Guest Thinkers

Jill Lepore, in her New Yorker piece on Ron Chernow’s Washington: A Life (and on, more broadly, biography), put it beautifully: “There is no humility in monumental biography. But there […]

If we are truly worried about mitigating the social effects of drug use, we are likely to have more success regulating it than prohibiting it entirely.

Nation editor Chris Hayes will not be subbing for Keith Olbermann after all. I posted earlier that he was disinvited but, that was incorrect. Hayes tweeted: “OK: I’m not filling […]

What do you think of the advertisement below? Does it warm your heart? Does it bore you? Perhaps the answer depends on whether you’re a parent, or even more specifically, […]

Psychiatrists see a lot of people who are, to use the technical term, screwed up. Psychiatrists’ talk, then, often turns around curing, or ameliorating, or at least preventing “bad” behaviors […]

Several weeks ago, we featured OpenIDEO – innovation consultancy IDEO’s collaborative platform for concepting and implementing social-good projects. Open Planet Ideas, a partnership between Sony and WWF, is using IDEO’s […]

The recent shuttle launch has a strange passenger: a 330-pound humanoid robot called Robonaut 2, or R2 for short. It’s the first humanoid robot to be sent into space, and […]

MSNBC host Keith Olbermann has been suspended indefinitely without pay after Politico reported that he made campaign contributions to progressive Democrats: Olbermann made campaign contributions to two Arizona members of […]

Busy day for me here at the Department, so I just wanted to highlight some news, both from Merapi and beyond Merapi: The NASA Earth Observatory posted some great IR thermal images of a […]

Each and every democracy is sovereign. Each and every country, even if it is in alliance with others, has the sovereign right to make its own choices – albeit observing […]

After finishing The Help by Kathryn Stockett a couple of days ago, I just put the book down and sat still for a few minutes, letting the final remnants of […]

“…green movements have continued to grow… What has changed is that a powerful counter-movement, led by corporate-funded thinktanks, has waged war on green policies.”

“The United Nations has named oil-rich Norway as the country with the best quality of life, followed by Australia and New Zealand, while Asia has made the biggest strides.”

Crowdsourcing has become a hotly contested innovation paradigm in recent months, drawing highly polarized opinions. While its creative merit in design has been publicly decried in the recent GAP logogate […]

Every time I see a row of seaside lampposts, each with a single seagull perched on it, I wonder: Do those birds think we built the highway system for them? […]

I’ve been trying to update on the evolving situation at Merapi all day, but the news is just too fast and too tragic to keep up. I’ll try to keep updating […]

In the final guest post on Colorado’s defeated Amendment 62, a “personhood” initiative that would have given full legal rights to fertilized human eggs, Trina Stout examines the effect of […]

The Tea Party—with its flamboyant supporters and over-the-top rhetoric—makes good copy. It make such good copy that it sometimes gets more attention than its actual influence warrants. But give credit […]

Ocean pollution has been a topic of increasing concern lately and its devastating aftermath for marine life has been grimly documented. To raise awareness about the issue, Electrolux has introduced […]

One of the biggest problems I find in the coverage of geologic events in the media is the relationship between cause and effect. Many times the confusion of what factors […]

The new eruptive phase at Merapi appears to be getting worse – and from the sound of it, the volcanologists at the Centre for Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation aren’t sure what […]

Can constitutional democracies generate the motivational resources that nourish them and make them durable? The Immanent Frame on the new writings of Jürgen Habermas.

When Daedalus crafted wings of feathers and wax for his son Icarus, he included the warning to not fly too close to the sun. As anyone who knows Greek mythology […]

Imagine just for a moment; a floating, orbiting and operational laboratory holding several crew members at any given time, weighing over 900,000 lbs.  It’s over 350 feet wide, with solar […]

I am almost heading out the door of the Colorado Convention Center here in Denver to head back home after an eventful GSA 2010. However, before that I wanted to […]

Low weight at birth is associated with all sorts of health troubles later in life, so it seems a great idea to give nutritional supplements to pregnant women in developing […]

The Republicans scored a huge victory in yesterday’s elections. Right now it looks like they will pick up around 65 seats in the House and 6 seats in the Senate. […]

To watch from afar as the drama of the US mid term elections unfolded as a Brit who has lived in America, likes America and likes Americans, is deeply frustrating. […]

With Republicans gaining the majority in the House, closing the gap in the Senate, and controlling the state legislatures and Governor offices in key states such as Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, […]

The GOP takes the House, brace for a Tsunami of Stupid. [Photo credit: Lindsay Beyerstein]