Today, the SLAC colloquium was presented by Dr. Lawrence Krauss of the Case-Western Reserve University. Krauss is a popularizer of science, remembered for such books as “The Physics of Star Trek” and “Quintessence”. His topic today drew a large and varied crowd from the laboratory, and raises a vital question: […]
Science
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By the title, you might think I’m talking in the same scare tactics that conservatives use to induce fear about medical procedures like abortion. I’m not. I’m talking about cyclotrons. That’s right… cyclotrons. “Not in my backyard!”, says Alaska. Don’t believe me? “Check it out”:http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,69726,00.html The best part is the […]
The Royal Society is 345 years old, as of November 30. For the world’s oldest extant scientific society, this year is not as grand or glamorous as a nice round anniversary, like 350 or 400. However, this is the last year of the Royal Society under the Presidency of Lord […]
The universe is expanding. We sit on our tiny blue world in, as Douglas Adams put it, an unfashionable Western Spiral arm of a galaxy. This galaxy drifts lonely and unregarded, pulled along by the expansion of spacetime. As we sit here and wonder, the universe in contemplation of itself, […]
Science is a method, one well suited to finding the connections between seeming disparate phenomena. Electricity flow along a wire, a magnetic field flows outward from it, and yet these two phenomena are two sides of a single interaction. Insects foraging food on a jungle carpet, fish foraging food on […]
I read somewhere recently (or heard somewhere recently?) that most scientists don’t have the scientific method posted anywhere on the walls of their office or lab. I was struck by that fact, until I stopped and said, “Hey, stupid – you don’t have it on your wall, either!”. This morning, […]
“In a short essay, Steven Salzburg argues why the flu is an excellent example not just of evolution, but why it is critical to teach evolution”:http://newswire.ascribe.org/cgi-bin/behold.pl?ascribeid=20051117.073638&time=08%2005%20PST&year=2005&public=0. I’d take it one step further: the flu is one poignant reason why it’s critical to teach the next generation about the nature of […]
It kinda started back during the Protestant reformation, but it’s come back recently. The Catholic church has been weighing in over the last year on the roles of religion and science. Cardinal Shoenborn made the first overt rumblings in support of intelligent design as science back in July [TAOMPH73] [TAOMPH77], […]
I’ve been thinking a lot of late about what to say the next time I go to Washington. I seem to get there, one way or another, about twice a year these days. I don’t do it to sight-see, though Washington D.C. is “home to a rich and varied set […]
Timely. NPR’s program “Soundprint today explored the story of ancient footprints uncovered in Africa, and how evolution is both denied and manipulated by politicians and theologians in South Africa to achieve their personal agendas”:http://soundprint.org/radio/display_show/ID/37/name/Footprints. This is an excellent illustration of just what happens when you couple the base states of […]
Bob Park “hits them all again in his column”:http://bobpark.physics.umd.edu/WN05/wn111105.html, “What’s New?”. As my father first brought to my attention, then as I saw in the news and now read in Bob’s column, Pat Robertson verbally intervened after the ousting of the Dover, PA schoolboard. After the voters in Dover taught […]
The new Kansas state board of education’s science standards state that “Science is a systematic method of continuing investigation that uses observations, hypothesis testing, measurement, experimentation, logical argument and theory building to lead to more adequate explanations of natural phenomena.” More adequate explanations? What does that mean? “Logical argument” is […]