What do magicians Penn and Teller have in common with many politicians, psychics and preachers? Well, they don’t really believe in the “magic” they are selling. The difference is that Penn and Teller have always told us exactly this upfront, and then fool us anyway. The performances of Penn and Teller are an interesting contrast to those of illusionist and… Read more »
If we are really going to make improvements to healthcare system in the United States, let me suggest that we start by stopping something. We are obscuring a huge reality when we refer to Aetna, Cigna, United Healthcare and their ilk as “healthcare insurance companies,” and we need to change that terminology in order to really understand what is going… Read more »
If you ever owned a scientific calculator or used one on your computer, it is still likely that you have never used the button that reads ex. One of the most interesting secrets of the universe is evoked by pressing that button, but I have never heard it explained well. This post will likely add little to help that situation…. Read more »
“At their deepest level, the laws of nature are expressed in terms of derivatives. It’s as if the universe knew about rates of change before we did.” – Steven Strogatz, Infinite Powers It is very hard to get non-math-inclined people to read a book about math. But I will try, because this is a really good one, accessible to even… Read more »
One of the first recommendations Republicans typically make in their “Replace ObamaCare” proposals is to give the health insurance companies the ability to “sell across state lines,” which they are convinced will drive down premiums. Insurers are already free to do this, but they need to live by the local regulations in each state in which they sell. There’s the… Read more »
The Republican Party, from the White House to the Congress to the “red” state houses, remains bound and determined to crash President Obama’s signature Affordable Care Act. They could not accomplish this through repeated congressional repeal votes, so their last hope is a multi-state lawsuit which the Barr Department of Justice has determined not to fight, in an alarming abrogation… Read more »
A recent study of brain scans in 125 people from multiple locations in the U.S. and Europe suggests a set of patterns of brain activity that are closely linked to differentiating human consciousness from unconsciousness, which has been an elusive Holy Grail for neuroscientists. [1] While the patterns are not yet “sufficient proof” of consciousness, this finding gives us one… Read more »
Charges of “socialist” seem to be emerging as primary attack strategy by Republicans toward Democrats as the 2020 elections fire up. It is, in my view, all an inane “Humpty Dumpty” twisting of the terms capitalist and socialist to mean “whatever I choose them to mean” in order to raise the ire of captive television and online audiences. In addition,… Read more »
A continuing theme of this blog is that humans have a difficult time grasping some basic math, even if their futures depend on it. A combination of “scare quote” stories I have read recently about the size of the national debt as well as discovering the new price of first-class postage stamps (now 55 cents) set my mind on the… Read more »
There has been no more interesting contrast in recent history than to see side-by-side photos of the swearing in of the 2019 U.S. House of Representatives. On one side, a diverse mix of young and old, men and women, and of various ethnicity. On the other side, a bunch of mostly-old white men like me, all dressed in dark suits:… Read more »