Chess is (unfortunately) a man’s world, and gender differences in chess are large. While the gap in average play is not large between men and…
Society, Politics and History
BIg if True: Nuclear Fusion
The NY Times reports about Sparc, a nuclear fusion reactor designed by the private company Comonwealth Fusion Systems. The reactor design is called Tokamak and…
Data is Not the New Oil
I have argued before and linked to articles suggesting that advertising is less useful than is commonly thought and that targeted advertising is largely ineffective….
The Economics of Interstellar Trade
In 1978 economist Paul Krugman wrote a paper titled The Theory of Interstellar Trade that was published in 2010. It is pure genius: while the…
More Evidence for Vitamin D and Covid
Vitamin D has been among the supplements researchers suggested may be helpful against Covid-19 for a long time. Now we have the results from a…
Debate Motions I Would Have Liked to Set
Over the last years I spent a lot of time doing competitive debating. As part of that hobby, I also served as Chief Adjudicator (CA)…
A First Step Towards Getting Rid of Universities
Universities are a weird thing. The vast majority of things you learn are either completely irrelevant or quickly forgotten. This is of course not true…
In Support of Super-Rich Philanthropy
The Guardian published an article titled “How philanthropy benefits the super-rich”. And parts of it are making me really really angry. I have seen similar…
The Secular Religious State
I came across another interesting article about Iran (you may also like the one about how Iran is the only country in the world where…
Coal Produces More Radioactive Contamination Than Nuclear Energy
The Scientific American has an interesting article: “Coal Ash Is More Radioactive Than Nuclear Waste“. Coal is known to kill thousands of people a year….