I had a most curious dream the other night, deeply moving. In the dream, my gorgeous ex-fiancee, my dear lady wife of forty years, had been told that she only had a week to live. So we flew to Fiji, where we lived for years. We rented a room in that most historic of buildings,…
I use Google Maps on my iPhone a lot when I travel. It lets me figure out how far I have to go, and how long it’s going to take me to get there. Not only that, but it can estimate travel times and distances for a variety of modes of transport—car, public transport, taxi,…
Michelle Obama is in the news this week because of the publication of her book, “Becoming”. In the book, she makes the statement that she will “never forgive” Donald Trump because he pushed the “birther conspiracy”. For those wondering, that was the claim that Obama was actually born in Kenya. It’s clear from the context…
Well, it appears that these days Europe is not just welcoming Islam. It is bending over and bowing to Islam … the latest case in point: BERLIN (AP) — The European Court of Human Rights says an Austrian woman’s conviction for calling the prophet of Islam a pedophile didn’t breach her freedom of speech. The…
I got to thinking about the Kavanaugh case and the #IBelieveSurvivors movement. As folks who follow my work know, I’m a data junkie. I don’t believe anecdotes. I want evidence, facts, data. I agree totally with what Robert Heinlein said: “What are the facts? Again and again and again – what are the facts? Shun…
Here is a story of three simple searches. The search I did is for the following terms: left wing political violence united states First, the results on Bing, Microsoft’s search engine … All but one have “left wing” or “left” in the headline. Next, the same search on DuckDuckGo, the privacy-oriented search engine … Again,…
I really don’t like being misquoted. In discussing my scientific work, someone will inevitably pop up to say something like “But you claimed that XYZ was absolutely true”, when in fact I actually said something like “XYZ might possibly be valid in some limited specific circumstances”. The distortions, the misunderstandings, the misquotations are astounding. And…
