The Granny Peace Brigade is an active anti-war group in New York City made up primarily of senior citizens. We frequently collaborate with Code Pink, The Raging Grannies, and Peace Action and are one of many local activist groups working for a peaceful world.

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JustLuxe.com is an all encompassing online luxury publication and travel guide focused exclusively on luxury goods, fashion, services and destinations. With thousands of informative articles and unique insights provided by an in-house team of luxury travel and lifestyle experts, JustLuxe is visited by more than 2.1 million affluent readers every month.

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No on 19 is a campaign committee that was established to oppose the California ballot initiative in November 2010 that would legalize marijuana sales and cultivation in the state.

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Propublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Our work focuses exclusively on truly important stories, stories with “moral force.” We do this by producing journalism that shines a light on exploitation of the weak by the strong and on the failures of those with power to vindicate the trust placed in them.

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Ervand Abrahamian, an Armenian born in Iran and raised in England, teaches at Baruch College in New York. He has also taught at Princeton, New York University, and Oxford University. He is the author of Iran Between Two Revolutions, The Iranian Mojahedin, Khomeinism, Tortured Confessions, and (with Bruce Cumings and Moshe Ma'oz) Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran, and Syria. He was one of the three individuals (along with Noam Chomsky and Nahid Mozaffari) whom David Barsamian interviewed for his book Targeting Iran. Abrahamian is currently working on two books: one on the CIA coup in Iran and another, A History of Modern Iran, for Cambridge University Press.

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Brooke Allen's critical writings appear frequently in the New York Times Book Review, the Atlantic Monthly, The New Criterion, The Hudson Review, and The Nation. Her Twentieth-Century Attitudes was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Her latest book is Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers (Ivan R. Dee).

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Ken Allen, M.S., ABD, is the founder and president of the National GLBTQ Youth Foundation, a nonprofit charity dedicated to improving social support for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth; and decreasing anti-LGBTQ oppression. Ken is completing his doctoral studies in psychology after spending the last four years researching the psychological needs of GLBTQ youth.

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Douglas Kriner is assistant professor of political science at Boston University. He is the author of After the Rubicon: Congress, Presidents and the Politics of Waging War, as well as The Casualty Gap: The Causes and Consequences of American Wartime Inequalities (with Francis Shen). Graham Wilson is professor and chair of the Department of Political Science, Boston University. He recently became President of the British Politics Group of the American Political Science Association. Wilson's research and teaching spans comparative and American politics.

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Dion Archibald is an Australian artist and producer of the Art News Blog. He'll occasionally cross-post his work at the Britannica Blog.

Samples of his art can be viewed here.

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John Arquilla is a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, where he has taught in the special operations curriculum since 1993. He also serves as director of the Information Operations Center. His teaching interests revolve around the history of irregular warfare, terrorism, and the implications of the information age for society and security. His books include: Dubious Battles: Aggression Defeat and the International System (1992); From Troy to Entebbe: Special Operations in Ancient & Modern Times (1996), which was a featured alternate of the Military Book Club; In Athena’s Camp (1997); Networks and Netwars: The Future of Terror, Crime and Militancy (2001), named a notable book of the year by the American Library Association; The Reagan Imprint: Ideas in American Foreign Policy from the Collapse of Communism to the War on Terror (2006); and, most recently, Worst Enemy: The Reluctant Transformation of the American Military (2008).

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Adam Augustyn is an assistant editor and assistant manager at Britannica. He has bachelor's degrees in biology and English from the University of Washington and a master's degree in English from Loyola University (Chicago). When not at work, he enjoys exploring Chicago's many fine eateries, seeing live music, and dying a little inside as he watches his beloved Seattle-area sports teams from afar. He occasionally blogs about those teams at the website Seattlest.

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Brent Baker is the Steven P.J. Wood Senior Fellow and Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center, where he edits the daily CyberAlert e-mail report. In 2001, Weekly Standard Executive Editor Fred Barnes dubbed Baker "the scourge of liberal bias." By the end of 2008 more than 20,000 people, including many influential reporters, editors, editorial writers, commentators, talk show hosts, and producers had joined Baker’s mailing list of cyber-subscribers. Baker spearheaded the MRC's launch, in August 2005, of the NewsBusters.org blog for which he now serves as Editor-at-Large. Check here for his blog postings. Baker lived in Massachusetts through high school, whereupon he says he "fled the liberal commonwealth" for George Washington University in Washington, DC and, since graduation, a life in Northern Virginia. Each Monday he'll present what he sees as the worst examples from the previous week of liberal media bias.

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Colette Bancroft is the book editor at the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. She has been a features writer, restaurant critic, editor, and English professor. She lives in Florida with her husband, John, a writer, and 45 yards of book shelves. Read her articles at http://opinion.tampabay.com/bancroft/.

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Graeme Bannerman is an Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute. He has run his own international consulting firm since 1987 that focuses on the Middle East and includes governments, private industry and educational institutions. Before entering the private sector, Bannerman worked on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1979 until 1987. His positions included Committee Staff Director under Chairman Richard Lugar. From 1979 to 1984, he was responsible for the Middle East and South Asia. Dr. Bannerman served as a Middle Eastern affairs analyst and on the Policy Planning Staff at the US State Department before going to work for the US Senate. He focused on Arab-Israeli affairs during the time of Camp David and the negotiation of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Bannerman has taught at several institutions including Georgetown University, the George Washington University, and the American University in Beirut. He also has participated as an international observer of elections in Georgia, the Philippines, Haiti, Pakistan, the West Bank/Gaza, Mongolia, and Yemen. The views expressed in his posts are his alone and not those of the Middle East Institute.

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Mitchell Bard is the Executive Director of the nonprofit American-Israeli Cooperative Enterprise (AICE) and the director of the Jewish Virtual Library. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from UCLA and has been published in academic journals, magazines, and major newspapers. He has written and edited 18 books, including The Complete Idiot's Guide to Middle East Conflict, 1001 Facts Everyone Should Know About Israel, and Will Israel Survive?. His latest book is The Arab Lobby.

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Matthew Battles, senior editor at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is the author of Library: An Unquiet History (Norton 2003). He has written about language, technology, and history for such publications as The American Scholar, The Boston Sunday Globe, and Harper's Magazine.

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Mark Bauerlein is a professor of English at Emory University. He has recently served as Director of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts. His books include The Dumbest Generation: How the Digital Age Stupefies Young Americans and Jeopardizes Our Future; Or, Don't Trust Anyone Under 30, Literary Criticism: An Autopsy, and Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906. His articles and reviews have appeared in Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, TLS, Yale Review, Partisan Review, The Weekly Standard, Reason Magazine, and many other national publications.

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Raymond Benson is an author, composer, computer game designer, stage director, film historian, and the fourth official author of the James Bond 007 novels. He wrote six original James Bond novels, three film novelizations, and three short stories - all published worldwide - and he serves on the Board of Directors of The Ian Fleming Foundation. An anthology of some of his 007 work was published in The Union Trilogy.

His most recently published thrillers include A Hard Day's Death and Dark Side of the Morgue (both part of his series of “rock ‘n’ roll thrillers”). He also wrote the novelization of the popular videogame Metal Gear Solid. Under the name “David Michaels,” Benson wrote the New York Times best-sellers Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and Tom Clancy' Splinter Cell--Operation Barracuda. His other recent thrillers include Face Blind, Evil Hours, and Sweetie's Diamonds. He also writes regularly for Cinema Retro: The Essential Guide to Movies of the ’60s & ’70s. His website is raymondbenson.com, and he's based in the Chicago area.

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Michael Berenbaum is a leading expert on the Holocaust. He is the former director of the United States Holocaust Museum Research Institute and President of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. He lectures widely and is head of the Los Angeles-based Berenbaum Group, a consuting company that specializes in the conceptual design of museums and the development of historical films, specifically those relating to the Jewish experience and histories of persecution and genocide. He is the main author of and advisor for Britannica's extensive coverage of the Holocaust and is the author of many books, including The World Must Know: The History of the Holocaust as Told in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and The Bombing of Auschwitz: Should the Allies Have Attempted It?

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Sagnik Bhattacharyya is a Clinical Lecturer and Consultant Psychiatrist at King’s College London.

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Sven Birkerts worked for many years as a bookseller in Ann Arbor and Cambridge. He has published an array of books of literary essays, including An Artificial Wilderness: Essays on 20th-Century Literature and The Electric Life: Essays on Modern Poetry. His The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age was a New York Times Notable Book. After publishing a memoir, My Sky Blue Trades, he published Reading Life: Books for the Ages. His latest book is The Art of Time in Memoir: Then, Again.

Birkerts edits the literary journal AGNI at Boston University. Additionally, he is a member of the Core Faculty of the Bennington Writing Seminars and Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Creative Writing at Harvard. He has been awarded Guggenheim and Lile-Wallace Foundation grants.

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Heather Blackmore is a freelance garden writer and University of Illinois Extension Master Gardener. As a stay-at-home mom to two little girls, she enjoys exploring the outdoors and sharing her love for gardening. She is currently working on the design and installation of a butterfly garden at her daughters' elementary school in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. Heather is a member of the Garden Writers Association.

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David Boaz is the executive vice president of the Cato Institute. He is the author of Libertarianism: A Primer, the editor of The Libertarian Reader and other books, and the author of the entry on libertarianism in Encyclopaedia Britannica.

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HostelBookers is a budget accommodation specialist with properties in over 3,500 destinations. With a passion for travel, their team of writers head up the HostelBookers blog to share the art of travelling on a shoestring. Students, couples and even families find themselves looking for the best cheap eats in Paris, the top party hostels in Rio de Janeiro or free New York art galleries. Readers can also discover some of the most exciting events taking place worldwide from art festivals to sporting events, gay pride celebrations or culinary festivals. Keep up to date with all the latest offers, competitions and blog posts on the HostelBookers Facebook page.

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Daniel Born, Ph.D., is editor of the Great Books Foundation’s quarterly magazine, The Common Review and is a lecturer at Northwestern University’s School of Continuing Studies. Author of The Birth of Liberal Guilt in the English Novel, he has published essays in the New York Times, Forbes.com, and Utne.

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danah boyd is a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She recently completed her Ph.D. in the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley. Her dissertation focused on how American youth engage in networked publics like MySpace, YouTube, Facebook, Xanga, etc.

Prior to Berkeley, danah received a bachelor's degree in computer science from Brown University and a master's degree in sociable media from MIT Media Lab. She has worked as an ethnographer and social media researcher for various corporations, including Intel, Tribe.net, Google, and Yahoo! She also created and managed a large online community for V-Day, a non-profit organization working to end violence against women and girls worldwide. She has advised numerous other companies and regularly speaks at industry conferences and events.

danah maintains a blog on social media called Apophenia .

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Archaeologist Lynn Dodd is a lecturer in religion and curator of the Archaeological Research Collection at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. She and fellow blogger Ran Boytner are coordinators of the Israeli-Palestinian Archaeology Working Group, which is dedicated to achieving the first-ever agreement on the disposition of the region's archaeological treasures following the establishment of a future Palestinian state. Click here for a video of the group's activities.

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Dan W. Butin is assistant dean of Cambridge College’s school of education. He is the editor of Service-Learning in Higher Education (2005, Palgrave) and Teaching Social Foundations of Education (2005, Lawrence Erlbaum Publishers), and author, most recently, of Rethinking Service-Learning: Embracing the Scholarship of Engagement within Higher Education (forthcoming, Stylus). Dr. Butin is an editorial board member of the journal Educational Studies. His research focuses on issues of educator preparation and policy and community-based models of teaching, learning, and research. More about Dr. Butin’s teaching and research can be found at http://danbutin.org.

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James E. Campbell is a professor and chair of the Department of Political Science at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. He is a former Congressional Fellow, a former program director at the National Science Foundation, and the president-elect of Pi Sigma Alpha, the national political science honor society. He has published four books, fifteen book chapters, and nearly fifty articles in scholarly journals. His books include The Presidential Pulse of Congressional Elections, Cheap Seats: The Democratic Party's Advantage in U.S. House Elections, and Before the Vote: Forecasting American National Elections. His most recent book is the second edition of The American Campaign (2008).

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Robert Campbell is the Pulitzer Prize-winning architectural critic for the Boston Globe and an annual contributor to the Britannica Book of the Year. A Fellow of the American Institute of Architects, he has received the AIA’s Medal for Criticism; the Commonwealth Award of the Boston Society of Architects; a Design Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts; and grants from the Graham Foundation and the J. M. Kaplan Fund. He was the 2004 recipient of the Award of Honor from the Boston Society of Architects. A graduate of Harvard College, the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, he is the author, most recently, of Cityscapes of Boston: An American City Through Time.

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Bryan Caplan is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University. His articles have appeared in the American Economic Review, the Economic Journal, the Journal of Law and Economics, Social Science Quarterly, and numerous other outlets. His webpage, www.bcaplan.com, features both his academic research and his numerous other interests, including the online Museum of Communism. He co-edits EconLog, along with Arnold Kling, and is the author of The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies.

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Nicholas Carr is the author of Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage and, most recently, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google. His new book, The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains, will be published next spring. He is a former executive editor of the Harvard Business Review and has written for the New York Times, the Financial Times, Wired, and many other publications. He is also a member of Britannica's Editorial Board of Advisors. He blogs at www.roughtype.com.

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The Cato Institute was founded in 1977 by Edward H. Crane. It is a non-profit public policy research foundation headquartered in Washington, D.C. The Institute is named for Cato's Letters, a series of libertarian pamphlets that helped lay the philosophical foundation for the American Revolution.

The mission of the Cato Institute is to increase the understanding of public policies based on the principles of limited government, free markets, individual liberty, and peace.

