Skeptophilia

A little over a year ago, I decided to do something I've always wanted to do -- learn Japanese. I've had a fascination with Japan si...

One of the most terrifying sleep-related phenomena is sleep paralysis . I say this only from hearing about the experiences of others; I have...

In one of my favorite novels, The Lathe of Heaven  by Ursula LeGuin, the main character -- an unassuming man named George Orr -- figures out...

The main character of Haruki Murakami's brilliant and terrifying short story "Sleep" is a perfectly normal middle-class woman ...

In Ursula LeGuin's amazing and disturbing novel The Lathe of Heaven , a very ordinary guy finds that he has a completely unordinary abil...

An unsolved mystery of biology is the question of why we -- and just about every other animal studied -- have to sleep. I've looked at t...

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation  episode "Night Terrors," the ship gets trapped in a phenomenon called "Tyken's Rif...

I'm a morning person. I know this is pretty unusual.  I also know from first-hand experience that night owls tend to hate us morning p...

So, last night, this weird thing happened.  I was skinnydipping in the Caribbean, swimming along trying to get to the other side, when I not...

One of my ongoing frustrations when I was a teacher was the failure of the educational community to use the latest scientific research to gu...