With their mouths largely shut but their laptops and flip phones open, teenagers’ bedrooms are beginning to sound like the library. So is the dinner table. On her show May 10, Ellen DeGeneres ribbed guest Lindsay Lohan: “Every time I’ve seen you, you’re out with eight or nine girls, having dinner. You’re all sitting around…
The disasters that have occurred so far have been on the local or regional level. They have been horribly damaging to lives and properties in the regions in which they occurred, but they have not been the paradigm-shifting harbingers of doom that the pessimists, like Kunstler, continually warn about. In fact, so far the pessimists…
The archetype of the mad scientist was Rotwang in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926). Played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Rotwang had unruly hair, a disabled hand, and obsessive research interests. He worked alone, and although he lived in a modern city that his inventions made function, he was like a 16th-century alchemist. —The Scientist on Camera (Slate) Hmm……
Photon vs Electron (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog) My son at age 8 is turning out to be quite the science geek. While I was driving him home from piano lesson today, he asked me whether an electron is the smallest thing in the universe. I took at stab at it and guessed that maybe a photon is…
CHERYL: Wait a minute! Did you see that? An apple fell out of that tree! [dramatic music; slow motion shot of falling apple] This means there must be some sort of FORCE! DARREN: A force — a gravitational force! CHERYL: Yes — and wait a minute — suppose the force stretched all the way to…
Science for non-majors offers an important chance to reach out to students outside the sciences, and try to give them some appreciation for scientific inquiry. This is critically important, as we live in a time where science itself is under political assault from both the left and right. People with political agendas are constantly peddling…
Veteran commander John Young and his rookie pilot Robert Crippen faced a lot of uncertainties April 12, 1981, as they waited for the space shuttle Columbia to lift off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Flight Center. —STS-1: ‘A test pilot’s dream’: Columbia astronaut recalls first shuttle flight on 25th anniversary (CNN) When my class was watching the…
Yes, you did read that right. And also, yes, this eight-year period of temperature stasis did coincide with society’s continued power station and SUV-inspired pumping of yet more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. In response to these facts, a global warming devotee will chuckle and say “how silly to judge climate change over such a…
Fully HALF of all children who grow up in bread-consuming households score below average on standardized tests. —!!! BREAD IS DANGEROUS !!! Similar:The Justice Department Deleted Language About Press Freedom And Racial Gerrymandering From… A subsection titled “Need for Fr…CultureThe super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse This was probably the wealthiest, most…BusinessI’ve…
Based on Shatner’s book “I’m Working on That,” in which he explored the connections between “Star Trek” technology and real science, “How William Shatner Changed the World” takes the tongue-in-cheek approach the actor often applies to what he considers the over-serious fandom of the TV shows and movies. —‘Star Trek’ inspired real inventions (AP | The…
According to the study, north European women evolved blonde hair and blue eyes at the end of the Ice Age to make them stand out from their rivals at a time of fierce competition for scarce males. —Roger Dobson and Abul Taher —Cavegirls were first blondes to have fun (Times Online) The authors conclude by stating,…
Judith Moran, director of the Math Center at Trinity College in Connecticut, “started life,” she said, as an art major. Now, like several of the faculty members questioned, Moran said she wants all students to be able to assess numbers in The New York Times. Trinity students also get their quantitative feet held to the…
More fossil fuels are used in packaging the water. Most water bottles are made with polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic derived from crude oil. ”Making bottles to meet Americans’ demand for bottled water requires more than 1.5 million barrels of oil annually, enough to fuel some 100,000 U.S. cars for a year,” Arnold said. Worldwide, some…
We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and “slipped the surly bonds of earth” to “touch the face of God.” —We will never forget them… (MetaFilter) A thread devoted to the 20th anniversary of the loss of the Space Shuttle…
Scientists recently have found a few rocky planets, including one last year just seven times the size of Earth, but all are very close to their stars and so extremely hot. The planetary discovery announced Wednesday and reported in today’s edition of the journal Nature is the smallest and coldest yet. —Ian Hoffman —‘Earth-like’ planets…
It has been twenty years since Christa McAuliffe reached for the stars. Her launch into the sky on the space shuttle, Challenger, literally became what she had previously anticipated as being, “The Ultimate Field Trip.” What truly prophetic words they were. —A Heavenly Legacy (Reeves Library) A good overview of the legacy of Christa McAuliffe. Similar:Universities…
NASA’s Stardust sample return capsule has returned to Earth today, floating to the ground under billowing parachute. A helicopter team has successfully located the capsule under desert dark conditions. —Leonard David —Mission Completed: Stardust Capsule Lands in Utah (Space) Similar:Shall I Encode Thee In DNA? Sonnets Stored On Double HelixIf you took everything human beings have…CultureIs…
Despite the billions of dollars spent every year in this country on over-the-counter cough syrups, most such medicines do little if anything to relieve coughs, the nation‘schest physicians say. Over-the-counter cough syrups generally contain drugs in too low a dose to be effective, or contain combinations of drugs that have never been proven to treat…
When shown images of real-life violence, people who played violent video games were found to have a diminished response. However, when the same group were shown other disturbing images such as dead animals or ill children they had a much more natural response. When the game players were given the opportunity to punish a pretend…
Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively. —Internet encyclopaedias go head to head (News @ Nature.com) Wikipedia stood up fairly well against…