The Cato Institute undertakes an extensive publications program dealing with the complete spectrum of public policy issues. Books, monographs, briefing papers and shorter studies are commissioned to examine issues in nearly every corner of the public policy debate. Policy forums and book forums are held regularly, as are major policy conferences, which Cato hosts throughout the year, and from which papers are published thrice yearly in the Cato Journal. All of these events are taped and archived on Cato's Web site. Additionally, Cato has held major conferences in London, Moscow, Shanghai, and Mexico City. The Institute also publishes the quarterly magazine Regulation and a bimonthly newsletter, Cato Policy Report. It will highlight its videos periodically at the Britannica Blog

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Jorge Cauz is president of Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., and oversees worldwide operations of the 240-year-old company. He has held high-level posts in Britannica’s operations throughout the world and been at the center of the company’s transformation from a marketer primarily of printed encyclopedias to a multimedia publisher with products in all media—including the Internet, CD-ROM, wireless, and print. His relationship with Britannica began in 1996, when he headed a strategic consulting engagement with the company for Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). He joined Britannica as a special advisor to the board of directors in February 1997 and later served as senior vice president, international, and chief operating officer of Britannica’s Internet operations. Before joining Andersen, Cauz was a principal at A.T. Kearney Management Consultants, where he worked on engagements throughout North America, South America and Europe. Before that he was with Rohm and Hass Company. Cauz holds an M.B.A. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management of Northwestern University.

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Karin Chenoweth, author of How It's Being Done: Academic Success in Unexpected Schools, is currently with The Education Trust, a national education advocacy organization. Before joining The Education Trust, Chenoweth wrote the Homeroom column for the Montgomery and Prince George’s Extras of The Washington Post, which gained a national readership for its focus on schools and education. Before that she was senior writer and executive editor of Black Issues in Higher Education (now Diverse), a higher education magazine that focuses on issues of particular interest to African Americans, Latinos, and American Indians. Prior to that she was a freelance writer and editor specializing in education issues. From 1981-1986 she worked for The Montgomery Journal, first as reporter and then as editorial page editor. Prior to that she was a stringer with byline with United Press International in Ankara, Turkey, during the 1980 military coup. She graduated from Columbia University’s School of Journalism in 1978.

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Gery Chico is a candidate for Chicago mayor in the city’s February 22, 2011, primary. An accomplished public servant, Mr. Chico has served the city of Chicago in numerous capacities, including chief of staff to the Mayor, president of the Chicago Public Schools during the period then President Bill Clinton called the system a “turnaround model for the nation”, president of the Chicago Park District, and chair of the City Colleges in Chicago. A proven business leader, Mr. Chico is also a founder of the Mexican-American Chamber of Commerce.

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Ken Chmielewski is an assistant cartographer for Britannica’s cartography department. He has a bachelor’s degree in meteorology and a certificate in GIS (Geographic Information Systems) from Northern Illinois University. He is also currently seeking his masters in GIS through the University of Colorado Denver. When not working on maps, he enjoys anything to do with the weather, playing and watching sports, biking, and photography.

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Bechara Choucair, M.D. is Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Public Health. Appointed by Mayor Richard M. Daley on November 25, 2009, Dr. Choucair is re-shaping the department to meet the public health challenges of the 21st century by focusing on specific winnable public health battles. He is leading the efforts to address tobacco, obesity, HIV/AIDS prevention, teen and unintended pregnancy prevention, and racial disparities in breast cancer mortality. He also is an advocate for better utilization of health information technology as a public health tool. Born in Beirut, Lebanon, Dr. Choucair earned a Bachelor of Sciences degree in Chemistry (with distinction) and a Medical Diploma from American University of Beirut. From 1997-2000 he did his Family Practice Residency at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. In 2009 he earned a Master's Degree in Health Care Management from the University of Texas at Dallas. From 2001-05, Dr. Choucair served as Medical Director of Crusader Community Health in Rockford, Illinois. From 2005-09, he was Executive Director of Heartland International Health Center. He serves as Vice-chair of Community Medicine, Department of Family & Community Medicine, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University. Awards he has earned include the Loretta Lacey Maternal and Child Health Advocacy Award, Illinois Maternal and Child Health Coalition, 2009; Health Professions Training and Education Award, National Association of Community Health Centers, 2008; American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation, Teacher Development Award, 2007; and Forrest Riordan Humanitarian Award, 2005. You can follow him on Twitter @choucair.

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David Cole is a professor of law at Georgetown University, the legal affairs correspondent for The Nation, a commentator on National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," a staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights where he's litigated a number of major First Amendment cases, and the author of Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism; Terrorism and the Constitution: Sacrificing Civil Liberties for National Security; No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System; and, most recently, Less Safe, Less Free: Why America Is Losing the War on Terror. He lives in Washington, D.C.

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John Companiotte’s articles have appeared in Golf Magazine, Links, Carolina Fairways, Golf Georgia, Atlanta Business Chronicle, Art & Antiques, and Avid Golfer. He is the author of Jimmy Demaret: The Swing's The Thing; The PGA Championship: The Season’s Final Major, with co-author Catherine Lewis; Golf Rules & Etiquette Simplified; and Byron Nelson: The Most Remarkable Year in the History of Golf.

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Bronwyn Cosgrave is a London-based writer and broadcaster contributing to an array of international magazines including British Vogue, Vogue India, and Vogue Nippon. She is special correspondent for the internationally syndicated television programme Fashion File, fashion correspondent for Britannica Book of the Year, and author of Made for Each Other: Fashion and the Academy Awards, the first fashion history of the Oscars.

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Paul Cranmer is an Information Architect in Encyclopædia Britannica's information management department.

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Thomas Craughwell, author of Failures of the Presidents and Stealing Lincoln’s Body, has written more than a dozen books on history, religion, and popular culture. His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, U.S. News and World Report, The American Spectator, Emmy magazine, and Inside the Vatican. He has been a guest on CNN, the BBC, The Discovery Channel, and the international Catholic cable network, EWTN. The History Channel is producing a program based on Stealing Lincoln’s Body, which airs the week of February 8, 2009. Tom writes out of his home in Bethel, Connecticut.

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John M. Cunningham is a research editor at Britannica. He has written extensively about popular (and semi-popular) music, most recently for The Stylus Decade. He also enjoys solving and constructing crossword puzzles.

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Theodore Dalrymple is a British doctor and writer who has worked on four continents and now works in a British inner-city hospital and a prison. He has written a column for the London Spectator for fourteen years, and he is a contributing editor to City Journal. His others writings have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Daily Telegraph, the Guardian, the National Post (Canada), and National Review, among many other publications. His latest book is Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses (Ivan R. Dee). He lives in France.

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Guido Daniele is an Italian multimedia artist and body painter. He was born in Soverato, Italy, lived and studied in India for two years, and now works in Milan. He’s done commissions for major corporate advertising campaigns, in both print and for television. In 2000 he began his internationally famous “Handimals” series of body painting. He’ll be highlighting one of his art works each week at the Britannica Blog.

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Susana Darwin has been active in Chicago publishing since 1988. She worked for Encyclopædia Britannica in a number of positions, including picture editor and managing editor of the Encyclopædia Britannica Almanac. Darwin holds a B.A. in Russian and film production from the University of Iowa and a J.D. from IIT/Chicago-Kent College of Law. A lifelong lover of reference books, she describes “having my brain cracked open” when she came upon a Russian-English dictionary at age ten. “It organized unfamiliar information, looked like a code, and suggested a totally different way of looking at the world. I was hooked.”

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Michele Davino is an underwater photographer who has taken part in several international competitions over the last several years with excellent results, including the Festival Mondial de l’Image Sous-Marine (Marseille, France), the Los Angeles Underwater Photographic Society's annual event (California), the Underwater Images Photo Competition (Cincinnati, Ohio), Underwater Images Cincinnati USA, and Scuba Diver Australasia's Through the Lens competition (Singapore). Thanks to his passion for the underwater world, he has written several books on underwater photography, including Fotografia digitale subacquea and Manuale Trimix 62, and he is currently cooperating with some specialized magazines. In the past, he also has dedicated his free time to technical diving with Trimix gas and teaching. More information and photographs of his portfolio are available on his Web site, http://www.micheledavino.it.

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Writer and commentator Frank Deford is the author of fifteen books, his newest, The Entitled, a novel about celebrity, sex, and baseball. On radio, Deford may be heard as a commentator every Wednesday on NPR's Morning Edition, and on television he is a regular correspondent on the HBO show RealSports With Bryant Gumbel. In magazines, he is Senior Contributing Writer at Sports Illustrated. Two of his books — the novel Everybody's All-American and Alex: The Life of a Child, his memoir about his daughter who died of cystic fibrosis — have been made into movies. Another of his books, Casey on the Loose, is being turned into a Broadway musical. Cathy Schulman, producer of 2005's Best Picture, Crash, is producing Deford's next film, a comedy titled The Sister-in-Law. The Best of Frank Deford: I'm Just Getting Started is available from Triumph Books. Deford is a member of the Hall of Fame of the National Association of Sportscasters and Sportswriters, and for sixteen years he served as national chairman of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation; he remains chairman emeritus.

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Miguel del Valle is a candidate in February 2011 for Chicago mayor. He has served as City Clerk of Chicago since 2006 and served for two decades in the Illinois state Senate, rising to the post of assistant majority leader.

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Faisal Devji is Associate Professor of History at the New School in New York. He has held faculty positions at Yale University and the University of Chicago, where he also received his PhD in Intellectual History. He sits on the editorial board of Public Culture and on the executive board of the American Institute of Indian Studies. In addition to publishing in academic journals, Devji writes for newspapers such as the Financial Times and websites like Open Democracy. His recent book is Landscapes of the Jihad: Militancy, Morality, Modernity (2005).

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Constantino Diaz-Duran is a freelance writer in Manhattan. He is a graduate of Columbia University, where he received a degree in American Studies. A regular contributor at The Daily Beast, he has also written for the New York Post, the Dallas Morning News, and the Orange County Register, and has been a guest on MSNBC and NPR. He is an avid fan of the New York Yankees, and a dog lover in the employ of an old mutt named Jack. You'll find him on Twitter as @cddNY.

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Nicole Digiacomo worked at The Associated Press in New York City for 10 years, starting as a receptionist before working her way up to Sales Representative for AP Images. She met her husband, Paul, at AP, and when he was promoted to Senior Sports Editor in a joint venture between The AP and STATS LLC., they moved to Chicago in November 2005. Nicole is now a Media Editor at Encyclopædia Britannica. She loves to travel, dance, and dine out and also is obsessed with the New York Yankees.

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Geoff Dougherty founded ChiTownDailyNews.org, a nonprofit online journal covering Chicago, in 2005. Previously, he was an investigative reporter at the Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald and St. Petersburg Times. Geoff has won numerous awards for his work. While at the Miami Herald, he spearheaded the newspaper's effort to analyze discarded ballots from the 2000 presidential election.

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Currently based in New York City, Cynthia is a nomadic soul who holds the most peculiar and very modern profession of freelance blogger. Writing daily at Jaunted.com, HotelChatter.com and Racked.com, and her personal blog, CallMeOnTheYacht, she has the delicious freedom to expound on her favorite topics of international travel, hotel news, design and fashion. In addition to charging through groups of gawking NYC tourists like a Thresher shark stunning its prey, Cynthia enjoys the occasional skee ball game and cross stitch pattern.

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Brian Duignan is a senior editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica and a frequent contributor to Britannica’s Advocacy for Animals site.

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George Eberhart is senior editor of American Libraries, the magazine of the American Library Association; the correspondent on library news for the Britannica Book of the Year; and editor of Whole Library Handbook 4: Current Data, Professional Advice, and Curiosa about Libraries and Library Services.

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Joseph Ellis is a professor of history at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, and author, among other works, of American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson, Passionate Sage: The Character and Legacy of John Adams, and Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, for which he won a Pulitzer Prize. He wrote Britannica’s entries on John Adams and Thomas Jefferson and a sidebar for Britannica entitled “Tom and Sally: The Jefferson-Hemings Paternity Debate.” His blog posts on the Founding Fathers form the basis of his foreword to a new Britannica book, published in conjunction with John Wiley & Sons, called Founding Fathers: The Essential Guide to the Men Who Made America, to be released this spring.

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James Evans is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, a member of the Committee on the Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, and a fellow at the Computation Institute (http://home.uchicago.edu/~jevans/). His work explores how social and technical institutions shape knowledge—science, scholarship, law, news, religion—and how these understandings reshape the social and technical world. He is particularly interested in the relation of markets to science and knowledge more broadly. His recent article in Science on how electronic provision of journals through the Internet has had a narrowing influence on science and scholarship, has been widely discussed in the academic and popular media (e.g., Nature, the Economist, NPR, BBC, Chronicle of Higher Education).

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Michael Feldman is the creator and host of Public Radio International’s popular quiz show Whad'Ya Know?, which originates from his hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, and airs on Saturday mornings. He also contributed sidebars to Britannica’s recent book Glad You Asked: Intriguing Names, Facts, and Ideas for the Curious-Minded published in conjunction with Triumph Books. Some of his posts will be based on writings for this book.

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Ben Fong-Torres is a former editor for Rolling Stone, freelance writer, disc jockey, and author of eight books, including Hickory Wind: The Life and Times of Gram Parsons, The Hits Just Keep on Coming: The History of Top 40 Radio, and The Grateful Dead Scrapbook.

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James Forsyth is the online editor of The Spectator in London. He principally covers British and American politics and foreign policy for the magazine both in print and online. He also contributes to the magazine’s blog, coffeehouse. Previously, he was the assistant editor of Foreign Policy magazine in Washington DC.

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Daniel Franklin is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia. He received his BA in political science from UCLA and his MA and PhD from the Department of Government at the University of Texas, Austin. He has taught American politics and American foreign policy at Colgate University, The Colorado College, El Colegio de Mexico (Mexico City) and the University of Texas, Austin. He served as an American Political Science Association Congressional Fellow in the offices of Rep. Larry Smith (Fla.) and Sen. Tom Harkin (Iowa).

Franklin has published a number of articles, book chapters, and reviews focusing primarily on the relationship between the U.S. Congress and the President. He is also the author of several books, including Extraordinary Measures: The Exercise of Prerogative Powers in the United States (University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991), Making Ends Meet: Congressional Budgeting in the Age of Deficits (Congressional Quarterly Press, 1993), Political Culture and Constitutionalism: A Comparative Approach (M.E. Sharpe Press, 1995) of which he is also co-editor, and Politics and Film: The Political Culture of Film in the United States (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006).

In 1999 Franklin received the Georgia State University Distinguished Honors Professor award.

