Big Think Blog

Big Think has adopted software company Apture’s innovative new multimedia linking platform, the Apture Innovative Media Hub, which will enable us to bring our experts to life, even more, with only one line of code. This new class of authoring tools will provide a point and click interface to link and embed multiple content on our site, to quickly and easily create an exciting multimedia experience for you.

The Apture solution also upgrades the overall experience by enabling you to simply point and click to view several media without ever having to leave Big Think. No longer a flat piece of paper, Big Think will now be an interactive and intuitive experience where words and faces are more powerful with the addition of a variety multimedia content.

Apture provides access to the richest multimedia on the web, including Wikipedia’s open-licensed reference library, the largest video libraries in the world (YouTube, and a long tail of other providers), Flickr’s global library of photographs, imeem’s library of user-embeddable music and video playlists, Google Maps, and now Big Think.

Azar Nafisi, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and the author Reading Lolita in Tehran, says that Barack Obama is the best presidential candidate to deal with the problem of Iran. It doesn’t require a change in policy–or a softening. But it requires a change in attitude—one where we remain open to intelligent dialogue.

And this change can’t come soon enough. Seymour Hersh reports in the New Yorker that congress agreed to boost covert operations against Iran last year despite reservations by key officials and that President Bush sought up to $400 million for the program, which attempts to undermine Tehran and gathers data on its nuclear intentions.

Pentagon chief Robert Gates warned that if the US does attack, “we’ll create generations of jihadists, and our grandchildren will be battling our enemies here in America.” It gets worse: Hersh writes that one Washington-backed Iranian group may have ties to al-Qaeda and the nation’s drug culture.

Regardless of who wins the White House this November, Iran will be waiting.

We’re all aware that gas prices have gone through the roof. My palms sweat just passing a gas station, and I don’t even own a car. And while many have tried to glorify the “staycation” as this summer’s hottest trend, the truth is, staying home is the same as not being on vacation, no matter what kind of fancy lingo they try to feed you.

Michael T. Klare, professor of Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College, sat down with Big Think to discuss alternative fuel solutions. In the long run, Klare hopes that solar and wind power will power the auto industry, but for now, he calls for a more realistic “liquid” solution. Watch the Michael Klare interview here:

http://www.bigthink.com/user/michael-klare

But some sly consumers have gotten a little too creative in their search for alternative “liquid solutions.” Consumerist.com reports that increasing numbers of U-Haul renters have begun topping off the trucks’ tanks with water.

Very crafty, my friends; but if it were that easy, we wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. (And we would probably all live in U-Hauls).

Dan Barber, chef and co-owner at the NYC restaurant Blue Hill, which serves up sustainably nightly, is a big supporter of the locavore movement. He says the trend towards eating locally grown and produced food has helped small farmers stay in competition with big factory farms.

It’s the medium-sized farms that are having trouble thriving despite the growing public consciousness of where our food comes from. Mega farms have economy of scale, and the small local farmers thrive at farmer’s markets, but the mid-sized farms are too small to compete at the chain supermarkets, and are too big to load up a truck and go to the green market.

Barber says that eating food from small farms gives the consumer great flavor and diversity while supporting responsible land use. The way to support the mid-sized farms, who provide some of the quality and eco-consciousness of small farms, is through new laws. He’d like to see a Farm Bill that proposes paying farmers not based on how much they produce, but also based on how well they treat their land. He hopes that city dwelling and suburban Americans will realize that any Farm Bill is really a Food Bill and affects their lives in profound ways.

Restaurants like Blue Hill bring these issues to the attention of people who wouldn’t ordinarily think about who’s growing their dinner. Tom Mylan and Sasha Davies, interviewed by the local blog Gothamist are the founders of the Unfancy Food Show. The event, held in a Brooklyn bar, brings together local food artisans and hungry people looking to sample their tasty wares. Mylan (a butcher) and Davies (an artisanal cheese maker) founded the event in response to the Fancy Food Show, which showcases expensive foodstuffs, many that have been imported from thousands of miles away. They say that not only is locally sourced better for the environment and biodiversity, but it’s also more inspiring.

Harvard’s Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory Jorie Graham, who formerly taught at the prestigious University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, says the Internet is hardly the language killer some make it out to be. In fact, she says, email isn’t a far cry from the sixteenth century practice of sending your love a handwritten missive by horse drawn carriage. “I’m not sure that we’re losing anything by email. Perhaps we’re trying to keep ourselves more human by being in touch a great deal,” says Graham.

Our e-communication is also bursting with adjectives and adverbs. Hear what else Graham finds interesting about the transformation of language — and global politics — through the internet.

Meanwhile, firmly in the doomsday present, change means peril. The Dow crashed almost 360 points to the lowest ebb in two years as financial firms continue to hemorrhage employees.

