Guest Thinkers

I’ve been a New York Times junkie since I was thirteen years old. This in itself shouldn’t be a big deal, but if you grew up in a small Southern […]

Roland Martin makes the case that Confederate soldiers in the Civil War were domestic terrorists — and shouldn’t be honored any more than we honor Muslim extremists who try to kill Americans.

Iphone meets blender. Blender wins. Story of all our lives, isn’t it? I mean, given that we’re all heading for an inevitable blending of our constituent atoms with the universe’s flotsam […]

I’m not putting my money on this one—not yet. A new company called Zero Baggage goes live this November with the goal of weaning jet-plane America off of luggage. Their […]

A beckoning light; a feeling of transcendence: these are two characteristics of a near-death experience that new research suggests may relate to amounts of certain chemicals in the blood.

Atheist social groups are sprouting up more than ever across college campuses emphasizing tolerance and proselytizing like their religious brethren.

Though many heads of state were on the plane crash that killed the President of Poland, the political machinery necessary to govern remains in place; an election must be held in 60 days.

Russia is threatening stop American families from adopting Russian orphans after a Tennessee family sent its adopted Russian son back to Moscow unaccompanied, save for a written letter.

Less labor intensive and more profitable per acre, more marijuana is being grown in Afghanistan increasing the Taliban’s profit from the drug trade.

Organic chemistry’s an intricate subject. Media chatter about wellness, though, is an action movie, where “good” molecules (like Omega-3 fatty acids) battle “bad” ones (like LDL cholesterol). If they could, […]

Justice Stevens, who will retire at the end of the Supreme Court’s current term, is a Chicago native where the political culture taught him to hold politicians accountable.

CNN looks at a list of potential nominees to fill Justice Steven’s seat on the Supreme Court including current Attorney General Eric Holder and Diane Wood.

In the first UN climate talks since Copenhagen, poor countries who will be most affected by climate change demanded a legally binding treaty.

“If ants wrote a stage play for human characters, it would look like this,” writes Barbara Kingsolver of E.O. Wilson’s first novel, Anthill. In a powerhouse-eco-figures play, the New York […]

Smart people have long had a history of quirky and inexplicable habits: Nietzsche wound up hugging horses, Freud couldn’t kick a drug addiction, Nikola Tesla adored white pigeons and loathed […]

The journalistic objectivity which the American press aspire to does not exist as such in Europe, and I say Europe is better off because of that. Peruse the newspapers of […]

In the midst of a number of interesting debates over school curriculum in certain states, Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry signed legislation this week ensuring that the state’s public school students […]

Politico reports that the notorious anti-choice congressman Bart Stupak (D-Mich) is retiring. Stupak claims that he abruptly announced his departure on a Friday afternoon for no particular reason. He told […]

We all suspect we’re being watched. Sometimes it’s obvious like when you see CCTV cameras peering at you from every street corner in London (London is perhaps one of the […]

As the campaign in Afghanistan wears on, there is a consensus in the Islamic world that a discernible American retreat from the region is in the works, writes Fouad Ajami.

Why use boring old bread to make your sandwich, when instead you can plop your bacon, cheese and sauce between two slices of deep-fried meat? It sounds like a sitcom […]

It can be shocking to hear stories about female terrorists like the Russian “black widows” and America’s “Jihad Jane” — particularly because women so rarely turn to violence.

The director of the census bureau in charge of marine species, called the Global Marine Species Assessment, has issued a warning about the deterioration of earth’s coral reefs. It was […]

Via Gawker we learn that a New York judge reaffirmed a guy’s right to demand the ring back if the engagement breaks off for any reason. In the case before […]

Insects have long been objects of fascination in classical literature, children’s nursery rhymes, and in the culture at large. Hugh Raffles’ interest in insects stemmed from his work in the Amazon, […]

An FBI Special Agent impersonated a representative of a real, legal anti health care reform group in order to positively identify a Washington man who allegedly left a series of […]

Scientists in the Philippines say they have discovered a new species of giant lizards with bright yellow, blue, and green skin, that lives in the forests and survives on a fruit-only diet.

Faced with climate change, some birds are changing their migration schedules and staying closer to home — and in the future they might stop migrating altogether.

Warming world, warming waters, coral reef die-off. You know the drill. But until recently, marine biologists knew relatively little about  what exactly was going on, on the bacterial level, when […]

A team of researchers are hoping to find 30,000 years of climate records in the rings of preserved kauri trees in the peat bogs of New Zealand.