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Norman J. Fried, Ph.D., is the Director of Psychosocial Services for The Division of Pediatric Hematology/Oncology at Withrop University Hospital on Long Island, New York. A Clinical Psychologist with graduate degrees from Emory University, he has also taught in the Graduate School at St. John's University and the Medical School of New York University, and has been a Fellow in Clinical and Pediatric Psychology at Harvard Medical School. He has a private practice in grief and bereavement and lives in Roslyn, New York, with his wife and three sons. He is the author of The Angel Letters: Lessons That Dying Can Teach Us About Living (Ivan R. Dee).

� Read posts by Norman Fried

THE FUTURIST, a bimonthly magazine published continuously since 1967 by the World Future Society, focuses on innovation, creative thinking, and emerging trends in the social, economic, and technological areas. Over the years, THE FUTURIST spotlighted the emergence of such epochal developments as the Internet, climate change, virtual reality, the end of the Cold War, and the subprime housing collapse. Its editors frequently highlight special features from THE FUTURIST here at the Britannica Blog.

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Gary R Gaffney, M.D., is Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. His research interests include the use of anabolic substances and body image in adolescents and young adults. His daily weblog Steroid Nation contains posts about steroid users, anabolic substances, and the relationship of these athletes and performance enhancing drugs to sports and society.

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Tom Gallagher is a professor of ethnic peace and conflict at the University of Bradford, England. His more detailed account of this subject appears in the 2007 Britannica Book of the Year. His latest book is Modern Romania: The End of Communism, the Failure of Democratic Reform, and the Theft of a Nation.

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Daniel Galvin is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. His primary areas of research and teaching are the American presidency, political parties, and American political development. He is the author of Presidential Party Building: Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush (Princeton University Press, 2009) and co-editor, with Ian Shapiro and Stephen Skowronek, of Rethinking Political Institutions: The Art of the State (NYU Press, 2006). He received his Ph.D. from Yale University.

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Bruce Gans is Professor of English and the founder and director of the Great Books Curriculum at Wilbur Wright College in Chicago as well as the National Great Books Curriculum Academic Community. His work has earned major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Post Secondary Education. It has also received front-page coverage in the New York Times and the Chicago Tribune as well as prominent coverage in the Chronicle of Higher Education and the Wall Street Journal, which recommended its student written Great Books scholarly journal Symposium as a model for Ivy League schools. A graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop in Fiction, Mr. Gans’ short stories, articles and criticism have appeared in journals such as Playboy, American Scholar and Kansas Quarterly. He is the recipient of artist fellowships in fiction writing from the National Endowment of the Arts and the Illinois Arts Council.

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Natasha von Geldern is the editor of travelbite.co.uk. Outside of work and travel, taking care of a baby daughter and performing with a local orchestra are priorities.

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Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, Dana Gioia is an internationally acclaimed and award-winning poet. A native Californian of Italian and Mexican descent, Gioia (pronounced JOY-uh) received a B.A. and a M.B.A. from Stanford University and an M.A. in Comparative Literature from Harvard University.

Gioia has published numerous books, including Disappearing Ink: Poetry at the End of Print Culture, three full-length collections of poetry, as well as eight chapbooks. His poetry collection, Interrogations at Noon, won the 2002 American Book Award. An influential critic as well, Gioia's 1991 volume Can Poetry Matter?, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle award, is credited with helping to revive the role of poetry in American public culture.

Gioia's many literary anthologies include Twentieth-Century American Poetry, 100 Great Poets of the English Language, The Longman Anthology of Short Fiction, and Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. His poems, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared in many magazines including The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The Washington Post Book World, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, and The Hudson Review. Gioia has written two opera libretti and is an active translator of poetry from Latin, Italian, and German.

The NEA's two critical studies: Reading at Risk and To Read or Not To Read: A Question of National Consequence have brought enormous public attention to the importance of reading and arts participation.

Renominated by President George W. Bush in November 2006 for a second term and once again unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Dana Gioia is the ninth Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. He is also the recipient of eight honorary degrees. He and his wife, Mary, have two sons.

Co-author Sunil Iyengar is the director of the NEA's Office of Research and Analysis.

� Read posts by Dana Gioia and Sunil Iyengar

Heather Gold is a comedian and speaker best known for her interactive shows and ability to connect people. She involves the people formerly known as the audience in her shows and shares her insights in popular keynotes at places like Google and Web 2.0 and her UnPresenting workshops.

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Edward E. Gordon is a writer, researcher, speaker, and consultant on the future of the U.S. and global workforce. He is the author of The 2010 Meltdown: Solving the Impending Jobs Crisis and Winning the Global Talent Showdown: How Businesses & Communities Can Partner to Rebuild the Jobs Pipeline and president of Imperial Consulting Corporation. He can be contacted at www.imperialcorp.com.

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Lilly Goren is Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at Carroll College in Waukesha, WI. She has held faculty positions at The University of New Hampshire, The University of South Florida, Kenyon College, Lake Forest College, and the College of St. Catherine. Her areas of interest include American political institutions, Politics and Culture, Literature and Politics, and exploring the political role of women and minorities through the prism of culture and entertainment. She is author of The Politics of Military Base Closings: Not In My District (2003) and co-author of The Comparative Politics of Military Base Closures (2000). She is editing a volume titled What Do Women Want: Feminism and Contemporary Popular Culture and she is at work on The Politics of Anger: The Atrophying of Governance.

� Read posts by Lilly Goren

Michael Gorman was Dean of Library Services at the Henry Madden Library, California State University, Fresno, from 1988 to 2007. He previously worked at the Library of the University of Illinois (Urbana), the British National Bibliography, the British Library Planning Secretariat, and the British Library. He has taught at library schools in Britain and in the United States--most recently at the University of California, Los Angeles.

He is the first editor of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition (1978) and of the revision of that work (1988). He is the author of seven books, including Our Enduring Values: Librarianship in the 21st Century. He has given numerous presentations at international, national, and state conferences.

Michael has been the recipient of numerous awards. He is a member of the American Library Association’s governing Council (1991-1995 and 2002-2007), the ALA Executive Board through 2007, and was president of ALA (2005-2006). He was made an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals (CILIP) in 2005.

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Andreas Graefe is a research assistant and doctoral candidate at the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis at the Research Center Karlsruhe, Germany. Currently, Andreas is visiting with J. Scott Armstrong at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School where he worked on forecasting the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election (www.pollyvote.com). Andreas holds a diploma (German equivalent to a master's degree) in Economics as well as a diploma in Information Science from the University of Regensburg. In his dissertation, Andreas compares prediction markets to judgmental forecasting methods.

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Henry Graff is Professor Emeritus of History at Columbia University. The Glorious Republic and The Presidents: A Reference History are among his many books. He is one of Britannica's advisors on the U.S. presidents and contributed to Britannica's entry on George Washington.

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Ian Grant is Managing Director of Encyclopaedia Britannica (UK) Ltd. He has been an information publisher since 1971, delivering illustrated information to homes, schools, and colleges throughout the world in books, software, and online, and in combinations of all three. His senior executive roles prior to working with Encyclopaedia Britannica were as Publishing Director of Two-Can Publishing Ltd, London and Princeton, NJ, and as Publisher and Group Business Director of Dorling Kindersley Ltd.

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James P. Gray is a retired judge of the Orange County Superior Court in California, a former federal prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney's Office in Los Angeles, and a criminal defense attorney with U.S. Navy JAG. He is the author of "Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed" (Temple University Press, 2001), "Wearing the Robe: the Art and Responsibilities of Judging in Today's Courts" (Square One Publishers, 2009), and "A Voter's Handbook: Effective Solutions to America's Problems" (The Forum Press, 2010), as well as a high school musical review entitled "Americans All" (Heuer Publishing). He can be contacted at JimPGray@sbcglobal.net or through his Web site at www.JudgeJimGray.com.

� Read posts by Jim Gray

Tim Groeling is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at UCLA. His research focuses on political communication and new media. He is the author of When Politicians Attack: Party Cohesion and the Media (forthcoming), Politics Across the Waters Edge: How Strategic Politicians, Journalists, and Citizens Shape the News about War (in the works with Matthew Baum), and numerous articles. He is the recipient of the Copenhaver Award for Teaching with Technology and has been named an Apple Distinguished Educator.

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Xu Guoqi is an associate professor of history and East Asian affairs at Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and the author, most recently, of Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895-2008. His other books include China and the Great War: China’s Pursuit of a New National Identity and Internationalization, Huagong he diyi ci shijie dazhan (Chinese Laborers in France during the First World War), and (co-author) Meiguo waijiao zhengce shi (History of American Foreign Policy, 1775-1989).

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Allen Guttmann is a sports historian whose work has won awards from the U.S Olympic Committee and the International Olympic Committee. He's a professor of American Studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts and a major contributor to Britannica's coverage of football and sports. His latest book is Sports: The First Five Millennia.

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Emma Hack, an internationally acclaimed and award-winning body artist from Australia, is at the forefront of an art form growing in popularity. Her art has been featured in Dubai, Holland, Belgium, Hong Kong, Canada, and throughout Australia, and her clients include Toyota, Tiffany, Sony, and Cirque du Soleil, among many others. In March 2001, she won the coveted 1st prize at the CIDESCO World Congress Professional World Body Painting Championship in Hong Kong.

Her unique style – in which her meticulously painted models virtually disappear into her lavish wallpapers and ornate backgrounds - is now instantly recognizable. She has painted some of Australia’s most well-known bodies alongside gorgeous models for acclaimed calendar projects.

Ms. Hack will highlight her compositions, and discuss her methods, weekly at the Britannica Blog. For more information on her work and exhibitions, or to contact her about commissions or to be added to her mailing list, visit her website: www.emmahackartist.com.

� Read posts by Emma Hack

Steve Hargadon is the director of the K12 Open Technologies Initiative at the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN) and is the founder of the Classroom 2.0 social network. He runs the Open Source Pavilion and speaker series for the NECC and CUE shows, and he is the organizer of EduBloggerCon, the Emerging Technologies Chair for NECC, a regular columnist at School Library Journal, and a blogger at www.SteveHargadon.com, the Infinite Thinking Machine and TechLearning. He consults with technology companies on K-12 education, and his podcast series on educational technologies can be found at www.EdTechLive.com and at Classroom 2.0. He and his wife and have four children.

� Read posts by Steve Hargadon

Dr. Syed Farooq Hasnat is the former Chairman of the Department of Political Science at the University of the Punjab in Lahore, Pakistan (2000-2004). He also directed the Middle Eastern section of the Islamabad Institute of Strategic Studies. Dr. Hasnat also served as a Professor at the University of Jordan’s Institute for Strategic Studies, as a researcher at the University of Innsbruck (Austria), and as a course coordinator for the Pakistan Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He served on the editorial boards of three research journals, including Strategic Studies in Pakistan. He has authored or co-authored numerous books and articles, including Security Problems of the Persian Gulf (1988), Security for the Weak Nations (1987), and The Sikh Question: From Constitutional Demands to Armed Conflict (1985). He is also an Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute. The views expressed are his own and not those of the institute.

� Read posts by Syed Farooq Hasnat

The Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies was established at Grand Valley State University in 2001, to "provide a foundation for influencing present and future leaders through the study of the presidency." The generosity of Col. Ralph Hauenstein (U.S. Army, retired) -- former presidential advisor and chief of intelligence during World War II -- made possible the Center's establishment, and his vision gave it shape.

Gleaves Whitney, also a contributor to the Britannica Blog, became director of the Hauenstein Center in 2003. During his tenure he has been the architect of more than 130 public programs, including three national conferences covered by C-SPAN, and two internationally web cast debates -- one to more than 3,500 viewers in eighteen countries, and the other watched on YouTube by more than 60,000 people in some 30 nations on all six inhabited continents. He has overseen tremendous growth of the Hauenstein Center's website, premiered a popular web column called "Ask Gleaves" -- the first presidential Q & A column in the nation -- and created a leadership academy for students and young professionals committed to public service.

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Thomas Hauser has written more than thirty books and is author of Britannica's entry on Muhammad Ali. One of his acclaimed books on the boxer, The Lost Legacy of Muhammad Ali, is available from the Britannica Store.

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Bernie Heidkamp is a Contributing Editor of PopPolitics.com and teaches cultural studies and literature to high school students in Chicago. He speaks frequently on technology and media literacy. PopPolitics launched in 2000 as an online magazine covering the intersections between pop culture and politics and now publishes a group blog. Several PopPolitics editors will be blogging at Britannica.

� Read posts by Bernie Heidkamp

Kurt Heintz is senior media technician for Britannica in Chicago. Away from the office, he's also a writer, media artist, and the founder/publisher of e-poets.net. His crossover work between new media and writing has taken him into poetry video, telepresent performance, and electronic literature. His C.V. is at http://heintz.e-poets.net/

� Read posts by Kurt Heintz

Arthur Herman grew up in Wisconsin and received his bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Minnesota in 1978. He went on to earn his Masters and Ph.D. with the Johns Hopkins University History Department. He taught at several universities in the Washington DC area, including Georgetown and George Mason University, before becoming Coordinator of the Western Heritage Program for the Smithsonian’s Campus on the Mall from 2000 to 2005.

Arthur Herman is the author of five books, including The Idea of Decline in Western History, Joseph McCarthy: Reexamining the Life and Legacy of America’s Most Hated Senator, How the Scots Invented the Modern World, and To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World. His most recent work, a full- length study of the forty-year rivalry between Mohandas Gandhi and Winston Churchill, was published in May 2008. His many articles and columns have appeared in Commentary magazine, the New York Post, and Wall Street Journal Asia. He has also become a frequent traveler to Australia, where he delivered the annual Bonython Lecture for the Centre for Independent Studies in 2006.

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Carmen-Maria Hetrea is director of the Knowledge Architecture team at Encyclopaedia Britannica. She joined the company as an indexer in 1982, at which time there was no stand-alone index for the encyclopedia. She has been directing the information management activities at EB since 1989 in the nascent field of knowledge architecture with an eye toward the semantic web. She received her formal education in linguistics at the University of Bucharest, Loyola University in Chicago, and the University of Illinois in Chicago. Her essay on “Why am I here” can be found here. When she doesn’t map “word spaces” she creates “living spaces” in homes and gardens and manages her world-wide web of human connections.

