Bee Movie came out in 2007. I have not seen it, but I have seen the memes that took hold several years later, and thus been made aware of its opening lines, which have infuriated me ever since: “According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly. Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground. The bee, of course, flies anyway, because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible.” I’ve heard a similar argument from those who — for whatever reason — are looking to

I spend a lot of time thinking about mental flotsam and jetsam*, the junk we all have lodged permanently in our brains, but that we rarely stop to actually consider. And it turns out that if you do consider it, you start to notice how arbitrary and nonsensical much of it is. This came up recently while I was trying to help my kid learn French. I sang her Frère Jacques, which we all know: Frère Jacques / Frère Jacques Dormez-vous? / Dormez-vous? Sonnez les matines! / Sonnez les matines! Ding, dang, dong / Ding, dang, dong Then, to help

When I was nine years old, I came down with a somewhat rare disease that left me hospitalized for several weeks. (Don’t worry, I’m fine now.) One day, I noticed a sequence of numbers printed on the side of my IV drip:

Quick: how many animals can you name in a minute? Done? OK, now think about how many of those animals have you seen, in real life, in the past year. Not many, right? Most of us live in a world devoid of wild animals, apart from maybe a few species like squirrels or raccoons. This means that we have few opportunities to compare our mental map — the idea of an animal that we carry around in our heads — against the real thing. And that means that sometimes, those mental maps can be off to a surprising degree.