My nieces have an iPhone and they delight in asking the digital assistant Siri questions. But maybe the key question is “Who is Siri?” (Have you ever asked her?) The March 2017 issue of Consumer Reports magazine discusses smartphones, and in a sidebar on page 50 they expose “The Real Voice Behind Siri”. In 2005,
From the Now-I’ve-Heard-Everything department — Mythology likes to rhapsodize about the lost continent of Atlantis, but there may be another loss we’ve completely overlooked. It’s in the Indian Ocean beneath the island of Mauritius. Although Mauritius is only 790 square miles, it has long interested scientists because of an unusually strong gravitational pull. You may
We all want to know if there really is life after death, and so-called near-death experiences have been a popular subject in our culture. Does your life really flash before your eyes when you think you are dying? A recent study published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition takes a new approach to evaluating these
I’m going to make this one simple. If you want to know what is wrong with our education system, I would recommend Podcast #562, “The Problem We All Live With” which originally aired July 31, 2015 on the National Public Radio program This American Life (https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with). “Right now, all sorts of people are trying to
Somewhere along the line, you’ve probably heard that spicy meals can cause strange or unusual dreams. Is it true? Maybe. This is discussed in detail in an article entitled “Can Spicy Food Really Cause Weird Dreams? The Answer Is Complicated” by chili lover Cari Romm on the Science of Us website (http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/can-spicy-food-really-cause-weird-dreams.html?). According to Ms.
There has been a lot of talk recently about presidential executive action. One of President Obama’s actions late last year was to designate two new national monuments in Nevada and Utah (http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/12/28/507314596/obama-designates-two-new-national-monuments-in-nevada-and-utah), which, like most presidential actions these days, was considered very controversial in some circles. If you disagree with this type of government action
Another of those questions we don’t think of every day — do your heart and brain communicate? Recent research suggests there’s definite link. University of Sussex researcher Sarah Garfinkel has found evidence that the beats of your heart — and your awareness of that rhythm — shapes everything from anxiety to racism to stock trading.
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner, Doubleday, 2007 This was a very depressing book to read. According to Weiner’s account, all the horror stories you’ve heard about the CIA are true, and then some. Apparently the Agency has never been good at what I thought its main mission was —
For longer than I care to remember, we’ve been hearing some very partisan claims on social media about rating presidents. Who was the worst? Most historians have a very strong candidate — James Buchanan, our 15th chief executive (1857-1961), the president just before Abraham Lincoln. In fact, there is a new biography out entitled Worst.
Here’s something I’m sure you’ve been wondering about for a long time. If you see a lot of movies, you may have noticed many villains have British accents, even when no one else in the cast is British. These range from Peter Ustinov’s Prince John in Disney’s animated Robin Hood (pictured) to Anthony Hopkins in
