I am beginning to suspect that many are reacting to the overstimulation of the modern world – the accelerating pace of change, data overload, time pressure, work and relationship instability – by turning off their brains. The rise of fundamentalism and the “family values” push, both efforts to turn back the clock, is one set […]
Read more...Those who remember the paranoid days immediately following September 11 may recall Nuke-O-Matic. The site let you pick a location and size of nuclear weapon, and then see how extensive the damage would be, with concentric circles color coded for the level of devastation. This article, “Study details catastrophic impact of nuclear attack on U.S. […]
Read more...OK, I am being completely unfair, I just wanted to get your attention. The blog New Economist pointed me to a couple of posts by what it calls “the always readable Cato Institute gadfly Will Wilkinson” on the subject of happiness research. He finds most of it to be lousy. I have no doubt he […]
Read more...Not to worry, I have not become a creationist. But each era has had firmly held beliefs about how the world works that have been displaced by later theories. The article below is a mundane but nevertheless important example. Some Danish scientists have questioned the long-held belief that nerve signals are electrical, since electrical impulses […]
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