As aggravating (and common) as it is when
scientists use illogical or unscientific arguments to promote science, it’s
perhaps even more irritating when they employ bad or deceptive scientific arguments.
A famous psychology experiment presented five-year-old children with a
choice: take one marshmallow now, or wait twenty minutes and get two marshmallows.
The children who chose to wait for two seem to be more likely to turn into
more socially and intellectually successful adults than the kids who chose
immediate gratification.
So yesterday Beyonce and I sang “America the Beautiful.” Oh, and did
I mention the other 400,000 people on the Washington, DC mall who
joined in? Yeah, fine, it’s a bit of a stretch to say “Beyonce and I”
since actually I was watching her on the Jumbotron, and besides that
her lips were about five bizarre seconds out of sync with the sound
blaring from the speaker tower, but it was a wonderful experience
nonetheless.