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Chris Hetrea is an undergraduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), majoring in Biological Sciences and Spanish. He is a recipient of a John and Grace Nuveen International Award. He's studied in Argentina at Universidad Austral, Buenos Aires, and at the Universidad de Buenos Aires. He's served as a research assistant on a project concerning the use of gene therapy as a partial treatment for gastro-intestinal cancer and authored the article, "Diagnostic Testing Advances with fMRI," for UIC's Journal of Pre-Health Affiliated Students (http://www2.uic.edu/orgs/jphas/journal/vol5/issue1/Winter2005_Vol5_Issue1.pdf. He's tutored peers at UIC's Writing Center and participated in the center's WELL (Writing for the Enhancement of Living and Learning) outreach program. He's also co-founded a NPO that plans to raise funds to help rebuild New Orleans.

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Matthew Hilton is a professor of social history at the University of Birmingham (England), a contributor to Britannica's entry on smoking, and author of Smoking in British Popular Culture, 1800-2000.

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W.F. Hogarth is a former British defense analyst who specialized initially in anti-submarine warfare, moved over to the study of European land battle scenarios, and later, as East-West tensions relaxed, concentrated on counterinsurgency. As a designer of reconnaissance equipment he led the certification program for the first man-portable transmission aerial for satellite communications, used covertly in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation to transmit live battle sequences to England, and integrated this into the first ever remotely-controlled airborne border monitoring system. The platform for this was his Dragoon aircraft, an optionally piloted vehicle (OPV), now being prepared for reconnaissance and border patrol in Afghanistan by a team at the UK Defence Academy where he is a Senior Visiting Fellow. In addition to ghosting speeches and articles on political affairs, he writes and lectures on counterinsurgency, aviation and history, and peerage and heraldry. He is a co-contributor to Encyclopaedia Britannica's entry on heraldry.

� Read posts by W.F. Hogarth

Michael Horn is the Executive Director, Education and co-founder of Innosight Institute, a non-profit think tank devoted to applying the theories of disruptive innovation to problems in the social sector. He recently coauthored Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns with Harvard Business School professor and bestselling author Clayton M. Christensen and Curtis W. Johnson, president of The Citistates Group. The book uses the theories of disruptive innovation to diagnose the root causes of schools' struggles and suggest a path forward to customize an education for every child in the way she learns.

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Aimee B. Horowitz is the director of Advisory Services at Catalyst with a strong background in consulting. She works closely with organizations to develop strategies that enhance diversity, increase use of flexibility as a business tool, and improve performance management processes. Ms. Horowitz has worked with mangers and executives in a wide range of industries and businesses, including high technology, financial services, pharmaceuticals, and law. She has taught courses as an adjunct professor at Columbia University and facilitated workshops on topics ranging from career development to flexible work arrangements.

� Read posts by Aimee Horowitz

Rick Horrow, founder of Horrow Sports Ventures, is a popular commentator and consultant on the business, law, and politics of sports. He is a sports business analyst for CNN, Fox Sports, CNBC, Westwood One, and CBS SportsLine. His radio program, “FOX MoneyBall: The Cost of Winning,” can be heard Sunday mornings on Fox Sports Radio affiliates, and his weekly radio show segments, “The Sports Business Minute,” are heard nationwide on Westwood One. He is the author of When The Game Is On The Line, an insider’s guide to mega sports deals. He’s nicknamed “The Sports Professor” because he is a visiting expert on sports law at Harvard Law School, where he received his law degree. He lives with his wife Terri and daughters Katie and Caroline in Jupiter, Florida.

Karla Swatek is the marketing director of Horrow Sports Ventures. Before establishing her own marketing firm in 1999, Swatek did editorial and corporate communications work in Silicon Valley and served as publicity director of Berrett-Koehler Publishers (San Francisco) and Pfeiffer and Company (San Diego). She lives in Carlsbad, California, with her husband Mike Davidson and son Andrew.

� Read posts by Rick Horrow, with Karla Swatek

Sasha Horwitz is the New Media Coordinator for Yes on Prop. 19: Control & Tax Cannibas, which can be found on the Web at http://yeson19.com/ and on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/taxcannabis.

� Read posts by Sasha Horwitz

William L. Hosch served as a Britannica mathematics and computer sciences editor. He received a bachelor's degree from Indiana University and a master's degree from Purdue University. Before joining Britannica in 1995, he was an instructor at Indiana University Northwest, where he taught classes in algebra, calculus, probability, linear algebra, and construction of mathematical proofs. When not digesting mass quantities of protein to boost his bench press over 400 pounds, he plays chess, watches movies, walks his three dogs, and, most of all, adores his wife every chance he gets.

� Read posts by William L. Hosch

Hussein Ibish is a Senior Fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) and Executive Director of the Hala Salaam Maksoud Foundation for Arab-American Leadership. Ibish has made thousands of radio and television appearances and has written for many newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. He was also the Washington, DC, correspondent for the Daily Star (Beirut). Ibish is editor and principal author of 3 major studies of Hate Crimes and Discrimination against Arab Americans (1998-2000; Sept. 11, 2001-Oct. 11, 2002; and 2003-2007.

� Read posts by Hussein Ibish

Maggie Jackson is an award-winning author and journalist who writes the popular “Balancing Acts” column in the Sunday Boston Globe. Her articles have also appeared in The New York Times, Gastronomica and on National Public Radio. Her latest book, Distracted: The Erosion of Attention and the Coming Dark Age, details the steep costs of our current epidemic deficits of attention. Her first book, What’s Happening to Home? Balancing Work, Life and Refuge in the Information Age, examined the loss of home as a refuge. A former foreign correspondent for The Associated Press in Tokyo and London, Jackson has won numerous awards for her coverage of work-life issues, including the Media Award from the Work-Life Council of the Conference Board. She is also a senior fellow with the Center for Work-Life Policy in New York and a frequent guest blogger for the Boston College Work-Life Family Network News. A graduate of Yale University and the London School of Economics with highest honors, she lives in New York City with her family.

� Read posts by Maggie Jackson

Nicholas Jackson is an undergraduate at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism where he is concentrating on magazine editing. He has served as editor-in-chief for two editions of Chicago Unzipped, a unique guidebook to the city written, designed and edited entirely by college students. In addition, he has held editorial, new media and marketing internships with Encyclopaedia Britannica, Texas Monthly and Sci-Tech Hands-On Museum. Focused on coverage of pop culture and the arts, he has contributed critical music commentary and reviews to Filter magazine, Sound the Sirens, Monsters and Critics, and more.

� Read posts by Nicholas Jackson

Joanne Jacobs is the author of Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the Charter School That Beat the Odds. After 19 years as a San Jose Mercury News columnist and editorial writer, she left in 2001 to create one of the first education weblogs, at joannejacobs.com, and to freelance for newspapers, magazines, online sites, and foundations.

� Read posts by Joanne Jacobs

Laurie Jacobson is a celebrated Hollywood researcher and author who released her fourth book in 2008. Timmy’s in the Well – The Jon Provost Story celebrates the 50th anniversary of Timmy from the original Lassie TV series. The book is a memoir she co-wrote with Jon Provost, her husband.

Prior to Timmy’s in the Well, Laurie published the saucy and inventive Dishing Hollywood, spilling the beans on 43 Tinseltown scandals – with a pertinent recipe connected to each one. Laurie’s second book, Hollywood Haunted (Angel City Press, 7th printing) covers more than 100 years of ghostly goings-on in filmland. Laurie also just made her film debut alongside Oscar-nominee Shirley Knight in Not Fade Away, now in post production.

A reformed stand-up comic, Laurie emerged from Harvey Lembeck's Comedy Improv Workshop, where she worked for years with classmates like Robin Williams, John Larroquette and John Ritter. Collaborations with other writers include Suzanne Somers on her third book Wednesday’s Children, interviews with celebrities raised in abusive environments, as well as contributions to tomes like Hollywood Handbook and The Hollywood Archive. She has also written and produced documentaries, television series and specials, appears regularly on radio and television, including: E!, CNN, Mike Wallace’s 20th Century, Entertainment Tonight, Art Bell, A&E;, History Channel, Discovery Channel, TVLand and AMC.

� Read posts by Laurie Jacobson

Alistair Jones is principal lecturer in the Department of Public Policy, De Montfort, Leicester, United Kingdom. Prior to this, he was at City of London Polytechnic and the University of Canterbury (New Zealand). He is also BBC Radio Leicester's Politics Pundit and is the author of several textbooks, including Phil Cocker and Alistair Jones: Contemporary British Politics and Government (Liverpool Academic Press, 2002) and Cocker and Jones: Essential Topics in British Politics and Government (Liverpool Academic Press, 2005). He also has written Britain and the European Union (Edinburgh University Press, 2007) and A Glossary of the European Union (Edinburgh University Press, 2008).

� Read posts by Alistair Jones

Bill Jones was born in the Welsh borderlands and grew up in Shrewsbury. He went to Aberystwyth University before working in the admin class of the civil service. He then worked at Manchester University and became Director of Extra-Mural Studies. Retired on medical grounds but still teaching and writing, he took up a part-time position in politics at Liverpool Hope University. He is one of the authors of Politics UK (6th Edition). His blog Skipper covers UK politics, parliament, and the press.

� Read posts by Bill Jones

L. Darrell Jones is editor, publisher and founder of Chicago Architecture Today, an online news source reporting on architectural interests across Chicago, the nation and the world. He has served as an educator for over 20 years, which includes instruction in the department of Engineering Graphics at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Chicago Architecture Today, which also serves as a resource tool for the general public and academia, currently sponsors two national student design competitions: The fall Midwest Creative Architecture Competition and the Mock Architecture Firm Competition held each spring. These events and other features referencing diverse architectural subjects can be found at chicagoarchitecturetoday.com/.

� Read posts by L. Darrell Jones

The San Francisco Chronicle recently wrote that “every good movement needs a contrarian. Web 2.0 has Andrew Keen.” Andrew is indeed the leading contemporary critic of citizen media. His controversial The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture is the first book that exposes the economic, ethical and social dangers of the Web 2.0 revolution. Born and bred in North London’s Golders Green neighborhood, Andrew was educated at London University, where he graduated with a First Class Honors degree in Modern History. Today, he is the host of the Internet chat show afterTV.com and regularly appears on television and radio. His writing can be found on his CultoftheAmateur blog, his ZDNet column as well as in traditional publications like the Weekly Standard, Fast Company, and the San Francisco Chronicle.

� Read posts by Andrew Keen

In 2003, Allen Keiswetter was the Senior Advisor to the US Delegation to the UN Security Council and General Assembly on Middle East Issues. He is currently a Professor at the National War College and an Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute; his views are his own and not those of the institute. Keiswetter served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from 2000 – 2001, Director of Arabian Peninsula Affairs in the Near East Bureau (1998 – 2000), Director of the Office of Intelligence Liaison in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (1996 – 1998), and NATO Deputy Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs (1993-1996). He established and chaired the Middle East Peace Process Multilateral Working Group on Water Resources at the US Department of State and has served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Sana’a, Yemen. He has also held posts at the US Embassies in Khartoum, Baghdad, and Beirut.

� Read posts by Allen Keiswetter

Kevin Kelly is Senior Maverick at Wired magazine. He helped launch Wired in 1993, and served as its Executive Editor until January 1999. He is currently editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, which gets 1 million visitors per month. From 1984-1990 Kelly was publisher and editor of the Whole Earth Review, a journal of unorthodox technical news. He co-founded the ongoing Hackers' Conference, and was involved with the launch of the WELL, a pioneering online service started in 1985. He authored the best-selling New Rules for the New Economy and the classic book on decentralized emergent systems, Out of Control.

� Read posts by Kevin Kelly

Roger Kimball is co-editor and publisher of The New Criterion and president and publisher of Encounter Books. His latest books include The Rape of the Masters, Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse, Art's Prospect: The Challenge of Tradition in an Age of Celebrity, and, with Hilton Kramer, Counterpoints: 25 Years ofThe New Criterion on Culture and the Arts.

� Read posts by Roger Kimball

Stephen Kinzer, a longtime foreign correspondent for the New York Times, has reported from more than fifty countries on four continents. He is the author, among other works, of the national best seller All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror and Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. He also contributed to Britannica's recent book Iran: The Essential Guide to A Country on the Brink.

� Read posts by Stephen Kinzer

Dave Kopel is Research Director at the Independence Institute, adjunct professor of constitutional at Denver University's Sturm College of Law, and associate policy analyst at the Cato Institute. He is the author of Aiming for Liberty: The Past, Present, And Future of Freedom and Self-Defense. You can find him on the web at http://davekopel.org.

� Read posts by David Kopel

Kathleen Kuiper, senior editor for the Arts and World Culture, has worked at Encyclopædia Britannica since 1980. During that time, she worked on a number of editorial projects, most significantly the editing of Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature. She was also the project manager for Britannica’s original Women’s History spotlight (Women in American History; no longer available) and Shakespeare and the Globe (most of which can be seen in Encyclopædia Britannica’s Guide to Shakespeare).

� Read posts by Kathleen Kuiper

Jennifer Laceda is a freelance travel writer and blogger based in Toronto. When not chasing after her young daughter, she is researching the latest trends in travel, fashion, design, and global cuisine while blogging away on her trusty Mac. Her blog, Folie à Deux, has been nominated for several awards, including the 2008 Weblog Awards for Best in Travel category. Her dream destinations are Botswana, Namibia, Tanzania & Zanzibar, Mali, Ethiopia, Syria, and Nepal.

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Joseph Lane is the Hawthorne Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Emory & Henry. He previously taught at Hampden-Sydney and at Bowdoin College. He is interested in stories, particularly the way that political thinkers and actors use stories to construct our ideas about politics, justice, and the proper distribution of power in society, and he enjoys deconstructing the rhetoric of American politics by reading it through a diverse range of texts including Thucydides’ Peloponnesian War, Euripides’ Trojan Women, Rousseau’s Reveries of the Solitary Walker, and Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. He is the co-author of The Deconstitutionalization of America: The Forgotten Frailties of Democratic Rule (2004) and author of the forthcoming Green Paradoxes. When he isn’t pontificating to his students, he enjoys hiking, biking, and climbing in and around southwest Virginia and spending time with his wife, Julie, and baby daughter, Grace.

