Skeptophilia

Sometimes I have thoughts that blindside me. The last time that happened was a couple of days ago, while I was working in my office and our ...

Language is defined as "arbitrary symbolic communication."  The "symbolic" part is because the word (either spoken or w...

When you think about it, writing is pretty weird. Honestly, language in general is odd enough.  Unlike (as far as we know for sure) any othe...

We just got back from a week-long trip to visit friends in Seattle, which meant boarding our two dogs with a local kennel.  We know and trus...

For many years we owned two cats, Puck and Geronimo. Imagine two soft, gentle, affectionate, fluffy kitties.  Puck and Geronimo were the exa...

Most of you have probably heard of SETI -- the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence.  SETI is an umbrella term that links dozens of dif...

One of the reasons that it's (generally) much easier to learn to read a second language than it is to understand it in speech has to do ...

Our dog Guinness has brought home the truth of the quip that cats are teenagers, dogs are toddlers. His engine has two settings: "full ...

I've long been fascinated with communication network theory -- the model that maps out the rules behind the spread of information (and i...

Like a lot of couples, my wife and I have a great many inside jokes and turns of phrase that amuse us no end but must puzzle the hell out of...

I've been interested for a long while in the interplay between our senses -- how all of our sensory organs work together to create our p...