Guest Thinkers

Many people ask me if science is getting more glamorous. Well, I hope so. The world of Hollywood and the media tell us that if you are beautiful and strong […]

Despite WikiLeak’s massive publication of Afghanistan war logs, there remain undisclosed elements to the war. For example, who we are fighting, says The New Yorker.

Often cited as a retroactive justification for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the issue of women’s rights is still what separates the West from the Middle East, writes Max Dunbar.

Self serving, egotistical and narcissistic. These epithets accurately describe the personality and motivations of former UK Business Secretary, former Northern Ireland Secretary and former Industry Secretary, Lord Peter Mandelson. Which […]

What if you could manipulate abstract, digital information like it were a tangible, physical thing? A new development out of MIT Media Lab promises to do just that. Slurp is […]

When you hear the name Edvard Munch, you almost immediately think of The Scream. It’s unavoidable.  Even during his lifetime, Munch found himself linked to that image and a select […]

Sociological Images posted the results of the Modesty Survey a project of a Christian website where Christian girls quizzed 1500 Christian guys about their standards of modesty. Not guys’ standards […]

“These days the top stories reflect the death of guilt. It’s gone. It has no place in polite society.” From Levi Johnston and Goldman Sachs to Roman Polanski, is guilt dead?

“Could the decades-long global impasse over abortion worldwide be overcome—by little white pills costing less than $1 each?” Nicholas Kristof reports on a gynecological revolution.

Pertinent news for anyone who uses soap, shampoo, perfume, sunscreen, lip balm, moisturizer, etc etc etc: last Wednesday, Congress introduced a bill that would give the FDA the power to […]

“Chucky Fat Face,” artist Chuck Close admits to being called by fellow artist Richard Serra during their graduate school days together at Yale early on in the film Chuck Close, […]

True/Slant and The Big Money will both close their doors this weekend, though one has a decidedly brighter future than the other. T/S will continue in some form under its […]

There is at least one way of guaranteeing Western media interest in the United Nations; a leaked letter from a disgruntled former employee that attacks a “leaking culture” within the […]

They have always loved him. But now the media is more in love with President Clinton than ever, as they have something simple and straightforward to celebrate: the marriage of […]

Michael Grunwald wrote in Time yesterday that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill might not be as disastrous as we thought. It’s not that it hasn’t had some serious consequences, obviously. […]

In rural India, over half of all households don’t have electricity. To light households and power commercial equipment, villages use kerosene lanterns, which are both expensive and environmentally harmful. But […]

Globalization has transformed the practice and study of law, says Larry Kramer, the dean of Stanford Law School. American law firms have dominated the internationalization of law, but this has […]

The U.S. military is investing in all kinds of augmentation – pills you ingest, body armor you can wear, and machine parts you can add to your body.

Conservative commentator Fred Barnes has recently criticized liberal journalists for discussing ideas on a free, private email list. Barnes claims that, unlike the denizens of journo-list, he’s a non-partisan conservative: […]

When President George W. Bush came to office in 2001, the U.S. was sending $1.4 billion a year to Africa in humanitarian and development aid, including programs intended to foster […]

“Ocean life is being wiped out from the bottom up,” reports the New Scientist. Recall from your high school food chain diagram that the smallest critters are the most important.

“The truth lies somewhere between ‘men oppress women with their uncontrollable needs’ and ‘women oppress men with their socially constructed monogamous love.’”

Silence speaks volume. In the unmitigated disaster that is the Gulf of Mexico, two silent partners watch as BP endures a hurricane of criticism, Transocean and Haliburton, who it has […]

No code is unbreakable. Mathematicians may be able design codes that can’t be cracked by all the computational power available on earth, but that won’t guarantee the security of the […]

There will be more. Julian Assange has assured us this: there will be more. Do we want more? Will the release of more classified material place more lives at risk? […]

Eliminate the middle-man. This classic piece of business advice recently received an unusual interpretation: the literary agent, commonly seen as the middle-man between author and publishing house, is circumventing the […]

Los Angeles often feels like another planet to non-natives, from the confluence of cultures to the often unearthly architecture. In Architecture of the Sun: Los Angeles Modernism 1900-1970, Thomas S. […]

Ever have a tune run through your mind, with no name or words attached? When you squawk out what you think might be the melody, people just shrug in perplexity. […]

“The burqa is not religious headwear; it is a physical barrier to engagement in public life adopted in a deep spirit of misogyny,” says The Stone column at the New York Times.

“An anthropologist argues that polygamy is harmful as Canada considers whether having multiple wives is a constitutional right.” Our neighbors to the North take a surprising turn.