Politics & Current Affairs — April 12, 2010

Supreme Decision

Many liberals want President Obama’s coming Supreme Court nominee to be in the mold of Justice William J. Brennan Jr. But today’s court may not be a place for a consensus builder.

bigthinkeditor

Liberals want President Obama to find a progressive nominee for the Supreme Court who is “an intellectual giant, and also passionate, persuasive, and politically savvy enough to build consensus and outfox the court’s conservatives” — someone not unlike Justice William J. Brennan Jr., who retired from the court in 1990. But the modern day Supreme Court may not be a hospitable place for a consensus builder in Brennan’s mold, writes Seth Stern.

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.

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7 min

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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

Surprising Science

Spank Not

New research shows that children who are spanked are more likely to become aggressive, building on a previous study showing that spanked children scored lower on cognitive tests.