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Robert de Neufville
Contributor, Big Think
I lecture and write about politics and philosophy. I hold degrees in politics from Harvard and Berkeley, and have studied complex systems at the Santa Fe Institute. Other interests include theoretical physics, cognitive science, evolutionary biology, and the game of Go. You can find me on Twitter at @rdeneufville.
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“No vows for now,” read the headline in the San Francisco Chronicle. Tuesday night a three judge panel of the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay of […]
Catherine Rampell, in the New York Times’ Economix blog, noticed something interesting about the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest report on consumer prices. Overall, consumer prices grew 0.3% in July […]
The Fourteenth Amendment has come under concerted attack in recent days. Some conservatives have talked about repealing the Citizenship Clause, which says that “All persons born or naturalized in the […]
The legal fight over same-sex marriage in federal courts is just beginning, and the outcome is far from certain. But in the aftermath of Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling overturning California’s […]
The controversy over the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” comes down to one thing: no one should be denied the right to build a house of worship solely on the basis […]
Yesterday the Senate passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act by unanimous consent. The bill allots $4.5 billion to fund public school food programs. The bill, which was backed by Sen. […]
The real target of yesterday’s decision to overturn California’s gay marriage ban was the Supreme Court. Judge Vaughn Walker knew that his ruling would not be the final word. His […]
A federal appeals court ruled today that California’s Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. Same-sex marriage is legal again in California—at least for the moment. Proposition 8 had amended the California Constitution […]
“If I wanted to sponsor a bill,” Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) asked, “and it said, ‘Americans, you have to eat three vegetables and three fruits every day,’ and I got […]
Michael Grunwald wrote in Time yesterday that the Deepwater Horizon oil spill might not be as disastrous as we thought. It’s not that it hasn’t had some serious consequences, obviously. […]
No code is unbreakable. Mathematicians may be able design codes that can’t be cracked by all the computational power available on earth, but that won’t guarantee the security of the […]
I am taking a couple of weeks off. But while I’m away, I thought I’d share with you some of the what I consider to be this year’s essential readings […]
I am taking a couple of weeks off. But while I’m away, I thought I’d share with you some of the what I consider to be this year’s essential readings […]
Here are some of the what I consider to be this year’s essential rnreadings on politics. In particular, today I want to look at some of the crucial rnissues that underlie domestic politics in America.
It probably wouldn’t have been that hard—from some angle—to get a picture of President Obama by himself on a Louisiana beach looking down at the ground, apparently at a loss. […]
In The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson referred to his fellow Americans as “citizens.” But in an early draft of the document, it’s clear that he originally used some other […]
The Fourth of July fireworks I have gone to for years have been canceled. Oakland is hosting a bunch of other Independence Day activities in Jack London Square—they’ll have some […]
Vice President Biden predicts that this, at long last, will be “the summer of recovery.” The stimulus bill is working, he said, and “more people are going to be put […]
Johanna Sigurdardottir, Iceland’s prime minister, just got married. That in itself might not be particularly noteworthy, except for one thing—she married a woman. When Johanna was elected in 2009, she […]
In the disputed presidential election in 2000, it was hard to say just who won the vote in the electoral college. But it was clear Al Gore won the national […]