Today I Learned

Survivorman Logo, via YouTube The TV show Survivor is described as a “ reality-competition ”, but it never struck me as realistic, and I...

Is Religion Like a Drug? | Rev | BBC Comedy Greats, via YouTube “You’ll feel that God reached out to you with his love.” “What does that...

Emo Philips, Opening for Weird Al Yankovic at the Apollo Theatre Today I learned the word “ paraprosdokian ”. According to Wikipedia, the...

Tuwiuwok Bluff, via Haven, Maine fan wiki When I thought about the TV series Haven , I remembered vague details, and thought it must have...

Nine Princes in Amber, cover, via OpenLibrary.org My Dad didn’t particularly like Roger Zelazny’s work. He thought it was a bit too...

Skeptical Science, John Cook, via Wikimedia Commons Words are fun! Today, let’s ask whether the words “equivalence” and “equivalency” are...

Thomas Bayes (maybe), via Wikipedia The portrait above might be that of Thomas Bayes ... but probably not. Perfect! I wanted to talk...

Artificial Intelligence is- Hey! Come on! I haven’t even said anything yet! Ahem. As I was saying, Artificial Intelligence is a term that...

“‘Who controls the past,’ ran the Party slogan, ‘controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.’” George Orwell,...

Contrary to the apparent belief of some in the world today, the book Nineteen Eighty-Four  was not intended to be an instruction manual...

One of my all-time favourite songs is Welcome to the Machine , by Pink Floyd. While the song appeared on the 1975 album Wish You Were...

When the COVID-19 pandemic began (need to be specific here, to avoid confusion ...), I recall a lot of people emphasizing the need to...

“Give me a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth” “δῶς μοι πᾶ στῶ καὶ τὰν γᾶν κινάσω” Archimedes is described as a mathematician,...

It’s been a while, but the Latin plural should be “Linuces” (3rd declension noun), but don’t worry – I won’t use that. Non-technical...

The Greek philosopher Diogenes is famous for carrying a lantern during the day, claiming he was “searching for an honest man”. Yet...

“That is the question!” Or is it? The problem with many questions nowadays lies in the motivations behind the asking. By quoting out of...

When I write, I sometimes have a topic in mind, and look for an interesting way to introduce it. This time, I ended up going down an...

Over the decades, the way we listen to music has changed, and it’s interesting to wonder about the implications of those changes. Prior...

A farmer asked a physicist to help him figure out how to increase milk production. After gathering data and studying the problem, the...

Recently, I was listening to an old episode of The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, (actually, episode 803, dated 28-Nov-2020), in which...