Guest Thinkers — September 1, 2010

Quick update for 2/23/2010

Nothing like the flu to get you off track

Posts might be a little sparse for the next few days – I’m recovering from a rather nasty bout with a flu-type thing, so I’m fallen behind in pretty much everything. I’ll try to get back up to speed here in a few days, but if you run across any fascinating volcano news, feel free to post it here.

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

Guest Thinkers

Friday Flotsam: Another rumbling Russian and tossing nuclear waste into volcanoes

The latest USGS/SI volcano report, how we use the magnetism of minerals to tell us about a volcano and should we dispose of nuclear waste by throwing it into a volcano (?!)