Thomas Kuhn was a philosopher of science whose signature work was The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, published in 1962. One thing that book did was introduce the phrase “paradigm shift,” which became annoyingly overused (but thankfully, I don’t hear it quite as often recently, even in those language-mangling arenas, corporate conference rooms). The other thing… Continue reading

It’s a mysterious thing, how people can so easily understand maps. You can unfold a map, show it to a very small child, and it won’t take them long to “get it.” They’ll even understand the limitations of maps (or possibly the limitations of paper); if you try to tell them they can peer  very… Continue reading

March is Women’s History Month, so I think it’s a good time to have a brief look at some of the women in the history of March 4, specifically. It was March 4, 1917 that Jeannette Rankin became the first female member of the US House of Representatives. She was actually the first woman to… Continue reading

March 2 has boasted some impressive engineering accomplishments over the years. There’s nothing particularly special about the date, at least as far as I know. It’s just a coincidence that various huge engineering projects have reached milestones on the same day of the year.  For instance, it was March 2, 1969 that the Concorde supersonic… Continue reading

March 1 Being afraid is a bad experience. I’m not talking about nervousness, worry, or mild anxiety; I’m talking about real fear. The kind that shuts down your ability to think clearly. The kind that leads people to do things that, later, even they themselves can’t fathom. And more often than not, they feel regret.… Continue reading

There are two different kinds of discoveries in science. One kind of discovery emerges over years of work, and if the work involves experimentation, there are probably many, many experiments involved. The other sort of discovery happens in a moment, when somebody with the right expertise and instrumentation observes something unexpected or even unprecedented. Of… Continue reading

Here’s a little thought experiment. Let’s set the scene. You are a leader in an organization that produces good that are largely handmade. Not completely — the makers in your organization use machinery, but their end product requires a lot of skill as well. It doesn’t matter for our experiment what the product is. It… Continue reading

In light of the new European war, instigated by Russian aggression, there are some eerie coincidences in the history of February 25. Have a look at some of them. With the Treaty of Moscow in May, 1920, Russia formally recognized the Democratic Republic of Georgia. That part of the world had in the past been… Continue reading