An app that gives you information about bar populations

In my review of the futuristic novel Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, I mentioned one element that the author envisaged which was an iPod-like device that people carried with them that would immediately calculate your attractiveness, informing everyone nearby both of your absolute score as well as your ranking in a room full of people. It sounded a little disconcerting, even creepy. [Read more…]

The situational dependence of moral judgments

A lot of outrage has been expressed at the behavior of the school administrators and the school nurse who did not allow a student suffering an asthma attack the use of his inhaler. The question naturally arises as to how anyone could be so callous as to not respond to an immediate visible need. This was especially so with respect to the nurse whom one would think would put medical needs first and bureaucratic niceties second. [Read more…]

Game over for the climate?

Anyone who is even minimally aware of how climate science works knows that you cannot use any one weather event or one anomalous season in any single location to argue for or against global warming. But some of the most vociferous opponents of the global warming hypothesis tend to be scientifically naïve and parochial and think that way (“Look at that snow! So much for global warming! Ha! Ha!). Maybe such people in this area of Ohio will be sobered up by the fact that the last winter was the warmest on record (it was barely a winter) and that we are predicted to have a warmer than normal summer. [Read more…]

Swearing and pain

(Note: I accidentally posted a draft of this yesterday before it was ready for publishing. I deleted the draft and am reposting it today with some additional editing and new material. I apologize for any confusion.)

I myself do not routinely swear. But when I accidentally do something stupid and hurt myself, I will find myself involuntarily swearing. I am sure that many people have had that same experience or at least being strongly tempted to swear when experiencing pain. But why do we do that? [Read more…]

The Catholic Church’s war on women picks up the pace

It is quite extraordinary how the Catholic Church seems to go out if its way to alienate women. Fresh from their assault on nuns (see here and here), the US Conference of Catholic Bishops is now targeting Girl Scouts. Both my daughters were girl scouts and it would be tough to find a more wholesome or inoffensive group. But the old men of the Catholic Church seem to see it as a gateway to evil. [Read more…]

Observation and inference

As a scientist who interacts a lot with the general public, I am often asked to explain phenomena that lay people have observed. I used to take those observations at face value and was often stumped at coming up with an explanation because of the inconsistent elements the observations seemed to contain. But I have found from experience that what people tell me they ‘saw’ is not purely raw observational data but that when you go back and actually repeat the situation, the observations are different from what was originally reported and that much of the paradoxical elements go away. [Read more…]

Bird navigation

There have been some interesting developments in learning how birds navigate. It was thought that birds had tiny chunks of metal in their beaks or inner ears that enabled them to detect the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field. But more research has thrown doubt on the existence of these so-called ‘compass cells’, saying that they were just a type of white blood cells. [Read more…]