So this is Christmas; and what have you done? Well, this is what I’ve done: a whole lot of media, surrounding my public lecture on ‘The Psychology of Christmas‘ just the other week. Turns out lots of people are interested in Christmas. Who knew? I’ve made a list (I’ve even […]
A letter in today’s Irish Times bemoans a recent column on homeopathy. The column had drawn attention to a report by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council that was dismissive of homeopathic treatments. But according to our letter-writer The report of the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) […]
Exhibit A: 1989 and Pons and Fleischmann announce cold fusion — an “inexhaustible source of energy” — at a press briefing in Utah, before they had applied for patents or published their technology. Too bad they were just plain wrong. I bet they feel embarrassed now. Exhibit B: 2002 and five-word […]
My university has a number of interesting claims to fame. And one of the coolest, certainly, is this. Neanderthal Man, remember him? Well, he’s basically an alumnus. Well, to be slightly more accurate, the term ‘Homo neanderthalensis‘ is the alumnus. It was coined at our university by the then Professor of […]
If there is “more than one way of knowing”, then how can you know that that is true? Presumably, if you know that it is true, then I can simply ‘know’ that it is not true. And I can further simply choose to ‘know’ that I am right in a […]
I am totally on holidays right now. I even have a beard. However, I still function at an intellectual level (for all intents and purposes). Here are two minor updates regarding ongoing media coverage of this blog/blogger-with-beard. Yesterday, The Guardian’s Higher Education Network included my post on paywalls in its […]
