bigthinkeditor
Edith Grossman found trying to translate Cervantes’ 400-year old masterpiece “Don Quixote” into modern English somewhat… Quixotic.
Harvard primatologist Richard Wrangham came by Big Think a few weeks ago to discuss cooking and all of its evolutionary implications. Did you know that cooking is a huge influence […]
Scientists think toads may be able to predict earthquakes by sensing “pre-seismic perturbations in the ionosphere.”
“If ever there was a scientific theory that is fundamentally historical, that purports to explain change over time, it is evolution through natural selection,” writes Donald Worster.
A group of scientists is hoping to transform fast food waste oil into a high-tech polymer and create a “smart roof coating system” which will help to insulate homes.
The moral and legal debate over the use of military drone aircraft raises questions about how adequately the current laws of war have been adapted to the age of terrorism.
Researchers have come up empty in their quest to link genetic “copy-number variations” to diseases like breast cancer and diabetes.
Scientists have discovered the reason why the earth wasn’t covered with a layer of ice four billion years ago, when the Sun’s radiation was much less than it is today.
Researchers Nina Mazar and Chen-Bo Zhong have found that exposure to organic and environmentally friendly products leads people to act more altruistically.
The taste of many 2008 pinot noirs from California’s Anderson Valley was tainted by the severe forest fires during the growing season that year.
Gary Bass looks at how Israel lost its alliance with France in 1967, and what that precedent might indicate for the country’s relations with the Obama Administration.
Some journalists believe that Apple’s forthcoming iPad could save their industry, but it’s likely that publishers are being overly optimistic in their pricing schemes.
Not that you spend too much time wondering what life would be like if you were a light bulb…but, in case you’re curious, your body’s existence is equivalent to a […]
No man is an island…or could be if he tried. Even traits that we believe to be products of our individual genes, choices, or experiences—from our weight to our taste […]
Simon Johnson, MIT professor, former Chief Economist at the IMF and co-founder of BaselineScenario.com, stopped by today to talk about the financial crisis and why we desperately need to get […]
Well before the Kinsey reports, turn-of-the-century Stanford University hygiene professor Dr. Clelia Duel Mosher did a scientific survey of the sexual habits of her era’s women.
A look at the factors behind the brutal civil war that has been taking place in the Congo over the past decade — and the epidemic of mass rape that has swept that country with it.
Researchers at the University of Utah have found that 2.5 percent of the population is able to do two or more tasks at the same time without hurting their ability to perform each.
Columbia University professor Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic says her team of researchers has grown a human jaw bone using stem cells taken from bone marrow.
Recent evidence indicates that bats have sensitivity to the geomagnetic field, and use it to navigate. When they are traveling miles from home at night they seem to guide their flight, at least in part, by using the magnetic field around them.
New research has found that the ancestors of modern Scottish people left rock engravings that contain a written language from the Iron Age.
It cost $10 billion and took 16 years, but the Large Hadron Collider finally went into operation yesterday in Switzerland — and the world didn’t end after all.
There’s a new anti-snobbery food movement in France called Le Fooding, which focuses on sensual cooking, that evidently wants to take over America as well.
Why did Texas, remarkably, escape the worst of the burst of the real estate bubble? The state has had a comparatively low mortgage default rate through the recession, and Alyssa Katz looks at the broader secret to the state’s success, and what Washington might learn from it.
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver may not be starting a “food revolution” with his push to make school lunches healthier, but Marion Nestle gives him credit for trying to get “real food” back into cafeterias.
March has its share of strange and obscure holidays. The first of the month is National Pig Day, the fifth is Multiple Personality Day (a chance for anyone to get […]
Today’s installment of our series “The Future in Motion” features Joseph Sussman, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at MIT, and Douglas Malewicki, Aerospace engineer and inventor of the SkyTran. The SkyTran is […]
Then you’ll want to learn from Bill Brown, professor of English and the visual arts at the University of Chicago and the creator of “thing theory.” What is thing theory? […]
Today is the first day of Passover. To most Jewish people, that means a seder, matzo, wine, recounting the story that’s in the Haggadah. To Rabbi Niles Goldstein, it’s more […]
As many of its activists depend on unemployment for inspiration and government benefits, can the Tea Party movement survive an economy on the rebound?