Guest Thinkers

By changing the distribution of mass on Earth, Japan’s earthquake sped up the planet’s rotation, shortening the day by 1.8 microseconds, N.A.S.A. geophysicist Richard Gross has found.

The U.S. Department of Energy aims to bring down the cost of solar electricity via a new program dubbed “SunShot,” an homage to President John Kennedy’s “moon shot” pledge in 1961.

Whatever the immediate dangers to health posed by the exploded nuclear facility in Fukushima, Japan, one clear victim is the growing confidence in nuclear energy internationally.

Kickstarter is a site that allows anyone to raise money from an online community in order to fund any sort of project. Here’s a primer on how to turn your vision into a reality.

If you dnate to the relief effort in Japan, you can enter a chance to win this new book about the past and present of Japanese art. 

An earthquake struck close to Japan’s biggest volcano late Monday night. Could this forebode an imminent explosion, the first since 1708? 

Today, Big Think launches StandOut, a video-driven career curriculum for university-educated job-seekers. StandOut video segments feature actionable career insights from today’s most influential leaders and experts, as they share their knowledge on topics ranging from résumés to risk-taking. 

As the situation in Japan continues to worsen, we are nearing the point of no return. It’s time to start considering “the Chernobyl Option.”

The education revolution is already underway, but will it utilize the pre-existing network created by Facebook, or will a new, education-specific network spring up? 

From bicycles to radios to internet connections, technologies of various kinds are part of what constitutes a more developed lifestyle even in places where incomes continue to hover at $1 or $2 per day.

That’s the question Bill Schneider asks in his somewhat unfriendly but useful article. He surveys the likely 2012 Republican presidential candidates with the support of Tea Partiers in mind. The […]

Individuals, corporations and government organizations are sitting on vast treasure troves of archived data that can be branded and then digitized as tiny propaganda across the Web to support their own agendas. 

The world is now witnessing a gigantic science experiment, with the Japanese people as guinea pigs. And every hour brings more bad news and complications.

It’s well known that New York City (and the Indian Point Nuclear Power plant) sits on fault lines, making an earthquake entirely possible. A geological paper says that the eastern seaboard might need to worry about tsunamis as well. 

This week, I will be guest blogging at TAPPED, the group blog of the American Prospect. I’ve got big plans for the week ahead. Please join me. My first post […]

A brief update while I’m out of town … If Japan didn’t need more geologic (and man-made) disaster, it now appears that the Shinmoedake cone at Kirishima has started erupting […]

I’ve gotten a couple of very thoughtful emails about my dissing the idea of practical altruism, including a very long one. Basically: They’re accusing of me of being a KANTIAN!  […]

India has overtaken China to become the world’s largest importer of weapons, according to a Swedish think-tank that monitors global arms sales. Russia remains its biggest supplier.

Protesters and police clash in Bahrain as a main road is blocked in the capital. Yemeni security forces attack a huge sit-in; live ammunition is fired. Oman’s sultan grants limited power to the state council.

Ivory Coast’s commercial capital Abidjan is descending into a violence as a weakened president is making way for violence against native men and women, U.N. peacekeepers and foreign journalists.

Latin America is experiencing an exceptional boom, owing to soaring income from exports of natural resources. But is the region making the most of this opportunity to use the funds effectively?

During the Clinton years, it would have been easy to secure support for intervention in Libya, but now N.A.T.O. appears timid over the issue of humanitarian intervention. What happened?

The U.S. and U.K. expressed support for the Arab League’s approval of a no-fly zone as Libyan rebels beat a hasty eastward retreat, but is the council’s action too little, too late?

Israel said that it would build hundreds of new housing units within the populous West Bank settlement blocs, ending a slowdown in government-supported construction that had lasted several months.

As Gaddafi hangs on to his military might, rebel forces have abandoned the town of Brega leaving open the road to Bengazi—the last major rebel outpost in the anti-Gaddafi east.

Leading author on democracy promotion and democratization, Thomas Carothers debunks the myths surrounding the Arab world’s new governments—and wonders what role the West should play.

Japan’s Prime Minister Naoto Kan said the country was suffering its worst crisis since World War II. The death toll could exceed 10,000 in one district alone, police warned.

Let’s dream for a minute. What if we lived in a world in which students and educators… had access to all of the information in their textbooks – and an […]

If I wasn’t out of town, helping our peripatetic college student move out of her dorm at the end of the quarter, I would probably be going to a video […]

According to some Republicans from New Hampshire, the answer to this question is yes.