Guest Thinkers

Is it ethical to exchange your money on the black market if you are visiting an oppressive regime? Former New York Times columnist Randy Cohen tackles this ethical query.    

If you are in the housing and real estate development business, an investor or simply thinking about your own housing options the baby boomers are shaping your future fortunes again […]

This week, I joined the Sidney Hillman Foundation as the lead blogger for the Hillman Blog. The Hillman Foundation was founded to honor Sidney Hillman the late founder and president […]

SUPER 8 is the only movie I’ve seen this year that’s worth thinking about.  I haven’t, of course, seen that many.  Posts on movies now in theatres on blogs by […]

It only took two minutes of reading about the chained Consumer Price Index (CPI) to see why the president has gone gaga over this. The possibility of using such tiny […]

An official with the arch conservative Koch Industries delivered a stinging rebuke to Sen. Patty Murray of the DSCC for attempting to solicit a contribution: For many months now, your […]

Attorney Jill Filipovic has a terrific primer for reporters covering rape cases. Her post was inspired by this story in Mother Jones about the Jamie Leigh Jones/KBR rape case. Jones […]

Currently collaborating with the British poet Rick Holland, music producer Brian Eno has seen speech take on different qualities when it is set to music. “We are all singing,” he says. 

When artist Joan Mitchell was born in 1925, her father wanted a boy. He let her know that her entire life, leading her to seek psychiatric help. As much as […]

Some weeks ago, I wrote a piece on what education can learn from game design. Back then I focused on artificial intelligence. Two days ago, I read another interesting piece […]

Quick post – you might want to watch some of the Etna webcams as the volcano looks like it might be starting to put on a show. Dr. Boris Behncke […]

This is the first of a few guests posts that will come up while I’m out in the field in the Sierras. Today’s post is my a longtime friend of […]

It was so ordained that James, rather than Rupert Murdoch, announced the closure of the News of the World, the 168 year old tabloid, after the presses roll this Sunday. […]

In her introductory video for “Pottermore,” the recently unveiled web portal for all things Potter, J. K. Rowling promises an enhanced multimedia experience for “the digital generation.” She also announces […]

Usually I’m a pretty reasonable person. However, over the past day, various items in the media have begun to drive me mad. Maybe I’ve been watching too much of Ramsay’s […]

Fox News is going on the offensive against its nemesis, the liberal think tank Media Matters. Over the past ten days, the network has run more than 30 segments calling […]

I have no idea which White House staffer twitterized President Obama’s answers to the questions Twitter users tweeted at the Twitter Town Hall the White House hosted yesterday. I’m sure […]

With the cost of genotyping falling at a rate faster than Moore’s Law, genetics could be used to answer some of the burning questions of the social sciences.

What’s exciting (and simultaneously scary at the same time) is that people are finally realizing that all of this data that we are accumulating about our bodies and our lives has economic value. 

Tara Sophia Mohr has a challenge for working women. “You’re brilliant and thoughtful, but could you move a few more inches in the arrogant idiot direction please?” Be an arrogant idiot is rule #5 of Mohr’s 10 Rules for Brilliant Women.

Today is the day that the sound of chickens coming noisily home to roost was heard all over the United Kingdom. It began with a BBC radio interview of the […]

            It is not overstating it to say that the world will be watching Washington these next couple weeks, nervously, since the global economy relies on the full faith and […]

What’s worse, taking steroids or lying about it to Congress? What the Roger Clemens perjury case tells us about our “national epidemic of lying.”

Let me share with you an alarming study that came to my attention a couple of years ago. Americans are now drinking more BOTTLED WATER than BEER.  Ther persons who reported […]

It seems that our attention is being brought back to Iceland every few months when it comes to volcanism – and this shouldn’t be any surprise, the north Atlantic island […]

When I found out today about the death of American artist Cy Twombly at age 83, I quickly ran a gauntlet of reactions: one, I have to write about him; […]

Ken Auletta’s profile of Sheryl Sandberg in The New Yorkeris an excellent companion to Sandberg’s TED speech of last December. The latter was passed like a Dead bootleg among a […]

I was talking to a friend’s son this weekend about his love life. He is tall and handsome so I figured that at the age of 17 he probably has […]

We are now in the heart of the summer after the long weekend (well, at least here in the US) … and it means that I’m within a week of […]

A Guardian newspaper investigation in Britain has revealed that one of Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers, the mass selling tabloid, ‘News of the World’, hired a private investigator to hack into the […]