Asimov on Scientific Discovery
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ [I’ve found it!], but ‘That’s funny.’
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“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ [I’ve found it!], but ‘That’s funny.’
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A recent article in the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, my former hometown newspaper, made the kind of statement that is all too common in popular reporting on behavioral economics: “The idea that we humans are not that smart comes from behavioral economics.” Really? Behavioral economics discovered stupidity? Irrationality? The limits of human intelligence? That is…
I thought I would share this wonderful poem with you: For eleven years I have regretted it, regretted that I did not do what I wanted to do as I sat there those four hours watching her die. I wanted to crawl in among the machinery and hold her in my arms, knowing the elementary,…
They take our money, and hand it over to hospitals and doctors, while keeping a good portion for themselves. What a waste, huh? Well, yes and no. To see a really illuminating discussion of health insurance companies, and what they really do, see this blog http://michaelbrownmd.blogspot.com/2010/02/health-insurance-does-not-earn-its.html by Michael Brown– the Chief Information Officer at Harvard…
I was recently struck by two news headlines that hit my email inbox on the same day: “Most Doctors Don’t Meet U.S. Push for Electronic Records” and “Sebelius touts new emphasis on healthcare data“. Do you see the problem here? If we really want to leverage “big data” to improve health care, we need physicians…
In a wonderful New Yorker article titled “The Hangover,” Nick Paumgarten writes about the strange mix of private and government forces that led to the Spanish fiscal crisis. In a wonderful sentence, he evokes one such force, the almost invisibility of debt: It is often hard to perceive an economic crisis. Debt doesn’t look like…
I don’t read much war history. I’m fascinated by what causes humans to end up in a state of war, but not so interested in the bloody details of how they fight their battles. Nevertheless, I thoroughly enjoyed The Day of Battle, a book by Pulitzer Prize winner Rick Atkinson. The book covers the war…