Dan Dennett writes, in his new book, Intuition Pumps, which is extracted in The Observer: “I am amazed at how many really smart people don’t understand that you can make big mistakes in public and emerge none the worse for it. I know distinguished researchers who will go to preposterous lengths to avoid having to acknowledge […]
Just the facts, man… The persistence of misconceptions
Derek Muller writes (and explains in more detail than I’m presenting here): “It is a common view that ‘if only someone could break this down and explain it clearly enough, more people would understand.’ However it is debatable whether clear, concise explanations really work…. People have existing ideas about real world phenomena before they encounter […]
A homosexual copulation, on first arrival in The Netherlands from the Cape Verde Islands
May 19th, 2013 was an historical moment in the history of European ornithology. Four Iago Sparrows (Passer iagoensis) arrived in The Netherlands from the Cape Verde Islands aboard a ship, named Plancius. They are the first know individuals of that species (endemic to the islands off West Africa) to have reached Europe. As the ship […]
Filled pauses at the Supreme Court
Following our Improbable article on ‘Laughter at the Supreme Court‘, we turn now to the implications of ‘Filled Pauses’ at the same institution. A Filled Pause (FP) can be uhm, ah, uh, &etc. The questions are: how often do they crop up, and which of the court’s Justices make the most use of them? And, perhaps […]