Surprising Science — February 4, 2009

Guangzhou Is Looking A Lot Like Lagos

Here’s one demographic that’s been lurking under the surface of the new China: Nigerians living in Guangzhou. Apparently with nothing more than a few yuan in their pockets, Nigerians with a head for business have been buying one-way tickets from Lagos and turning up in Chinese cities to enter the textile trade.

As The New Yorker reports, the profit margins are limited and the living conditions are grim, but Nigerian merchants are finding more success than they would back home and are increasingly adding to China’s cultural soup by intermarriage and permanent residency. Will Guangzhou become that shining city on a hill for 21st century migrants?

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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.

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High Culture

6 great books with wildly unreliable narrators

Dive into the twisted truths and concealed realities told by literature’s most unreliable narrators.

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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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