November 3, 2012
Answer: About 20 meters. Th Hubble Space Telescope's aperture is 2.4 meters. So, you really can't do it at the present time.
This is one of a large, seemingly inestimable number of practical need-to-know and esoteric questions addressed in Lawrence Weinstein's book Guesstimation 2.0: Solving…
November 2, 2012
White people really know what they are talking about, don't they!
November 2, 2012
Personally, I can give you a half dozen reasons. But why listen to me, when you can listen to Desiree Schell speaking with John Zeller, Nicole Gugliucci, John Matson, and Cynthia Phillips??? Which you can do on Sunday. Check out: #188 Why Should I Care About Space?
November 2, 2012
Climate change denialism is on its last legs and will soon be no more relevant than Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists or Obama birthers. But on the way out they are making me laugh. In the last 48 hours I've heard one denialist's claim that Superstorm Sandy was not relevant to climate…
November 2, 2012
If this does not lose a LOT of votes for Romney in Ohio than everyone in Ohio will have some 'splainin' to do.
November 2, 2012
Five families of birds make up the group that could be referred to as the Cotingas and Manakins, which in turn include species with such colorful names as "Pale-bellied Tyrant-Manakin," "Bare-necked Fruitcrow," "Peruvian Plantcutter," and "White-browed Purpletuft." And certainly, you've heard of…
November 1, 2012
I'll vote for Brian and I think he's make a great Congress person, but I will be speaking to him about dissing the stone age!
If you want to help get rid of a Michele Bachmann clone, click here!
And this too:
November 1, 2012
The Drake Equation is that famous equation where you count how many stars there are, figure out the chance of a star having planets, of planets having water, etc. etc. until finally you get some rough estimate of the chance of live evolving elsewhere in the universe. It's a little more complicated…
November 1, 2012
The Carnival of Evolution is up and running HERE at Sorting out Science. Catch up with the latest and greatest from the blogosphere on Evolution!
November 1, 2012
Rising Sea Levels: An Introduction to Cause and Impact is a new book by Hunt Janin and Scott Mandia. Janin is a writer of non fiction and scholarly books, and Mandia is a professor of physics and a science communicator who specializes in climate-related issues.
To me, sea level is one of the most…
November 1, 2012
Live at 9:30 AM Eastern THIS MORNING:
Featuring Obama campaign surrogate Kevin Knobloch and former Republican congressman and Delaware governor Mike Castle.
Moderated by ScienceDebate.org's Shawn Otto and ClimateDesk Live's Chris Mooney.
TUNE IN HERE FOR LIVESTREAM
Thursday, November 1, 2012
The…
October 31, 2012
The McGregor Museum is a complex building with several wings surrounding an inner court yard, a multi-layered roof, balconies everywhere, and numerous trees in the court yard close in to the building. So, a cat can spend the heat of the day in the shaded crown of a tree, and the cool of the…
October 31, 2012
As promised, the footnotes for A True Ghost Story.
1Unless this statement itself is not true, in which case, how can you know what is true and what is not true? And besides, it can't really all be true because some of it is about ghosts.
2Who wants to be alone sitting in the dark?
3I use the term…
October 31, 2012
... Continued ...
Finally, without any further interruption ...
One morning I was up a bit earlier than usual, and I was in the bathroom shaving. It was an hour or so before sunup. The lighting in the bathroom was poor, but there was a security spotlight outside the window, as I recall, so I had…
October 31, 2012
... Continued ...
Since we are talking about geology, I do not want to give up the opportunity to bring up one of the coolest stories of geology ever, given the present day discussion of science and religion. You will be asking for a source for this story. Look it up in Wikipedia, where all…
October 31, 2012
I know elections are stressful and even annoying, and this year it is worse than ever because there is so much at stake, especially here in Minnesota where we have two boneheaded ballot amendments to deal with. Sometimes it just feels like this:
I'm hoping Bronco Bamma wins!
October 31, 2012
... Continued ...
One of the main reasons we were staying in Kimberley at all was to assist the museum staff with a particular, and rather singular, survey and excavation. The location and circumstances of this field project were quite remarkable.
This was on the location of an historic hunting…
October 31, 2012
Earlier this year a paper was published in the journal Nature in which a team of scientists looked at changes in storm surge potential under conditions of global warming, and they used the New York City area in their modeling. Combined with resent research adding to the growing body of data and…
October 31, 2012
... Continued ...
I wrote earlier about the graves that were dug daily to receive the dead. In truth, the details of this procedure are still being worked out by archaeologists at the McGregor Museum in Kimberley, but when we were there on this particular trip, part of the grave yard to which I…
October 31, 2012
Storms of My Grandchildren is a book by James Hansen that outlines the science behind increasing storminess associated with global warming, and covers key events in the recent history of the politics of climate change science denialism. It is a good book. The National Center for Science Education…
October 30, 2012
... Continued ...
Well, we were living with this ghost who would walk up and down the hall in the middle of the night, invisibly leaving behind only the sound of its footsteps. But before I tell you how this all came out, I want to tell you a related side story.
As I had mentioned, I had the "…
October 30, 2012
Check it out:
Thank you Sarah!
Here's the Sungudogo Page in case you want to experience the pain of reading it too! (I mean the good kind of pain, of course.)
October 30, 2012
... Continued ...
So there we were in the Haunted Guest Quarters of the Old Infirmary, and I had already heard the ghost once. In the morning, my colleague and BFF Lynne who was staying with us for a couple of days noted that she had heard the mysterious footsteps as well....
"Greg, one, maybe…
October 30, 2012
Everything I'm about to tell you in this story is true.1 This is a long story, so it will span more than one blog post. You might not want to read this story while you are alone or while sitting in the dark.2
Kimberley South Africa is said to be the most haunted city in the world, and it…
October 30, 2012
... in the last ten years. Here's Bill Maher:
October 29, 2012
Reports from Lower Manhattan are sketchy, but the tide gauge shows that the Atlantic Ocean is receding, but not before filling the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel with several feet of water, probably flooding several subways, and covering the New York Stock Exchange floor with a few feet of water.
So far…
October 29, 2012
Sandy was originally scheduled to pass over the Gulf Sream, intensify, then back off a bit in intensity as it spun closer to the cost, with the midpoint of the thousand mile wide tropical storm passing over the coast in the wee hours of the morning, Tuesday. Instead, Sandy has sped up and is…
