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Faced with a long dinner menu, it’s hard to decide what to order. (Even with a medium-sized menu, my wife always says “You go ahead and order, I haven’t decided yet.” But that’s extreme.) It’s not just an urban legend. There are scientific studies that demonstrate it. The study When Choice is Demotivating by Sheena […]

I was just a few seconds ago scanning a page of possible tests in the program DocuTAP, a list of about fifty items, to enter an order for an EKG. On the list, everything is in ALL CAPS. Even though I knew the approximate location of what I was looking for, it took me a long […]

What’s in a word? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet. Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2) OK, I cheated. I changed “name” to “word.” It sounded better for the purposes of this essay, which is about the need to choose words carefully. Yes, I changed a word […]

An experimental study recently (late 2011) ballyhooed in the press looks at how we tend to forget things as we move into a doorway, and that walking back into the room doesn’t help you recover the memories. (Duh. I could have told anyone this. As could everyone.) Not sure why prior studies on the same […]

The Whorf-Sapir hypothesis says that our language shapes how we think. It’s been moderately debunked in recent decades, but it’s likely true, at least in small part. And one of those small parts is when someone coins a new word that encapsulates a new idea. There has been a debate within philosophy since Plato’s time […]