Guest Thinkers — September 2, 2011

New Lessons from Holmes today on Scientific American

Lessons from Sherlock Holmes fans: a new installment of the series is now available at Scientific American, here. I will not be posting any more series updates on this blog, but you can expect new columns regularly—for now, every Tuesday and Friday—on Scientific American. Again, if you’d like to be notified whenever a new article posts, you can follow me on Twitter, @mkonnikova. Or, if you don’t have Twitter, please email me at maria.konnikova [at] bigthink [dot] com, and I will create an update list so that you can be emailed of new developments. Have a wonderful weekend.

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

Surprising Science

How to make love like a caveman

What was prehistoric human sex like? Most of us conjure “the hackneyed image of the caveman, dragging a dazed woman by her hair with one hand, a club in the other.” Psychologist Christopher Ryan says this image is mistaken in every detail.