Guest Thinkers

Traditional political wisdom pushes the notion that a president has a magic wand bestowed upon him once he gets into the White House, a wand that should be able to […]

In another nod to biomimicry as a frontier of design innovation, industrial design student Brian Lee has just won Australia’s Target 2020 competition for envisioning the car of the future […]

Jamaican Prime Minister, Bruce Golding, in his interview with Big Think, confirms what we know: crime, like global capital markets, is uniquely, irrevocably networked. The rare drug crime might be […]

In 1886, shortly after his dismissal as director of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in a cloud of scandal, Thomas Eakins changed the title of his 1880 painting Crucifixion […]

The recession ended more than a year ago. That’s what economists say, at least. But while output may be growing again, that doesn’t mean the economy is running smoothly. Nor […]

The Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party, the successor to the Mongolian Communist Party, has been in power for fourteen years out of sixteen years of post Communist Governments. The party asked […]

Pest control is typically associated with toxic chemicals and considered an antithesis to organic farming. But South Korean company Eco Solatec may be able to change that. Their Solar Trap […]

Bright sunny Wednesday here in Ohio made all the better upon hearing that the miners trapped in the Chilean mine have started to make their way – one by one […]

Something I wrote for this week’s edition of the Weekly Pulse health care newsletter. The gimmicky, pink breast cancer “awareness” stunts are getting old.  October is Breast Cancer Awareness month. […]

Nathaniel James, Community Engagement Specialist at the Mozilla Foundation, spoke at American University yesterday about Mozilla’s “disruptive” plans to keep the internet open and accessible — plans that could change […]

“It will never be a substitute for proper carbon-taxing, but eco-labelling is a development to be welcomed.”

The recession has not torn young couples apart; it has pushed them closer together. Marriage and divorce rates have remained remarkably immune to the business cycle.

Would it be a classic pearl handled six shooter? A double barreled shotgun with a hand carved stock? An AK-47 semi-automatic assault carbine with laser sights? Or would he simply […]

“What happens if a tree falls in a forest and no one hears it?” Willard Spiegelman asks intriguingly in a recent article in The Wall Street Journal. “What happens if […]

Excellent: City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Councilwoman Jessica S. Lappin (D) have introduced legislation to require so-called “crisis pregnancy centers” in New York City to disclose that they are not […]

Tension was evident as humanists and atheists gathered this weekend, reported Mitchell Landsberg at the Los Angeles Times.  At issue among the attendees at the annual conference of the Council […]

New evidence from speed-dating trials helps untangle the reasons why segregation persists in dating and marriage.

Being a college professor has definitely made me realize how many students are “terrified” (their words) about math and science. Many have gotten the idea that you need to be […]

In Germany, utility companies pay homeowners and businesses for power generated by alternative energies that is fed into the electricity grid. Should the U.S. take note?

“Sir Isaac had a whole other full-time career that he kept largely hidden from view but that rivaled and sometimes surpassed his devotion to celestial mechanics.”

“I tend to think of the exhibitions I do as a loose accumulation of paintings with no single theme—like a variety show,” artist Glenn Brown said in 2007. “A comedy […]

Republican senate candidate Sharron Angle says that teenagers who are raped should make lemonade out of lemons by bearing their attackers’ children. Angle is one of several senate candidates who […]

Not every scientific paper is great work, as any scientist will tell you. But shoddy work gets ignored or quickly debunked. There is an enormous incentive for scientists to debunk […]

Over at the NY Times’s Green blog, Todd Woody has an update on the Proposition 23 race, reporting that environmentalists opposed to the ballot measure have opened a sizable fund-raising […]

Rep Bruce Braley (D-Ia) paid a visit to the “headquarters,” of the American Future Fund, a shadowy 501(c)4 group that has spent nearly $1 million to defeat him in the […]

Welcome to Earth Science Week, everyone! Why not start off with a bang? At the end of last week, there was some buzz in the geoblogosphere and Twitter about a […]

“As Wikileaks prepares to release more documents on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, will greater accountability follow?” Al Jazeera on the controversial startup.

“When thinking about the Columbus Day holiday it helps to remember the good intentions of the people who put together the first parade in New York.”

The 18th century French Neoclassical painter Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres played the violin well enough to hold his own with “Sold His Soul to the Devil” good musicians such as […]

Hours wasted behind the wheel commuting to work, taking kids to school, hurrying for soccer practice and bar mitzvahs, and the frustration caused by traffic jams and road rage – […]