This post first ran November 30, 2011. Last week, I fell in the Thames. I only fell in up to my thighs, but the gaping, bleeding puncture on my shin, inside which I could see geologic-looking layers of anatomy — that was a bad sign. So I found myself at the A&E (that’s ER to […]
Erik wonders if the nonsense words that populate the best children’s books are a good idea when your kid is already tasked with learning two languages. “Someday he’ll learn the words “muggle,” “orc,” “Ewok,” Klingon,” “melange,” and “thoughtful lawmaker,” none of which are real,” he writes, prompting many assurances in the comments that “melange” is […]
What scientific concept would everyone be better off knowing? When the magazine Edge asked mathematician and economist Eric Weinstein, he described the following: What rigorous system would be capable of tying together an altered reality of layered falsehoods in which absolutely nothing can be assumed to be as it appears. Such a system, in continuous […]
Inspired by true events Me: Alexa. Good morning. Alexa: Good morning! On this day in 1961, NASA sent a chimpanzee named Ham into space, flying 155 miles up in the Mercury capsule. But these scientists weren’t just aping around. This mission was designed to tell them about – Me: Alexa stop. Alexa, did […]
When the ancient Greeks wanted to get something done, they really committed. In 499 B.C., in a bid to get out of an unpleasant job assignment, Histaeus, the leader of Miletus, plotted a rebellion against the Persian king Darius the Great. Elaborately coded missives sent to co-conspirators would only rouse suspicion. He needed something much […]
“It is easy for me to imagine that everything in our lives is just a creation of some other entity for their entertainment.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson, on the odds that all human existence is a simulation “Two tech billionaires [are] secretly engaging scientists to work on breaking us out of the simulation.” – The Guardian “What […]
This was written for Father’s Day, June 11, 2012. But it also suits this holiday season when too many people are missing too many other people. That is, you know who a person is by the shape of the hole they leave when they’re not there. Here you go. It’s not sad.
I know a guy who doesn’t have a birthday. Andy* was born in the Moroccan desert. His parents were nomads. There were no smartphones in the 1960s and a nomadic tribe didn’t have much use for the Gregorian calendar. And when it came to recalling the exact day and month of Andy’s birth, there were […]
