Truth & Justice
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Sugar Coating: What Your Doctor Really Prescribes
about 21 hours ago
What's the Latest Development? A new Harvard study calls into question our assumption that medicine is one of the most honest professions. In a survey of 1,900 doctors from across the country, 55 percent said they had been overly optimistic about a patient's prognosis and 10 percent said they ... Read More
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Is Your Boss a Robot? Here's How to Tell.
1 day ago
What's the Latest Development? At the annual Loebner Prize Competition, robots and humans compete to convince judges they are actually human. Imagine your boss took part. Would his or her communication style qualify as robotic or human? If during a discussion, your boss responds to the last ... Read More
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FU Asks: Should the Government Fund the Arts?
1 day 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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Paul Ryan, Individual Liberty, and the Fate of Medicare
5 days ago
Just as Mitt Romney appears to be wrapping up the Republican nomination for the presidency, congressional Republicans are taking steps to set up their own political framework for the 2012 election. In short, the future of Medicare is on the line and a Romney vs. Obama match-up will surely address ... Read More
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Why Do People Become Digital Pirates?
5 days ago
What's the Latest Development? Enabling digital piracy must be one of the least profitable theft crimes ever. By the time 'James', as we'll call him, was just 19 years old, he had begun cooperating with many elite piracy sites, using his formidable technical knowledge specifically to not sell ... Read More
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How Twitter May Save Democratic Society
5 days ago
What's the Latest Development? The stubbornness of the Assad regime in Syria seems a sharp contrast to last year's Arab Spring, when tens of thousands took to public squares in Cairo. At that time, Twitter mobilized crowds that no community organizing could, says BBC correspondent Paul Mason ... Read More
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It's Your Data: Why Facebook Should Pay You
5 days ago
What's the Latest Development? Facebook is seeking to raise $5 billion in cash by becoming a publicly traded company, an action the social networking firm is expected to take by this spring. Over 70 percent of the company's profits currently come from advertising revenue, which is tailored to ... Read More
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Standardized Testing: The Monster That Ate American Education
6 days ago
What's the Big Idea? As the Assistant Secretary of Education in the first Bush administration, Educational historian Diane Ravitch became known for her push to establish national standards for K-12 education. From 1997-2004, she served as a member of the National Assessment Governing Board ... Read More
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Can Alien Life Survive Earthly Budget Cuts?
11 days ago
What's the Latest Development? In December, the world's most advanced search for extraterrestrial intelligence, called SETI, resumed scanning the skies for alien signals. SETI currently utilizes an array of 42 radio telescopes, located at the Hat Creek observatory in California, built for a ... Read More
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Is Twitter Gaming Authoritarian Governments?
13 days ago
What's the Latest Development? Twitter has announced it will, if asked, block tweets in specific countries where the tweets' contents violate local law. Though the company has promised not to take any initiative on its own, only removing content as the result of a valid legal challenge. And like ... Read More
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Is the Digital Revolution Bad for Medicine?
15 days ago
What's the Latest Development? The digital revolution is making more medical data available to more people but does that necessarily benefit patients? No, says cardiologist Eric Topol. He tells the story of a patient who received an at-home CT scan as a gift on Valentine's Day. The patient ... Read More
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Obama Leads to Curb Tuition Costs
16 days ago
What's the Latest Development? President Obama announced his plan to help young people and families afford college today by increasing the amount of federal loan money available, doubling the number of work-study programs and creating an incentive program to reward universities for keeping ... Read More
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Julian Assange To Host Talk Show On Russia Today
17 days ago
Julian Assange: Establishment outsider. Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Talk show host? Apparently so. The Australian founder of controversial website WikiLeaks will be at the helm of "The World Tomorrow," a series comprised of 10 interviews with "key political players, thinkers and revolutionaries," to ... Read More
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Are There Climate Change Winners?
18 days ago
What's the Latest Development? While global warming would prove bad for the Earth in general, colder regions of the planet could experience positive changes. New shipping routes could open across the frigid Northern Sea, making it quicker and cheaper to export oil from Russia and Norway to the ... Read More
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Court Strikes Down Warrantless GPS Tracking
19 days ago
What's the Latest Development? In a unanimous decision that may set precedent for future digital privacy cases, the Supreme Court has ruled that police officers who attached a GPS tracking device to car without a warrant acted unconstitutionally. Originally, police officers had obtained a ... Read More
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Political Islam Has Arrived. Now What?
20 days ago
What's the Latest Development? Over the weekend, a new political era began in Egypt as the first parliamentary elections took place since the popular uprising which removed former-president Hosni Mubarak. "The Muslim Brotherhood, the country’s dominate political and religious force, won 47% of ... Read More
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America's Continued War Against Democracy
20 days ago
What's the Latest Development? American warplanes that have bombed Iraq and Afghanistan take off and land at a small island in the Indian Ocean called Diego Garcia, the principle island of the Chagos archipelago. It is little known that these islands, a British colony, were ordered 'swept' and ... Read More
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How Diversity Sparks Creativity
21 days ago
What's the Latest Development? New research shows that while we may praise diversity with our words, our actions tell another story. The larger the group of people we form a part of—a running club, a college campus, an office, etc.—the more likely we are to stick by others who we judge as being ... Read More
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Research of Deadly Bird Flu Virus Put on Hold
22 days ago
What's the Latest Development? A 60-day moratorium has been put on an international research effort into the deadly H5N1 bird flu virus which resulted in the creation of a more communicable strain of the disease. Dutch and American scientists wanted to know if the virus, which has been smoldering ... Read More