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Victoria Lautman is a Chicago print and broadcast journalist. Since 2004 she has produced and hosted Writers on the Record with Victoria Lautman, an author-interview series heard live on WFMT radio that also appears as a column in Chicago magazine. Lautman worked for the Smithsonian Institution’s Hirshhorn Museum after receiving an M.A. in art history and went on to become a host and contributor on Chicago Public Radio for twenty years, covering art, architecture, design, and pop culture. She’s appeared regularly on television as an arts commentator, and she has written widely on cultural topics for the Chicago Tribune, Interview, Metropolitan Home, the Chicago Sun-Times, Art & Auction, Architectural Record, USA Today, Architectural Digest, and many other publications. Her book The New Tattoo was published by Abbeville Press, and her website is victorialautman.com.

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Peter Lawler is Dana Professor of Government at Berry College in Georgia. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, including Modern and American Dignity, Postmodernism Rightly Understood, Stuck With Virtue, Aliens in America, and Homeless and at Home in America. He's also written over 200 articles and reviews for scholarly and popular publications. Lawler is executive editor of the acclaimed scholarly quarterly Perspectives on Political Science and a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. He was the 2007 winner of the Richard M. Weaver Prize in Scholarly Letters.

� Read posts by Peter Augustine Lawler

Michael A. Ledeen, a resident scholar at AEI (the American Enterprise Institute), is an expert on U.S. foreign policy. His research areas include state sponsors of terrorism, Iran, the Middle East, Italy, U.S.-Chinese relations, intelligence, and Africa (Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe). A former consultant to the National Security Council and to the U.S. State and Defense Departments, he has also written on leadership and the use of power. He is the author of The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots’ Quest for Destruction (St. Martin’s Press, 2007) and The War against the Terror Masters: Why It Happened, Where We Are Now, How We’ll Win (St. Martin’s Press, 2002).

� Read posts by Michael A. Ledeen

Macy Leung Stenberg was a graduate design student at Harvard University's Graduate School of Design in Fall 2009. While at Holabird and Root, she worked on a variety of professional architectural projects ranging from universities, public institutions, to city street redevelopment. Her professional interests include sustainable design, new media technology, and urban design. She received her master in Architecture from Iowa State University and undergraduate degree in Economics from University of California at Santa Barbara. She also pursues drawing and painting, and her work has been published and received several national awards.

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Michael Levy is Britannica's Executive Editor and editor of the Britannica Blog. He received a bachelor’s degree (1991) in political science from the University of North Carolina and a doctorate (1996) in international relations and comparative politics from the University of Kentucky. Before joining Britannica in 2000, he was a political science professor at Southeast Missouri State University. When he’s not working at Britannica, Michael is usually listening to podcasts or reading magazines (or obsessing about the Chicago Cubs, UNC Tar Heels, and the New Jersey Devils). You can follow him on Twitter at michael_levy.

� Read posts by Michael Levy

Allan J. Lichtman is a professor of history at American University in Washington, D.C. His six books include Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928 and The Keys to the White House. His latest book is White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement. He's provided commentary for all major television and radio networks and is regularly quoted by leading newspapers and magazines worldwide. He has published more than 150 scholarly and popular articles and served as an expert witness in more than 75 federal voting rights and redistricting cases. As an expert for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights he discovered that the outcome of the 2000 presidential election turned on the vast disparity in rates at which officials rejected ballots cast by blacks and whites in Florida.

� Read posts by Allan J. Lichtman

Thomas Lippman is a former reporter and editor for The Washington Post (1966-1999, 2003). He covered the war in Iraq for the Post in 2003 and served as a diplomatic, national security, and Middle East correspondent based in Cairo. He is the author of several books, including Inside the Mirage: America’s Fragile Partnership with Saudi Arabia (2004), Madeleine Albright and the New American Diplomacy (2000), Egypt After Nasser (1989), and Understanding Islam (1995). He is currently researching the history of US engagement in Saudi Arabia and US-Saudi relations. Lippman is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and he is an Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute. The views expressed in his posts are his alone and not those of the Institute.

� Read posts by Thomas Lippman

Kim Long is a Denver-based author and illustrator. He created the Moon Calendar in 1980, the first publication to show accurate depictions of the moon phases for every day of the year. The Moon Book is a companion volume, with explanations and background about the phases and cycles of the moon.

� Read posts by Kim Long

Carla Lowe is founder and of Citizens Against Legalizing Marijuana (CALM), which is dedicated to defeating Proposition 19 in California. For information, see: http://www.calmca.org.

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Lisa Lubin is a three-time Emmy-award-winning Television Writer/Producer/Editor. She wrote, produced, and edited a variety of broadcast specials, including a weekly lifestyles and entertainment magazine show, on ABC7 Chicago for the last ten years. After 15 years in television she took a sabbatical of sorts, which turned into 2+ years traveling and working her way around the world. She has written about her adventures at her travel website, www.LLworldtour.com. She was recently interviewed about her travels for ABC’s Good Morning America. Her site was listed as one of the Travel Blogs I Can’t Live Without in 2008 and top twenty Most-Inspirational Blogs of 2007 by nationally syndicated columnist Chris Elliot and was also featured on MSNBC.com, the Chicago Daily Herald, the NJ Daily Record, Women on the Road, “Panorama Europeo,” a radio show broadcast in Italy, Spain, and Argentina, and on Chicagoist. Her articles and photographs have been published by Sunset Magazine, Smithsonian Online, The Dallas Morning News, The Boston Globe, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Go Nomad, Brave New Traveler, and The Savvy Gal, and she'll be highlighting her work weekly at the Britannica Blog.

� Read posts by Lisa Lubin

J.E. Luebering is director of the Core Reference Group at Britannica, where he has worked since 2004. He holds degrees from Kenyon College and the University of Chicago.

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Charles M. Madigan is Presidential Writer in Residence at Roosevelt University in Chicago and a veteran journalist and author. He was a reporter, writer, senior writer, editor and columnist for the Chicago Tribune for 27 years. He also ran the paper’s first Internet news desk. He received outstanding professional performance awards on two occasions and two Beck Awards, the paper’s highest honor for reporting and writing. He was named the paper’s first Senior Writer in 1996 and won an Overseas Press Club Human Rights award for a series of articles he wrote on the murder of 63 Muslims in a small town in Kosovo during the war. He left the paper in 2007. For a decade before that, he was a reporter, writer, editor and foreign correspondent for United Press International in Philadelphia, Harrisburg and overseas. He wrote from Moscow for UPI from 1977 to 1979, when he joined The Tribune in Chicago. He was also an instructor in global studies at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in 2003 and 2004. His books include Dangerous Company, Management Consultants and the Businesses They Save and Ruin, The Hard Road to the Softer Side of Sears, Lessons from the Heart of American Business, and, most recently, -30-: The Collapse of the Great American Newspaper for Ivan R. Dee Press. He served as a researcher for a presidential campaign book, also under contract with Ivan R. Dee, that was published early in 2009. Madigan also composes and performs music in the Irish and Celtic traditions in Chicago. He plays guitar.

� Read posts by Charles M. Madigan

Joseph Maguire is a professor of the sociology of sport at Loughsborough University, England. He is a contributor to Britannica's entry on sports and author of Global Sport: Identities, Societies, Civilizations, among other works.

� Read posts by Joseph Maguire

Scott Mahler is a writer and former Senior Editor for National Geographic Books and the Smithsonian Institution Press. He is also a former Assistant Professor of English at the Berklee College of Music and Instructor in the Radcliffe Publishing Course. He has written for The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Saveur magazine, and several other popular and scholarly publications. As an editor in the arts, humanities, and sciences, he published several notable books, including Mapping the World: An Illustrated History of Cartography, Poems for the Millennium: The University of California Book of Modern and Postmodern Poetry, Cubano Be, Cubano Bop: One Hundred Years of Jazz in Cuba, and A Brief History of Central America. He lives in Panama.

� Read posts by Scott Mahler

Thomas Mann is a reference librarian and the author of The Oxford Guide to Library Research (Oxford, 2005).

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Robert McHenry is a former editor-in-chief of Encyclopaedia Britannica and author of How to Know.

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Denny McLain was the last Major League pitcher to win 30 or more games in a season, winning 31 games for the Detroit Tigers in 1968. He won both the MVP and Cy Young awards that year. He is the author, with Eli Zaret, of the new book I Told You I Wasn’t Perfect (Triumph Books).

� Read posts by Denny McLain

On his day job Tom McMahon makes technical information understandable and accessible to people. At various times, he has been a magazine editor, a webmaster, a manager of a publications department, a user interface designer, a technical writer, a help desk expert, a technical instructor, a Six Sigma Black Belt, a manufacturing technician, a political campaign manager, a concert publicist for Harry Chapin, a political advance man for Walter Mondale, a nuclear reactor operator, an electronics technician, a janitor, a busboy, and a paid subject for a Mayo Clinic medical experiment. (He will not divulge which of these experiences were formative. He does state, however, that he finds writing in the third person to be rather odd.) He publishes two websites, 4-Block World and Tom McMahon, from which he'll frequently cross-post to the Britannica Blog.

� Read posts by Tom McMahon

Joseph D. McNamara, retired police chief of San Jose, California, is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and a member of Law Enforcement against Prohibition.

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Gregory McNamee is a contributing editor for Encyclopædia Britannica, for which he writes regularly on world geography, culture, and other topics. An editor, publishing consultant, and photographer, he is also the author of 30 books, most recently Moveable Feasts: The History, Science, and Lore of Food (Praeger, 2006). His Web site is http://www.gregorymcnamee.com/.

� Read posts by Gregory McNamee

Chet Meeks teaches Sociology at Georgia State University.

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Alex Meixner is the Director of Government Relations for the Save Darfur Coalition. In that capacity, he leads the Coalition’s efforts to directly lobby the U.S. government, focusing on Congress, the White House, the State Department, and the National Security Council. Mr. Meixner has previously served as the Coalition’s Communications Director, and he continues to act as a spokesman for the Coalition.

� Read posts by Alex Meixner

Allan Meltzer is University Professor of Political Economy at Carnegie Mellon University, coauthor of Britannica's article on money, and author, among other works, of A History of the Federal Reserve. A version of his post on Milton Friedman was also published by the American Enterprise Institute.

� Read posts by Allan Meltzer

Jennifer Mercieca is Associate Professor of Communication at Texas A&M; University where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on American political discourse. She is the author of Founding Fictions and is co-editor (with Justin Vaughn) of the forthcoming Obama’s Burden, essays from Texas A&M; University’s March, 2010 Rhetoric, Politics, and the Obama Phenomenon conference.

� Read posts by Jennifer Mercieca

Debra Mancoff is Adjunct Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute and the author of books on art, culture, and beauty in nineteenth-century Europe and America including Mary Cassatt: Reflections of Women's Lives; Jane Morris: The Model of Pre-Raphaelite Beauty; and Icons of Beauty: Art, Culture, and the Image of Women.

Michal Raz-Russo is Curatorial Assistant for Exhibitions in the Department of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago and writes about American and European photography in the 19th and 20th century.

Their blog explores fashion as an active and expressive site where the issues of history, culture, convention, and innovation converge.

� Read posts by Debra Mancoff and Michal Raz-Russo

With undergraduate degrees in Microbiology and Medical Technology and a Master of Education degree with a focus on curriculum development in technical subjects, Judy has had a keen interest in computer-based education for both adults and younger students since the mid 1990s. Judy believes that content relevance is a successful strategy to engage learners so she produced student news within MSNBC.com and MSN.com from 1999-2002, and then launched Student News Net (SNN) in 2003 as an independent endeavor. Now in partnership with Encyclopaedia Britannica, Judy is Britannica’s Student News Net’s producer and editor. She is also currently completing a second Master of Education degree in Learning Technologies within the School of Education at the University of Michigan.

� Read posts by Judy Miller

Kate Miller cooks frugal and delicious meals for her family of six. She has been cooking on a tight budget for over a decade. Although she has no formal culinary or financial training, she considers her kitchen education as trial-by-fire, with five of the toughest critics eating at her table every day. Kate shares recipes daily on her blog, Cooking During Stolen Moments. Additionally, Kate is the founder of Stolen Moments Menu Planning, where she creates personalized menu plans to help families save time and money in the kitchen.

� Read posts by Kate Miller

Tasha Moideen is a student at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She is majoring in microbiology and immunology with the hope of following in the footsteps of her father and grandfather and becoming a doctor. She publishes several blogs, including MediaNewsTime.

� Read posts by Tasha Moideen

The Monkey Cage is a blog maintained by Henry Farrell, Associate Professor of Political Science at George Washington University; Andrew Gelman, Professor of Statistics and Political Science at Columbia University; John Sides, Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University; Joshua Tucker, Associate Professor of Politics at New York University; and Erik Voeten, Peter F. Krogh Associate Professor of Geopolitics and Global Justice at Georgetown University. It is committed to publicizing political science research and providing informed commentary on political events and issues. Contributions from The Monkey Cage will be periodically posted here on the Britannica Blog.

� Read posts by The Monkey Cage

Henry Munson is a professor of anthropology at the University of Maine, author of Britannica's article on fundamentalism, and author, among other works, of Religion and Power in Morocco and Islam and Revolution in the Middle East.

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Caryle Murphy is an independent journalist and author of Passion for Islam. A long-time reporter for the Washington Post, Murphy was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting (1991) and the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting (1990) for her coverage of Iraqi-occupied Kuwait and subsequent Gulf War. Her other awards include the Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation (1990); the Edward Weintal Diplomatic Reporting prize (1991) and a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award (1994). While at the Post, Murphy served twice as a foreign correspondent, first in Southern Africa during the tumultuous era that followed the Soweto uprising and police slaying of black leader Steve Biko. In 1990, Murphy was in Kuwait when Iraqi forces crossed the border and occupied the emirate, and in the early 1990s, she was appointed the paper's Cairo bureau chief. In 2005, she did a three-month tour of duty in Baghdad. Murphy left the Post in 2006 to pursue an independent journalism career. She worked for five months at the paper's web site, where she helped launch "On Faith," an online feature dedicated to religion. In early 2008, she returned to the Middle East to report on developments in the oil-rich kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

� Read posts by Caryle Murphy

John Murphy is an associate professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Illinois. He specializes in presidential rhetoric and contemporary American oratory. He often blogs at Oratorical Animal.

