There is a useful test for whether an ability is special: look at what the nearest relatives can do.
For most human capabilities, the answer is that they do something…
There is a question about animal communication that has been argued for a long time, and alarm calls are where the evidence is strongest.
The question is whether animal signals…
Fruit Ripens Because of a Gas It Releases Itself, and One Ripe Piece Will Set Off Everything Near It
There is a category of everyday phenomenon that turns out to have a mechanism nobody would guess, and the way fruit behaves in a bowl is one.
The observable facts…
Every sound in a room reaches you twice - directly, and then repeatedly as reflections from every surface. What a room sounds like is almost entirely a question of how…
The whole subject is pressure rather than force. The same push applied through a smaller area produces a higher pressure, and a cutting edge exists to make that area as…
The fundamental constraint is that ink is either present or absent. Everything printers have done for a century and a half is a way of simulating tones that the process…