Imagine a world in which Einstein crafted his general theory of relativity – discovering and codifying the laws that govern light, space, and time – then went about his life, never publishing, and never telling another person. It may seem obvious, but scientific knowledge, in order to influence the generation of future scientific knowledge or […]
There are some tasks that require cognitive processes that are habitual, automatic, and to some degree effortless, such as seeing a word and automatically reading it or seeing two numbers and automatically processing their magnitudes (e.g., seeing 5 and 3 and perceiving 5 to be greater). There are other tasks that require cognitive processes that […]
The last few weeks, I’ve been very busy with the logistics of organizing a mid-size conference that will be held this summer. Some of the decisions, like the city and the approximate timing, have been made for me, but I’ve had to choose between competing hotels, make a schedule with talks, workshops, symposia, keynotes, breaks, […]
Roadie folklore has it that there are some towns in rural Texas or Saskatchewan that are so small, you miss them if you blink too long while cruising down some highway to nowhere. This is unlikely to be actually true, although figuratively speaking, I can think of a few rural towns in Western Australia that […]
In some parts of New York state, it recently snowed 18 inches (~45 centimeters) following a major winter storm. With every hour, the snow piled higher and higher – but some of the increments in accumulation, especially toward the beginning, felt bigger, while others took longer to notice. You might even have the feeling that […]