BoomerGirl Diary

Why spend another Monday morning muddling through the minutiae, when you can hobnob over coffee with some of today's "leading thinkers, movers and shakers"? Let BigThink jump start your brain today. It might change your perspective for the rest of the week.

I don't remember how I discovered BigThink.com, now "a work in progress" in Beta, but I'm glad I did. It's a refreshing change from the news and blog sites I frequent.

About BigThink, in their own words:

"Our task is to move the discussion away from talking heads and talking points, and give it back to you. That is Big Think's mission. In practice, this means that our information is truly interactive. When you log onto our site, you can access hundreds of hours of direct, unfiltered interviews with today's leading thinkers, movers and shakers. You can search them by question or by topic, and, best of all, respond in kind. Upload a video in which you take on Senator Ted Kennedy's views on immigration; post a slideshow of your trip to China that supports David Dollar's assertion that pollution in China is a major threat; or answer with plain old fashioned text. You can respond to the interviewee, respond to a responder or heck, throw your own question or idea into the ring."

I haven't attempted to interact with the site (not sure I'm a big enough thinker for that) but the videos are, more often than not, worth watching. Today, for instance, Dana Gioia, poet and chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, is featured. He recites one of this poems about a brief, romantic encounter at a wedding twenty years ago, and the "what if" questions that linger even today. Lovely.