They squint, they stammer, they shuffle and shamble, they flounder around like seals out of water. Awkward in the house and clumsy in their games, they are fumblers and bunglers at whatever they do. — Sir Cyril Burt, The Backward Child, 1937 Sir Cyril Burt, one-time president of the British Psychological Society and notorious charlatan […]
Barry Evans
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M/V Madaket: 112 Years Young
“The ship wherein Theseus and the youth of Athens returned from Crete had 30 oars and was preserved by the Athenians down even to the time of Demetrius Phalereus, for they took away the old planks as they decayed, putting in new and stronger timber in their places. [Philosophers argued,] one side holding that the […]
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Josiah Gregg in California
“Here commenced an expedition, the marked and prominent features of which were constant and unmitigated toil, hardship, privation, and suffering.” From the journal of Lewis Keysor Wood, published in the Humboldt Times, April, 1856 Picking up where we left off last week (“Josiah Gregg: Prairie Years,” April 21): After two decades of prairie living in […]
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Josiah Gregg: PrairieYears
“[In 1839] An unconquerable propensity to return to prairie life inclined me to embark in a fresh enterprise.” Commerce of the Prairies, Josiah Gregg, published in 1844 A large brass plaque outside Eureka City Hall celebrates the Josiah Gregg overland expedition, which “discovered” Humboldt Bay in late December of 1849. Two months later, 43-year-old Gregg […]
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The White Sands Footprints
Anyone with even a passing interest in the peopling of the Americas will know that the Clovis First hypothesis has long been put to rest. The idea — that the first humans to come to the “New World” arrived around 12,500 years ago were the same people who fashioned fluted stone Clovis points (after Clovis, […]
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137: Magic Number?
“[The fine structure constant] is one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics: a magic number that comes to us with no understanding by humans … you might say the “hand of God” wrote that number … .” — Physicist Richard Feynman When otherwise hard-headed physicists invoke God or the Devil, you can be fairly […]
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Love I Language
“With this ring, I thee wed.” These words are spoken some 2.5 million times a year in the U.S. — or up to twice that, when both parties to a marriage give rings. Notice anything odd about that sentence? “I” is the subject (S), “thee” the object (O) and “wed” the verb (V), for an […]
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Language: 100,000 or 1 Million Years Old?
Seriously! My headline isn’t hyperbole — that’s what linguists are arguing about. This isn’t like the age of the universe, with experts debating whether it’s 13.7 or 13.8 billion years old. Same thing, for most of us. This is a serious, tenfold difference of opinion. If you’re in the “continuity” camp, you believe that language […]
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A Brief History of QR Codes
“I used to play Go on my lunch break. One day, while arranging the black and white pieces on the grid, it hit me that it represented a straightforward way of conveying information. It was a eureka moment.” — Masahiro Hara, quoted on Nippon.com, Feb. 10, 2020. If you’ve eaten out lately, you might have […]
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Make Friends, Live Longer
“… more than 20 percent of the adult population in America admits to struggling with loneliness. That’s more people than have diabetes in our country. That’s more than adults that smoke ….” Former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy As everyone knows, the best way to stay healthy and live to a ripe old age is […]
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Of Photons and Cormorants
We were paddling on Stone Lagoon, cormorants in formation overhead, when out of the blue … “Hey, you know about science, right?” “A bit. I’m a science writer, not a scientist …” “Yeah, well. E = mc2, you know? Energy and mass?” “Um … OK.” “And photons don’t have any mass, right?” “Right.” “So if they’re […]
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The Two-Envelope Paradox
A lifetime ago — March 11, 2010 — I wrote in this space about a curious paradox I’d stumbled upon (“A Pair of Paradoxes”). It originated, near as I can tell, in a 1953 book by Belgian mathematician Maurice Kraitchik called Mathematical Recreations. Paraphrasing from my column: Over coffee, Alice and Bart decide on a […]