Guest Thinkers — May 13, 2010

Video: Octopus vs. Subcompact Shark

Octopus and hidden cameras go together like chocolate and peanut butter. You never know what those crazy cephalopods will get up to. Today, Boing Boing dug up some neat old National Geographic hidden camera footage that solved a marine murder mystery: Why were so many spiny dogfish turning up dead at the aquarium?

Better to watch it with the sound off, though. The voiceover really milks the octopus vs. shark angle. Yes, spiny dogfish are a species of small schooling Atlantic shark–but the narrator is laying it on a little thick the whole unstoppable predator trope. Oregon Expat explains why the clip hardly depicts the Cthulu vs. Jaws scenario the narrator sets up for you.

Photo credit: Flickr user Photocapy, distributed under Creative Commons.

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

The Big Freeze: How the universe will end

Heat death is a deceptive name. As Michio Kaku explains, entropy doesn’t necessarily refer to dramatic destruction; it’s more about how stuff just tends to fall apart.