Topic
Brain
7 articles
Society
Why does the other queue always move faster?
Everybody believes it and everybody assumes it is a complaint rather than a fact. Two researchers measured the same effect on a highway and found that it is genuinely true, for a reason that has nothing to do with luck.
Society
Why does time feel faster as you get older?
Every adult says it and every child finds it baffling, because a summer holiday is obviously enormous. Nothing is wrong with anybody's clock. The difference is in how much of the summer gets written down.
Biology
Why does spinning make you dizzy?
The strange part is not the dizziness. It is that you feel almost nothing while you are spinning, and the whole world takes off the moment you stop. Something inside your head is still going round.
Astronomy
Why does the Moon look bigger near the horizon?
A Moon coming up behind the houses looks enormous, and three hours later the same Moon overhead looks ordinary. Photograph both and the two discs come out identical. Whatever is growing, it is not the Moon.
Society
Why can’t you remember being a baby?
You spent two whole years learning to walk and talk, and you cannot recall one minute of it. The obvious answer is that babies do not make memories. Babies make memories perfectly well, and then lose them.
Society
Why do you suddenly see something everywhere?
You learn a word on Tuesday and it turns up four times by Friday. Nothing about the world changed in three days. Your filter did, and it will not tell you it did.
Biology
Why can’t you tickle yourself?
Run a fingertip up your own arm and nothing happens. Let a friend do exactly the same thing and you fold in half. Your skin cannot tell whose hand it is, so something further in must be doing the deciding.