Promoting Science and Critical Thinking
The Winton programme for the public understanding of risk based in the Statistical Laboratory in the University of Cambridge has a call for you to submit to them your stories of coincidences. Why are they doing this? By recording your coincidence stories, you can help them build a picture of what kinds of coincidences are … Read more
IBM Research scientists have successfully demonstrated the ability to store one bit of information in as few as 12 magnetic atoms. Now that is truly impressive, because today’s disk drives use about one million atoms to store a single bit of information – so yes, there is indeed a considerable degree of scope to leverage … Read more
The Inquirer reports … THE SOCIAL NETWORK Facebook has been hit by a scam tempting users to change the colour of the web site. The scam involves inviting users to change the colour of their Facebook to pink, red or black for a limited time only. A link within the post then prompts the user … Read more
As you can see from the picture here, we naturally tend to see objects that resemble faces everywhere. Be it clouds, tortilla’s, bits of toast or odd-shaped hills on Mars, the pattern recognition engine between your ears does an amazing job. Now, what is interesting is that it is just a resemblance, you can also … Read more
We are all wrong about something at some point in time, there are no exceptions, it is part of being human. Information is presented, we come to a conclusion and take a stance. But what if you are wrong, what then? Do you save face and stick to your position come what may, or do … Read more
I always suggest that whenever you are faced with crazy claims, the best response is not to rant and rave, but instead deploy wit, satire and humour. Take evolution for example, there are folks who not only sincerely tout the thought that it is not true and that “god did it” is a better answer, but they also … Read more