Author Archives: alan

This story  about a Jewish man in Miami who shot at two Israeli tourists whom he mistook for Palestinians (and who then posted “Death to Arabs” on social media due to the same misperception) makes me wonder whether ten years from … Continue reading →

A black hole has been spotted heading towards Earth, and we have 200 years before it arrives. Does our species have a chance of survival? Perhaps. But not on Earth. (Assuming any kind of astronomically plausible black hole, there is … Continue reading →

Even just the title of the article linked to in the post below should make it clear that Prussian Blue stains were NOT found in the homicidal gas chambers but only in the de-lousing ones. And the whole purpose of … Continue reading →

Sorry Jim Baggott, but I do not for a moment believe that soviet communist philosophy shaped postwar quantum theory . While I can believe that some believers in social determinism felt threatened by the inherent uncertainties of quantum mechanics I can’t … Continue reading →

Note: This is not a work of scholarship so I have included no references, but all of the claims that follow are true – as can easily be verified by using google searches on the terms used to find links … Continue reading →

This avoidance scheme described below is a good part of the reason why I have always advocated that the value of all gifts should be taxed as income in the year received. Source: (1001) Colin Riegels’s answer to How do … Continue reading →

When I was little I enjoyed being read to – or listening to stories being read on the radio. And the performance of a raconteur still has its appeal for what it adds by way of  expression. It can also … Continue reading →

Source: Kingston ‘health homes’ put Jane Philpott’s vision of primary care to the test – The Globe and Mail

The word “woke” is either real or imagined Afro-American “slang” for figuratively having awakened from a previous state of sleepwalking through life unaware (or in denial) of differences of privilege between ourselves and others. As such its use by me … Continue reading →

Nate Silver is crowing that his model predicted the actual outcome as “most likely” but that’s a bit like saying that exactly 50 heads is the most likely outcome in a series of 100 coin tosses (which it is) despite … Continue reading →

At the end of an unrelated article, Steven Levy responds to a question from one of his readers (not actually me despite the name coincidence) Ask Me One Thing Alan asks, “Why can’t we choose how to pay for online … Continue reading →

There is a lot of talk these days about encouraging creators of AI tools to tag the work they produce so people will know that it is fake; but the idea that this would prevent the spread of misinformation is … Continue reading →

We are frequently asked these days to confirm that the state of Israel has a “right to exist”. Well, I’m afraid that I have to say NO! No state has the right to exist because states don’t have rights. People … Continue reading →

Yes! AlphaFold does appear (at least to this non-expert) to actually advance Chemistry. But I have seen nothing that I would call evidence that Hinton’s work on the “Boltzmann machine” has contributed anything to understanding of the physical models that … Continue reading →

After reading this article twice, and yet again the paragraph where the author purports to show that “it’s wrong to think that Bergson’s idea of duration can be assimilated into the idea of psychological time”, I am still unable to … Continue reading →

It’s a shame when those who claim to be “Fact Checking” resort to willful misinterpretations, distortions, and exaggerations of their own. For example this Fact Checker from The Washington Post starts with “We’re the cleanest economy in the entire world.” — Vance (False, … Continue reading →

People often ask questions like “Why does a mirror reverse things horizontally but not vertically?” – which is odd because a mirror does not always “reverse things horizontally but not vertically”. For example if it is lying on the ground (or … Continue reading →

I don’t actually think that the prospective nuclear standoff is any more dangerous than the first one. There are currently five nations with the capacity to build unmanned nuclear powered submarine launch platforms which could crawl undetectably to within just … Continue reading →

Both the citation of projected GDP increase as a justification for UBI and the use of carbon taxes to fund it strike me as wrongheaded. GDP is a poorly defined quantity with only a loose relationship to the more relevant … Continue reading →