The European Commission has published an enjoyable list of Euromyths.
Each one is accompanied by a link taking you to the truth on the subject.
Exposing the Euromyths
The European Commission has published an enjoyable list of Euromyths.
Each one is accompanied by a link taking you to the truth on the subject.
Henry Bryce Prestwich wins the Cork International Race 1937
Researching the Saddleworth air crash of 1949 and the later death of Michael Prestwich, I came across this video of his father winning a motor race before the war.
It presents a wonderful picture of motor racing in the 1930s - all cigarettes and no safety precautions with commentary by Mr Cholmondley-Warner.
Henry Bryce Prestwich was a cotton merchant. A forum post on the Autosport site says:
He was born Henry Bryce Stadelbaur or Stadelbauer at Altrincham, Cheshire, England in 1911. Both spellings appear on documents. His father was Otto Stadelbau(e)r, a British subject from a Saxony family. However, like many with a German sounding name, the family changed their name during the 1914-18 war to acquire a more English sounding one (following the example of King George V).
I found that Prestwich had raced a M.G. at the Donington Park Motor Car races in May 1936 (9.5.36) and at the same track in the Coronation Trophy races in May 1937 (12.5.37). After the 1937 Cork race, he only appears once more in the records, starting but not finishing the 1938 Cork Light Car (voiturette) Race, again in a MG.
The London Gazette records that Prestwich was commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant in the British Army in November 1940.He survived the war, only to die at Saddleworth with his wife and two of his three children. It seems Prestwich was his mother's maiden name.
Sergey Karjakin qualifies to challenge for the world chess title
While the geeks were watching a rerun of the election night coverage from 1966, I outgeeked them by watching the final round of the Candidates chess tournament in Moscow.
The tournament was held to find who would challenge the world champion Magnus Carlsen for his title in a match in New York this November.
In today's final round the leaders were playing one another: Sergey Karjakin had white against Fabiano Caruana.
A draw would give Karjakin victory in the tournament, but Caruana needed a win. (By a quirk of the tie-break system that situation could have been reversed if Vishy Anand had won his game, but that never looked likely and he agreed an early draw.)
Caruana obtained an active, unbalance position without taking on too much risk. I got the impression he was drifting slightly when he got to move 35 or so, but there still seemed all to play for.
Then Karjakin played a devastating rook sacrifice that the grandmasters commentating on the game had not anticipated.
A tremendous achievement in such a tense game, though most people believe that Carlsen will retain his title when they meet.
You can play through the game on chess,com.
Karjakin played his sacrifice in the position above: the devastating 37. Rxd5.
Why rebutting your opponents' charges can be counterproductive
In the days when I was an agent or produced election leaflets I discouraged the idea that we should rebut the claims of our opponents in the literature we put out.
My reasoning was that it was much better to concentrate on our own positive messages. If that wasn't enough then we were never going to win away.
Some support for this position comes from psychological research discussed in a 2007 Washington Post article - thanks to @sundersays for tweeting the link this morning.
The Post describes a study by the University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz:
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently issued a flier to combat myths about the flu vaccine. It recited various commonly held views and labeled them either "true" or "false." Among those identified as false were statements such as "The side effects are worse than the flu" and "Only older people need flu vaccine."
When ... Schwarz had volunteers read the CDC flier, however, he found that within 30 minutes, older people misremembered 28 percent of the false statements as true. Three days later, they remembered 40 percent of the myths as factual.
Younger people did better at first, but three days later they made as many errors as older people did after 30 minutes. Most troubling was that people of all ages now felt that the source of their false beliefs was the respected CDC.The same phenomenon, says the Post, has been observed in other experiments.
And Ruth Mayo, a cognitive social psychologist at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has found that people tend to forget that someone was denying accusations over time - they just remember the association between him and the accusation:
"If someone says, 'I did not harass her,' I associate the idea of harassment with this person," said Mayo, explaining why people who are accused of something but are later proved innocent find their reputations remain tarnished. "Even if he is innocent, this is what is activated when I hear this person's name again.What do do?
Mayo found that rather than deny a false claim, it is better to make a completely new assertion that makes no reference to the original myth. Rather than say, as Sen. Mary Landrieu ... did during a marathon congressional debate, that "Saddam Hussein did not attack the United States; Osama bin Laden did," Mayo said it would be better to say something like, "Osama bin Laden was the only person responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks" - and not mention Hussein at all.It is not always easy to keep to this, but I am happy to publicise peer-reviewed science that chimes with my hunches or prejudices.
