World's Fair
Vince LiCata
Chocolate Pudding Meringue Pi Pi Pie (well, not quite)
Posted by Vince LiCata on March 14, 2010 Well, here’s my son and my entry for the Scienceblogs + Serious Eats Pi Day Contest: (Warning: this entry may be frightening to children or people who know how to make pies.) Tony and Vince’s “Chocolate Pudding Meringue Pi Pi Pie (not quite)”. It was designed to have the following dimensions: Circumference = height =…
Big Pharma needs more money! (Wait a minute….does not compute…)
Posted by Vince LiCata on March 10, 2010 In the Feb 26 issue of Science, the Chief Patent Counsel for GlaxoSmithKline has written a “Policy Forum” article outlining the reasons that the pharmaceutical industry needs longer and stronger patent protection on its new drugs (to fend off those nasty generics). I was kind of shocked to see such a propaganda piece in Science,…
Appease the teachers or the students? Humor about Evolution and Black Holes in Walker, Louisiana
Posted by Vince LiCata on March 8, 2010 I gave two “public science” talks, back to back this past week to two groups of 200 9th graders at Walker High School, which is about 20 miles east of Baton Rouge. (Two because their auditorium only holds 200 students at a time). I give public science lectures in a program run by the Louisiana…
A Few Random Questions
Posted by Vince LiCata on February 28, 2010 Does it bother you when people say: “Wow, it’s been so cold this winter, so much for global warming.”? And you have to remind them that global warming means that the average temperature of the earth is increasing, and that, in fact, the average temperature of North America is predicted to get colder, by maybe…
AAAS Meeting – Science in the Theatre
Posted by Vince LiCata on February 23, 2010 I was just in San Diego for the 2010 AAAS National Meeting – that’s the American Association for the Advancement of Science – the parent organization that publishes the journal Science. This year’s theme was “Bridging Science and Society”. As part of this, I organized and chaired a session called “Science in the Theatre” (although…
The Saints have Won the Super Bowl: Some Science Analogies
Posted by Vince LiCata on February 9, 2010 Between the Saints and Mardi Gras time: Louisiana is in full celebration right now. Some of the “cultural” elements on view during the Super Bowl reminded me of parallels in the culture of science: 1. The Super Bowl champions are always called the “World Champions” – even though this is a solely US sporting event.…
The Dance of the Louisiana State Science Fair, Or: Notes from the War on Science in Louisiana
Posted by Vince LiCata on January 31, 2010 When the most recent LSU budget cuts were handed down by the Louisiana governor a couple of weeks ago, one of the items that went on the chopping block was the Louisiana State Science and Engineering Fair, which has long been sponsored and hosted by the university. In a state with a creationist governor, and…
The Forbin Project in Practice: One Household Appliance at a Time
Posted by Vince LiCata on January 21, 2010 Although it’s not Dr. Forbin’s Colossus (one of the first AI systems to attempt to destroy the world on film –note the “on film” please), it is quite irritating, and the result might eventually be the same: We recently replaced our oven – why? the computer went out on it. We recently replaced our washer…
But do you LIKE “The Big Bang Theory”?
Posted by Vince LiCata on January 16, 2010 A next step beyond believing in it (or any well established theory — e.g. Evolution) is to ask: do you like it? (and here I’m talking about the real thing, we’ll deal with the television show later). Einstein didn’t like it. So much so he made his self-proclaimed “biggest mistake” trying to work around it.…
Do you believe in the Big Bang?
Posted by Vince LiCata on January 12, 2010 Writing about gravitational waves and the fact that waves from the big bang might still be bouncing around the universe (see January 10th post) reminded me of an odd science-and-religion overlap that happened in one of my classes recently. We were studying a play about Ralph Alpher’s work on Big Bang nucleosynthesis and cosmic background…