Technology & Innovation — July 28, 2009

A Bright Spot for the Auto Industry

Customers are already flocking to the 5-day-old federally funded program “Cash-For-Clunkers,” according to the Detroit Free-Press and the New York Daily News. The $1 billion initiative gives consumers a $3,500 or $4,500 discount for swapping old gas guzzlers to purchase or lease new fuel efficient cars. The hope is that consumers will spend the money they’re saving on gas to stimulate the economy. It will be interesting to see if the streak continues. In Google Trends, variations of “Cash for Clunkers” climbed to the top of this week’s “hottest searches” list.

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

Politics & Current Affairs

Obama’s Sino Expert and The Rising China

The Sino-expert didn’t suggest our President Obama to quote Karl Marx but Mencius. I hope the Chinese comrades have the courage to get rid of the “Goat skin” of Communism and further walk out the shadow of Deng Xiaoping. Sino-expert of America can learn something from Mencius. Chinese surely can learn from him too and change the modern China to a positive rising China.