Guest Thinkers

One of the questions I almost never hear from black men is “what are you reading these days?” What I do hear is “you know, I was reading Power Moves […]

Is the high cost of marriage in Egypt, which has sexually disenfranchised many young men, helping to fuel the ongoing uprising?

We’ve been reading a lot lately about the rediscovered remnants of the Pink and White Terraces (also known as Te Tarata and Otukapurangi) near Mt. Tarawera in New Zealand, but […]

This week, Al Jazeera English has launched a major advertising campaign branded, “Demand Al Jazeera in the USA,” to stir public demand for access to the cable news channel.  What […]

According to United Press International, Russian scientists say there’s the chance that a 900-foot asteroid could cause a global cataclysm in a little over twenty years.

Scientists have confirmed an axiom of teenage life: Kids intent on climbing the social ladder at school are more likely to pick on their fellow students.

With protests against regimes in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, the West fears a new era of Islamic political power in the Middle East. There are four reasons it shouldn’t.

What’s the matter with social psychology? Everybody in social science (including social psychology itself) has a diagnosis, because everybody thinks something is amiss (“it’s a terrible field,” an anthropologist once […]

If you only read one piece about Scientology, make it Lawrence Wright’s in this week’s New Yorker. Wright’s book The Looming Towertold the story of how we arrived at 9/11, […]

After saying something really controversial like Tea Partiers aren’t Fascists, I thought it safer to return to a relatively trans-partisan commentary on a good movie.  This is part of my […]

How the divide in wealth between the rich and the poor is being maintained through marriage.

Part way through a revolution, only one thing seemed certain in Egypt: there is no longer an Arab exception to the worldwide desire for dignity, human rights, and possibly democracy.

Last week Seth Mnookin, author of the Panic Virus,  kicked off the inaugural event in the new Science in Society Film and Lecture series at American University, sponsored by the […]

The massive droughts in China underscore the fact that we’re simply running out of the freshwater needed to sustain the earth’s nearly 7 billion people. How can we fix this problem? 

With federal judges retiring at the rate of one a week—and being replaced nowhere near that fast—101 of the 854 seats on district and circuit courts are currently vacant. Can democrats and republicans make nice and fill this gap?

As I read the news today of an alleged US drone crashing and members of AQAP making off with the wreckage, I was reminded of the part in Lawrence Wright’s […]

“My beard points to heaven, and I feel the nape of my neck on my hump,” Michelangelo wrote in a poem about his experience painting the ceiling of the Sistine […]

While there are currently two dozen apps on the market designed to help people quit smoking, a new study says none of this software is likely to do the job.

Some news for today: Taiwan: Most people don’t realize that the island of Taiwan has potentially active volcanoes. One such volcanic center is the Datun (as known as Tatun) Group, […]

My fellow BIG THINK blogger, Mark Seddon, has written that Glenn Beck is “Goebbels” or a Fascist or Nazi rousing the masses up in a dangerous, murderous way.  Palin and the Tea […]

So what do you do? Do you respond to their bizarre, inane and frequently offensive attention seeking bombast, or do you deny them the oxygen of publicity? In Britain last […]

Around 2012, the sun’s magnetic cycle will reach its peak, increasing the chances of massive magnetic storms that could wipe out the satellites that govern GPS, television streams, and even the Internet.

Note: I had one more Egypt dispatch in my notes to post, but as I left the country and bounced around my new (temporary) home events on the ground have […]

The art collecting world remains as much about collecting name cache as it does about collecting art. Becoming a trusted dealer and banking on that brand name allows you to […]

And in a real brief update (I can’t spend all day doing this!), the BBC has a report with video of an explosive event at Kizimen in Kamchatka (top left). […]

For those of you interested in all the coming and going with volcanoes and earthquakes in Iceland, if you’re not following Jon Frimann’s blog, well, for shame. He usually has […]

Will Huffington tilt AOL towards her own distinctive brand of uber progressive political proselytizing? What long-term incentive does she have to successfully rebuild AOL’s content business?

A new study of 900 kids reports a correlation between the number of hours a woman works outside the home and the BMI* of her children. “For a third grader […]

Bob Duggan, BIG THINK’s artistic blogger, worries that nobody is thinking about the sesquicentennial of the Civil War.  I agree that there’s not enough political reflection about that war.  Political […]

Pieces of volcano news on this snowy Ohio Monday morning (and now that the Superbowl is done, only one week until the real sports begin again): Japan: Eruptions reader and […]