Guest Thinkers — July 8, 2011

A Lawyer’s Advice for Reporters Covering Rape Trials

Attorney Jill Filipovic has a terrific primer for reporters covering rape cases. Her post was inspired by this story in Mother Jones about the Jamie Leigh Jones/KBR rape case. Jones alleges that she was gang raped while working for KBR in Iraq.

Last year, Megan Carpentier wrote a bracing debunking of KBR’s spin in RH Reality Check, her piece well worth revisiting.

[Photo credit: Phil Roeder, Creative Commons. This is a photo of the U.S. Supreme Court, which doesn’t try rape cases, but I like the image.]

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

Brian Eno: “Speech Is Song”

Currently collaborating with the British poet Rick Holland, music producer Brian Eno has seen speech take on different qualities when it is set to music. “We are all singing,” he says.