This article about Scott and Scurvy is gripping stuff. I knew Scott's expedition had been troubled by scurvy, but I had put that down as yet another of his bad-management decisions. I had totally failed to clock that he was following the best scientific advice available at the time. Which was closer to identifying Vitamin C than ever before ... but ( Read more... )

I'm interested in fallacies and cognitive biases and all that sort of thing. Sometimes I wonder whether knowing about, say, the Fundamental Attribution Error makes it easier to avoid or not. One particular concern is the effect (whose name I've forgotten) where you tell people something, then tell them it's false, then wait a while and ask them ( Read more... )

Have just realised that I have been making a classic, obvious error in my appraisal of risk while playing cricket. Specifically, the risk of being struck painfully by a cricket ball. Until just now, I'd felt much safer as a batsman or wicket keeper than as a fielder, on the grounds that I had pads for my shins and something to defend myself with (a ( Read more... )

I can be pretty dim sometimes. This morning, after *mumble* years, I finally made the connection between "coming out" in the sense of disclosing that you're LGBT, and "coming out" in the sense of being a debutante ( Read more... )

I got an actually-useful reply from the bus people I complained to! And things aren't quite as grim as I thought ( Read more... )

My brain is such a fibber ( Read more... )