� Read posts by John Murphy

Lorraine Murray is an associate editor for Encyclopaedia Britannica and editor of Britannica’s Advocacy for Animals site.

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Ethan Nadelmann is the founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance.

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Christopher B. Nelson has been president of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, since June 1991. He is an alumnus of St. John's (B.A. 1970) and a graduate of the University of Utah College of Law (J.D. 1973), where he founded and directed the university's student legal services program. He practiced law in Chicago for 18 years and was chairman of his law firm when he left the practice to take his current position at St. John's College.

Mr. Nelson has been a panelist and speaker on state, regional, and national programs concerning liberal education, great books, issues of institutional autonomy in the face of government regulatory intrusion, and changes proposed in the accrediting system. He has lectured on Virgil, Plato, Homer, and John Henry Cardinal Newman, and is a published author on issues facing higher education.

� Read posts by Christopher B. Nelson

Michael Novak is the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of some 25 books on social, economic, and political issues. He was twice the U.S. ambassador to the UN Human Rights Commission and once to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. His most recent book (co-authored with his daughter, Jana Novak) is Washington's God: Religion, Liberty, and the Father of Our Country. For his other posts at the Britannica Blog (co-written with his daughter), click here.

� Read posts by Michael Novak

Michael Novak is the George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of some 25 books on social, economic, and political issues. He was twice the U.S. ambassador to the UN Human Rights Commission and once to the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. His most recent book (co-authored with his daughter, Jana Novak) is Washington's God: Religion, Liberty, and the Father of Our Country. For other posts at the Britannica Blog by Michael Novak himself, click here.

� Read posts by Michael and Jana Novak

Michael Nutter is the manager of Britannica’s cartography department. He has a master’s degree in geography from Michigan State University, was a Peace Corps agricultural co-op advisor in the Marshall Islands in the late 1970s, and taught earth science and geography at several community colleges before joining Britannica in 1985. He enjoys reading and walking and tries to live a small-carbon-footprint lifestyle.

� Read posts by Mike Nutter

Lucy O'Brien is a freelance writer and author of several books, including She Bop 1 and 11: The Definitive History of Women in Rock, Pop and Soul and Madonna: Like An Icon.

� Read posts by Lucy O'Brien

Anthony O'Hear is the Garfield Weston Professor of Philosophy and Head of the Department of Education at the University of Buckingham in England and editor of the journal Philosophy. His many books include Plato's Children (2005), Philosophy in the New Century ( 2001), After Progress (1999), Beyond Evolution: Human Nature and the Limits of Evolutionary Explanation (1997), Introduction to the Philosophy of Science (1989), The Element of Fire: Science, Art and the Human World (1988), and Karl Popper (1980). His most recent book is The Great Books: A Journey through 2,500 Years of the West's Classic Literature (2009).

� Read posts by Anthony O'Hear

Christopher O'Toole was the acting editor of www.travelbite.co.uk.

Outside of written journalism Chris has appeared as host of music programmes What Could be Radio and The Endless Groove on Insanity radio, and continues to maintain a strong awareness of broadcast media.

Chris has previously written for a number of publications, including online music websites www.Fopp.co.uk, RockFeedback.co.uk and www.PennyBlackMusic.co.uk as well as Notion and Orbital print magazines.

While away from work, music and international travel are both strong interests. He presently live in East London.

� Read posts by Christopher O'Toole

Maureen Orth has been a special correspondent for Vanity Fair since 1993. She has interviewed and profiled numerous heads of state and celebrities from around the world. Prior to this, she was contributing editor at Vogue from 1984 to 1989 and a columnist for New York Woman from 1986 to 1990. From 1983 to 1984 she was a network correspondent for NBC News. In 1981 she was the principal correspondent of Newsweek Woman on Lifetime cable TV. Before beginning her journalistic career, she served with the Peace Corps in Medellin, Columbia. Her writings have appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Esquire, and Rolling Stone, among many other publications. Her books include Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History and The Importance of Being Famous: Behind the Scenes of the Celebrity-Industrial Complex. Ms. Orth lives in Washington, D.C. Her husband was Tim Russert, the Washington bureau chief of NBC News and moderator of Meet the Press. Her website is maureenorth.com.

� Read posts by Maureen Orth

Richard Pallardy is a research editor at Encyclopædia Britannica. He studied English at Illinois State University, concentrating on postcolonial studies. Peripatetic by nature, he can normally be found wandering the streets, or darting through the stacks of the Chicago Public Library in search of obscure shreds of information.

� Read posts by Richard Pallardy

John Park focuses on Northeast Asian security, economic and energy issues, and U.S. foreign policy toward the region at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He is the director of the institute’s Korea Working Group, a consultative body comprising senior experts from the government and think tank communities, which is chaired by Ambassador Richard Solomon. Park is co-director of the U.S.-China Crisis Avoidance & Cooperation Project, which is a collaborative endeavor with Fudan University and the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations. He is also co-director of the Trilateral Dialogue in Northeast Asia, which brings together U.S., South Korean, and Japanese partners.

Prior to joining the Institute, Park worked in Goldman Sachs’ public finance group in New York. His writings have appeared in the Washington Quarterly, Wall Street Journal Asia, International Herald Tribune, and Far Eastern Economic Review. He has also commented on the Six-Party Talks on BBC World Service, CNN, CNBC Asia, Bloomberg TV, NPR, and Reuters. He received his Ph.D. from Cambridge University and completed predoctoral and postdoctoral training at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

� Read posts by John Park

Trevor Parry-Giles is a professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Maryland. He is the author or co-author of several books including The Prime-Time Presidency: The West Wing and U.S. Nationalism (University of Illinois Press, 2006), and The Character of Justice: Rhetoric, Law, and Politics in the Supreme Court Confirmation Process (Michigan State University Press, 2006). He is currently working on a comprehensive analysis of the rhetoric of the Clinton presidency and a biography of Judson Welliver. He is also the editor of the journal Communication Quarterly.

� Read posts by Trevor Parry-Giles

Paul Perrin resides in Brighton, and at the 2010 British general election he stood as a United Kingdom Independence Party candidate for Hove.

� Read posts by Paul Perrin

Mark J. Perry is a professor of economics and finance in the School of Management at the Flint campus of the University of Michigan. Perry holds two graduate degrees in economics (M.A. and Ph.D.) from George Mason University in Washington, D.C. In addition, he holds an MBA degree in finance from the Curtis L. Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. Since 1997, Professor Perry has been a member of the Board of Scholars for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a nonpartisan research and public policy institute in Michigan. His blog, from which he'll occasionally cross-post to the Britannica Blog, is Carpe Diem.

� Read posts by Mark J. Perry

William Pike works at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. He is an active church layperson and a regular contributor to Kirkus Reviews. He received a bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a Master of Divinity degree from Duke University, and maintains a blog at http://hereiraise.blogspot.com/.

� Read posts by William Pike

John J. Pitney, Jr. is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of American Politics at Claremont McKenna College. He received his B.A. from Union College and his Ph.D. from Yale. He has been a New York State Senate Legislative Fellow, a Congressional Fellow, and deputy director of research at the Republican National Committee. He has written articles for National Review Online, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times, among others. He is coauthor of American Government and Politics: Deliberation, Democracy, and Citizenship (2010), published by Wadsorth.

� Read posts by John J. Pitney, Jr.

James F. Pontuso is Patterson Professor of Government & Foreign Affairs at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia. He is the author of Assault on Ideology: Solzhenitsyn’s Political Thought, Václav Havel: Civic Responsibility in the Postmodern Age, co-author of The Deconstitutionalization of America: The Forgotten Frailties of Democratic Rule, and editor of Political Philosophy Comes to Rick’s: Casablanca and American Civic Culture.

� Read posts by James Pontuso

David A. Price is the author of Love & Hate in Jamestown, a history of the Jamestown colony. He was formerly a reporter in the Washington, D.C. bureau of Investor's Business Daily. He grew up in Richmond, Virginia, and holds degrees from the College of William & Mary, Harvard Law School, and Cambridge University. In addition to his book on Jamestown, he has written about the colony for National Geographic Online and Encyclopaedia Britannica, writing Britannica's entries on Jamestown, Pocahontas, and Powhatan. His book's website is www.jamestownbook.com.

� Read posts by David A. Price

John P. Rafferty is Britannica's editor for earth sciences. He holds a doctorate in geography from the University of Illinois. Before joining Britannica in 2006, he taught courses in geography, earth science, environmental science, and biology. He also writes for Britannica's Advocacy for Animals website.

� Read posts by John Rafferty

Michael Ray is a research editor for Britannica. He currently oversees coverage of arts and culture, geography and travel, and history and society for the Britannica.com homepage. When not working as a concert producer at the Old Town School of Folk Music, he can be found frequenting an assortment of independent comic book and record stores in Chicago's Lincoln Square neighborhood.

� Read posts by Michael Ray

David P. Redlawsk is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa and Director of the University of Iowa Hawkeye Poll. His research focuses on the emotional responses of voters to campaign information. Redlawsk also studies citizens’ views of political corruption. His teaching includes Local Politics, Voting Behavior, Political Psychology, and Decision Making. Recent publications include two books published in 2006, How Voters Decide: Information Processing in an Election Campaign (with Richard Lau) and an edited volume, Feeling Politics: Emotion in Political Information Processing. He is currently working on an edited volume on service learning with state and local government partners. Dr. Redlawsk has extensive experience in local government, having served as chair of a planning commission and as an elected official in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and as a Democratic Party official in Johnson County, Iowa, where he was County Chair during the 2004 Iowa Caucuses.

� Read posts by David P. Redlawsk

Writer and critic Howard Rheingold says he "fell into the computer realm from the typewriter dimension, then plugged my computer into my telephone and got sucked into the net." He was among the first wave of creative thinkers who saw, in computers and the Internet, a way to form powerful new communities, and he is credited with inventing the term "virtual community." He was also editor of The Whole Earth review and editor in chief of The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog (1994).

His 2002 book Smart Mobs presaged Web 2.0 in predicting collaborative ventures, and it was the outgrowth of decades spent studying and living life online. An early and active member of the Well, he went on to cofound HotWired and Electric Minds, two groundbreaking web communities, in the mid-1990s.

The Cooperation Commons is the site of his ongoing investigation of cooperation and collective action. He teaches Participatory Media/Collective Action at UC Berkeley's School of Information, Digital Journalism at Stanford University, is a non-resident Fellow of the Annenberg School for Communication, and a visiting Professor at the Institute of Creative Technologies, De Montfort University in Leicester, UK.

� Read posts by Howard Rheingold

Julie Rhoad ­(BFA M.Ed) is president and CEO of The NAMES Project Foundation. Prior to joining The NAMES Project Foundation, Ms. Rhoad enjoyed a successful career as a creative director, producer and owner of Candler Creative, Inc., a firm providing innovations in communications strategy, new product launches, business meetings, exhibition design and special event planning. A specialist in internal corporate communications strategy and interpretive planning, Julie has worked all over the world creating, producing and executing successful domestic and international special events, industrial presentations, exhibits and trade shows. In addition, she has provided design and project management services in the areas of exhibit design and integrated audiovisual systems applications for museums, visitor centers, customer and product presentation centers and traveling expositions. Ms. Rhoad began her career as a professional theatrical stage manager and, in regional and stock theatre, she held a variety of positions including production manager, technical director, general manager and production stage manager prior to becoming active in the corporate communications field. Ms. Rhoad is thrilled to have returned to her roots in non-profit with The NAMES Project Foundation/The AIDS Memorial Quilt.

� Read posts by Julie Rhoad

As a chief weapons inspector for the United Nations Special Commission in Iraq, Scott Ritter was labeled a hero by some, a maverick by others, and a spy by the Iraqi government. In charge of searching out weapons of mass destruction within Iraq, Ritter was on the front lines of the ongoing battle against arms proliferation. His experience in Iraq served as the basis for his books Endgame: Solving the Iraq Problem-Once and For All and Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of the Intelligence Conspiracy to Undermine the UN and Overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Scott Ritter has had an extensive and distinguished career in government service. He is an intelligence specialist with a 12-year career in the U.S. Marine Corps including assignments in the former Soviet Union and the Middle East. Rising to the rank of Major, Ritter spent several months of the Gulf War serving under General Norman Schwarzkopf with US Central Command headquarters in Saudi Arabia, where he played an instrumental role in formulating and implementing combat operations targeting Iraqi mobile missile launchers which threatened Israel.

In 1991, Ritter joined the United Nations weapons inspections team, or UNSCOM. He participated in 34 inspection missions, 14 of them as chief inspector. Ritter resigned from UNSCOM in August 1998, citing US interference in the work of the inspections.

His latest book is Target Iran: The Truth About the White House's Plans for Regime Change. He lives in New York State.

� Read posts by Scott Ritter

Adam Roberts is vice-president of Born Free USA and chair of the Species Survival Network’s Bear Working Group. He is also a contributor to Britannica’s Advocacy for Animals site.

� Read posts by Adam Roberts

Kara Rogers is Britannica’s biomedical sciences editor. She holds a Ph.D. in pharmacology and toxicology from the University of Arizona, where her research focused on understanding the role of antioxidants in mitochondria. Rogers has written for various publications on topics ranging from current medical research and eugenics to parasitic and vector-borne diseases.

