Polymath at Large

kw: science, scientists, rewards, athletes In an old " Wizard of ID " strip, the knight asks the king why athletes are paid mill...

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, creativity You know a book is good when it seems much too short. At just over 250 pages, Imagine: How Creati...

kw: policy, income taxes, analysis In a recent campaign advertisement, President Obama states that Mitt Romney wants to lower taxes on the...

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, physics, time travel, time machines Brian Clegg is becoming one of my favorite explainers. I reviewed two of...

kw: time travel In 1950, hearing his colleagues discussing if "Martians" or other aliens were "out there", Enrico Ferm...

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, collections, short essays There are a number of ways to have a chance at getting some of your writing into p...

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, aging I phoned my father on his sixtieth birthday and asked, "What is it like?" He said, "I f...

kw: observations, fluorescence I got a check in the mail yesterday, one of those rather official looking ones. On the back, in barely-visi...

kw: bacteria, air quality According to Jessica Green of BioBE (Biology and the Built Environment) at University of Oregon, a cubic meter...

kw: wordplay, proverbs, collections Over time I have gathered a number of pairs of proverbs that have opposite meanings. A quick search of...

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, music, learning "Is it nature, is it nurture? I don't know. Should I care?" These are lines...

kw: sports, corruption All day I've heard conversations up and down the hall where I work, people arguing over whether the NCAA sancti...

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, gravity, science In my musing about the Higgs particle on Monday, I considered the odd case of the graviton...

kw: government spending, politics I have occasional discussions and debates with my brother about politics. He is more left-leaning, and I...

kw: medicine, influenza, articles In the May 2012 issue of Discover , a short article by Wendy Orent asks, "Can stuffing germs up fer...

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, activism, city planning About seven years ago, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, I wrote to the governo...

kw: real estate, speculation Triggered by ideas in a book I've been reading, I did a little digging around in Zillow (a great site ...

kw: particle physics, science I typically keep abreast of the news from the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), but this one slipped past me: On ...

kw: observations, nature, insects, birds We just returned from a walk in a nearby schoolyard. It rained this morning, and the air is humid...

kw: programming, computer science A couple of decades ago I was working on a program to simulate the way oil fills up a "reservoir...