Guest Thinkers — May 25, 2010

Book Learnin’

Historical perversions and obfuscating euphemisms have the support of the Texas school book board which is seeking to tell an especially politicized version of history.

bigthinkeditor

Historical perversions and obfuscating euphemisms have the support of the Texas school book board which is seeking to tell an especially politicized version of history. The board wants to emphasize Jefferson Davis over Abraham Lincoln in history texts and replace “slave trade” with “triangle trade” and “capitalism” with “free enterprise system”.

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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Surprising Science

Global Cooling

Adding nanoparticles to water increase its thermal conductivity, or its ability to take heat away from something, which could save the world a significant amount of electricity.