Links for 2020-11-29
- Man saves puppy from alligator’s jaws in Florida. This video is bananas, and I say that as a native Floridian. [Flipboard]
- The dark art of playing world-class Scrabble. “[I]f you want a level playing field the first thing to do is make sure you’re not playing against someone who sincerely believes that skriegh is a word just because it appears in a list some loser compiled so that losers can be winners.” [The Spectator]
- Bumblebees’ self-image gets them through tight spots. “The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found the bumblebees measured the gap by flying side-to-side to scan it. When the gap became narrower than their wingspan, the bees took a longer time to scan the opening. And then they did something remarkable: they turned their bodies to fly through sideways. Some of the bees’ bodies did bump the sides of the narrowed opening—but every one of the 400 recorded flights through the gap was a success.” [Scientific American]
- How was the first atomic clock calibrated? [Physics Stack Exchange]
- Inductive versus deductive reasoning: how to make stronger arguments [Ness Labs]
- New chemistry and the birth of public hygiene [The MIT Press]