Personal Growth — April 12, 2012

The Man Who Copyrighted His Own Mind: Jonathon Keats LIVE on Big Think

It is no stretch to say that Jonathon Keats is Big Think’s favorite living artist, experimental philosopher, or what you will. This is a man who has attempted to genetically engineer God in a petri dish, sold real estate in alternate dimensions of space time, and created a porn theater for plants (videos of bees pollinating flowers).

Yesterday, he spoke with Big Think’s Jason Gots about his work and his conviction that the world needs more curious amateurs willing to perform bold public experiments that ignore the narrow boundaries of our hyper-specialized age.

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

How Ultra-Low Power Computing Will Change Everything

Computer performance has doubled roughly every 18 months since the 1970s. But computers’ energy efficiency has also been doubling, which may prove to be the more important development.