Guest Thinkers

Ronald Reagan would have been 100 on February 6.  If they had a cure for Alzheimer’s, you know he would have made it.  Health-obsessed Americans today (disproportionally sophisticated liberals) should at least look to Reagan for longevity tips.

Gabrielle Giffords reminds me of Phineas Gage, a nineteenth century railroad worker who survived being pierced cleanly through the brain by a thirteen pound iron bar. In both cases,  the victim’s core brain functions remained relatively unscathed.

For many in the Labour Party, the promotion of Ed Balls to Shadow ­Chancellor was as inevitable as it was long overdue. I was among many party members who argued […]

A long-term retreat in snow and ice cover in the Northern Hemisphere is weakening the ability of these seasonal cloaks of white to reflect sunlight back into space and cool global climate.

Some researchers have explored whether warfare might be explained in part by swings in climate. But what about the opposite effect? Can humanity’s skirmishes change the climate?

A new two-part study published in the journal Energy Policy claims it’s possible and affordable for the world to achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2030.

To borrow a phrase fromBilly Idol, Dijkstra presents “flesh for fantasy” first as the nightmare of Puritanism and, more hopefully, as the perhaps impossible dream of a mature, open society.

President Obama’s numbers are up.  After averaging less than 47% percent approval for his second year in office, Obama’s approval is now up to 50% again. By an 8 point […]

Engineers at Cornell University have developed a form of turbine-free wind power called Vibro-Wind. 

Collaborative Fund is a new kind of investment fund that bridges the disconnect between doing good and doing well in business, providing the financial foundation for creativity and innovation that will shape our shared future.

The modern world may have been inaugurated with the thought that we can and should make ourselves happy in this world.  No longer should we be, as St. Augustine wrote, […]

A few weeks ago when I blogged about a social-psych study that found people have more empathy when they feel low in status, I wasn’t aware how much work is being done on the rich-asshole problem in social science.

Is the search industry locked in a race to the bottom or are conditions ripe for a breakthrough? This question will take center stage at a gathering in San Francisco on February 1, to be webcast on BigThink.com.  

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the American Civil War. The process of looking back at that time must also include looking back at previous attempts […]

A recently published study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found a correlation between friendship and possession of a particular version of a single gene.

Last year, Chauncey DeVega asked a great question: how would we see Sarah Palin if she were black? As much as we might like to pretend otherwise, blacks in America are […]

I’ve got a new USGS/Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcanic Activity Report for a wintry January Thursday. Some highlights (with post report updates) include: Russia: The Kamchatkan volcano, Kizimen, has […]

BIG THINK has done has the big service of presenting many, many excellent and expert views on what happiness is and how to be happy.  Surely, we increasingly think, this […]

It’s pretty obvious the time the GOP spent this week debating a healthcare repeal bill that has absolutely no chance of becoming law instead of deliberating over more practical matters […]

The decline in birth rates in 2009 isn’t a story about young women learning about life with a baby from a reality show. It is a story about young women who know all too well what life with a baby is like.

Whether there is a God or not, the universe per se cannot have a purpose in any anthropomorphic sense for which that term is usually employed, says Michael Shermer.

The U.S. may be in decline, but the fact that the U.S. asks that question so often is one of the reasons it has not declined. Americans have a strong impulse for course corrections.

I just had a chance to view the upcoming Nintendo 3DS portable gaming console operating with autostereoscopic technology, which is 3D without the glasses. This is truly the beginning of a […]

Many apologies for the delay in postings, other work has gotten in the way, but I promise to be better in the future.  It has been an incredibly busy few […]

One company is taking the familiar childhood concept of a bake sale and turning it into a social enterprise for the grown-up world.

It can’t have been good news for Piers Morgan that in the week CNN chose to debut his new show ‘Piers Morgan Tonight’, another Brit, comedian Ricky Gervais tanked horribly […]

Will Saletan accuses Apple CEO Steve Jobs of “gaming the system” to get a liver transplant: Jobs lives in Northern California, but he got his liver in Tennessee. Why? Different […]

Over on Jon Frimann’s Iceland Volcano and Earthquake Blog, there has been a lot of talk about the activity under Vatnajökull (see map below), the largest glacier on Iceland and […]

Great art can sometimes be like a magnet—attracting hordes of admirers. The Gauguin: Maker of Myth exhibition that recently closed at the Tate Modern in London, England, drew more than […]

The fact that many sun sign horoscopes are based on badly outdated information is troubling to many people, but what may be even more disturbing is astrology’s close similarity to racism.