Culture & Religion — April 16, 2010

Milestone Mania

Because of the sheer number of games that have been played over time, finding truly unique statistical milestones in baseball is becoming more and more difficult.

bigthinkeditor

Baseball has reached a point that few other professional sports have reached: “There have been so many games and so many pitches thrown that just about every unusual event that is reasonably likely to happen already has,” writes Matthew Futterman. “To find anything truly unique, historians have to slice the game so thinly that the most heralded achievements … are starting to seem a bit picayune.”

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

Guest Thinkers

Living Well

Epicurus’s program for attaining serenity boils down to “Forget about God, death, pain and acquisition, and your worries are over,” writes Joseph Epstein. But would such a detached life be worth living?