Guest Thinkers — August 17, 2010

Green Prisons

“Do the world’s incarcerated have a responsibility to save the planet? The Washington State Department of Corrections seems to think so.” The Independent on environmentally friendly prisons.

bigthinkeditor

“Do the world’s incarcerated have a responsibility to save the planet? The Washington State Department of Corrections seems to think so.” The Independent on environmentally friendly prisons: “This week, the US Green Building Council awarded the department North America’s most prestigious environmental award—a plaque for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design—for a 21-building, medium-security extension at its Coyote Ridge Corrections Centre in Connell, a small city in the state’s Franklin County. … The prison’s facility manager, Glenn Jones, told reporters this month the jail had performed ‘better than we hoped’. He described how its laundry system reduced reliance on a local aquifer, and how a rubbish recycling programme had cut the amount of waste produced by a half, impressing local legislators.”

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.

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Men financially dependent on their female partner cheat more often, while financially dependent women look elsewhere less frequently, says a study on income disparity and infidelity.