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Dunbar’s number: number of people with whom you can have a “stable social relationship”

Dunbar’s number is a suggested cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships—relationships in which an individual knows who each person is and how each person relates to every other person. Informally, this is “the number of people you would not feel embarrassed about joining uninvited for a…

Meet your death panel

For years, the Republican right suggested that if Obamacare passed, the result would be “Death Panels” which would choose whether or not individuals would get the healthcare they need. We all denounced those claims as specious; there was no such provision in the ACA. Now that the Republicans have control of the government, they’ve trotted…

The game “Set” rocks the mathematical world

You may have played the game “Set”: Invented in 1974, Set has a simple goal: to find special triples called “sets” within a deck of 81 cards. Each card displays a different design with four attributes—color (which can be red, purple or green), shape (oval, diamond or squiggle), shading (solid, striped or outlined) and number…

This is my America.

I believe in this dream of America: a place where no one profits from the misery of others, where the suffering of the smallest child matters as much as the glory of our captains and leaders. I believe in a place where we seek truth, where we treat disagreements with respect and patience, where honesty…