Guest Thinkers

Thomas Nagel says that “devaluation of conscious reasoning” is a form of “moral and intellectual laziness,” and that David Brooks is guilty of same in his new book. Nagel’s review […]

We are entering into a decisive turning point for the reactor crisis in Japan, as heroic workers attempt to restore power to the compromised reactors. The next few days are critical.

How do you get your point across over an issue as contentious as climate change? As a hearing in the U.S. Congress last week showed, the evidence alone is not enough.

French writer and philosopher Pascal Bruckner says the values that accompany our time’s ceaseless drive to be happy are counterproductive—what we need, he says, is a new humility.

Update: Following Friday’s shooting in Sanaa a number of officials in the ruling GPC party have submitted their resignations.  Below is an up-dated list that continues from this earlier post. […]

Rolling Stone editor Neil Strauss shares some exchanges New York Timescopy editors from his days as a rock critic, several years ago: Editing an article that quotes the Courtney Love […]

What events precipitated last Friday’s horrific sniper massacre in Yemen, and more importantly where do things go from here? 

For the first time, a Washington Post/ABC News poll has found that by a margin of 53-44 a majority of Americans think same-sex marriage should be legal. It won’t be the […]

“[I]n La Ruche you either came out dead or famous,” Marc Chagall said of the Parisian refuge of bohemian artists from Eastern Europe that he called home during his first […]

THERE are already some on the Left who are arguing against military intervention – in the form of a no fly zone – over Libya. The argument has merit on […]

I have to admit I’ve been warming up a bit to the out-there techno-optimism of Ray Kurzweil displayed so prominently on BIG THINK.  He (like lots of people) has been […]

“By ‘retiring’ from political life, what the Dalai Lama really is doing is prodding Tibetan exiles to take more initiative and stand up for themselves.

The current retirement system assumes that people must diligently save and invest in order to buy things in the future. But what if people were free to share, barter and swap for these goods?

[The See/Saw Contest for Japan Continues; see the end of this post]I never met the man or even heard him speak, but hearing that art historian and author Leo Steinbergpassed […]

With thanks to  Alex Weprin who on March 17, 2011 filed a fascinating report based on a study which has been posted in the journal Arab Media & Society. The […]

Here’s an artice that explains well why Congress should get the national government out of the radio and TV business.  A taste: NPR’s defenders would respond indignantly to this argument by […]

In my latest post for TAPPED, I reply to fat activist Paul Campos who argues that Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move!” program is the fat-hating equivalent of “ex-gay” ministries who purport […]

Advocates of nuclear power say the rational choice is to keep licensing those reactors, despite the ongoing crisis in Japan. But a healthy fear of nukes might just be evolutionarily motivated.

Back in 2007, when I was a loan officer for a small mortgage lender in Atlanta, the president of the Pennsylvania title company that closed the majority of the loans […]

Newly unveiled personal robots or drones could allow students from across the globe to actively take part in campus life on any college or university they chose, like remote-controlled avatars. 

Is the recent tectonic activity around Japan a forewarning that Japan’s largest volcano will blow? Probably not, explains volcanologist Erik Klemmeti.

Nuclear reactors planned for the U.S. are safer and more efficient than the 40-year-old Japan facility that has suffered explosions and leaks, experts say. Still, their approval is likely to be delayed.

It’s spring training for Major League Baseball and that means it’s time for another season of edublogger fantasy baseball! Last year’s champions were Harold Shaw, Vinnie Vrotny, and – for the […]

Federal and state governments certainly face serious fiscal problems, and can’t continue to spend more than they take in indefinitely. But are they really broke?

It has been a busy couple weeks geologically – and somehow I missed last week’s Global Volcanism Program report, so I thought I’d put a brief update with this week’s. […]

Isabel Wilkerson’s masterful history of the Great Migration won a National Book Critics Circle Award last week, a richly deserved honor. You can read my review of “The Warmth of […]

Eyewitness accounts and twitter messages on the ground in Japan reveal rising desperation and frustration with the media. 

Released just yesterday, Physics of the Future is my most ambitious book to date. Based on interviews with over three hundred of the world’s top scientists, who are already inventing the […]

I am old enough – just – to remember Britain’s one and only referendum on whether we should remain a member of what was then called the Common Market, back […]

Professor of history at the University of Maryland, David Hirsch warns against expecting too much from battery innovation, such as in electric cars, but not from alternative transportation.