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 […]
Some years ago, a law student looked at US government attempts to regulate products that claimed to prevent hair from vanishing. The student — who retained his own head of hair and later became a law professor — wrote this paper: “Not Its Crowning Glory: Obstacles for FDA in Regulating Ingested Dietary Supplements Purporting to […]
Last night two of our editors were in the audience of a special event at the Coolidge Corner Cinema. Afterwards, one of them wrote (on Facebook) this appraisal: Last night, we went to a screening of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” The movie was preceded by a talk by Melissa Franklin, chair of the Harvard Physics […]
The basic laws of human stupidity are ancient. The definitive essay on the subject is younger. Called The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity, it was published in 1976 by an Italian economist. Professor Carlo M Cipolla [pictured here, below] taught at several universities in Italy, and for many years at the University of California, Berkeley. He also […]
A proposed new law restricts the appearance, in films, of non-local pigeons. Here is the complete text of the bill: HOUSE DOCKET, NO. 2203 FILED ON: 1/12/2009 HOUSE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . No. 816 AN ACT RELATIVE TO PIGEONS IN MOTION PICTURES. Be it enacted […]