Guest Thinkers

Now that AGU is behind us and that I’ve waded through a lot of grading (over the weekend: 4 sets of labs and one each of papers and homework), I […]

Part of being a postmodern conservative is being open to the truth of the distinctively personal LOGOS of Christianity, to the possibility that the Christian understanding of being a person is […]

Germany’s controversial approach to fighting the euro crisis has split the European Union. The only thing agreed on is that the EU needs Germany as a motor if it is to survive.

This holiday season, Hybrid Reality is preparing for the next digital decade by cleaning out the attic and donating books to charity—an interesting opportunity to reflect on the future of […]

You have two options: Stay up Late or Get up Early!It’s been over thirty months since the continental United States in it’s entirety has been able to view a total […]

Congress finallyrepealed the military’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy today. After 17 years, gay and lesbian troops will be allowed to serve their country without having to lie about who […]

My friends at the Rick Smith Show (“Where Working People Come to Talk”) are camping out in a supermarket parking lot in sub-zero temperatures to collect food and donations for […]

“Will she, or won’t she?” Here is a question that has dominated the tabloid newspapers in Britain these past few weeks, as Cheryl Cole, a presenter of the ‘X Factor’ […]

Playing into the established “reuse is better than recycle” eco-sensibility, TerraCycle takes trash and transforms it into useful eco-products. TerraCycle runs a series of free national brigades, inviting people to […]

More than 2 million people tuned in to see President Obama appear on Myth Busters last week, an appearance that the president used to symbolize his dedication to improving science […]

Mark Thompson is the Director General of the BBC, who used also to be Editor of the London Times. Some critics believe he will be best remembered as the BBC’s […]

Age may matter, but it is only one of several factors that are important when you are looking for love.

This week’s theme is epistemological unease in the sciences: Complaints in a number of disciplines that studies didn’t really find the effects they’re reporting. One reason for these worries is […]

For the past year, security researcher Dan Kaminsky has had an interesting secret side project that has nothing to do with his day job: He’s been working on correcting color […]

I’ve now made it back from another great yet exhausting American Geophysical Union meeting. I was able to get some samples that I need for my research, set up some […]

So this post–like some others–is meant to be diagnostic.  It’s a postmodern and conservative observation on who sophisticated Americans think they are these days.  As an attempt to be an […]

Real-time translation and augmented reality have been among 2010’s hottest topics. Now, one app is marrying the two. Word Lens is a real-time translation app that turns your iPhone into […]

Last week, for almost forty five minutes, a genuine feeling of optimism overwhelmed me as I chatted with Marsha Weissman, the executive director of the Center for Community Alternatives, although […]

Insiders say Facebook is set to generate $2 billion in revenues in 2010. Here’s how bloggers are explaining the company’s success.

When the decision-makers at the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery decided to drop David Wojnarowicz’s 1987 video “A Fire in My Belly” from their exhibition Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American […]

With the Senate voting 81-19 on an $858 billion deal to extend all the Bush tax cuts—as well as extend unemployment benefits and reduce the payroll tax—it’s hard to take […]

I was standing in the kitchen, half listening to the TV the other night while I warmed my dinner up when two black guys from Georgia appeared on CNN. The […]

So I’m a POSTMODERN CONSERVATIVE.  I’ll have a lot to say about what that means later.  But one of beginning to explain why conservatism needs to be postmodern–or free of […]

It’s amazing what you can find in art when you really, really want to find it there. Italy’s National Committee for Cultural Heritage claims that they’ve found evidence of a […]

The WikiLeaks drama is only the latest in over a century of new technologies heralding the demise of professional diplomacy—yet such rumors always prove to be greatly exaggerated. One defense […]

He didn’t look back. David Remnick’s recent thoughts on the Khodorjovsky trial, its parallels—and non-parallels—to an earlier Soviet prosecution (of poet Josef Brodsky) made us think about poets, diplomats, and […]

The anti-slavery researcher and advocate says that slavery and human trafficking are already becoming huge problems in China.

So, as usual, the annual AGU meeting has been incredibly busy. When I first started attending the meeting, I was able to go to lots of talks and posters and […]

If you manage to find a match through an online dating site, that match is more likely to commit to meet if they have paid a fee for the service.

At the New Yorker last week, science journalist Jonah Lehrer penned a conversation-starting feature on the so-called “decline effect,” the tendency across scientific fields for a new and exciting finding […]