Stonington’s Lobster Trap Christmas Tree

Where did 2023 go? My last post here was entitled “Late August,” and now it’s early December. The holidays are upon us, and once again, Stonington, Connecticut’s huge lobster trap Christmas tree, is in my front yard. (Slight exaggeration. It’s a block away.)

Having finished my stint as interim editor of Skeptical Inquirer magazine, I hope to return to producing my “Behavior & Belief” column on a more regular basis. I have written two columns since I last posted here. The first is entitled “The Mozart Effect Lives On,” and indeed it does but not in its original form. There is something magical about names associated with genius—Mozart, Einstein, etc—that seems to encourage the expression of unsubstantiated claims, and some of these claims live on like zombies.

My most recent column is “Rhinos and Radium: A Skeptic’s Tour of Paris, Part II.” In 2021, I made a trip to Paris, and when I returned home I wrote a column called “French Science & Pseudoscience: A Skeptic’s Tour of Paris.” This October, I went back to Paris and continued the tour.

Marie Curie

The resulting column includes a short biography of Marie Curie and the rest of her scientifically brilliant family. In addition, there are stories about trepanning, an unclaimed $1,000,000 mathematics prize, and not one but two famous rhinoceroses. I had no idea rhinos were so historical.

Other miscellanies: The Chinese edition of my book The Uses of Delusion: Why It’s Not Always Rational to Be Rational has been released by a publisher in Taiwan. I can’t read it, but perhaps someone out there can.

Finally, in October at the CSICon Skeptics conference in Las Vegas, I gave a Talking Heads-inspired speech, “Start Making Sense,” and somehow I worked in mentions of the US Supreme Court, my own love life, facilitated communication, and Henrik Ibsen’s 1884 play The Wild Duck. The most nervous part of the talk was knowing that Richard Dawkins, Dr. Paul Offit, and Bill Nye the Science Guy were all in the audience. Somehow, I managed to get through it. A video of my talk may appear later, and if it does, I will post it here.

That’s all for now. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season. See you in 2024!

SV