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The Higgs Particle Is as Good as Found
Orion Jones
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552 - When Macbeth Met Hamlet: a Scandinavian Scotland?
Frank Jacobs
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A Catalogue of Social Media (and Related) Tools
Alan Rosenblatt
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Venture Capital for the 99%
Dominic Basulto
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This Super Camera Captures What's Beyond Human Comprehension
Michio Kaku
Church and State
The question of religious freedom, and of the relationship between religion and government, was paramount in the founding of the United States. Almost 250 years later, these issues continue to spark fierce cultural and legal battles, as Americans with deeply held religious views clash with those who are equally protective of secular principles.
This has flared up once again in early 2012, in the form of a Catholic protest against federal health care laws that would require employee health plans (even in Catholic institutions) to pay for contraceptives. The debate, as always, is about the limits of freedom for individuals and institutions bound together by the laws of a shared State.
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The Contraceptive Clash: Not About Religious Rights
In the continuing flap over the Obama administration’s decision to require Catholic institutions to provide birth control under the new health care law, both sides have failed to come to grips with the complexities of religious liberty.
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Clean Water is the Best Prophylactic
Dean Kamen's Slingshot is "a prophylactic disguised as a drinking fountain," write Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler in a new book.
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The Religious War on Reproductive Health
When it comes to reproductive health in America, progress often seems like a one-step-forward-two-steps-back kind of situation. But let's start with some rare good news: in January, the Obama administration announced that most employers would have to cover birth control in their employee health ... -
Has Condom Availability in Schools Increased Teen Pregnancy?
I was in Catholic community center today for a sporting event when a brightly colored poster on a bulletin board caught my eye. The picture was of a parachutist falling gently toward the earth and the caption read “Would he do it if he knew his gear would fail to protect him from injury or death 1 ...
Latest
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Heart Disease Tied to Y Chromosome
about 3 hours ago
What's the Latest Development? In a survey of 3,000 British men, scientists have found an important link between a particular version of the Y sex chromosome and heart disease, meaning the predisposition to illness is passed down from father to son. Researchers found that 90 percent of the men ... Read More
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Support African Americans for Humanism
about 3 hours ago
As NPR recently reported, there's a high price to pay for being a black atheist in America. African Americans who come out of the closet as nonreligious may be cut off by their own families, may be labeled a "race traitor" or an "apostate", or accused of lacking morals or having "holes in their ... Read More
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Will the Supreme Court Rule on Same-Sex Marriage?
about 7 hours ago
On Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the 2010 district court ruling that California’s Proposition 8 forbidding same-sex marriages was unconstitutional. It was the first time a federal appeals court had overturned a state law against same-sex marriage. In the majority opinion ... Read More
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The Crazy Cat Lady, Explained
about 8 hours ago
Why do people hoard pets? Psychologists have explained the phenomenon as arising from early childhood experiences. Animals are often stable fixtures in an otherwise dysfunctional life. Yet what if your cat makes you even more dysfunctional? An evolutionary biologist named Jaroslav Flegr argues ... Read More
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The Contraceptive Clash: Not About Religious Rights
about 15 hours ago
In the continuing flap over the Obama administration’s decision to require Catholic institutions to provide birth control under the new health care law, both sides have failed to come to grips with the complexities of religious liberty. In the weeks since the mandate was announced in January ... Read More
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Clean Water is the Best Prophylactic
about 15 hours ago
"The most fecund population on the planet is the rural poor," Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler observe in their recent book Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think . Demographers have found alarming birth rates in the developing world, and it is linked to what Diamandis and Kotler call the ... Read More
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Is Art History Better Unsaid Than Red?
about 16 hours ago
A new tour at the Museum of Modern Art in New York has many seeing red over “seeing” Reds in the collection. As reported in Art News, Artist Yevgeniy Fiks’ “performative tour” titled simply enough “Communist Tour of MoMA” begins with the current exhibition Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of ... Read More
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Men: too Emotional for Military Professionalism
about 16 hours ago
When asked by CNN's John King what he thinks about the Pentagon's recent decision to allow female troops to serve nearer the front lines of battle, Rick Santorum replied that this could be a problem because of the natural protective valor of men-folk: I do have concerns about women in front ... Read More
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Is Kim Jong-un Dead?
about 22 hours ago
On China's microblogging site Weibo, rumors of Kim Jong-un's death surfaced earlier today when bloggers posted that he was assassinated in Beijing. Media outlets have yet to issue any official reports, but the rumors have spread to Twitter and they are ripe for punny jokes. Gawker was one of the ... Read More
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FU Asks: Should the Government Fund the Arts?
about 24 hours ago
Welcome to a new feature on the Floating University blog, FU Asks, where we open up the academic debate on our e-learning platform to the Big Think community. This week we're featuring a discussion prompt from Leon Botstein, President of Bard College and conductor of the American Symphony ... Read More
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Reading List for Course on Science and Environmental Communication
1 day ago
This semester, students from a diversity of majors at American University are participating in an advanced seminar I am teaching on science and environmental communication. For the first part of the semester, we are covering core issues and themes. In the process, students will be blogging on ... Read More
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Diffusion of Innovations for Dummies
1 day ago
Question: What do VCRs, Betamax players, condom use in Thailand, and hybrid corn seeds in Iowa have in common? Answer: The adoption of these innovations each followed a logical, predictable framework that can be applied to (most) any innovation. The Diffusion of Innovations theory has been ... Read More
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IdeaFeed
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Rethinking the Workplace
How Diversity Inspires Innovation
Diversity in all senses encourages creativity and innovation by fusing together two or more ideas that are traditionally separate. Specialists are often too narrowly focused.
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Personal Management
Is Your Boss a Robot? Here's How to Tell.
At the annual Loebner Prize Competition, robots compete against humans trying to convince judges they are actually human. Might the judges determine your boss is actually a robot?
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Launching a Start Up
Start Your Business Without Going Broke
Thinking of starting a business, but unsure of where you will find the cash to open the doors? Here are a few tips on how to launch a business with little to no money out of pocket.
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Seeing the Unseen
So Long, Lone Inventor. Hello, Collective Capitalism.
The American myth of the lone innovator, from Thomas Edison to Steve Jobs, no longer fits the complexity of technological progress or the interconnectedness of communication systems.