Guest Thinkers

Information about Japan’s failing nuclear reactors is being leak slowly, with few confirmed reports as to the real status, but here’s what we know so far as of the end of the weekend. 

So I know you’ve missed me:  Well, I’ve been busy hearing about various scientific accounts of virtue at the meeting of the recipients of the University of Chicago Science of […]

When people discuss “rationality” they can mean any of five different concepts.

If futurists like Ray Kurzweil are correct about the accelerating pace of technological breakthrough, it is only a matter of time until we augment our brains with machine components.

Could a genetic disorder and a rare blood type explain Henry VIII’s health problems, his wives’ miscarriages, and even his madness? New findings shed light on England’s most infamous king.

We’ve all been floored by the footage and information about the Mw8.9 earthquake in Japan (video) and the tsunami that followed. Some of the footage is stunning – like nothing I’ve […]

It says something about the rather dismal condition of both British politics and journalism, that this week there was an amount of liberal fluttering over a speech at the London […]

The Japanese reactor situation is already the second worst nuclear power plant accident, second only to Chernobyl. The situation changes hourly, but here is what we know so far.

Research on life extension is all about aging and death within a human body. Perhaps it should expand to encompass the effects of being run over by a car: According […]

People who blow their deadlines and forget their appointments tend to find themselves making an early appointment with the grim reaper, says research on longevity.

Events over the weekend made clear that Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Salih’s days are numbered.

Our intelligence has not altered how we age: despite all our advances—our clothing, high-rises, technology and more—it turns out we age and die at the same rate as other primates.

Walk through a modern art gallery, and you’ll likely hear comparisons of the masterpieces on the wall to children’s finger-painting. But a new study proves that people really can tell the difference between the masters and toddlers.

Regular readers will know that I take a jaundiced view of former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair. Of course he left office some time ago, and in normal circumstances this […]

We have been hearing some news that Karangetang, one of the more active volcanoes in the Indonesian arc, might erupt again soon – and sure enough, today it did. The […]

There has long been a desire to prove a connection between Earth’s geological activity and the gravitational resonance of the moon and the sun. Is there any truth to this claim?

The website Neurotree shows the biographical roots of ideas, mapping them like a genealogical chart—which mentors brought forth which proteges and who in turn mentored others.

Piracy in the waters off Somalia shows how an environmental issue such as overfishing can evolve into an international security crisis, says Shannon Beebe.

Among the challenges of electric cars is “range anxiety” — fear of being stranded with a dead battery, miles from a plug.

With Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, etc, we have all become “life bloggers,” and innovative startup Memolane is the first to compile all these data points into searchable electronic memory.

GUEST POST BY JASON SILVA Alan Harrington eloquently wrote in The Immortalist that we should all strive to remain, “uncompromising child-voyagers andretain a child’s eye view of what might be”… And isn’t this what we’ve […]

The Republicans are trying to pit private sector workers against public sector workers, but the workers shouldn’t listen. 

In their haste to pass a union-busting bill in the dead of night, without a quorum, Wisconsin’s Republican senators may have violated the state’s open meetings law. As I report […]

The new fissure (see top left) that began erupting last weekend after the draining events at Pu`u O`o and Halema`uma`u appears to have more longevity than the last similar fissure […]

Smart phones will empower the tourists of the future, acting as their expert personal interpreters and translation shades that can instantly decipher text in foreign languages.

This New Republic author shares with us abundant evidence that Republican leaders of various kinds have turned on Sarah Palin.  It’s true enough that many were seduced by the promise of […]

One of my favorite minor masterpieces in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art is Young Woman Drawing (1801) by French master Jacques-Louis David. Or at least it was […]

While reading about the relationship between Thomas Aquinas and insider trading allegations, it occurred to us that the evolution of thinking about any classic crime has an almost-classic arc: deplore; […]

When I first met Tony Blair in 1993 at his house in Islington in North London, I was struck by two things. First, the man who had just recently become […]

Lionel Jensen, Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, addresses the claim that Chinese currency manipulation is at the heart of America’s fiscal woes.