Becoming comfortable in flux is an art, according to the How to Change the World blog. Ariane de Bonvoisin, author of The First 30 Days: Your Guide to Any Change and Loving Your Life More, you should focus on the good: “Begin to ask yourself better questions. Trade disempowering inquiries–Why am I so unlucky?, “Why did this happen?”, “Why is life so hard?”–for positive questions such as “What is positive about this situation?” or “In what way is this change a gift?” Begin to believe that from all change–even the most challenging or painful–something good will come. This is the change guarantee.”

To learn more about the people who use Big Think, we have partnered with a research firm called Federated Media, which has designed a special Big Think survey.

We hope this relationship with Federated will accomplish two things: help drive more appropriate advertising–to bring you the kinds of products and services that you like most. And, provide Big Think with valuable information about your interests, which will help us build content that is right for you.

So when you have a free moment, take the quick and easy Big Think survey. We’ll be happy to share the results with you when we have them. And thanks for continuing to participate in the conversation.

http://external.fmpub.net/take/209/

University of Virginia’s happiness expert, Jonathan Haidt, wades chest deep into the bubbling ooze of American politics that, he says, is one part religious fervor, one part self-righteousness and one part moral philosophy. Not only does he have the stomach for it, he emerges from the soup with some bone-hard theories, so old they seem new again.

Hiadt argues that morality is not just a systematic way of ensuring ‘justice’ and avoiding ‘harm’ but a codified system of behavior that allows for societies to move cohesively. Morality is the patient coach that transforms the pee-wee soccer squad from a drooling, whiny mob into a team with common ends.

His point? We need to abandon our current view of mutually exclusive moralities, as this only fosters the intense brand of self-righteousness that has divided our country along countless cultural and religious fault-lines.

Hiadt’s point is affirmed by the recent scuffle between presidential hopeful (pun intended) Obama and the influential conservative evangelist James Dobson, reported on CNN. Obama argues that we can’t govern by scripture; Dobson argues that Obama is deliberately misinterpreting the Bible to further his own political agenda.

This promises to be the first of many such dramas, especially as campaign season rolls forward and the two candidates vie for the religious vote, in all its tricky melting-pot incarnations.

Agree or not, Haidt’s interpretation is innovative, and it offers a fresh perspective on a particularly American political question.

Most Americans agree that trees are good and pollution is bad, but are stumped as to how they can personally protect a planet so big.

We sort our recyclables, mostly, and then wait for science to come up with ways to run cars on banana peels. Artist and architect Fritz Haeg says that we should stop waiting for a silver bullet and instead focus on using our individual talents to heal the earth.

In Gothamist, Savitri D., the director of the anti-consumerism group the Church of Stop Shopping is drawing attention to a threat to park space in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn by conducting a 4 day hunger strike while dressed as a mermaid. She donned her Mermaid costume as part of the annual Mermaid Parade held every year in Coney Island to celebrate the Summer Solstice and began sitting in a local storefront and fasting after the parade and Mermaid Ball to draw attention to the proposed changes to the plan to develop Coney Island.

The original plan included 61 acres of publicly accessible areas and the new proposal reduces this to nine acres. She hopes that her hunger strike will encourage locals to attend the local planning meeting where this issue will be discussed.

That’s what we call putting your individual talents to work. Click here to watch.

For the next ten weeks, as we roll out Think Science Now, our series on the human side of science, you have a chance to cast a vote for each new scientist. And when you do, Pfizer will donate $1 to Donor’s Choose, a website that matches people who need things with people who can give them. Pfizer and Donor’s Choose are raising money for teachers to buy lab equipment for their students, and thereby improving knowledge of science for a new generation of school kids. So please visit the Think Science Now page on Big Think, scroll down half way on the right, and click the button that says “Vote for this video profile.” This week the featured scientist is Dr. Sarah Schlesinger, a professor at Rockefeller University in New York and one of the nation’s leading researchers on HIV/AIDS. A vote for Dr. Schlesinger is a vote for a future scientist, and maybe, one day, a cure for another disease.

http://www.bigthink.com/thinksciencenow/weeks/1/

Paola Antonelli, the Italian-born curator of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, feels that no matter who’s elected President this November, they should include designers among their advisers.

No, she doesn’t think that redecorating the White House will help solve the mortgage crisis. But, she says, designers are grounded in practicality, designing objects for their clients that have to fit specific needs, stay in budget, obey local regulations and still be beautiful. Antonelli says that their innovative problem-solving skills will make designers the intellectuals of the future and position them to come up with an elegant and practical health care plan.

Designers let their imaginations run free when designing concept items, such as Cars of the Future, that will never be manufactured. Aside from looking really cool, the ideas that result from this unbridled creativity is later channeled into more practical, marketable items.

Wired’s gadget lab blog features six crazy concept bicycles, two of which you can actually buy. Unfortunately the bike with square wheels wont be hitting the market any time soon.