Guest Thinkers

Recently we wrote about emerging models for Research (the “R” in R&D) and how the US government can encourage and support them. But what about Development – the “D” in R&D? […]

The Fourth of July is one of our most patriotic holidays.  The famous portrait of Revolutionary era soldiers marching with fife and drum is one of its most recognized symbols, […]

“The letters of Pliny the Younger provide gripping insight into Roman life — and the last hours of a city.” Michael Dirda reviews the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and the destruction of Pompeii.

Documentation made during the late 1960s of how one liberal German after-school center attempted to teach sexual liberation demonstrates the thin line between freedom and abuse.

“We love them, of course, but new research suggests that having children makes us unhappy — it’s just that none of us feels able to admit it.” The Independent researches a taboo issue.

Matthias Ringmann, a minor scholar and cartographer working in landlocked Eastern France, was responsible for putting America on the map, literally. History, however, has since forgotten him.

When I was a kid, I found myself glued to the television whenever a moon landing took place. Even when others grew jaded by repeated landings, I never lost sight […]

The Fourth of July fireworks I have gone to for years have been canceled. Oakland is hosting a bunch of other Independence Day activities in Jack London Square—they’ll have some […]

Alice Dreger, Ellen K. Feder, and Anne Tamar-Mattis made headlines this week with a post on Bioethics Forum entitled “Preventing Homosexuality (and Uppity Women) in the Womb?” The headline made […]

Leave it to a comic book icon to cause a flag-related stir as the 4th of July weekend approaches. Wonder Woman, everyone’s favorite 69-year-old Amazon, celebrated the 600th issue of […]

Thanks to the Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s runaway hit, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith,” we tend to think of undercover operative agents as not only being uncommonly good looking but […]

Vice President Biden predicts that this, at long last, will be “the summer of recovery.” The stimulus bill is working, he said, and “more people are going to be put […]

Last night I met with an old friend in Central London, who used to be a journalist and who now works for a large, international company which makes good use […]

Steve Chapman at The Chicago Tribune asks if gun regulation, following the Supreme Court’s move to strike down Chicago’s handgun ban, is like using a garden hose to defeat a forest fire.

Every year, millions of women and children across Southeast Asia are being enslaved and exploited in the multimillion-dollar human trafficking industry. This is one of the largest-scale human rights violations […]

If you are a Star Trek fan, you may long have been fascinated by the idea of a “replicator”; a device where you simply ask for something and the device […]

We need poetry in our lives. It is not a luxury. It is not only for an elite. And it does something that no other art form can do, even […]

Johanna Sigurdardottir, Iceland’s prime minister, just got married.  That in itself might not be particularly noteworthy, except for one thing—she married a woman. When Johanna was elected in 2009, she […]

“I don’t consider myself an artist. I consider myself a creator.” As soon as I heard these words from  Stephen Hayes through the phone, I sat back in my chair. […]

“Agnosticism is not some kind of weak-tea atheism,” writes Ron Rosenbaum. “Agnosticism is … opposition to the unwarranted certainties that atheism and theism offer.”

Opening my daily Treehugger news email just now, I noticed that headline: ‘Dinner in the Dumpster’. Oh, I thought, how fun! An article about freeganism! In fact, the article at […]

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then John Scarlett Davis must have been the sincerest flatterer in all of England in 1829.  In the exhibition Seeing Double: Portraits, […]

Is World Cup soccer moving away from the sort of team=country nationalism that leads to flare-ups like 1969’s “soccer war” between El Salvador and Honduras? It’s often remarked that the […]

Meanwhile, let another Rolling Stone reporter take your attention, for a different if no less compelling reason: a meditation on a writer we miss, David Foster Wallace. In the latest […]

Raw Story breathlessly reports that a researcher is experimenting with dangerous drugs to stop girls from growing up to be lesbians: “Afraid your daughter may be queer, or not be […]

Cities’ ability to store heat means they are typically warmer than their surrounding areas. Given climate change, this could mean the end of cooler nights and more frequent heat waves.

Grist’s Umbra Fisk (the website’s point person for green living questions) recently revisited the toilet issue and doled out some very important water-saving tips: sink a half-gallon of water in […]

“It’s time we Met,” reads several posters in the latest marketing campaign of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  A recent piece by Peter Aspden titled “Met […]

Elena Kagan’s confirmation should hold about as much suspense as the third presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain back in the fall of 2008. As in absolutely none. […]

Last month, I had the honor of greeting my colleague, Stephen Hawking, famed cosmologist, in New York, where he was being honored by the World Science Festival for all his scientific […]