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 […]
According to the BBC, “scientists in the UK claim to have developed the first human nerve cells from human stem cells”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4155016.stm. They used embryonic cells, the most pliable of the known stem cell types. These are also the very ones which have mired the U.S. in controversy over Federal funding […]
Yahoo! recently claimed that they had more searchable content than Google. I’ve used Google for many, many years – I haven’t used Yahoo! for searches for the opposite reason I *do* use Google. It’s historically poor by comparison. Looks like “Yahoo’s claims have been challenged by an independent check”:http://vburton.ncsa.uiuc.edu/indexsize.html. Scientists […]
I found an “article in the BBC about weather balloon-based temperature readings from the 1970s”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4152576.stm rather amusing. As a scientist, I am daily faced with revelations about new understanding of the behavior of my experiment. This is no different; however, the data taken by these weather balloons is often used […]
Several weeks ago I mentioned that I had chanced on Sen. Rick Santorum’s (R-PA) new book, and that I had reacted with a bit of shock at his lack of understanding about science. More important, his lack of clarity on issues scientific was used as a critical piece in his […]