bigthinkeditor

“Don’t trade your passion, originality, and curiosity for some second-hand notion of success.” William Deresiewicz urges freshmen not to play it safe.rn

“Through science and technology, we are getting better at bringing cosmic quantities to the human scale.” “The everyday is slowly but surely inching towards the cosmic.”

It’s possible to see procrastination as the quintessential modern problem. It’s also a surprisingly costly one. Some of us lose money and risk blindness because of it.rn

The real cost of cheap pineapples in the UK is carried by Costa Rica, where sprays and pesticides eliminates biodiversity and endanger public health.

Nate Anderson looks at the “legal blackmail” business, a pornographer who decided to take revenge on pirates and the backlash and legal changes it provoked.

“If Obama wants to save his presidency, he may have to do it the old-fashioned way: not by transcending his party’s divisions, but uniting his supporters around their common fears.” rn

“As morality merges with management, a servile readiness to fit thought and conduct to what is politically correct becomes the passport for continuing dependence on…an intrusive state.”

Angry Birds is a chuckle-inspiring game about wingless birds who have been wronged by a gang of pigs. Virginia Heffernan explains how she loves it but also now hates everything.

Can teachers do much to remedy poor academic performance that is due to low IQ, poor health, peer-group pressures, a bad family environment, or the effects of popular culture?

“The strained economy shouldn’t keep the nation from crafting school improvements, but Obama’s pitch for longer school years is unhelpful right now.”

“As the top tax rate rises and falls, so do tax avoidance techniques—both legal and illegal. Changes in reported income, therefore, might not reflect changes in actual income.”

“How do drones change the nations that use them?” Does America need to consider the morality of increasing use of unmanned drone attacks into Pakistan?

“When Hunter S. Thompson applied for a job at the Vancouver Sun in 1958, the famously wild and inventive author wrote a cover letter that broke all the rules.”

“If there’s one epithet the right never tires of, it’s ‘elitism.’ So what do Republicans mean by this French word?” Slate reviews the history of a modern political scare word.

The New Republic explains why Palestine is unlikely to renounce violence as a political tool, give up on current negotiations or demand the right to vote in Israel.

“Malcolm Gladwell is wrong about the poor revolutionary power of social networking, as the tweeters in Kashmir show.” The Guardian responds to The New Yorker’s critique of Twitter.

“It turns out that the enemies of free expression are adept at the Internet, too.” The Wall Street Journal reports on totalitarian regimes that restrict cyber-freedom.

“For decades, antipsychotic drugs were a niche product. Today, they’re the top-selling class of pharmaceuticals in America.” Duff Wilson on the shadowy underworld of big pharma.

“The chief executive of Microsoft is going to the U.K. to explain the multi-billion dollar bet that the world’s biggest software company and a poster boy for corporate America is making.”

“Now that gold has crossed the magic $1,000 barrier, why can’t it increase ten-fold?” Harvard Economics professor Kenneth Rogoff on the world’s most unpredictable precious metal.

“Instead of the vast expanses of leisure time imagined by science fiction writers, we now get one hour less sleep per night than our parents’ generation did.”

“When Mao Tse-Tung launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, one of the principal targets of attack were intellectuals whose death warrants were signed by fellow intellectuals in the West.”

“What is it about the presumptuous use of ‘we’ that inspires so much outrage, facetious or otherwise?” Ben Zimmer on the contentious use of the plural subject pronoun.

“The letters reveal that the discovery of the double helix could have turned out differently if the characters involved had a little more information.”

“China is pouring another $7 billion into Brazil’s oil industry, reigniting fears of a global ‘land grab’ of natural resources.” The Independent on a rising China’s geopolitical strategies.

“Amish values of hard work, humility, loyalty, and community make for surprisingly—or maybe not-so-surprisingly—successful entrepreneurs.”

“Part of our current malaise is sheer fatigue with the old forms of politics. Can the Comedy Central duo break the mold?” The Guardian on Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert.

“‘The average American doesn’t realize how much of the laws are written by lobbyists’ to protect incumbent interests, Google CEO Eric Schmidt told Atlantic editor James Bennet.”

An idea proposed by the Third Way, that government issue an itemized taxpayer receipt, has the support of many commentators who want to know what their tax dollars are used for.

Who better to comment on President Obama’s recent decision to declare an end to the United States’ prolonged conflict in Iraq than General Wesley Clark? In his Big Think interview, […]