“I and many others around the world are of the strong belief that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster,” Henderson affirms. “It was He who created all that we see and all that we feel. We feel strongly that the overwhelming scientific evidence pointing towards evolutionary processes is nothing but a coincidence,…
The world’s grown too complex for journalists to cover using only literary skills. A generation ago, forward-thinking journalists developed computer-assisted reporting techniques, uncovering stories from public databases, including crime reports, school test scores and census data. Unfortunately, CARR has remained a specialty within journalism, rather than a core skill. Part of this can be attributed…
In the scenario, there are two versions of the gene for magical ability — the M version, which creates muggles, and the W version, which is needed for wizardry. But everyone gets two copies of the gene — one from each parent — and even a single M scuttles any hope for a magical career.…
The skinny bar is made up of old and red stars and is about 27,000 light years in length, about 7,000 light years longer than previously believed. The bar is at a 45 degree angle to the line between our Sun and the center of the galaxy and may put the Milky Way in a…
Oh give me some foam, whose pieces won’t roam, from the tank, on which its attached, with seldom the sight, of pieces in flight, the shuttle, it hardly gets scratched. Foam! Foam on the tank! Stay stuck, to the place you’re attached! With seldom the sight, of your pieces in flight, The shuttle, it hardly…
In 2003, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey reported that his group had found “the biggest dinosaur that we know of in Virginia.” Earlier this year an Indian newspaper reported on a dinosaur discovery that they termed the “oldest fossil record from Dhar district in Madhya Pradesh.” Not long after, papers in Rio were…
Bangerter and Heath studied 500 US media reports between 1993 and 2002 to see how classical music became a must for children, and considered in which states the articles were published. They found a correlation between unsatisfactory education systems and the number of reports published about the effect. Some states even heavily promoted the use…
Discovery swooped through the darkness of the Mojave Desert and landed on the Edwards runway at 5:11 a.m. PDT, well before sunrise. It marked the conclusion of the first shuttle re-entry since Columbia’s tragic return. —Alicia Chang —Discovery Lands Safely in California (AP|My Way) Whew! Similar:Jimmy Kimmel Reveals "Worst Twerk Fail EVER – Girl Catches Fire"…
Discovery and seven astronauts blasted into orbit Tuesday on America’s first manned space shot since the 2003 Columbia disaster, ending a painful, 2 1/2-year shutdown devoted to making the shuttle less risky and NASA more safety-conscious. —Shuttle Discovery Blasts Into Orbit (AP|MyWay) Similar:ChatBot Helps Crack the Case of the Missing 45GBThe other day I got a…
There are already educational and psychotherapeutic treatments for writer’s block, some fairly effective. But remember, not many people want to be treated for hypergraphia. Their writing is usually very important to them. That raises an important point: What right do I have to give a medical name to a character trait that people value in…
“Psychiatrists believe that these auditory hallucinations are caused when the brain spontaneously activates, creating a false perception of a voice,” says Professor Hunter of the university’s psychiatry department. “The reason these voices are usually male could be explained by the fact that the female voice is so much more complex that the brain would find…
Managers had held out hope, however slim, that they might be able to launch Discovery within a few days. But with engineers no closer to figuring out why the fuel sensor malfunctioned Wednesday – a potentially deadly problem – NASA had no choice but to call for a lengthy standdown. NASA is up against the…
“Middle world is like the narrow range of the electromagnetic spectrum that we see,” he said. “Middle world is the narrow range of reality that we judge to be normal as opposed to the queerness that we judge to be very small or very large.” He mused that perhaps children should be given computer games…
The unmanned probe of the Deep Impact mission collided with Tempel 1, a pickle-shaped comet half the size of Manhattan, late Sunday as thousands of people across the country fixed their eyes to the southwestern sky for a glimpse. —NASA Cheers Probe’s Direct Hit on Comet (AP|MyWay) Similar:What Does Children’s “Obsession” With Technology Tell Us About…
Let’s say you picked a specific number of people in the United States at random. What then is the chance that the people you picked do not accurately represent the U.S. population as a whole? For example, what is the chance that the percentage of those people you picked who said their favorite color was…
After 2 1/2 two years of frustrating setbacks and delays, NASA officially set July 13 as the launch date Thursday for the first space shuttle flight since the Columbia tragedy. —Marcia Dunn —Space shuttle ‘go for launch’ on July 13 (AP/My Way) In my mind, the space shuttle is intimately connected with school. The Columbia tragedy…
General Electric is the latest big corporate convert; politicians at the state and national level are looking for solutions; and religious groups are taking philosophical and financial stands to slow the progression of climate change. They agree that the problem is real. A recent study led by James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for…
Over the last three decades, building materials have changed dramatically. Plumbing, flooring, siding, roofing – most are now made from synthetics. The same goes for the stuff inside the building, like foam rubber seat cushions, plastic computer cases, and nylon carpet fibers. As a result, today’s blazes produce two to three times as much energy…
In popular conception, mathematics is the ultimate resolvable discipline, immune to the epistemological murkiness that so bedevils other fields of knowledge in this relativistic age. Yet Philip Davis, emeritus professor of mathematics at Brown University, has pointed out recently that mathematics also is “a multi-semiotic enterprise” prone to ambiguity and definitional drift. Earlier this year,…
For those of you who don’t know what Mono is… let me explain. It is known to most ignorant people as “The Kissing Disease.” This, of course, makes anyone who has it appear to be a whore or a gameshow host. But, this isn’t a proper representation of how the disease is actually spread. I…