Economists rarely perform experiments with mice. But it does happen, as in this study: “Morals and Markets,” Armin Falk, Nora Szech [pictured here], Science, vol. 340, n. 6133, May 10, 2013, pp. 707-711. The authors, at the University of Bonn and the University of Bamberg, Germany, explain: “In the experiment, subjects decide between either saving […]
Best space music videos: Hadfield/Bowie & Coleman/Anderson/Bach
These are our picks for best space music videos of the past few years. In our view, they qualify as being improbable in all the best senses of that word. Both videos show performances done by musician-astronauts in spacecraft orbiting the earth. Chris Hadfield performs David Bowie‘s “Space Oddity”: Cady Coleman and Ian Anderson (of […]
Mind, the Gap
Some British psychiatrists are going to war with some British psychologists, suggests an article by Jamie Doward in The Observer. The article sports this headline, subheadline, and first paragraphs: Psychiatrists under fire in mental health battle British Psychological Society to launch attack on rival profession, casting doubt on biomedical model of mental illness There is no […]
Simanek’s Perpetual Futility
Donald E. Simanek‘s “Perpetual Futility—A short history of the search for perpetual motion” is an introduction to the perhaps perpetual search for perpetual motion. It begins: Popular histories too often present perpetual motion machines as “freaks and curiosities” of engineering without telling us just how they were understood at the time. They also fail to inform […]