� Read posts by Kara Rogers

Jay Rosen teaches Journalism at New York University, where has been on the faculty since 1986. From 1999 to 2005 he served as chair of the Department. Rosen is the author of PressThink, a weblog about journalism and its ordeals (www.pressthink.org), which he introduced in September 2003. In June 2005, PressThink won the Reporters Without Borders 2005 Freedom Blog award for outstanding defense of free expression. In April 2007 PressThink recorded its two millionth visit. He also blogs at the Huffington Post. In July 2006 he announced the debut of NewAssignment.Net, his experimental site for pro-am, open source reporting projects. The first one was called Assignment Zero, a collaboration with Wired.com. A second project is OfftheBus.Net with the Huffington Post. A third was introduced in November 2007: beatblogging.org ("Follow along as 13 reporters build social networks into their beats.") Rosen is also a member of the Wikipedia Advisory Board. In 1999, Yale University Press published his book, What Are Journalists For?, which is about the rise of the civic journalism movement. (sample chapter) Rosen wrote and spoke frequently about civic journalism (also called public journalism) over a ten-year period, 1989-99.

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Michael Ross is the Senior Vice President, worldwide product development/technology, and General Manager of Education at Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. He has held executive positions at other publishing companies and began his publishing career as an editor for Time-Life Books. He has contributed to several industry publications, including the Experts’ Guide to the K-12 School Market. His first book, Publishing Without Borders: Strategies for Successful International Publishing, was published in 2003. His new book, published in January 2007, is Publishing Without Boundaries: How to Think, Work, and Win in the International Marketplace. He speaks often at international conferences on electronic publishing, strategic alliances, and licensing and was inducted into Printmedia’s Production Executives’ Hall of Fame in 2002. In December 2009 he was inducted into the Association of Educational Publishers' Hall of Fame.

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Richard Rusczyk founded AoPS (The Art of Problem Solving) Incorporated in 2003 to create interactive educational opportunities for avid math students. He is one of the co-authors of the Art of Problem Solving textbooks, one of the co-creators of the Mandelbrot Competition, and the Director of the USA Mathematical Talent Search. He was a participant in National MATHCOUNTS, a three-time participant in the Math Olympiad Summer Program, and a USA Mathematical Olympiad winner (1989). He graduated from Princeton University in 1993, helped inaugurate ESPN's SportsFigures program, and worked as a bond trader for D.E. Shaw & Company for four years. AoPS marks Richard's return to his vocation - educating motivated students.

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Alexander Russo is a freelance education writer and blogger and former education aide in the U.S. Senate. Before that, he was a researcher and a teacher. His education blogs are This Week In Education and District 299.

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Jennifer Saba an associate editor with Editor & Publisher, where she has covered the business side of newspapers for the past four years. She has written extensively about circulation, advertising, ownership issues, and online initiatives. She is a two-time winner of the Jesse H. Neal Award for best series of articles written for E&P.; As a business reporter for the past ten years, Saba covered the dot-com boom in San Francisco, technology, advertising, and design. She started her career as media planner for the advertising firm Tracey Locke. Originally from Dallas, Saba holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Texas at Austin and a master’s from Stanford University. She lives in New York.

� Read posts by Jennifer Saba

The founder and director of the renowned Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, Larry J. Sabato has appeared on national television and radio programs including 60 Minutes, Today, Hardball, and Nightline. A Rhodes scholar, he received his doctorate in politics from Oxford, and has been at UVA since 1978. The author of countless articles and some twenty books, most recently A More Perfect Constitution: 23 Proposals to Revitalize Our Constitution and Make America a Fairer Country, he coanchored the BBC’s coverage of the 2006 election. In 2002, the University of Virginia gave him its highest honor, the Thomas Jefferson Award.

� Read posts by Larry J. Sabato

Laura Sabattini is a Director in the Research Department and a member of the Work-Life Issue Specialty Team at Catalyst, a leading nonprofit research and advisory organization working globally with companies to expand opportunities for women and business. It has offices in New York, San Jose, Toronto, and Zug (Switzerland). She has consulted organizations and lectured nationally and internationally. She received her B.A. in Organizational and Work Psychology at the University of Padua, Italy, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she also served as an adjunct faculty member. She is author of the study, The Double-Bind Dilemma for Women in Leadership: Damned if You Do, Doomed if You Don’t.

� Read posts by Laura Sabattini

Larry Sanger is best known as co-founder and the original organizer of Wikipedia. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Citizendium, a wiki encyclopedia project that combines public participation with gentle expert guidance, and requires real names of all contributors. The Citizendium project added over 7,000 articles and over 6 million words in a little over a year. Sanger has frequently spoken and written about collaborative content and related subjects. He has also taught philosophy, specializing in epistemology, at Ohio State University. Dr. Sanger grew up in Anchorage, Alaska, received his B.A. in philosophy from Reed College in 1991 and his Ph.D. in philosophy from Ohio State University in 2000. He has also been a teacher of Irish traditional music on the fiddle.

� Read posts by Larry Sanger

Paul Scham is an Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute. From 1996 to 2002, he was a Fellow and Research Development Coordinator at the Truman Institute for Peace at Hebrew University. He is active in Israeli-Palestinian Civil Society cooperation initiatives. He was Washington Representative of Americans for Peace Now (1989–1990) and was the Special Assistant to the General Counsel in the US Department of Education from 1988 to 1989. He is also a member of the California and Israeli Bar. In 2005, he co-edited Shared History: A Palestinian-Israeli Dialogue. The views expressed in his posts are his alone and not those of the Middle East Institute.

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David Schmid is an Associate Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of English at the University at Buffalo. He is the author of Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture.

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Kunal Sen is an Executive Director at Encyclopaedia Britannica, responsible for developing digital products for the international market, and also responsible for improving web traffic to Britannica’s websites. Before joining Britannica, Kunal was a member of a research team, and lead a group that developed the first computerized system for clinical analysis of human gait. Kunal was born in Calcutta, India, where he obtained master’s degrees in Physics and Computer Science, and then obtained his doctorate from University of Illinois at Chicago in the area of Artificial Intelligence. He also co-authored a number of technical textbooks and taught at Dominican University. Outside of his professional life, Kunal loves to paint, write, and try to stay current on what’s happening in the world of science and technology.

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Rick Shenkman is an associate professor of history at George Mason University and the editor and founder of George Mason University's History News Network, a website that features articles by historians on current events. He can be seen regularly on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC. He is a New York Times best-selling author of six history books, including Legends, Lies & Cherished Myths of American History and Presidential Ambition: Gaining Power At Any Cost. His latest book is Just How Stupid Are We? Facing the Truth About the American Voter. Click here to read his blog, How Stupid?

Educated at Vassar and Harvard, Mr. Shenkman is also an Emmy award-winning investigative reporter and the former managing editor of KIRO-TV, the CBS affiliate in Seattle. In 1997 he was the host, writer and producer of a prime time series for The Learning Channel inspired by his books on myths. In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the Society of American Historians. He publishes the presidential politics blog POTUS.

� Read posts by Rick Shenkman

Dr. Sari Fine Shepphird is a clinical psychologist, eating disorders specialist, and author of the book 100 Questions and Answers about Anorexia Nervosa (Jones & Bartlett). Working with a full spectrum of eating disorders issues, her experience on the subject spans nearly twenty years. In addition to maintaining an outpatient private practice, she provides consultation about eating disorders to the media as well as to other treatment providers. Dr. Shepphird is a Medical Health Expert Blogger for Wellsphere.com and she also authors Treatment Notes, a Weblog for professional treatment providers who wish to learn more about eating disorders.

Dr. Shepphird is currently a member of the Board of Directors for the California Psychological Association and also serves in leadership positions for several other mental health organizations and committees. Dr. Shepphird earned both her Master’s Degree (1994) and Ph.D. (1996) in Clinical Psychology from the California School of Professional Psychology.

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Clay Shirky teaches at NYU's Interactive Telecommunications Program and writes and consults widely about the interlocking effects of our social and technological networks on one another. He is the author of Here Comes Everybody, about the changes created by new social tools. His writings about the Internet can be found at www.shirky.com.

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Marc Sidwell is a freelance writer and researcher based in London, specialising in liberal education and the Great Books. He is a Research Fellow for the New Culture Forum and a subeditor for Standpoint Magazine, and his article on California's Thomas Aquinas College is available on their website. Marc is co-editor, with Professor Anthony O'Hear, of The School of Freedom: A Liberal Education Reader from Plato to the Present Day, published in Summer 2009 and available on Amazon.com. Professor O'Hear is also the author of The Great Books: A Journey Through 2,500 Years of the West's Classic Literature.

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Alexia Sinclair is an award-winning Australian photographer and digital artist. Her digitally montaged work has been described as dark and sexy, baroque and magical, mixing avant-garde fashion and her work with contemporary fashion models with exotic European landscapes. She'll highlight the women in her acclaimed "Regal Twelve" series on the Britannica Blog at various times throughout the year. "Each character's portrayal," she says, "is approached through the eyes of a contemporary woman and, as such, is influenced by contemporary notions of beauty and power." Learn more about Alexia and her artwork at alexiasinclair.com.

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Barbara Slavin is Assistant Managing Editor for World and National Security at The Washington Times. Prior to joining The Times in July 2008, she was senior diplomatic reporter for USA TODAY since 1996, responsible for analyzing foreign news and U.S. foreign policy. She has accompanied three secretaries of State on their official travels and also reported from Iran, Libya, Israel, Egypt, North Korea, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and Syria. She is a regular commentator on U.S. foreign policy on National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System, and C-Span. She is a Jennings Randolph fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, researching Iran's rising influence in the Middle East. (She is temporarily on leave from the newspaper as she conducts this research.)

Prior to joining USA TODAY, she was a Washington-based writer for The Economist and the Los Angeles Times, covering domestic and foreign policy issues, including the 1991-93 Middle East peace talks in Washington. From 1985-89, she was The Economist correspondent in Cairo. She traveled widely in the Middle East, covering the Iran-Iraq war, the 1986 U.S. bombing of Libya, the political evolution of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism. Earlier in the 1980s, she served as The Economist correspondent in Beijing and also reported from Japan and South Korea.

Prior to moving abroad, she was a writer and editor for The New York Times Week in Review section and a reporter and editor for United Press International in New York City. She got her BA in Russian language and literature at Harvard University and also studied at Leningrad State University. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Her new book is Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation. Her website is BarbaraSlavin.net

� Read posts by Barbara Slavin

RaeLeann Smith is a circus specialist with the animal rights organization PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). She works to educate people about the cruelty involved in circuses and other animal acts and meets with legislators to develop ordinances that protect animals used for entertainment. She is currently working to promote legislation in Chicago that would be the strongest elephant protection law in the United States.

� Read posts by RaeLeann Smith

Founded in 1915, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago aims to encourage the growth and understanding of contemporary art through exhibitions, publications, and events. The Museum presents art that is on the cutting edge of the new, whether from the Midwest, the United States, or from anywhere in the world. Mia Ruyter and Kelly Huang are co-blogging for the Museum and are happy to be highlighting the Museum's work, ideas, and exhibitions on the Britannica Blog.

� Read posts by The Renaissance Society

Editor at Large Peter A. Sokolowski joined Merriam-Webster in 1994, and he has since defined and edited entries for the best-selling Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate® Dictionary, Eleventh Edition, Merriam-Webster’s French-English Dictionary, and the forthcoming Merriam-Webster’s Advanced Learner’s English Dictionary. Peter represents the company in national author tours, radio and television interviews, and various presentations covering a wide range of language-related topics. His many duties include recording podcasts of "Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Day" and monitoring entries to the interactive "Merriam-Webster’s Open Dictionary" — two popular features of the company’s free Web site, Merriam-Webster OnLine. Peter attended the University of Paris and taught French at the University of Massachusetts while earning his M.A. in French Literature. He also maintains a busy free-lance career as a musician, and presents jazz programming for Western New England’s National Public Radio affiliate.

� Read posts by Peter Sokolowski

Thomas J. Spanos has been a lead technical illustrator and multimedia designer for Encyclopaedia Britannica since 1994. He received his Bachelor degree from the school of Design at the University of Illinois in Champaign with emphasis in 3-D animation, sculpture, and entomology. Outside of the office, he is an officer in the 501st international costuming organization and enjoys both making costumes and learning about other cultures first hand.

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Karen Sparks is editor of Britannica Book of the Year.

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M. Masoom Stanekzai has served as advisor to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and as vice chair of the Demobilization and Reintegration Commission, a group responsible for the disbandment of illegal armed groups, since 2005. From 2002 to 2004, he was minister of telecommunication/information and communications technology in the Afghan Transitional Government. During this time, he developed and implemented a major reform and restructuring program that helped the sector to flourish as one of the success stories of post-conflict reconstruction in the country. He is also a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace. The views expressed are his own and not necessarily those of the U.S. Institute of Peace.

� Read posts by Mohammad Masoom Stanekzai

Ilan Stavans is Lewis-Sebring Professor in Latin American and Latino Culture at Amherst College. His books include The Hispanic Condition (1995), On Borrowed Words (2001), Spanglish (2003), Dictionary Days (2005), The Disappearance (2006), and Love and Language (2007). He edited The Oxford Book of Jewish Stories (1998), The Poetry of Pablo Neruda (2003), the 3-volume Isaac Bashevis Singer: Collected Stories (2004), The Schocken Book of Modern Sephardic Literature (2005), and César Chávez: An Organizer's Tale (2008). The film My Mexican Shivah, produced by John Sayles, is based on his story "Morirse está en hebreo."

� Read posts by Ilan Stavans

David Stein is the host of one of the most unusual talk shows on radio, "The David Stein Show: A Celebration of Life Through Sports." It can be heard from 2-6 AM Eastern Standard Time on Sporting News Radio, XM Sports Nation Channel 144, and Sirius Channel 123 and is carried by more than 115 radio stations. David starts each call by asking the listener to "tell me something good about your life." Every show is created to bring out the best in people with David asking listeners to "pay it forward" and "to get off the bench and onto the court" by getting actively engaged in their families and communities and by contributing something meaningful both to his show and to life in general. His CD (pictured here) is a compilation of some of the most inspirational moments from his show.

David joined Sporting News Radio after hosting The Fox Sports Radio Morning Show and World Poker Tour Radio on XM Satellite Radio; he also makes regular appearances on The Golf Channel. David will be blogging regularly with Britannica, giving a monthly “David Stein Celebration of Life Through Sports Award” to a worthy individual or team; read his posts for more information on the award.

