Category: Science/Common Sense
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Queen of Hearts
This is chapter one of Sharon’s Playing to an Inside Straight talking about health and her health journey. I like metaphor and I like memory triggers, therefore I am choosing cards that I think do both. So let’s start with the Queen of Hearts. I thought that the Queen of Hearts was an appropriate card…
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The Russians are Stealing the North Pole!
The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the British Geologic Survey have reported on the latest position of the magnetic north pole, and it’s quite disturbing. See News Now (SNN) anchor Ami Gonnacry, interviewed esteemed scientist August Peabody. Gonnacry: “Dr. Peabody could you give us some background on this latest threat to life…
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Fear and Envy of AI
The two most frequent and equally dangerous responses to so-called AI are fear and envy. First let’s dispense with the bear in the convenience store. AI is really, as we in the biz like to say, NBI (Nothing But Initials). There’s nothing either artificial or intelligent about what most of us are talking about. Sure…
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Is Your Customer Service Feedback a Lie? And How Does That Impact our Brave New AI World?
Feedback is the life blood of any business. Once you grow your business beyond constantly having personal interactions with your customers, you need some mechanism to tell you how the service or product you provide is meeting or not meeting your customers’ satisfaction. As the owner you eventually get the answer of course when people…
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The Madness of Crowds
I’ve recently read a number of articles about how people think and make decisions. I’ve been fascinated by this topic for most of my life because I recognize that…, I’m odd. Once when I went to a classical music concert with a friend, she asked me how I liked it. I replied that at first…
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Gnats
The following is the letter I sent to my city’s recycling office and my city council member. It’s been over 3 days, and I have not heard back, so I’m making this an open letter. Honorable Friends and Public Servants, I live in an urban area of mixed single homes and apartments. As I sit…
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Hurricane Season
It’s hurricane season in San Diego. This is a rare, but periodic occurrence in Southern California. Hurricane season here is nothing like it is along the Gulf Coast or even the East Coast. The only recorded hurricane to actually get to San Diego was in 1858 and barely qualified as a hurricane (wind speeds of…
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The Horrible Lives of Grad Students
Since I’m old, and the hair on the top of my head hasn’t turned gray yet (my goatee did long ago), I started to read an article claiming to have found the reason hair turns gray by researching the biology of the hair follicle as it ages. It was all pretty dull, and I was…
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Astronomy Made Simple
What We Know I love astronomy. Partly from reading a lot of science fiction as a youth, and partly because you get to make most of it up. All you really need to know is a little about heat, light, and gravity—and you already know about those—some of the simplest concepts of geometry (a sphere…
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Whatever Happened to Skepticism?
Science! is a big thing these days especially among politicians who insist that you have to listen to the experts because, presumably they know more than you do. Don’t trust your own common sense because that’s the kind of thing that told people that the earth was flat. Except, whoops, nobody ever believed that except…
Musings of a Restless Mind 