Category Archives: Science

SPREADSHEET ERRORS (COMMENT).

SPREADSHEET ERRORS (COMMENT). In a comment on this post, Henry Nejako pointed out an article in New York magazine about how a graduate student had found “a major flaw in an influential 2010 economic paper by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth … Continue reading

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DID TOOLS CHANGE MAN’S BODY?

DID TOOLS CHANGE MAN’S BODY? I am accustomed to think of Darwinian natural selection as reflecting the adaptation of a species to a changing natural environment. This article by Sarah Reardon in NewScientist reports on new evidence that evolution may … Continue reading

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SMALL SAMPLES—ANOTHER PROBLEM WITH PUBLISHED ARTICLES.

SMALL SAMPLES—ANOTHER PROBLEM WITH PUBLISHED ARTICLES. I have posted, for example here, about studies by John Ioannidis and others which find that about one third of frequently cited scientific papers turn out to be wrong. Among the reasons is a … Continue reading

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TWIN STUDIES ARE NOT ABOUT TWINS.

TWIN STUDIES ARE NOT ABOUT TWINS. Annalisa, knowing my interests, gave me this link to a post about a famous set of identical twins. They were born in 1933 and separated at six months, with one being raised by his … Continue reading

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380,000 YEARS AFTER THE BIG BANG.

380,000 YEARS AFTER THE BIG BANG. I began this blog with a post about the evidence of the Big Bang in our night sky. I was astounded that scientists had been able to find data about an event that took … Continue reading

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VIKING TECHNOLOGY—SUNSTONES.

VIKING TECHNOLOGY—SUNSTONES. This wikipedia article cites written records and inventories in medieval Iceland (1200 to 1500) which refer to sunstones, which one Icelandic source from the period says could be used to locate the sun even in a completely overcast … Continue reading

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THE SOUNDS OF THE UNIVERSE.

THE SOUNDS OF THE UNIVERSE. The first post on this blog expressed my wonder that the echo from the Big Bang makes up a lot of the static you hear on the radio. This article by Honor Harger on Huffington … Continue reading

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POPPER’S ATTACK ON HEGEL.

POPPER’S ATTACK ON HEGEL. I showed the passage from Hegel about heat and sound to Mary Jane, who does the family philosophy. She suggested that perhaps the translation was unfair to Hegel. The translation is by Karl Popper, and Google … Continue reading

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HEGEL—“THE FATHER OF ALL PSEUDOTHINKERS”?

HEGEL—:THE FATHER OF ALL PSEUDOTHINKERS”? From time to time, I mention my lack of aptitude for philosophy. I am grateful to Nassim Nicholas Taub for this quotation from Hegel (quoted in FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS): “Sound is the change in the … Continue reading

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THE WONDER OF CELLOPHANE.

THE WONDER OF CELLOPHANE. Lee Bryant sent me this article from the Smithsonian by Mike Dash about the discovery in 1978 of a family of five that had lived in Siberia out of contact with anybody else for forty years. … Continue reading

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