He is a former recipient of First Place Awards from UPI and The Philadelphia Press Association for radio feaures, and he was honored with induction into The Easter Seals Hall of Fame this year for his 18 years of service to that organization. As a stand-up comic, David has opened for Jerry Seinfeld, Steven Wright, among others. He is also a motivational speaker, using stories from his own life and from the show to inspire others.

� Read posts by David Stein

Ian Stewart is a science writer, science fiction writer, and a professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick in England. He is the author of many books, including, most recently, Letters to a Young Mathematician (Art of Mentoring) and Why Beauty is Truth: The Story of Symmetry. He also wrote Britannica's entries on number symbolism and analysis.

� Read posts by Ian Stewart

Mary E. Stuckey is a professor of political science and communication at Georgia State University. She is interested in issues of political power and the national media, and especially how both affect minority groups. She is the author of eight books, including The President as Interpreter-in-Chief, Strategic Failures in the Modern Presidency, Defining Americans: The Presidency and National Identity, and Slipping the Surly Bonds: Reagan's Challenger Address. She is at work on Jimmy Carter, Human Rights, and the National Agenda. She is also the editor-elect of the Southern Communication Journal.

� Read posts by Mary Stuckey

Nina Sughrue is a senior program officer in the Education and Training Center/International at the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) in Washington, DC. She is involved in coordinating training programs that help government officials, military and police personnel, representatives from various international organizations, and non-governmental employees improve their conflict management skills. She has conducted training in Afghanistan, Sudan, Jordan, Turkey, Central Asia, Pakistan, and Poland and with Israelis and Palestinians. The views expressed here are not necessarily those of the USIP, which does not advocate specific policies.

� Read posts by Nina Sughrue

Jon Talton is a journalist and author living in Seattle. He writes the “On the Economy” column for the Seattle Times and is proprietor of the blog Rogue Columnist. He has been a columnist for the Arizona Republic, Charlotte Observer, and Rocky Mountain News, and his columns have appeared in newspapers throughout North America on the New York Times News Service and other news services; he has been a regular guest on CNBC. Jon is also the author of eight novels, including the David Mapstone mysteries, among them Dry Heat and Cactus Heart. His latest novel is the investigative thriller The Pain Nurse. Before journalism, he worked for four years as an ambulance medic in the inner city of Phoenix.

� Read posts by Jon Talton

R. Murray Thomas is a professor emeritus of education at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His most recent books are Religion in Schools: Controversies Around the World (2006) and Violence in America’s Schools: Understanding, Prevention, and Responses (2006). He’s a regular contributor to the Britannica Book of the Year.

� Read posts by R. Murray Thomas

Curious Expeditions is Michelle Enemark and Dylan Thuras. Artists, writers and historians, the pair have been working together for 7 years to find overlooked and obscure history. They recently spent a year living in Budapest and traveling throughout Eastern Europe in search of the esoteric, obscure, and wondrous, much of which is documented at their website www.curiousexpeditions.org. They are currently working on a short documentary about wax anatomical models and the history of dissection.

Dylan is also a contributor to the popular (currently being re-designed) www.Kirchersociety.org, and was the co-planner of the "First Annual Kircher Society Meeting" featured in the New Yorker magazine. He is currently working on a graphic novel about the London beer flood of 1816.

Michelle's photography has been used in numerous publications and as the cover for the mystery novel "Dance to your Daddy." She is currently working on a book of her museum photography. When she can find some free time she enjoys putting together and mounting animal skeletons.

� Read posts by Dylan Thuras and Michelle Enemark

Andrea Toback is the Executive Director of Human Resources at Encyclopaedia Britannica. She holds a B.A. in Biology from Northwestern University and an MBA from SUNY at Buffalo where she received the Wall St. Journal Award for Academic Excellence. Andrea enjoys hiking and biking, traveling, reading, writing musical parodies and spoiling her two cats.

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Graeme Turner is a professor of Cultural Studies and the director of the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland in Australia. His most recent books are Ending the Affair: The Decline of Television Current Affairs in Australia (2005), Understanding Celebrity (2004), British Cultural Studies: An Introduction (2003), and The Film Cultures Reader (2002). He was elected President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2004.

� Read posts by Graeme Turner

Videoart.net was founded by video artists and filmmakers based in New York City. We are dedicated to video art and short films but interested in any artist utilizing the video medium. We are here for talented artists, actors, directors and filmmakers who need assistance navigating the technical, social, and international aspects of Internet short films and video art distribution. Videoart.net provides a searchable online archive and connects artists with curators, producers, and the public. The Videoart.net archive is open to all genres, from short films, video installations to interview footage, etc. Our three-fold mission: to establish an international hub of video artists, filmmakers and audiences; to expand video arts into public spaces accessible to a wider audience; and to create an online community of filmmakers and artists. To help further this mission we're pleased to be highlighting this artwork weekly at the Britannica Blog.

Artists and videos highlighted to date: Ty Jeffries (Greta Garbo's Lost Screen Test), Simo Ezoubeiri (Popcorn, Dubai Through Colors), Paulo Cancela de Abreu (Pocket War), Sim Sadler (Talk Therapy: Dr. Phil vs. Bill O'Reilly), Bil Thompson (The Tea Bag).

� Read posts by Videoart.net

Edward S. Walker, Jr., is an Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute’s public policy center. He served as MEI’s President and CEO from 2001 until August 2006 and currently teaches at Hamilton College. He was US Ambassador to Israel (1997-1999), Egypt (1994-1997), and the United Arab Emirates (1989-1992), and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations (1992-1993). He was Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs from 1999 to 2001. The views expressed are his alone and not those of the Middle East Institute.

� Read posts by Edward Walker

William Walsh is a 30-year carpetbagger to the South via Jamestown, N.Y., where his ancestors date back to pre-Revolutionary War. He is the author of The Conscience of My Other Being, The Ordinary Life of a Sculptor, Speak So I Shall Know Thee: Interviews with Southern Writers, and most recently, Under the Rock Umbrella: Contemporary American Poets from 1951-1977. Originally educated in psychology, years ago he made the switch to the arts. He has taught college English, literature, and creative writing, and has, among the many occupations, worked as a private investigator and a computer forensic consultant. He has recently completed a novel and a movie script, and is finishing up on a new collection of poems.

� Read posts by William Walsh

Dubbed “the explainer” by Wired magazine, Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist at Kansas State University exploring the impacts of new media on human interaction. He is also a member of Britannica's Editorial Board of Advisors. After two years studying the impacts of writing on a remote indigenous culture in the rainforest of Papua New Guinea, he has turned his attention to the effects of social media and digital technology on global society. His videos on technology, education, and information have been viewed over ten million times and are frequently featured at international film festivals and major academic conferences. Wesch has won several major awards for his work, including a Wired Rave Award and the John Culkin Award for Outstanding Praxis in Media Ecology. He is also a multiple award-winning teacher whose teaching projects are frequently featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education and other major media outlets worldwide.

� Read posts by Michael Wesch

Darrell M. West is the John Hazen White Professor of Political Science and Public Policy and Director of the Taubman Center for Public Policy at Brown University. West is the author of 15 books, including: Biotechnology Policy Across National Boundaries (2007), Digital Government (2005), Air Wars: Television Advertising and Election Campaigns (2005), Celebrity Politics (2003) (with John Orman), The Rise and Fall of the Media Establishment (2001), and Patrick Kennedy: The Rise to Power (2000). He is a frequent commentator on media and elections and has been quoted in the New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and on National Public Radio, C-SPAN, the Today Show, O'Reilly Factor, Hardball, NBC Nightly News, and ABC World News, among other programs.

� Read posts by Darrell M. West

Mr. White served as Deputy Director of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research Office of Analysis for the Near East and South Asia (INR/NESA) and Senior Regional Analyst from 2002-2005. During this time he was also a principal Iraq analyst and head of INR/NESA’s Iraq team. Previously, White served as Chief of INR’s Maghreb, Arabian Peninsula, Iran and Iraq division and State Department representative to NATO Middle East working groups from 1990-2002. He has held a number of positions at INR/NESA, including deputy chief of the Arab-Israeli division, head of NESA’s Lebanon crisis team, analyst for Syria and Iraq and editor of INR’s Arab-Israeli Situation Report. White also served as briefer on Iran and Iraq for the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC) and Jordanian cabinet-level officials (1981-1986), Political Officer at the US Interests Section in Baghdad (1983) and US Sinai Field Mission peacekeeper (1978-1979). White is the recipient of numerous awards, including five-time recipient of the State Department’s Superior Honor Award, INR Analyst of the Year, National Intelligence Medal for Outstanding Achievement and the Secretary’s Career Achievement Award. He is an Adjunct Scholar at the Middle East Institute, and his views are his own and not those of the institute.

� Read posts by Wayne White

Donald Whitfield is Director of Higher Education Programs at the Great Books Foundation and a graduate of St. John’s College. He has been on the editorial team of numerous Great Books Foundation projects, particularly its series of science anthologies, which includes What’s the Matter? Readings in Physics.

� Read posts by Donald Whitfield

Catherine Whitney is a New York nonfiction author who has written and cowritten more than forty books on a wide range of topics. She is the author of The Calling: A Year in the Life of an Order of Nuns (Crown), the coauthor with nine female U.S. Senators of Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate (Morrow), and the coauthor with Lee Iacocca of Where Have All the Leaders Gone? (Scribner). Whitney’s recent book, The Women of Windsor: Their Power, Privilege and Passions (HarperCollins), takes an intimate look at the driving influence of the modern women behind and on the throne.

� Read posts by Catherine Whitney

Gleaves Whitney became director of Grand Valley State University's Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies in 2003. During his tenure he has been the architect of more than 130 public programs, including three national conferences covered by C-SPAN, and two internationally web cast debates -- one to more than 3,500 viewers in eighteen countries, and the other watched on YouTube by more than 60,000 people in some 30 nations on all six inhabited continents.

In addition to his public work, Gleaves is a scholar who writes and lectures nationally on a variety of historical topics. He is author or editor of 14 books including most recently (with Mark Rozell) Religion and the American Presidency and Religion and the Bush Presidency. Other books include American Presidents: Farewell Addresses to the Nation, 1796-2001; John Engler: The Man, the Leader & the Legacy; and 6 volumes of Messages of the Governors of Michigan. Another book on the Bush presidency, based on a Hauenstein Center conference he organized, is forthcoming.

� Read posts by Gleaves Whitney

Miranda Wilding is an artistically driven West Coaster. She is disarmingly tall and effortlessly blonde. She possesses a subversive wit and knows how to maintain a cool head in a crisis. (Or so she’s been told…) She is devoted to her family, her friends and her loves - past, present and, of course, future. Two of her supreme passions are acting and writing. She publishes the film blog Cinematic Passions.

� Read posts by Miranda Wilding

Sarah Wiley attended graduate school to study Southeast Asian History at Northern Illinois University. Her first encounter with the region came as an exchange student in 2002-2003 with Rotary International, when she lived in Malaysia. For two summers she was an intern at Encyclopaedia Britannica’s headquarters in Chicago.

� Read posts by Sarah Wiley

Jody Williams served as the founding coordinator of the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL) until February 1998. Beginning in early 1992 with two non-governmental organizations and a staff of one – Jody Williams, she oversaw its growth to over 1,300 organizations in 95 countries working to eliminate antipersonnel landmines. In an unprecedented cooperative effort with governments, UN bodies and the International Committee of the Red Cross, she served as a chief strategist and spokesperson for the ICBL as it dramatically achieved its goal of an international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines during a diplomatic conference held in Oslo in September 1997. Three weeks later, she and the ICBL were awarded the Noble Peace Prize. Since February 1998, she has served as a Campaign Ambassador for the ICBL, speaking on its behalf all over the world.

Since 2003, Williams has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Global Justice, in the Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston. Along with sister Nobel Laureate Dr. Shirin Ebadi of Iran, Jody Williams took the lead in the establishment of the Nobel Women’s Initiative, launched in January 2006.

She is the recipient of fifteen honorary degrees, among other recognitions. In 2004, she was named by Forbes Magazine as one of the 100 most powerful women in the world. She is coauthor of After the Guns Fall Silent: The Enduring Legacy of Landmines. Her most recent book, edited with Steve Goose and Mary Wareham, analyzing the Mine Ban Treaty and its impact on other human security-related work, will be released in March. She is also the author of Britannica's entry on the ICBL.

� Read posts by Jody Williams

Daniel Willingham posts on the first and third Mondays of each month. He is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, where he's taught since 1992. Until about 2000, his research focused solely on the brain basis of learning and memory. Today his research concerns the application of cognitive psychology to K-12 education. He writes the “Ask the Cognitive Scientist” column for American Educator magazine and is the author of Why Don't Students Like School? A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom. His website is www.danielwillingham.com and he can also be found on Facebook.

� Read posts by Daniel Willingham

Frank Wilson is the book review editor of the Philadelphia Inquirer and publisher of Books, Inq. His poems have been published in First Things and Boulevard.

� Read posts by Frank Wilson

Robin Wilson is Head of the Pure Mathematics Department at the Open University (United Kingdom) Gresham Professor of Geometry in London (the oldest mathematics Chair in England), and a Fellow in Mathematics at Keble College, Oxford. He is the author and editor of thirty books, including How to Solve Sudoku: A Step-by-Step Guide and Hidden Word Sudoku: The Last Word in Sudoku Puzzles. He's written on sudoku for the 2007 Britannica Book of the Year

� Read posts by Robin Wilson

James Wines is a prolific writer, lecturer, and designer. He is a professor of architecture at Pennsylvania State University, president and founder of SITE (an architecture and environmental arts organization), and the author of Green Architecture (2000), among other books.

� Read posts by James Wines

Anita Wolff has had a 40-year career at Britannica as a copy editor, editor, and manager. She is semi-retired but maintains a lifelong interest in animal behavior and animal welfare and is part of the editorial staff of Britannica’s Advocacy for Animals site.

� Read posts by Anita Wolff

Josh Xiong is a third year University of Toronto undergraduate specializing in International Relations and Economics. He is Opinion Editor of the Toronto Globalist, a student-run international affairs magazine, and author of the blog Neocon Blues, which can be found at joshxiong.com.

� Read posts by Josh Xiong