Technology & Innovation — April 30, 2009

An Unenchanted Evening With Barack Obama

The Times’ Jeff Zeleny might have gone a bit too far with his adjectives at last night’s 100-day press conference.

Zeleny asked Obama to tell the world what surprised, humbled, enchanted and troubled him after his first trimester in office. Even a veteran linguist like the O-man stumbled on the answer. Lesson to the White House press corps: don’t mix questions to the president with Snow White-esque prompts.

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.

▸

7 min

—

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

Surprising Science

When Video Games Imitate Art

There isn’t any data supporting this fact, per se, but it is possible that images of Mario and Pac-Man are as instantly indelible as some of history’s most famous portraits, […]