Guest Thinkers

Federal regulators apparently allowed BP and dozens of other oil companies to begin drilling without obtaining mandatory environmental permits, according to the New York Times. By law, the Minerals Management […]

Brace yourself for some depressing climate change news. Even if we cut rncarbon emissions dramatically, we won’t really see the impact by the rnyear 2050, says Bjørn Lomborg,rn Director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center. So if the outlook is so rnbleak, what should we do in the meantime? Where should we direct our rnenergies? Lomborg has some ideas.

A study has found that by 2080, global warming could result in one-fifth of the world’s lizard species becoming extinct.

Octopus and hidden cameras go together like chocolate and peanut butter. You never know what those crazy cephalopods will get up to. Today, Boing Boing dug up some neat old […]

Heat death is a deceptive name. As Michio Kaku explains, entropy doesn’t necessarily refer to dramatic destruction; it’s more about how stuff just tends to fall apart.

Vast quantities of dispersant chemicals have been sprayed into the oil slick in the Gulf of Mexico to reduce environmental damage. But there’s little knowledge about their possible impact.

Western-style Holocaust denial—the attempt to produce pseudo-scientific proofs that the Jewish genocide did not happen—is not that common in the Arab world, writes Gilbert Achcar.

So what are we to make of the new British coalition Government that made its appearance, in the shape of David Cameron and Nick Clegg, in the 10 Downing Street […]

Elena Kagan’s friends assure us that she’s not gay. “I’ve known her for most of her adult life and I know she’s straight,” Kagan’s roommate in law school told Politico. […]

Ever since Niall Ferguson was a boy, and still to this day, the Harvard historian says he has looked to the BBC’s Dr. Who as his superhero role model. Why? […]

The relationship between literary talent and literary fame is not so interesting to discuss (being so much discussed, and yet being uniquely subjective). Why should we care if the writers […]

How connecting cutting-edge technologies with the people who need them the most is revolutionizing the traditional aid model and empowering communities to take charge of their own well-being.

War-on-terror hawks may believe we must kill and intimidate people who have some nebulous terrorist intent. But Robert Wright is surprised that President Obama would entertain the notion.

David B. Hart writes that the “New Atheism” has “proved itself to be so intellectually and morally trivial that it has to be classified as just a form of light entertainment.”

Solicitor General Elena Kagan, President Obama’s new nominee for the Supreme Court, is by all accounts spectacularly brilliant. She was also, by all accounts, did a fantastic Dean of Harvard […]

If Sylvia Earle’s older brother had never borrowed their neighbor’s copper diving helmet and taken his kid sister for a dip in the Weeki Wachee River not far from their […]

Oil giant BP announced a new plan to staunch the high-pressure oil geyser befouling the Gulf of Mexico, they call it the Top Hat. The Top Hat is a slightly […]

“Couples in lasting marriages have at least five small positive interactions (touching, smiling, paying a compliment) for every negative one (sneering, eye rolling, withdrawal).”

Over the weekend BP’s latest effort at stanching the Deepwater Horizon oil spill failed. The New York Times asked five experts to weigh in on what might now be done.

Nobody likes a showoff, China, and now that you’re rising like the sea level during a tsunami, the world’s nations are trying to put you down. Will the world ever […]

The Journal of Cosmology has gathered responses from the scientific community to Stephen Hawking’s warning about colonial aliens—one biologist even wrote a limerick.

A new U.N. report says that one in three plant and animal species face extinction given the rate of human production and consumption.

Psychology Today comments on a survey finding that one in ten people think it appropriate to interrupt sex to send a text message. Is nothing sacred?

Sharon Lerner at The Nation appreciates Mother’s Day but laments the illusion that women’s generosity is infinite; generosity without support—real support—is unsustainable.

The answer to religious extremism cannot be secularism because familial and cultural roots run too deep in the Middle East, writes Rima Merhi. A more inclusive religious education is needed.

Privacy concerns aside, the millions of dollars needed to maintain surveillance cameras would be better spent on beat cops, writes Steve Chapman at the Chicago Tribune.

Just as the Philadelphia Museum of Art set to close its showcase of in-house Picassos in Picasso and the Avant-Garde in Paris, The Metropolitan Museum of Art revved up their […]

The financial crisis threw a lot of us into a funk: either we lost our jobs or questioned what we were doing with our lives in the first place. Some literally packed their bags and went on 6 month trips around the world. If you can’t do the global adventure trip, but would love to ‘reset’ your thinking and career, start by living the kindergarten life!

The American Academy of Pediatrics is under fire for revising its guidelines on female genital mutilation (FGM). U.S. federal law bans all forms of female genital cutting for minors. However, […]

As of last Wednesday, 13 entities had offered assistance with the Gulf oil spill cleanup including Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Republic of Korea, Spain, […]