Kathleen Dunn, host of Wisconsin Public Radio’s “Conversations with Kathleen Dunn”:http://www.wpr.org/kathleendunn/, had two consecutive shows recently, the first with “a proponent of the intelligent design proposition”:http://clipcast.wpr.org:8080/ramgen/wpr/dun/dun050824e.rm and the second with “a biologist from UWM”:http://clipcast.wpr.org:8080/ramgen/wpr/dun/dun050825e.rm. I haven’t had a chance to listen, but I’ll be checking them out in order this […]
This week I had two immense pleasures. The first, in order of occurance, was the chance to present the case for a suite of non-standard physics (so-called “exotic” physics) to my BaBar colleagues. The second was to participate in a SLAC site tour for talented 16-18 year-olds from all over […]
My good pal Mandeep sent me a lovely blog article from “Jim Burklo, minister at the Sausalito Presbyterian Church”:http://tcpc.blogs.com/musings/2005/08/beyond_the_fish.html. Jim talks about how intelligent design is a discredit to both science and religion. Well, Jim puts it best so let me just quote him: But [intelligent design] isn’t a “theory” […]
In what appears to be quite a breakthough, “Harvard stem cell scientistsld by Dr. Douglas Melton, Kevin Eggan and others have claimed to regress an adult skin cell back to its stem cell phase by fusing it with an embryonic stem cell “:http://today.reuters.com/news/NewsArticle.aspx?type=scienceNews&storyID=2005-08-22T055304Z_01_DIT221123_RTRIDST_0_SCIENCE-CELLS-DC.XML. While this may be the key to […]
In this, the third in a series of short essays about the structure of our universe, I will introduce you to a mysterious and elusive particle, the neutrino. This essay will do the work of three, since there are three different kinds of neutrinos. Their histories are closely linked, so […]
“The NY Times has a long article on the history and finance of the Discovery Institute, as well as its campaign to inject non-science into the science classroom”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/national/21evolve.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5089&en=24bc7c9c168ac8a8&ex=1282276800&adxnnl=0&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1124576825-jnRIYk4t25rJCvsuvxP4ww. Here are a few things I found fascinating and scary: * “When someone says there’s one thing you can’t talk about, that’s […]
The American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America, “have issued a joint statement on the teaching of evolution in the science classroom”:American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America (*on Wisconsin!*). It’s nice to see […]
This week, I and many of my friends and colleagues mourned the loss of the great Princeton theoretical physicist, John Bahcall. “The New York Times has a lovely article summarizing his contributions to U.S. and global science”:http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/19/nyregion/19bahcall.html?ex=1282104000&en=bb5de594ced89543&ei=5089&partner=rssyahoo&emc=rss. John’s most famous insight was his very detailed model of the sun and […]
Dear America, I haven’t written to you in a while, and for that I am very sorry. The last time we spoke was in March, when I was in Washington D.C. There has been no stop to the work I’ve been doing here on the West Coast since then, and […]
August is a “dead month” for my collaboration, on a variety of levels. This is the standard European vacation season, so ~half of my collaboration is winking in and out of existence. This happens to be a month I **don’t** like to vacate, mostly because it’s quiet and I can […]
Please just go and read “The Onion article on ‘intelligent falling'”:http://theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4133&n=2.
I found that “Gallup poll that reports that 45% of Americans believe they were created in their present form by God 10,000 years ago”:http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/creation/evol-poll.htm. I find a few of the other numbers in this study interesting. Given that a discussion of God and His role in the universe is one […]