grant hutchison
Order of Kilopi

Dr. Sam: Johnson, Detector, by Lillian de la Torre. A collection of short stories narrated by James Boswell, in which Dr Samuel Johnson solves crimes...

We had a similar experience in northern China a few years ago, though few spoke English, and people were a little less polite. On several occasions...

I presume that's right. Places like Gorham's Cave, now tucked into a rock face a few metres above the sea, would in Neanderthal times have looked...

I doubt if there would be any point in modelling situations where the applicable scales were hugely different - either one model or the other would...

Certainly the tunnel complex used a few of the more accessible existing caves as entrance points, such as Ragged Staff Cave. But the Neanderthal...

Light doesn't travel in a straight line, except in flat space. Grant Hutchison

It's not a matter of "forming". The photon sphere is just a particular set of coordinates in the metric, with significance for stable orbits. If the...

Distance is the spatial separation between two spacetime events. It's different for different observers, but each observer can calibrate their...

The "selfish" thing is very common, and fascinating. At whose expense is one being selfish, under these circumstances? A hypothetical child that...

Given that the last time Graham Island was above water level was in 1832, when Italy didn't exist, that seems unlikely. The later episode with an...

It's not clear to me what you think the problem with measuring distance might be. Are you just saying that a point has different dimensionality to a...

It just strikes me as interesting (and symptomatic of the societal pressure I mentioned earlier) that the "child-free" seem to be expected to have a...

Just spent a bit of time exploring the tunnels in the Rock of Gibraltar (as you do). In the World War II section there's a rather nice map, showing...

And is now on its way to me. Thanks for the recommendation. Grant Hutchison

Given that the average distance for reading a smartphone is 32-36cm (depending on the text), I doubt that. Grant Hutchison

Another place where evolution gains traction in reproduction is by making it feel good to care for your own children. The parents of young children...

Yeah, that one's on the list of things people say to voluntarily childless couples - right next to the "pets are surrogate children" line. Grant...

Oh, for pity's sake. There's actually a whole spectrum of knowledge lying between a full-referenced dissertation and a supposition, and I for one am...

My e-reader must be populated by about 50% classics, 30% stuff I've downloaded while away from home, and 20% stuff not available in print. Of the 30%...

Ibid. Grant Hutchison

Extortion only works in some formulations of the Prisoner's Dilemma that prevent or discourage disciplining by other players. (You can follow links...

Yes, there's a whole societal narrative which characterizes child-rearing as good and laudable, while childlessness is bad and aberrant (and, I've...

No useful evolutionary purpose to such a thing, really. Species are driven to have sex, certainly, but until fifty years ago whatever happened after...

Another reason classics in ebook form can be useful - a tap on an unfamiliar word can bring up a definition. Grant Hutchison

Some of us do actually fact-check ourselves before posting - but it gets tedious to weigh in immediately with evidence for things that are likely to...

Generally when people say "This is untestable" they mean "This is untestable" not "This will always be untestable". Because if they meant the latter,...

My previous link referred to unit sales - both numbers and revenue are increasing according to those figures. (Swift's earlier graphs were based on a...

And some more. Grant Hutchison

It appears we agree that physical books are pleasant things to own. Grant Hutchison

Oh look, some other data. (The link is to a summary article - follow the links to reach the data on which it is based.) Independent bookstores...