Guest Thinkers — February 22, 2011

Creative Destruction in Las Vegas

Is this what Joseph Schumpeter had in mind when he coined the phrase “Creative Destruction”? Today, the Las Vegas Strip’s first mass-market casino-hotel, Stardust, was imploded to make way for Boyd Gaming Corp.’s $4.4

billion megaresort Echelon: “Hundreds of people partied beneath tents and on makeshift patios before

Boyd chairman Bill Boyd’s four grandsons pushed a plunger to detonate

the former Stardust casino. The blast generated a massive dust cloud

that chased the revelers into cars, buses and nearby casinos.”

Hey, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.

[image: Yahoo! News]

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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