Politics & Current Affairs — December 26, 2009

Drums of War

The New York Times is accused of beating the drums of war by printing an editorial advocating a military strike against Iran.

bigthinkeditor

“Just a few of the latest incidents: we’ve been leaked the news that Barack Obama is almost powerless to stop Israel from attacking Iran, should it choose to do so. Yet more supposedly secret and hitherto overlooked documents have surfaced, purporting to contain evidence of a weapons program in Iran. And, most significantly, the US House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved new sanctions against Iran. (The Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act was co-authored by Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a representative with apparently very flexible parameters when it comes to condemning ‘terrorism’.) I raise the subject again now because of a nagging suspicion, deep down, that all this is rather more than just a random collection of discrete incidents. True, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bolton are no longer in a position to act, but it still seems as if this conversation is heading right back to the same conclusions that those gentlemen were advocating back in 2007.”

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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