Guest Thinkers

According to this expert, that president’s big advantage is that he’s not attracted primary opposition in his bid for re-election.  The left may be dissatisfied with him for not showiing […]

If the Eighties was the decade of greed, then the Seventies was the decade of Satan. Some would argue that Satan is always with us (you know who I’m talking […]

I had a conversation with Scott Meech at Edubloggercon this year in which we discussed the fine line between ‘naming the problem so we can solve it’ and ‘shaming and […]

The NASA Earth Observatory has been doing an excellent job of monitoring the eruption at Eritrea’s Nabro using all their eyes in the sky. The latest image, taken from the […]

Three significant events are going to take place in America in the next 18 months. We will increase our nation’s debt ceiling, despite all the political showboating. We will not […]

Arguably, the invention of the ATM by IBM nearly 40 years ago was one of the greatest moments in the history of modern consumer banking. These ATMs revolutionized the way […]

And if it’s literature, do we care if it’s violent? “Grimm’s Fairy Tales, for example, are grim indeed,” wrote Justice Scalia, in his majority opinion in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants […]

Rosetta Stone CEO Tom Adams explains why the best leaders embrace the future now and ask questions later.  

We talk a lot about the hazards that are present at Washington’s Rainier mostly in terms of what might happen if the volcano erupts. However, remember that even when Rainier […]

Here are three interesting items that make the process of packing, eating and separating trash a bit more practical, fun, and smart.  I love the idea behind the packaging of […]

Friday’s New York Times touts the health benefits of good posture: it helps avoid the pain (both physical and financial) of back and neck problems, improves muscle tone and breathing, […]

When Walmart comes to your town, there are always two different reactions: “No! They’ll kill all the small businesses!” Or “Yes! Big selection at low prices!” A similar phenomenon is […]

Consider the big effort being made to engineer equality at a particular Swedish pre-school.  Here’s the meat of the article: Breaking down gender roles is a core mission in the […]

Immolating yourself on the courthouse steps to underscore your belief that you were wrongfully separated from your wife and denied custody of your children is the ultimate self-refutation. Especially if […]

Disputes about evidence in social science can drag on for decades. I bet many a researcher has fantasized about the day when a world-famous panel of judges looks at the […]

We’re still getting little in the way of news about the Nabro eruption from Eritrea – I’ve been looking around and the best figure I’ve found is that at least […]

The 31st annual New York City Pride March was held just two days after Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill making New York the sixth and largest state to achieve […]

It has been awhile since the last in my Q&A series, but I think the new Q&A guest will make up for that lapse. Dr. Clive Oppenheimer (top left) has agreed […]

David Ropeik, a leading expert in risk communication, has joined Big Think as a regular blogger.  Among his inaugural posts at “Risk: Reason and Reality,” Ropeik discusses a fascinating new […]

How do we speak and write about things when things are not going the way that we want? Not just little things, like lunch, but big things, like wars. Do […]

Huntsman is now the Republican darling of the liberal press. The truth is his speech before the Statue of Liberty (which echoed Reagan in terms of location) was shallow and […]

Smart phones even more than tablets are the perfect all-in-one purpose devices. And as we are using them a bit more every day in a multitude of situations that just […]

Wednesday evening the bipartisan negotiations on raising the debt ceiling collapsed when House Majority Eric Cantor (R-VA) announced he was pulling out of the talks. Cantor refused to continue the […]

People’s attitudes lag behind their times, as Hermann Broch observed. At the height of the European Enlightenment, philosophers who dreamed of universal rights accepted that men would be broken on […]

Last night, an equal marriage bill passed the New York State Senate and was signed into law by Governor Andrew Cuomo. New York has become the sixth, and largest, state […]

Nature doesn’t litter, people do. In the US that trash amounts to 1.4 billion pounds per day. And 40% of that is packaging. Recently, Greenpeace tried to provoke the global […]

In Milwaukee, the fourth-poorest city in America, educators have launched a “guerrilla classroom” initiative that transforms urban locations into impromptu classrooms for parents and children. Across Milwaukee, playgrounds, bus stops […]

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recentlywrote that while members of the U.S. armed forces may as a group be politically conservative, “they live by an astonishingly liberal ethos.” Kristof’s […]

We all draw as kids, yet most of us stop drawing somewhere around the fourth or fifth grade. Doodles seem unserious by then, and adulthood only makes us less likely […]

In his recent essay, “My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant,” star reporter Jose Antonio Vargas recalls being sent to the U.S. at the age of 12 to live with his […]