In perhaps the same way that Americans prattle on about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the French never tire of the death of Napoleon Bonaparte. In fairness, the circumstances surrounding the Little Corporal’s later years, death and burial are…unusual. At age 46, he was exiled to the godforsaken island of St. Helena. He was […]
Month: October 2010
In his October 8 New York Times op-ed column, David Brooks offered his assessment of the character of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg in the movie The Social Network: “It’s not that he’s a bad person. He’s just never been house-trained. He’s been raised in a culture reticent to talk about social and moral conduct.” This […]
May we present the newest of the people of LWON, Richard Panek? Richard thinks that the history of the telescope is a history of mankind’s view of itself; that Einstein and Freud introduced us to the possibility of things both important and invisible; that our knowledge of the universe is constrained by the cosmological Dark […]
While browsing this year’s list of Ig Nobel awardees (improbable research is so much more fun than the kind that wins Nobels), I stumbled across a quirky little study on The Peter Principle. What’s The Peter Principle? I’m glad you asked. In 1941, a man by the name of Laurence Peter became a teacher. He […]
This is the story of Massachusetts General Hospital case #31-2010: a 29-year-old woman whom I’ll call Melissa. I’m telling Melissa’s story not for its common-sense lesson—avoid interactions with cats*—but because it shows that doctor detective-work happens outside of TV Land. Melissa was a veterinary assistant at an animal hospital. One day, at work, a cat […]
“The universe is what it is, and we’re trying to find out what it is,” John Huchra told me. “The explorers of the new world weren’t trying to prove theories, they were looking at what was out there.” Huchra was an observational astronomer, as opposed to a theorist. Theorists say that, given physics, the universe […]
A few years ago a friend of mine gave a party and screened the movie Microcosmos for the revelers. Perhaps it was the punch I had imbibed, but I seem to recall that the film – a montage of mesmerizing bug scenes including ants drinking from a dewdrop and caterpillars moving in single-file – had […]
It’s true, some of those science documentaries are pretty condescending. http://abstrusegoose.com/78