Guest Thinkers

I briefly wrote about digital dementia in my post about demand driven education. The term deals with the fact that people tend to outsource information to digital devices we had […]

It’s a common and tired trope of storytelling that the geek shall inherit the Earth. Revenge of the Nerds might actually be the pinnacle of this geeky genre. What makes […]

Francis Fukuyama tells Big Think about the pressures that one must overcome in rethinking positions–in his case, his views on the Iraq War–and how he overcame those pressures. 

I was in Catholic community center today for a sporting event when a brightly colored poster on a bulletin board caught my eye. The picture was of a parachutist falling […]

Last night was Iowa State University’s largest-ever commencement for graduate students: 150+ Ph.D. students and another 280+ Master’s students. I had the pleasure of graduating three of my doctoral advisees. Pam […]

Physicists at Stanford, who have spearheaded the billion-dollar Gravity Probe B mission, have announced that they have found Einstein’s missing inch, once again proving the correctness of general relativity.  According […]

Last week I marked my third blogiversary – and acknowledged that I started this blog looking for information on an eruption that had started in Chile. That eruption turned out […]

How has growing up amidst the specter of war shaped the modern teenager? And how do we explain to the young why one man’s death is something to celebrate?

The fabled planetary alignment predicted to occur in 2012 is actually happening right now. Is this a sign of the Apocalypse, or just eye candy for stargazers?

Change is good. It introduces the new and tests the assumptions of the old. I have made a change in the publishing strategy of disruptivedemographics.com. Beginning May 2011 ‘Disruptive Demographics’ will […]

Liposuction is often billed as a permanent surgical solution to unwanted fat deposits. Various types of fat-sucking surgery have been available for over three decades, but these procedures have rarely […]

House Republicans are backing off their controversial plan to privatize Medicare, for now. The Congressman who would have been in charge of translating the policy proposal into a law has […]

Here’s a question for you… Let’s say that my daughter’s taking Geometry and the homework assignment from her textbook asks her to prove that the three perpendicular bisectors of the […]

[UPDATE: And the winner is… Suzie Linch, who submitted Nathan Barber’s blog, The Next Generation of Educational Leadership. Congratulations, Suzie!] Does your local principal or superintendent blog? Do you read the […]

No sooner had Britain voted in a referendum on a new voting system, the demand for a new referendum came bellowing from north of the border following the resounding victory […]

In the beginning, God separated the light from the darkness, and it was good. Growing up a Bible-thumping, Southern-bred, segregation-approving Fundamentalist, Barry Moser became a licensed Methodist minister at the […]

In a 2008 study led by my colleague Ed Maibach,  over half of the nation’s public health departments reported that their communities were already experiencing health effects from climate change, […]

Daily affirmations and inspirational messages may look cheesy but they work. Ironically, the first things we forget are the most vital for our happiness, like the love we have for […]

It has been a while since we’ve had what I would consider a “busy” Global Volcanism Program Weekly Volcanic Activity Report – but this week, there is a ton of […]

So here’s a ferocious attack on new atheist Sam Harris from the Nation, our country’s leading leftist publication.  The conclusion: Harris is oblivious to this moral crisis [of selfish individualism]. His self-confidence […]

What is it about power that changes people – or if not changes, brings out those aspects of them that had heretofore lain dormant? As the old adage goes, power […]

Have you noticed that something in the digital zeitgeist has changed the way we think about creativity and commerce? Artists are no longer just “artists” – they are now entrepreneurs, […]

The experts will do the analysis, but the philosophers will parse the emotions. Leon Weiseltier has this piece, on The New Republic’s website, in which he talks about the difference […]

I am a big fan of Jane McGonigal’s idea to create platforms, such as games, in order to involve everyone into solving global problems. Similarly, but on a much smaller scale, […]

Your girlfriend loves reruns of Sex and the City, high heels and champagne. You, on the other hand, like to pour over the Financial Times, drink espressos and debate the […]

Does killing Osama bin Laden guarantee President Obama’s reelection? It’s hard to imagine—short of the unemployment rate magically dropping several points—a single better piece of news for Obama. It’s certainly […]

The official account of the killing of Osama bin Laden has changed. U.S. officials initially claimed that bin Laden went down shooting. Now, they’re saying he wasn’t armed when he […]

I thought I’d offer some random observations… First off, I agree with my fellow BIG THINKER Kris that it’s most unreasonable to fear terrorist retaliation.  That’s not only because the odds […]

The population of the world, long expected to stabilize just above 9 billion in the middle of the century, will instead keep growing and may hit 10.1 billion by the year 2100, according to a new U.N. report. 

A friend of mine sent me a text message yesterday. “Should we be worried about retaliation?” I was in the middle of something, so I gave her a one word […]