Guest Thinkers

What happens to the digital legacy of those who have complicated online profiles, passwords, digital assets such as music and who happen to be—dead?

Cattle and other livestock create tons of damaging greenhouse gases. There may be one environmentally friendly solution: eating bugs. But will anyone go for it?

The world of parenting was presented with a gentle and nudging article in the New York Times last week on the importance of maintaining an imaginative and fun environment for children.The […]

At the Energy Innovation 2010 conference I attended last month, Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency Cathy Zoi said something that I found very interesting about Obama’s economic stimulus package: “With […]

I have made it back to Ohio from Minnesota today – no small feat considering all the snow across the middle part of the continent. Amazing how a little phase […]

So how many of you have heard of Piers Morgan?  The answer is probably rather a few more than had a week or so ago. Morgan has stepped into the […]

Over the weekend I read Amy Chua’s paean to “Chinese parents” in The Wall Street Journal with morbid fascination. What felt morbid was Chua’s “Mommie Dearest” anecdote about battling with […]

In what can only be described as awkward timing, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Yemen only a couple of weeks after amendments went to parliament that would allow President […]

The Internet has been burning up this past week as massive groups of animals around the world have been suddenly dying en masse. We hear reports from Sweden, Louisiana, Arkansas, […]

Pretty much everyone knows that Superman is the original super hero, and maybe the greatest of that genre. As Jim Crocesang, “You don’t tug on Superman’s cape.” But one super […]

The leading Darwinian conservative has done me the honor of responding to my previous post, including the excellent comment by Brendan Foht.  According to Larry, the criticism of him for rejecting the idea of […]

Gun control and drug policy are important issues, but it’s dangerous to read too much into a single tragedy. It isn’t fair to suggest that Republican rhetoric was in any way responsible for Jared Loughner’s attack in Arizona.

Hello from snowy Minnesota! I’m here at Gustavus Adolphus College to give a talk for the Geology Department (special thanks to Dr. Elli Goeke for inviting me out!) Thought I’d […]

Silicon Valley greats tend to leave a host of successful entrepreneurs in their wake. But now “successful alumni” are starting to include people who were never really alumni to start with.

With nearly 5 billion mobile phone users worldwide, mobile networks are the most powerful communication technology systems today. But they are still centralized, top-down networks wherein a cellular provider disseminates […]

Whether it is climate change, immigration, or income inequality, America seems incapable of making progress on solving complex problems. In fact, it seems that the country is locked in a […]

Just before leaving New York to return to England, I went with my family to visit a former journalist colleague who lives with her partner and two gorgeous young boys […]

Violence in American politics tends to bubble up from a world that’s far stranger than any Glenn Beck monologue, says the conservative columnist Ross Douthat.

The foremost quality that makes wood wood, both as a material and as a metaphor, is its inflexible rigidity. Dutch designer Carolien Laro, however, has challenged this age-old conception with […]

When a disaster devastates a country’s infrastructure, we tend to think about physical infrastructure damages — roads, telecommunication, delivery routes. But the damage to information systems can often be even […]

Sometimes I find myself feeling sorry for Thomas Robert Malthus. You remember Malthus, he was the one who argued that humanity was destined to remain in poverty because every time […]

Yemen is a confusing place and of all the opaque places within the country my vote for the most confusing is Abyan.  Last week we talked about jihadi tensions that […]

Country Strong hasn’t been taken seriously by film critics. I’m not going to review what they’ve said or speculate on why they said it. I’m just going to explain why […]

Today, Saudi Arabia is out with a new wanted list of 47 men it believes have fled the kingdom and joined the jihad abroad.  Many, according to this AFP report, […]

 In a recent article, MSNBC called Facebook the divorce lawyer’s new best friend. Social media allows people to easily meet and flirt with attractive people, diverting attention and time away from […]

The Republican Party owns hate speech in America the way Bill Gates owns Microsoft. But by the end of the day, what’s left of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords life will be […]

Maybe the danger of digital culture to young people is not that they have hummingbird attention spans but that they are going deaf.

Iraq finally has a new government after months of deadlock, but the cynical horsetrading has damaged the image of politics. Residents of Baghdad no longer trust their fellow citizens.

The flat earthers who refuse to believe that there is global warming or that sea levels are rising have had a good couple of months in the Northern hemisphere. They […]

On a day filled with tragic images of the shooting of Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 18 others, it seems absurd to blog about anything else. As advertised, this is […]