Skip to content

All Articles


Through luck or sheer force of will, these seven former interns all managed to make it from paper-pushing, truck-loading, and (literally) shit-shovelling to the very top of their fields. Many went […]
Plenty of people are happy for their leaders and bosses to make choices for them, as long as they probably would have made similar choices themselves.  Yet when leaders and bosses don’t truly represent the interests of their constituents and employees, nudging can be toxic. 
In 1990, Kate O’Connor was the aide for the lieutenant governor of a small, largely inconsequential New England state. Fourteen years later, when Howard Dean became a front runner for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, that job — her first — suddenly changed.    
There’s growing concern that tensions over territorial disputes in the South China Sea could escalate into a military confrontation between China and its neighbors—a confrontation, many argue, that would inexorably […]
Female Olympians are rightly angry that their bodies have been criticized in petty ways. The Brazilian soccer team was called “a bit chubby,” and weightlifters have been called “fat” and […]
Today Counterterrorism adviser John Brennan gave a detailed overview of US policy toward Yemen at the Council on Foreign Relations.  Marc Lynch over at Foreign Policy has provided the good […]
My latest article has just been published on AlterNet, Why Is America’s Most Progressive Voting Block Often Overlooked? In it, I discuss the strong progressive leanings of American nonbelievers, what […]
The freewheeling, rabble-rousing Internet hacktivist collective known as Anonymous thus far has played little or no role in determining the outcome of the 2012 Presidential Election. With the exception of partnering […]
Back in May, I reviewed Steven Pinker’s hugely ambitious new book The Better Angels of Our Nature, about the decline of violence through history. I couldn’t do justice to all […]
In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled that the Boy Scouts of America, as a private membership-based organization, had the right to discriminate against gay people by expelling them or barring […]
I want to issue an apology and a goodbye to many frequent commenters, who I consider my intellectual mentors. Comments are now turned off on the blog. Many will see […]
NASA went for the Gold with the Curiosity space probe, and scored a perfect 10. Perfect start, perfect execution, perfect dismount. And Curiosity is the Godzilla of space probes, with 10 […]