Technology & Innovation — August 21, 2010

The Economic Case for Polygyny

Big Think has called August “The Month of Thinking Dangerously” and served up one radical idea each day in the Dangerous Ideas blog. The ideas started off dangerously enough, with bioethicist Jacob Appel advocating that the government spike our drinking water with lithium in order to cut the suicide rate and Stephen Hawking urging us to to leave Earth or face extinction. But from my vantage point as a Canadian, the idea of giving prisoners the right to vote is rather tame; inmates already have that right here in Canada. Today, to put the danger back in Dangerous Ideas, I make an economic case for polygyny.

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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