Guest Thinkers

Bought by the MoMA in 1948, the same year it was painted, Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World entered the American art pantheon seemingly once it was dry. For more than half […]

With a diminishing space program, is science and technology forced to take a back seat?

I wanted to make a quick post on the some new volcano news as I’ll likely be a little sporadic with my posts next week. I have my last trip […]

This blog is for everyone who sat through a first-year economic class wondering why their professor couldn’t come up with better examples than guns and butter and for teachers of […]

We live in a culture that valorizes over-busyness. In so many workplaces, the hero is the one who is putting in the long hours. Why isn’t the hero the person who can get amazing work done and leave at a reasonable time?

The world’s leaders, financial and political, are disappointed in us. Around the globe, they’ve cut spending on our schools and roads and parks, raised our retirement ages, taken aim at […]

The markets are a mess. That doesn’t mean you or your investment reactions should be. When everything is going well, it doesn’t take all that much for good investors to […]

As the Brain Drain Race between wealthy nations heats up, emerging countries will continue to lose any chance at economic stability, while wealthy nations lose potential partners and markets in the global economy. 

At the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, researchers from Carnegie Mellon demonstrated how the same facial recognition technology used to tag Facebook photos could be used to identify […]

Had Piers Morgan stuck with the celebrity thing, I suspect that the hacking storm would have touched him, but not engulfed him. Celebrity twitter is what Morgan knows, and it […]

The Did You Know? (Shift Happens) videos have been seen by at least 40 million people online and perhaps that many again during face-to-face conferences, workshops, etc. This week saw […]

Lately, I have been talking with a couple of start-ups in education that take on the classroom experience. The common problem those developers have is that there are at least […]

Neuroscience and psychology have identified willpower as essential to success in school and beyond. Like a muscle, it can be developed through exercise, and exhausted through overwork. 

If we heard anything this winter from Eruptions readers in California like Diane, it was that it was snowy in the mountains. Very snowy. We’re talking 50-100% more than usual […]

            I’ve had an interesting conversation with a colleague the past few days about an earlier piece I wrote here, Cool Dudes, Hot Temps: The Climate Change Battle Will Get […]

The term “independent voter” suggests someone who is open-minded. We imagine that the independent voter goes into each election without preconceived ideas about which party to vote for, but instead […]

Between 1 and 2 PM (Hawaiian time) on August 3, the floor to the Pu`u O`o crater collapsed in spectacular fashion – and luckily for us, many Eruptions readers were […]

The military tends to talk in signs and numbers—and, perhaps most famously, in code. The use of abbreviations and alphabetical systems is efficient. In this week’s New Yorker, we learn […]

One there was ‘Watergate’; now every minor, irritating little faux scandal as the mocniker ‘gate’ attached to it. The latest being ‘Tipgate’, an August silly season story that has found […]

Last night on Twitter, some of us geology-types (including Brian Romans, Yorrike, Volcanojw, Ron Schott, Cian Dawson) had a discussion about “big picture” geology projects. We’re talking about the equivalent […]

Who says you can’t have a good conversation on Twitter? View “Iowa school flexibility” on Storify Image credit:toe touch

In the May-June 2011 issue of the international art magazine Flash Art, performance artist Marina Abramović began a regular column titled “Marina’s Diary,” in which she plans to document her […]

From Amanda, I learn that a couple decided–apparently of their own free will–to have a hobo-themed wedding.  Lest you think this post comes from a place of knee-jerk anti-hobo animus, […]

I wanted to point out a series of images posted by the NASA Earth Observatory that capture three volcanoes that are currently restless or outright erupting … right now! Well, […]

A strong majority of Americans say it is likely that oil prices will triple in the coming five years and that such a tripling would be harmful both to the […]

Once again I find inspiration from one of my former students for a post.  Here’s his FACEBOOK request:  “I’m interested to hear your thoughts on the ‘Palestinian Chicken’ episode of […]

In my Room 101, I am this beluga: Watch. HT: Loren Beyerstein.

Lots of pieces of volcano news I’ve missed reporting over the last week, so I thought I could try to round them all up. Alaska: A 40-meter lava dome/flow was […]

Chronic disease plagues personal lives and public policy. Sheer numbers only begin to give a glimpse of the associated suffering, cost and scope of the problem. In the United States […]

Stewart Brand’s famous maxim, “Information Wants to be Free,” has been, for more than 25 years, one of the most popular rallying cries of the Digital Age. These words have […]