Our columns in other publications — The ‘Feedback’ column in New Scientist magazine, beginning in September 2022, and the “Improbable Research”column that ran for 13 years in The Guardian newspaper.
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Double standards— World Standards Day 2023 will arrive soon, two days after it arrives. As Feedback noted last year (17 September 2022), having double Standards Days is standard behaviour. This year, most of the world will officially celebrate […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine is about the new Ig Nobel Prize winners. The Feedback column was created and edited by John Hoyland. I first knew Feedback (and John’s work) as a subscriber to New Scientist. Every year the column would have an especially fun and interesting writeup of the new Ig […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: When conversation dies — “Can the dead communicate with cell phones?” asks the headline of a press release from King’s University College, Canada…. The press release explains: “Dr. Imants Barušs, Professor of Psychology, has been awarded a $44,500 […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Time for a nap — Brainy people get to dream a little more than not-quite-so-brainy people, correlationally speaking, if their brains and genomes accord with the findings of researchers from the University of the Republic in Uruguay, University […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Nit-picking literature — Little things bother some people. Elizabeth Kowaleski Wallace wonders why little things failed to bother Robinson Crusoe, the hero of Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel, who spent 28 years documenting his plight as a castaway […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has five segments. Here are bits of each of them: Down, with texting — Want to guess what might happen if someone walks while texting? If you prefer a formally educated guess to an autodidactic supposition, Paulo Pelicioni and his colleagues at the University of New […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Al’s AI ailment — AI spells trouble for all the Alanas, Alannas, Alannahs, Alainnas, Alans, Alains, Allans, Allens, Alens, Alins, Aluns and other persons whose names begin with the letter pair “A then L” or the pair […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Suspicious eyes — In the year 2001, US president George W. Bush foreshadowed a hope that decades later would pervade the robotics industry. Bush stood next to Russian president Vladimir Putin at a press conference in Slovenia […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Sheepish fears — … They performed experiments exposing sheep to a dog sitting in a window, and to the window without the dog. They tried giving the sheep drugs to reduce anxiety and giving them drugs to […]
This week’s Feedback column (that I write) in New Scientist magazine has four segments. Here are bits of each of them: Multi-scare the birds — …Their report advises that: “At present, there is no bird control technique that provides maximum protection for crops, so it is recommended to use a combination of scaring methods at the same […]