Guest Thinkers

You’ve probably wondered how wildlife filmmakers are able to follow a polar bear and her cub across a year. Or get perfect close-up shots of a bear feasting on a […]

The NASA Earth Observatory posted an excellent image today of the erupting volcano Shiveluch on the Kamchatka Peninsula. This isolated part of eastern Russia is one of the most volcanically […]

The Feast Conference is a social innovation summit gathering some of the world’s most compelling thinkers and doers from a cross-disciplinary spectrum of innovation, inspiration and empowerment. Last year, The […]

While I was out of town last week I got a lot of reading done. One of the books I picked up was the paperback version of Palace Council by […]

Subtitled Bollywood films are proving a boon to literacy in India. The Boston Globe reports that communities gather around old TV sets for entertainment and education.

When Frank Welsh wrote his outstanding one-volume history of Hong Kong, he titled it “A Borrowed Place.” In I Like Hong Kong… Art and Deterritorialization, Frank Vigneron, an Associate Professor […]

Imagine if a state defined embryos as people, giving full legal protections and rights to a collection of cells the size of the ball on a fine-tipped pen? Sound like […]

Sorry about the lack of posts today – I’ve been trying to get over a nasty headcold and my ability to concentrate on much has been less than great. So, […]

If a cliché is beautifully wrought does it save it from the evils of being cliché? David Brooks does not like what he refers to as the “Quiet Desperation dogma” […]

After watching a few minutes of President Obama’s appearance on the townhall style “Investing In America” forum held on CNBC yesterday, you couldn’t help but get the feeling that Obama […]

When looking at design as a utilitarian problem-solving tool, the smartest solutions are often the simplest ones. That’s certainly the case with Tube Grip – a compact inflatable grip-assistant designed […]

The late strip club owner and bon vivant, Paul Raymond would certainly have approved, as a fair number of old ‘faces’ joined author Paul Willetts for the launch of ‘Members […]

Last week, The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart announced the “Rally to Restore Sanity,” to be held October 30 on the National Mall. “Ours is a rally for the people who’ve […]

A recent feature piece in The New York Times on the 25th Paris Biennale, currently at the Grand Palais until September 22nd, made the bold statement that “[f]uture historians may […]

Shorter Newsweek: A half-witted, mean spirited, quasi-functional alcoholic would be a great Speaker of the House. [Photo credit: Alli’ Cat’, Creative Commons.]

As if this weren’t bad enough, Douglas Irwin, an economist at Dartmouth, is out this week with a new grievance against France. He says it bears much of the blame […]

I’m still playing catch-up from the field trip, but there is a pile of news – mostly research-related rather than new eruptions – so I thought I’d whip up a […]

In September 1940, a Polish army captain crept into the one place everyone wanted out: Auschwitz. His missions was to file intelligence reports on methods used at the camp.

“The result of the death of God was the divinization of Man. But having witnessed the atrocities committed in the name of such anthropocentrism, midcentury theorists sought to displace humanism.”

It looks like I got back just in the nick of time, before you guys started fighting over whether Christine O’Donnell is dumber than Sarah Palin, or even whether Michael […]

Writing in the New York Review of Books blog, Notre Dame professors John T. McGreevy and R. Scott Appleby recently provided a useful lesson on the history of religious discrimination […]

Nick Bilton‘s I Live in the Future & Here’s How it Works (Crown/Random House) has just been released. It’s a contemporary memoir of the New York Times tech correspondent and […]

I’m back from Denison Geosciences Department Field Trip the Smokies of Tennessee and North Carolina – I’m exhausted but it was a great trip for all. And just for fun, […]

Commercial space tourism is no longer such a distant dream. Over the next decade or so, we are going to start seeing the development of quite a few interesting relationships […]

The New York Times has an important editorial on how this election cycle is shaping up to be the most secretive “since the Watergate years,” thanks to subterranean rivers of […]

You know when a newspaper is in trouble when it begins to hire legions of new managers, starts having yet more ‘away days’, when journalists are organised into ‘pods’, and […]

“The religious sect that rejects modern life is spreading from its traditional heartlands, but scandals are damaging its benign image.” The Independent profiles the Amish.

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” may come up for a vote after all. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) wants to bring the 2011 defense authorization bill, which contains a provision […]

After successfully employing Islamic law in the U.S. court system, a writer at Guernica realizes that Sharia and feminism aren’t always mutually exclusive.

“In 1960 a spirited animal lover with no scientific training set up camp to observe chimpanzees. Today Jane Goodall’s name is synonymous with the protection of the species.”