The Mohave Rattlesnake—And How it Became an Urban Legend

Discharge before noon: an urban legend.

Truth or Urban Legend?

It has become widely accepted that correlations between variables measured with the same method, usually self-report surveys, are inflated due to the action of common method variance (CMV), despite a number of sources that suggest the problem is overstated. The author argues that the popular position suggesting CMV automatically affects variables measured with the same method is a distortion an...

How a real housewife became an astrobiologist.

In 1987, with three children, all sons under the age of 10, a husband who lost his job in the oil bust of Houston, and a family that needed money, I found myself at the local public school employed as a teacher’s aide. I made $742 a month. At the end of the year, I had the obligatory review of my work. The principal was demanding and was considered somewhat difficult. However, she offered some ...

How autism became autism

This article argues that the meaning of the word 'autism' experienced a radical shift in the early 1960s in Britain which was contemporaneous with a growth in epidemiological and statistical studies in child psychiatry. The first part of the article explores how 'autism' was used as a category to describe hallucinations and unconscious fantasy life in infants through the work of significant chi...

How Media Became New

On August 19, 1839, the Palace of the Institute in Paris was completely full with curious Parisians who came to hear the formal description of the new reproduction process invented by Louis Daguerre. Daguerre, already well-known for his Diorama, called the new process daguerreotype. 1 According to a contemporary, "a few days later, opticians' shops were crowded with amateurs panting for daguerr...