“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks” is a proverb I learned in primary school along with other common English idioms. It never occurred to me at the time that the saying contradicted the also-common “You’re never too old to learn.” It turns out that even if the battle between “fixed mindsets” and “growth […]
Not magic but science
Mechanical engineer Bill Nye, also known as The Science Guy, has a new popular science program on Netflix called Bill Nye Saves the World. During the first episode, Nye dons a light blue lab coat and demonstrates the mechanics of climate change and the greenhouse effect. “As I hold the bulb of this thermometer,” Nye says, “the liquid […]
Making stuff up
I took an extra year to finish college for health reasons. That year taught me a lot about myself, and it also gave me front-line exposure to the uncertainty and ambiguity that’s a normal part of conventional medicine. Take the adjective idiopathic. It’s used to describe conditions or symptoms that seem to arise in individuals from nowhere […]
A timely example: denial at work
The merchants of doubt are back in business. Just as I wrote about denial in public controversies this weekend, London’s Daily Mail charged yet another climate science data conspiracy. The Daily Mail isn’t new to the game of “If you can’t lie, obfuscate,” but the public’s comprehension of and trust in climate science isn’t a […]
Nostalgia is no way to build a life
One of my favorite things is looking at the stars, especially in areas with low levels of light pollution. When I lived in Jamaica, my grandparents still had an exposed balcony (we installed railings when my grandmother developed dementia). I would sometimes sit on the balcony, long after my grandparents had gone to bed. Their […]
Raising our information standards
As long as there’s been an internet, people have forwarded one another stories and photos and award offers, some inspiring, some horrifying, some valid, some fictional. What some reporters are now calling “fake news” is a sub-category of the content we information traders are willing to traffic in and share with each other. During this fall’s US […]
