Guest Thinkers

In a seemingly dramatic change of opinion, Pope Benedict XVI says in a new book that condoms can be justified for male prostitutes seeking to the stop the spread of H.I.V.

If marriage is no longer obligatory or even—in certain cases—helpful, then what is it for? A new poll from the Pew Research Center charts the changing attitude toward marriage.

The DREAM Act sends the message that although American immigration law in effect tries to make water run uphill, we are not monsters, says the Democracy in America blog.

Football, the king of American sports, is under fire for its violent tendencies. This is nothing new, says sports historian Chris Klein who favors rule changes to clean up the game.

After reading Josephine: The Hungry Heart yesterday, all I could do was shake my head.  The five hundred page biography by Jean-Claude Baker and Chris Chase brought Josephine Baker to […]

We’ve been covering bike-sharing programs quitea bit over the past few months. And now Mexico City is stepping in with what could easily be the most impactful bike-sharing program of […]

Colonel Russell Williams is one of those double-life people—an able military commander who was also a rapist and murderer. The crimes for which he was sentenced last month were shockingly […]

“If a week is a long time in politics”, as Harold Wilson once said, two weeks away from politics on paternity leave is clearly an age. The Leader of Britain’s […]

Non-denominational spirituality plays an important role in the day-to-day functioning of post-apartheid South Africa, says a former director of its Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

A sculpture nestled in the courtyard of C.I.A. headquarters contains four secret codes. To date, three have been uncovered, but the fourth remains a mystery.

Federal land conservation efforts are a failure and large swaths of the nation’s property should be turned over to the states, say Holly Fretwell and Shawn Regan at Forbes.

Is history repeating itself? Professor of English Alan Jacobs draws parallels between the moral development of 18th century England and our own post-modern times.

What do you call it when corporations get together with politicians to work out the details of legislation? Normally, of course, it’s called “lobbying” and is subject to federal regulations […]

Do today’s college students define cheating differently? That’s the thesis of this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education, entitled “Cheating and the Generational Divide.” The author claims that a […]

Scientists at CERN laboratory in Switzerland scored a major breakthough recently when they trapped atoms of anti-matter for the first time in history. Fans of Star Trek know the potential […]

Republicans are exploiting public outrage over whole body scanners and new invasive pat-downs to justify privatizing TSA screeners: As criticism grows of the government’s new full-body imaging scanners and the […]

Nothing like a good Nature paper to get the media’s attention, especially when it was about the biggest air traffic disruption in almost a decade. Of course, the headlines I […]

In a letter at the journal Science this week, my colleagues Ed Maibach and Tony Leiserowitz join with Tom Bowman, climate scientists, and other social scientists to issue a call-to-action […]

A new study from Ohio State researchers examines the impact of Al Jazeera on public opinion across Arab states, concluding that the news network strengthens Muslim identity among heavier viewers […]

Dire warnings about global warming can backfire if presented too negatively, making people less amenable to reducing their carbon footprint, new research shows.

Over at the NY Times’ Dot Earth, Andrew Revkin has a post titled “An Inconvenient Mind” gathering thoughts from social scientists Dan Kahan and Robert Bruille on the UC Berkeley […]

In the age of social networking and digital communities, there’s something to be said for analog art of appreciation – of people, of places, of music, of all the other […]

If you’re a member of America’s anxious middle class, you can feel downtrodden one minute and privileged the next, just watching the news. Here’s some super-rich guy planning his run […]

As you’ve probably heard, the TSA introduced a new extra-invasive body search protocol on Oct. 29, just in time for the rollout of whole body scanners at 65 airports. The […]

Ireland, once hailed as the ‘Celtic Tiger’, is bust and has gone cap in hand to the IMF and the European Central Bank. Ireland was once hailed by Britain’s now […]

Now, there is a lot of articles on the new Nature paper on the Eyjafjallajökull and the signs leading up to it – but considering I’m not privy to such […]

For the first time in its 217-year history, the Louvre, perhaps the greatest museum in the world, is asking the French public for financial help to purchase a painting. Even […]

We tend to prefer a world in which wealth is more evenly distributed, even if it means we have to get by with less. Jonah Lehrer says inequality is our original sin.

Germany geologist Andreas Dahmke defends the process of storing carbon dioxide underground to prevent global warming. Nuclear power is far more dangerous, he says.

Could anyone imagine what American political reporting might look like if its leading actors weren’t so obsessive about the next election? If “who’s running in 2012” is the media equivalent […]