In the Broadway redaction of Pygmalion, Professor Higgins regretted how proper English is considered freakish, and “in America, they haven’t used it for years.” The problem glares in the speech of television commentators, for whom coiffures are more important than diction: while grammar is banished from the social media, our urban landscape has become a jungle … Read more
There really is something charming about Bill Nye the Science Guy. I’ve never been a fan by any measure: for one thing, I’m too old. But Nye’s screen persona has genuine appeal, and he really did help a generation of American kids develop an interest in science. So I was a bit upset when he … Read more
A museum curator here in New York recently showed me some extraordinary documents and I touched them with awe, albeit with cotton gloves. There was Benjamin Franklin’s annotated copy of the Constitution, and a long letter by Washington refusing to run for a second presidential term, because all he had to commend himself was his character, which was … Read more
A few weeks ago Politico published an article by professional skeptic Michael Shermer—I think when you are the publisher of a magazine called Skeptic, you can be classified as a “professional skeptic,” right?—called “Why Politicians Need Science,” with the subtitle, “Remember: before the triumph of science, we burned witches at the stake and thought that kings … Read more
Some say the world has gone mad, others that it is only now becoming sane. The disagreement shows that people disagree on what it is to be rational. It also reflects a widespread and very basic change in how people think. Joe Bissonnette notes that the change is visible in IQ test results. For decades … Read more
Confirmation bias is the tendency to ascribe greater significance to information that supports our pre-existing theories and lesser significance to information that contradicts those theories. We often do this subconsciously. For example you get a new car, and now you notice that same type of car on the road with a much greater frequency than … Read more
As the sixtieth anniversary of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s death approaches this April, a renewed interest in his thought has found its way into the popular consciousness. A play praising the life of Teilhard, titled The De Chardin Project, ran from November 20 until December 14 in Toronto, Canada. Additionally, a two-hour biography on Teilhard’s … Read more