Just a quick observation. I talk a lot about how economics assumes that people always make rational decisions and how there are many experiments that show that it isn’t actually the case. We are actually really bad at making rational choices when it comes to money. Why wasn’t this ever an issue in medicine? I [...]
This is me living in the past. I’ve come across a couple reminders of why I loved and hated (but mostly loved) treeplanting for so long. One’s an article in the McGill Tribune including beautiful shots of Manitoba lakes, a helicopter I’ve been in a million times and Eric Rowles. In case you’re one of [...]
Every year, The Edge Foundation asks some of the smartest people in the world a question. A couple of my favourites from the past were “What have you changed your mind about and why?” and “What is your dangerous idea?” This year’s question is the best yet and was put forth by linguist and Montrealer [...]
Recently I had some classes about the ethics of doing research on humans in developing countries. There are many hoops to jump through in order to get approval to do research on humans in developed countries but when you move to developing countries, things get even stickier because, among many ethical issues, you shouldn’t be [...]
Seventy-five years ago, beer as we knew it changed. The first beer sold in a can flew off the shelf on this date in 1935. It apparently had a overwhelming positive reaction from beer drinkers everywhere. I wonder how long it took for the first shot-gun to take place? Check here for more of a history.
Since The Besnard Lakes opened their show with audio from Carl Sagan, my love of Sagan has been rekindled. People like this don’t come along very often:
Well said Jonah. The story appeared in the New Yorker in December about the alleged ‘decline effect’, a mysterious effect that attenuated scientific findings. Basically, some scientists are finding that after they make an important experimental discovery, each additional experiment they do shows the strength of the effect they found to be smaller than before. [...]
There’s an interview on wired.com with photographer Richard Nicholson and his new book, Analog, The Last One Out, Please Turn On The Light. The book is comprised of 4×5 photographs of various darkrooms in London. A celebration of analog photography. The kind of photography that takes years to master. The kind of photography that I [...]
Marketplace, a show dedicated to protecting consumers, comes down hard against homeopathy. Basically, they decided that spending money on homeopathy was a big waste of time, although they rightfully noted that people benefit from speaking from a homeopath because they actually have time to listen to their patients–time most medical doctors don’t have. You can [...]
Didn’t have time today to get around to talking about Jonah Lehrer’s article The Truth Wears Off like I said I would. It’s an article about the ‘decline effect’ where scientific effects seem to get smaller the more we measure them. There are some interesting things in the article although most of the things I [...]
