Guest Thinkers

The eruptions have been coming nonstop this week. Much of the news has been Hawaii-centric—for good reason—but there has been volcanic activity around the globe as well. 

Twenty-five years after the Soviet-era meltdown drove 60,000 people from their homes in the Ukraine, a rebirth is taking place creating an unlikely refuge for Europe’s strangest wildlife.

Project Icarus is an ambitious five-year study into launching an unmanned spacecraft to an interstellar destination headed by the Tau Zero Foundation, a non-profit group of scientists.

The Anglo-Dutch oil conglomerate Shell has applied for permits to drill just 30 miles off the World Heritage-listed coral reef in Western Australia thus alarming many naturalists.

This week’s Isaac Asimov Memorial Debate saw physicists spar over superstring theory—a theory of everything which hopes to unite Einstein’s relativity with quantum mechanics.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic space tourism venture will call New Mexico its home. A new spaceport will open to visitors in the spring for much less than a $200,000 ticket to space.

Have the environmental benefits of energy efficiency have been oversold? Paradoxically, there could even be more emissions as a result of some improvements in energy efficiency.

The best portraits look as if the subject could step right out of the frame and walk among us, maybe even sign an autograph or two. Recently, something like that […]

Google the words ‘baby’ and “owned” and you’ll find a curious phenomenon: many people have put up vids of infants and toddlers getting conked, clobbered, whacked and tripped.

When the Chief Executive of Barclays Bank, Bob Diamond made his appearance in front of a House of Commons Select Committee recently, he said that “the time for remorse was […]

Activity along the newly-formed rift that opened between Napau and Pu`u O`o craters this weekend continues to be active. It isn’t in constant eruption, but it does cycle through periods […]

In the near future, foreign language students will interact online with other students around the globe, creating communities for exchanging language skills.

Hillary Clinton, of all people, made my day last week when she said the news in the United States consists of “…a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking […]

Benjamin Dueholm has a cover story in the Washington Monthly assessing sex advice columnist Dan Savage as an ethicist: Savage yields to no one in his sexual libertarianism, but he […]

The Hybrid Reality Institute recently announced Data, a robot actor and celebrity, has joined the Institute as a Fellow, making it the highest ranking non-human entity to join a think tank. 

UPDATE: Contest Deadline is Friday, March 11th at 8 a.m. EST and the Five Winners will be Announced Next Week – Stay Tuned! Imagine, if you can, the world in the […]

 I will talk about the work of each of the speakers below over the next few weeks.  But it should be clear enough that this conference will explore most of […]

The new fissure eruption on Kilauea is going strong – the fissure has been erupting(video) over the last two days, sometimes producing fountains as high as 25 meters, but usually […]

Slovenian philosopher and cultural critic Slavoj Žižek argues that what Israel needs is not segregation, but unity and free contact between its peoples.

With governments toppling around the Middle East, what will this moment bring to bear on Iran? Its nuclear program continues while intervention is considered riskier than ever.

North Korea is using a German intermediary to approach the United Nations in hopes of selling carbon credits from its hydro-power projects to more wealthy nations for hard currency.

Globalization has been both a force for good and ill in the world, argues Satheesan Kumaaran. Economies in conversion are often unable to exploit the benefits of liberal markets, the author says.

Revolutions’ final outcomes are seldom congruent with their prime movers’ intentions, says Shlomo Ben Ami. Will the relationship between Egyptian civilians and their military hold?

Desperate to avoid involvement in Libya in the event of prolonged civil unrest, the U.S. have asked Saudi Arabia to supply weapons to the rebels in Benghazi, reports Robert Fisk.

After the euphoria of Tunisia and Egypt, Qaddafi’s defiance provides a reminder that revolutions are often bloody and uncertain for their duration, says Wendell Steavenson.

In the quest to being the first or fastest to get out of a free-falling share in the stock market, financial model formulas  are programmed into computers  by investors great […]

Performance art usually receives condescending smirks in the United States as the last kid picked for the cultural game of kickball. With Charlie Sheen’s big adventure, however, maybe performance art has finally come to the colonies.

I guess Scott Walker isn’t totally heartless. One of the few areas of Wisconsin state government where Governor Walker wants to increase funding are “payments to counties to cover the […]

Normally I don’t post over the weekend, but volcanoes are on no man’s schedule! After the collapses at Pu`u O`o (see below) and the draining of the lava lake at […]

Animal smuggling has grown to a $9.8 billion-a-year criminal industry, and is exceeded only by the drugs and arms trades. Profits help to fund terrorism and civil wars, says The Independent.