Guest Thinkers

Our 10-day visit to Japan coincided with China surpassingJapan in the global economic rankings, a story which seemed to make a splash everywhere but in Japan. According to Waseda University […]

I noted the moment when sales of Amazon’s Kindle outpaced the site’s hardcover sales. Now, only a short time later, two new significant events signal the end of book publishing […]

Quality news media inspire constructive debate and diffuse innovations.  An example came yesterday as the New York Times spotlighted the trend toward open-review publishing, reinvigorating conversations about the topic across […]

There’s hardly anything more symbolic of an outdoor party or picnic than the red disposable plastic cup. But neither the aesthetic appearance nor the environmental impact of such disposable tableware […]

On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge Royce Lambert ruled that all federally funded research on human embryonic stem cells (hESC) is illegal. He reasoned as follows: If a human embryo […]

I guess the New Yorker is still trying to redeem itself for the notorious “The Politics Of Fear” cartoon cover during the 2008 presidential primary that depicted Barack Obama in […]

“A study released Tuesday suggests that a new species of microbe is consuming the undersea plumes in the Gulf oil spill—perhaps more quickly than scientists anticipated.”

The specter of $10 is lurking in the corners of the startup industry. The figure is common to two aspects of the website business. As I wrote about earlier, blog […]

When I wrote last week about the fact that all California state employees have to sign a loyalty oath, a reader took issue with the picture I posted of school […]

Power in politics turns on being able to simultaneously control attention to an issue while also defining the terms of debate. A golden rule is to define yourself and your […]

Let them build it. Is this what the rationalists want us to say? Let them build it. These four words counter the one, more emotional one—never—echoing across anger from the […]

The perils of plastic are nothing new to most of us. A lesser-known fact, however, is that plastic has a higher energy value than just about any other type of […]

The other shoe has dropped in Harvard’s investigation into allegations of scientific misconduct by Marc Hauser, the cognitive psychologist. Harvard announced last week that it had found Hauser responsible for […]

I am proud to announce that the second season of “Sci Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible,” debuts next Wednesday, Sept. 1, at 9 pm, on the Science Channel (check […]

We are currently in the midst of earth’s “sixth great extinction.” For the past 10,000 years, existing species have been dying out faster than new species have been evolving, say […]

In a series of posts over at Scientific American’s blog CrossCheck, John Horgan describes how several recent articles and books have prompted him to re-evaluate his views on nuclear energy. […]

Hurricane Katrina may have cost them their homes and split up their families, but some credit it as the impetus to reinvent their lives for the better, explains Nicole LaPorte.

“The main argument here is that pleasure is deep,” Paul Bloom writes early on in his new book, How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We […]

As a follow up to his guest post yesterday on the prospects for independent book stores, I asked Paul D’Angelo, a communication professor at the College of New Jersey, his […]

I don’t have to write anything today, because the professionals have done my job for a change. Eugene Robinson, Frank Rich, and Maureen Dowd, who are all political pundits I […]

With the Web tipped to soon eclipse friends as the primary way of finding mates, researchers are relishing online dating as a potent peephole into dating behaviour.

Researchers have found that most migrating birds and other animals are just “following the leader”, which has serious ramifications as their habitats become more fragmented.

Ross Douthat ponders baseball’s decline into sordidness as Roger Clemens becomes “one of the many…superstars credibly accused of using performance-enhancing drugs.”

According to a new study by scientists at the Astromaterials Research Science Directorate at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, “Mud volcanoes themselves are an indicator of a fluid-rich subsurface, and they […]

Last week I posted somewhat optimistically about media reports suggesting a rebirth for independent bookstores. In reply, below is a guest contribution from my colleague Paul D’Angelo, a professor of […]

How are cutting-edge conspicuous consumers blowing their excess cash? Fantasy fish tanks, according to the New York Times. The Home and Garden section devoted hundreds of words to the “six-figure […]

Wind turbines are more likely to prompt an association with the Northern California hills, where wind farms grace the vast landscape with their unseemly efficiency, than with the hustle-and-bustle of […]

We really are undergoing a clash of civilizations, Ayaan Hirsi Ali says. Hirsi Ali argues that political scientist Samuel Huntington was right when he wrote in 1993 that future conflicts […]

“Rising temperatures have helped blunt plants’ ability to pull carbon from the atmosphere, according to a study published yesterday in Science.” Is it a threshold in the warming cycle?

Building on yesterday’s post, today I examine some more implications of the claim made by The Times of London that it found the names of Afghan informants in the secret […]