Science

Obama Got the Law Right and the Politics Wrong

His ACA employer mandate delay was constitutional—why didn’t he say so?

  • Louis Fisher

Exhuming Equality: The Forensics of Human Rights

All around the world, we are digging up the dead.

  • Adam Rosenblatt

A Case for Climate Engineering

Harvard climate scientist David Keith leads a discussion about his new book, A Case for Climate Engineering, explaining climate engineering as a tool to combat global warming. He is joined by MIT political scientists Kenneth Oye and Stephen Van Evera. 

  • David Keith

A Case for Climate Engineering

Keith explores a challenging proposal; climate engineering is no silver bullet.

  • David Keith

Video: The World After Snowden

Toward Distributed Security in Cyberspace

  • Ronald Deibert

A Guide to the Affordable Care Act

Who are you in the eyes of the ACA?

  • Deborah Stone

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Your Body, Their Property

Who owns human tissues?

  • Osagie K. Obasogie

Censored by Google

Any literate person could recognize that the essay was a work of art. But Google’s family-friendly algorithm decided it was porn.

  • Joel Whitney

Subject of Study

If there is a moral limit to artistic license, director Alice Winocour has gone beyond it in Augustine.

  • Alan A. Stone

Learning Sympathy

The success of humanitarian appeals  is not a given of human nature. They work because we have come to sympathize with the suffering of others, distant and alien.

  • Claude S. Fischer

The Truth About GMOs

Genetically modified foods are safe for humans and pose no special environmental risk. Yet there are serious policy questions to consider.

  • Pamela Ronald
with responses from
  • Marc Gunther
  • Greg Jaffe
  • Margaret Mellon
  • Rosamond Naylor
  • Robert Paarlberg
  • Nina Fedoroff
  • Tim Burrack
  • Jennie Schmidt
  • Jack Heinemann

Can Science Deliver the Benefits of Religion?

New research shows that a scientific worldview helps people cope with feelings of powerlessness and the anxieties of mortality.

  • Tania Lombrozo

High in Uruguay

The South American Country May Soon Be the First in the World to Officially Cultivate and Distribute Marijuana

  • Michelle García

What’s Wrong with Technological Fixes?

Evgeny Morozov answers questions about his new book, To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism.

  • Evgeny Morozov
  • Terry Winograd

Beyond Blame

The philosophy of personal responsibility has ruined criminal justice and economic policy. It’s time to move past blame.

  • Barbara H. Fried
with responses from
  • Paul Bloom
  • Christine M. Korsgaard
  • Gideon Rosen
  • Erin Kelly
  • Brian Leiter
  • Adriaan Lanni
  • George Sher
  • Mike Konczal
  • T. M. Scanlon

Are MOOCs Good for Students?

The push for online learning is bad for literacy and bad for democracy.

  • Thomas Leddy

Much Ado About MOOCs

We should examine the potential of online learning with an open mind.

  • Rob Reich

The Potential of Online Learning

We should avoid absolute judgments about MOOCs and assess the mix of possibilities they offer.

  • William G. Bowen

On Being an Octopus

Nothing stretches our thinking about the mind the way an octopus does.

  • Peter Godfrey-Smith

Getting Smarter

Why are human beings becoming more intelligent?

  • Claude S. Fischer

Washed Away

Remembering Japan’s tsunami.

  • Stephen Phelan

Strapped

My eight years with a gun.

  • Hal Stucker

E-Disharmony?

Online Dating Isn’t Threatening Monogamy

  • Claude S. Fischer

Cash Cows

Thanks to dairy farmers, there is hope for a sustainable middle class in East Africa.

  • Jennifer Wheary
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