Big Think Blog

Twitter lit up Wednesday night during Mike Huckabee’s speech at the Republican Convention when the preacher turned governor scoffed at Barack Obama for bringing “European Ideas” back to the United States. Some saw the comment as xenophobic while others seemed to appreciate the sentiment that the United States does just fine on its own, sans European (read: socialist) influences. But Huckabee is not running for President (at least in the general election). So what does John McCain think about Europeans and their ideas? In the last 30 seconds of this clip, McCain told Big Think, the US has a lot to learn from folks across the big pond. Hint: he likes Europeans. Shhh!

For the rest of McCain’s interview with Big Think, click here

Less than a week after the arrival of Gov. Sarah Palin to the national spotlight, her longtime pastor, Larry Kroon of the Wasilla Assembly of God church, has been outed as yet another screwball religious fanatic who taught moral lessons to someone who may lead the free world. The Daily Kos reports that Kroon supports Jews for Jesus, but seems to have antipathy for Israel. And anyone who criticizes President Bush over Iraq, he seems to think, may be buying a one-way ticket to Hell. Not only that, but these ideas seem to have actually influenced the Republican vice presidential candidate. Could this pastor do even more damage than Jeremiah Wright did to Obama? Big Think asked rational pastor Rick Warren how it is possible to reconcile evangelism and tolerance. Warren was quick to explain that if God can give him the freedom to choose his beliefs, then he must show the same respect. In the meantime, is anyone digging up dirt on Joe Biden’s priest?

Thirty-two year-old Scott Kleeb, a Democrat running for the U.S. Senate from Nebraska, has been called a “moderate liberal populist.” But Kleeb told Big Think that most political labels are outdated and need to be thrown out. Here’s what he says he and a lot of other modern Democrats stand for.

Yesterday, sci-fi blog io9 relayed an article from PLOS Pathogens, a journal published by the Public Library of Science, that claims there may be a cure for the Ebola virus. While most of us may not be worried about catching the mysterious virus, the discovery of a cure could have greater implications for ending other diseases. It may also unlock the door to questions about cellular life that could help us live longer. The news also comes as relief to those worried about bio-terrorism. While Ebola is not common, it spreads quickly and kills 90% of its victims and could be easily spread with the use of bio-weapons. Immunologist Anthony Fauci sat down with Big Think months ago and explained why finding cures is not only the best defense against disease, but a good offense in the war on terror.

When is it okay for the personal to become the political? Gov. Sarah Palin did not get the chance to answer that question this week when it was revealed that her teenage daughter was pregnant. Almost immediately, Senator Obama issued a statement that said scrutiny of Gov. Palin’s children should unequivocally remain off limits to the media (and by proxy, voters?) But that’s not going to stop most citizens from unpacking as much political meaning from the candidates’ personal lives as possible.


Let’s set aside for a moment debates about teenage pregnancy–and the specter of abortion that lives in its shadows. How and when do we want our political leaders to weigh in on moral issues? We asked Sen. John McCain this last November and here’s what he had to say about the line between private lives and public policy. Oh, and why abortion is a special case.




For more the rest of the interview, click here!

Are you sitting on your couch right now watching CNN, eating some leftover Chinese and thinking to yourself “I could be a famous blogger!” Well not so fast, smart guy. Here’s media critic Jay Rosen on what it really takes to start a blog [that people actually read]. “Self-publishing is easy,” he says. “The hard part is joining the conversation.”

How strange. The Republican National Convention turned out to be a bad place for a Rage Against the Machine concert. Last night, the cops basically wouldn’t let the anarchist band play, which led to about 4,000 fans trying to break down the security fence near the northwest entrance to the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, according to the blog Idolator. A non sequitur, you say? Au contraire. They saw a machine and they raged against it. Bravo! Here’s activist musician Moby on whether music can really change politics.

The Know Your Money blog out of the UK lists the ten most expensive paintings in the world today, including Jackson Pollock’s “No.5, 1948,” which is rumored to have gone for $140,000,000 and Pablo Picasso’s “Garçon à la pipe” which sold for $104,200,000. Are these prices really worth it? Here’s Simon de Pury, Chairman of the Phillips de Pury & Company auction house, on how to distinguish hype from value.

To whom should we give credit for the amount of attention the presidential campaign has (and will continue to) receive: the abysmal record of the Bush White House or the popularity of reality TV? Perhaps both, for what else but a perfect storm of political, economic, and media trends could have led to our current situation: a Republican Party headed by a non-conformist and a 44 year-old woman running against a black man named Barack Hussein Obama backed by a party run increasingly by cowboys? Colorado Governor Bill Ritter and Senate hopeful Scott Kleeb of Nebraska are only two examples of the Democrats’ effort to reclaim the spirit of the American West. After being monopolized for eight-years by the Connecticut Yankee with a Texan drawl, real Westerners seem fed up. But East Coast Democrats may need time to become adjusted to some of these new Western ideas. When Big Think interviewed Scott Kleeb, he tried to explain that the much-maligned Farm Bill has much less to do with agriculture than many think. If, as Ryan Lizza reports in The New Yorker, the American West is the future of the party, it will have to be careful to not alienate us Eastern Democrat greenhorns. As Hillary Clinton supporters take in John McCain’s veep choice and the Obama camp tries to figure out how to attack Palin without drawing their ire, one can only wonder what transformations each party will have undergone after all the dust has settled.

Although two days remain before John McCain will officially accept the GOP’s endorsement of his candidacy, St. Paul, Minn. should already expect to resemble Denver in three days time—something like an empty fairground after everyone has gone home. The Democratic and Republican National Conventions are accustomed to receiving, and ignoring, criticism for their tendency to attract hordes of journalists, all of whom redundantly report on the partisan chest-thumping and back-slapping. However, when Big Think interviewed press critic Jay Rosen, he explained that the problem “is not that there are too many journalists, but that the ideas they bring are too impoverished.” Calling the conventions “a gathering of the news tribe to which the parties are also invited,” Rosen points out that there are 15,000 journalists compared to 2000 delegates. Yet this would not be a problem if the “horse-race press” actually gave us information that we didn’t already know. “It is completely in love with its own agendalessness and in advertising its own agendalessness,” Rosen says. Maybe by 2012 journalists will take Rosen’s advice, but thusfar the conventions’ greatest accomplishment has been a post-Katrina PR campaign focused on hyping up concern for Hurricane Gustav.