Category Archives: Opinion

Of Mice and Music

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I have a clipping from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, July 28, 1997. It talks about an experiment conducted by David Merrell. His experiment was to observe the effects of music on mice. There were three groups: the Mozart mice, the hard rock mice, and a control group that listened to no music at all. His tests ran for three weeks.

At the end of the experiment, the control group had cut its navigation time in half. The Mozart mice did even better, cutting their time by 8½ minutes. But the hard rock group did much worse — taking 30 minutes to complete the maze, bumping into walls, staggering aimlessly about.

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Scholarly Legends: Did Medieval Christians Think the World Was Flat?

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Back in January 2003, I read this intriguing article in World magazine, ”Scholarly legends” by Gene Edward Veith (access requires payment for non-subscribers), in which the author compares a few common errors about history to contemporary so-called “urban legends.”

I had the good sense to clip it from the magazine and file it, and just recently found it again. It deals with three specific legends that have circulated in the scholarly world and washed over into popular culture: Continue reading →

To Vaccinate or Not to Vaccinate

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There is a lot of controversy about vaccination circulating on the Internet right now. And a lot of it has to do with increasing fears related to the H1N1 flu (swine flu).

Personally I think that the current level of attention seen in the media about H1N1 amounts to hype. While no one can deny that a serious outbreak could occur at any time, it’s worth noting that an estimated several hundred thousand people die each year, worldwide, because of flu in general (all variants, not just H1N1); this is nothing new.

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