When the Europeans discovered the “New World”, they infamously brought with them diseases which that world had never before encountered. Infectious agents like smallpox, typhus and cholera were generously shared with the local population – often deliberately so – and were responsible for significantly decimating the natives’ numbers. It’s a common theme; a species colonizes [...]

A photo of an impish Richard Feynman playing the bongos appears in Ray Monk’s biography of Oppenheimer. It is accompanied by the caption “Richard Feynman, Julian Schwinger’s main rival for the title of greatest American physicist in history”. That got me thinking; who is the greatest American physicist in history? What would your choice be? [...]

When I was in graduate school I once came across a computer program that’s used to predict the activities of as yet unsynthesized drug molecules. The program is “trained” on a set of existing drug molecules with known activities (the “training set”) and is then used to predict those of an unknown set (the “test [...]

Why are we drawn to tragic heroes much more then to conventional ones? Perhaps because tragic heroes, because of the flaws and ambiguity inherent in their nature, continue to intrigue us long after we have finished admiring the essentially simple and good character of conventional heroes. Hamlet catches hold of our imagination much more than [...]

If we were omniscient and had infinitely fast and perfect computers, perhaps we could use quantum mechanics to explain chemistry, biology, economics and psychology. In reality, no amount of quantum mechanical theorizing can explain how molecular aggregates coalesce to give rise to self-replicating assemblies, let alone how these assemblies acquire the capacity for consciousness, introspection [...]

Since we were discussing the differences between climate change “skeptics” and “deniers” (or “denialists”, whatever you want to call them) the other day this piece is timely. The Wall Street Journal is not exactly known for reasoned discussion of climate change, but this Op-Ed piece may set a new standard even for its own naysayers [...]

Why do people believe in God, ghosts, goblins, spirits, the afterlife and conspiracy theories? Two common threads running through these belief systems are what skeptic Michael Shermer in his insightful book “The Believing Brain” calls “patternicity” and “agenticity”. As the names indicate, patternicity refers to seeing meaningful patterns in meaningless noise. Agenticity refers to seeing [...]

This post is really a question. Over the past few years, ever since the climate change debate, well, heated up, the words “skeptic” and “denier” have been thrown around on countless websites and blogs, usually accompanied by much frothing at the mouth. This has left me wondering; is there anything bordering on a consensus among [...]

Energy efficiency sounds like a good idea on multiple fronts; mitigating global warming, reducing dependence on foreign oil and saving money. Conservatives and liberals may disagree about the first reason, but you would expect both of them to enthusiastically embrace energy efficiency based on the other two reasons. Yet we find attitudes toward energy efficiency [...]

Over the last two days I had a pleasant exchange with a 7th grader from California who wanted to know more about nuclear energy for a school project. He asked me about a dozen questions on nuclear power and I answered them. It was instructive to realize how I needed to formulate my own words [...]