Guest Thinkers — August 16, 2010

Viral Marketing the Pope

The AP reports that organizers of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Austria next month are offering the faithful a foretaste: daily cell phone text messages with quotes from the pontiff. The Archdiocese of Vienna said the service, which began Sunday and will continue through the pope’s Sept. 7-9 visit, will provide free excerpts of his sermons, blessings and writings.

Currently on holiday, the Pope also framed an appeal on the environment in religious terms:

We cannot simply do what we want with this Earth of ours, with what has been entrusted to us…We must respect the interior laws of creation, of this Earth, to learn these laws and obey them if we want to survive….This obedience to the voice of the Earth is more important for our future happiness … than the desires of the moment. Our Earth is talking to us and we must listen to it and decipher its message if we want to survive.

a computer generated image of a human brain.

Thinking

The great free will debate featuring Michio Kaku and Steven Pinker

Who — or what — really controls your mind?

Building destroyed by the Halifax Explosion. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

The Past

The largest accidental explosion of all time

More than a century ago, Halifax suffered an accidental blast one-fifth the size of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

a collage of photos of a man with a hat and a book.

High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

a group of five matches on a pink background.

The Well

Signs you’re burned out — and how to bounce back

If you don’t feel better after the weekend, the “burnout paradox” could explain why.

▸

7 min

—

with

Laurie Santos

Starts With A Bang

The trick to instantly identifying JWST images

If you can identify a foreground star, the spike patterns are a dead giveaway as to whether it’s a JWST image or any other observatory.

Up Next

Guest Thinkers

Paul Kurtz on What’s Missing from The New Atheism

The philosopher Paul Kurtz has published a new position booklet that addresses much of what I have been arguing is missing–and so deeply troubling–about the New Atheist movement. Below is […]