CosmosGAL is All Shook-Up

Yesterday evening, I was talking on the phone to a Los Angeles TV production company about a project (more about that later) when the woman I was talking to suddenly stopped dead in mid-sentence and announced they were having an earthquake. Obviously she had more important things to attend to, so I hung up. When [...]

If You Want to Get Ahead…..(update)

The use of human body parts in medicine has a long history. For example, the medieval weapon salve was a popular treatment for wounds of conflict in the dark ages. It was believed that enacting a cure upon the weapon that had inflicted an injury could heal wounds. Paracelsus, the renowned 15th century Swiss alchemist, [...]

Scientist Dies

I did not know Randy Pausch. I did not know his work. He was a Carnegie Mellon computer scientist who was the same age as me. And he just died a couple of hours ago. His last lecture became an internet phenomenon with over 3.5 million hits on You Tube. Watch it. It will really [...]

Taking the P*ss or What?

Ok so this posting will not go down so well but hell, we have to understand the whole of human behavior

Drinking one’s own urine is not uncommon. It is widespread in India, can be found in a number of religious teachings and is recommended by alternative therapists for the treatment of a variety of ailments.
Urine [...]

SuperSense and the Dalai Lama

My colleagues Paul Bloom and Susan Gelman have an interesting short piece in the current Trends in Cognitive Science journal about how the Tibetan authorities selected the 14th Dalai Lama.
According to eye witness testimony from 1941, the bureaucrats tested a two-year old boy in a remote village by presenting him with personal authentic possessions that [...]

Lennon Lyrics Go for a Song

Gail Rennard was a plucky young 16 year-old living in Montreal when she heard that John Lennon and Yoko Ono where staging their famous “bed-in” at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in 1969 as a peace protest. Gail managed to sneak in and meet the Beatle and he ended up giving her hand-written lyrics to the [...]

The Reluctant Blogger

Welcome to my blog. I am told that hosting a blog will help promote my forthcoming book, “SuperSense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable.” At first I was reluctant to do this as blogging struck me as a rather self-indulgent, opinionated activity. Then I realized that’s exactly what it is supposed to be and for [...]