Guest Thinkers — December 21, 2010

Video of December 17 Raid on Arhab

The Yemen Embassy in DC has posted a video of the Dec. 17 raid on an al-Qaeda safehouse in Arhab to You Tube.

The video is fascinating – just over 7 minutes – and if you listen closely you can hear security forces calling on Mujali to come out, although I didn’t hear them calling on Qasim al-Raymi to exit the building. Of course, he escaped so maybe he was already gone.

It was also impossible for me to tell whether the mafraj had some qat skeletons on the floor. (Does AQ chew qat?) I do know that I wouldn’t do any “ghost-busting” in that mafraj.

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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