Guest Thinkers

Before 2010 fades even further into the distance, I wanted to bring you Waq al-waq’s first (and possibly only) best of list.  That is, my pick for the two best […]

One Earth Designs aims to ignite innovation across the socio-environmental spectrum among Himalayan agricultural and nomadic communities, working directly with local stakeholders to ensure each invention is of real practical […]

If you’ve ever responded to tragedy by raging at God, you’re not alone. A new study finds that anger at God is a common emotion among Americans.

Calling it “an insistent history that refuses to wait any longer to be told,” Lynn Hershman Leeson declares “WAR,” her acronym for the women’s art revolution begun in the 1970s, […]

I admit I was creeped out by this new paper, from the European Journal of Social Psychology, which reports that people primed to think about their ancestors performed better on […]

The good news is, of course, is that the old are living longer and healthier than ever.  But, as I explained, the news in not all good for us old guys in […]

We’ve found out the winner of 2010 Pliny for volcanic event of the year yesterday, so now let’s look back at the entire year in volcanic activity. It was a […]

In isolated villages and monasteries in northern Iraq, and in churches in Baghdad, Irbil and Mosul, it is still possible to hear Assyrian Christians talking and praying in ancient Aramaic, […]

As evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa explains during his Big Think interview, many of humankind’s most important psychological traits stopped evolving over 10,000 years ago. Today, many of our unconscious biases […]

If you’re a frequent user of Amazon, you probably enjoy the ability to buy an item with just one click. Amazon has all your credit card information stored in its […]

Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics, says Stephen Hawking. But are Hawking’s theoretical ideas not philosophical in their essence?

Gross domestic product is taken to be the leading indicator of national well-being. But we should ask ourselves: is it really wise to accord such importance to growth?

The Republican Party’s maniacal obsession with repealing, revoking, or rescinding any trace of the healthcare legislation the Obama Administration and the Democrats passed into law almost a year ago has […]

This simple quiz neatly divides the world into two kinds of people. A hundred thousand unexplained dead fish is a job for: a) theology; or, b) ichthyology. [Photo credit: psyberartist, […]

After spiking in attention leading up to the December 2009 Copenhagen meetings, analysis by DailyClimate.org and by Max Boykoff at the University of Colorado show a sharp decline in both […]

Nowhere is the sensemaking power of design more evident than in pictograms, signage and icon design. A new effort from Mozilla and rockstar designer Aza Raskin aims to bring this […]

By now most of us have seen the 1950’s “The Good Wife’s Guide“—the one that tells women that a “Good Wife” is one who acknowledges her husband as master of […]

2011 has begun, but its not too late to look back on 2010. Last year was a remarkable year for volcanic eruptions – quite a few eruptions caught the attention […]

William Burroughs famously remarked that Islam had hit a one thousand year writer’s block. Is this assessment justified, especially in the areas of science and politics?

More than 2.5 billion people around the world lack access to formal financial services. But new mobile banking services in Africa are helping millions of people out of poverty.

Long before “The Situation” and his kind entered the zeitgeist, Andy Warhol filmed his own reality show featuring his personal constellation of “Superstars”—artists, musicians, poets, actors, models, and sometimes just […]

Everyone in Yemen is catching it.  Early last week, seven ministers and two deputies resigned their posts so that they could compete in the upcoming parliamentary elections scheduled for April.  […]

So it turns out there are actually three outstanding holiday movies–TRUE GRIT, THE KING’S SPEECH, and THE FIGHTER. True Grit is, as I’ve said, very ambitious and philosophically pretentious.  It […]

I have a couple of news briefs for the first Sunday of 2011. First off, as many of you noted, Kizimen in Kamchatka had another explosive eruption over the weekend. […]

As I wrote in my past blog entry, “The 1000 Genomes Project Will Help Us Understand Genetic Variations,” it initially cost $3 billion to fully sequence all of the 25,000 […]

The brain-as-computer model of the mind will be replaced by an organic model, in which the brain is embodied—part of a whole, dynamic, living organism.

In the coming years, we’ll see a convergence of new platforms for posing grand challenges and new tools to allow anyone to address these challenges.

The tax breaks put into place by the 2009 Economic Recovery Act stimulated a sharp rise in news and consumer attention to a range of energy efficiency home improvements, providing […]

With no War on Drugs there would be, within one generation, no “black problem” in the United States, says The New Republic, echoing England’s increasingly liberal drugs policies.

Nicolas Kristof recently wrote a column in the New York Times urging Americans to teach their children Spanish before Chinese. Chinese has become quite the coveted prize for New Yorkers: “Chinese […]