Thomas Friedman, three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, once offered the following insight into his modus operandi: “I often begin writing columns by interviewing myself.”

Some might see this as an...

It was a salutary lesson for the Royal Society and made clear that the formidable intelligence of its scientific membership was no guarantee of sound business judgement.

The debacle played out in the 17th century when the country's most prestigious scientific...

Karim Sadjadpour in Foreign Policy:

In the early years of the Iranian Revolution, an obscure cleric named Ayatollah Gilani became a sensation on state television by contemplating bizarre hypotheticals at the intersection of Islamic law and sexuality. One of his most outlandish scenarios --...

The e-mail that brought the art world’s latest scandal to light came to Knoedler last November 29. It disclosed the results of forensic tests done to a Jackson Pollock painting, Untitled 1950, that the gallery had sold in 2007 for $17 million to Pierre Lagrange, a London hedge-fund...

THE USUAL interpretation of the phrase “the madness of art” conjures up an attractive cliché: the writer as a creature possessed, spilling out words in a divine frenzy. This isn’t the normal experience of the practicing fiction writer, the writer who’s found a way to keep going...

Robin Wells in The Guardian's Comment is Free:

In the Netherlands, the center-right government of Mark Rutte fell, unable to cobble together a coalition to pass budget cuts required by EU fiscal rules – rules that mandate that eurozone countries run annual deficits no more than 3% of GDP,...

Steve Fraser and Joshua Freeman in Salon:

Sweatshop labor is back with a vengeance. It can be found across broad stretches of the American economy and around the world. Penitentiaries have become a niche market for such work. The privatization of prisons in recent years has meant the creation...

Ross Andersen interviews Lawrence Krauss (who may be obliquely referring to David Albert's review), in The Atlantic:

Your book argues that physics has definitively demonstrated how something can come from nothing. Do you mean that physics has explained how particles can emerge from so-called...

Mona Eltahawy in Foreign Policy:

Yes, women all over the world have problems; yes, the United States has yet to elect a female president; and yes, women continue to be objectified in many "Western" countries (I live in one of them). That's where the conversation usually ends when you try to...

From The Independent:

1987 – I was twenty-five years old and holed up in the intensive care unit at the National Neurological Hospital in London, stricken from head to toe with Guillain-Barré Syndrome. Symptoms: total paralysis. Prognosis: uncertain. Guillain Barré Syndrome is a bizarre...

Natalie Angier in The New York Times:

When first we meet Hannah, the wondrously mopey mid-20s heroine of HBO’s new hit series “Girls,” she seems to have more strikes against her than a bowling alley at Fenway Park. Her parents have cut off her monthly stipend. Her literary-magazine boss...