Physical Sciences
sa smith | September 30, 2009Yeah... I didnt go see 'Darwins Dilemma' last night.
Why?
Because Ive seen EXPELLED.
At least when I watched EXPELLED I was in the comfort of my own home and could do dishes/vacuum/watch other movies when I got bored. But Id be trapped in a theater!
Also, I got no response to my debate request re: Wells HIV/Evolution Denial... I just dont understand why ID Creationists dont want to debate me... :(
Sooo... Youll have to wait for Ians write-up.
Ian has written his view of Meyers talk. His post actually contains information and complete sentences, not just "AAAAAAAAHAHAHAHA!!!":
Meyer was in…
palmd | September 25, 2009The stupid truly burns brightly in this one. Dana Ullman, known to readers of Respectful Insolence, Science-based Medicine, and this blog as Hahnemann's cognitively impaired bulldog, has started blogging at the Huffington Post. It's certainly an appropriate venue for his brand of cult medicine belief, but that doesn't make it any less painful. His inaugural piece, entitled The Wisdom of Symptoms: Respecting the Body's Intelligence betrays a stunning level of ignorance of basic human biology.
I have good and bad news about the human body: it is neither wise nor foolish, good nor evil, nor is…
palmd | September 24, 2009It's like this: science requires a tolerance of failure. If your shiny, happy hypothesis fails to stand up to rigorous scrutiny, you drop it and move on. If instead of a true, disposable hypothesis, you have a fixed belief that will not change based on the data, you are delusional. Boosters of alternative medicine prefer the term "maverick" to "lunatic" but in the two are often the same.
It is nearly impossible to get someone to abandon a belief in alternative medicine, no matter how strong the evidence against it. Study after study has failed to validate homeopathy as anything other…
drorzel | September 24, 2009
$6/Kg to orbit -- KarlSchroeder.com
"The fact is, there is only one problem worth speaking about in space development, and that is the problem of cost-to-orbit. It currently costs around $10,000/kg to launch anything at all.
That price will never come down as long as chemical rockets are the only technology we use. "
(tags: space economics science technology blogs karl-schroeder)
The Real Cost of Medmal | Mother Jones
"Unfortunately, the real problem with our medical malpractice system isn't that it costs too much. The real problem is that it's a lottery. Some people get money they…
revere | September 21, 2009One of my healthier, but alas more expensive habits, is that I walk a mile or so several times a week to my neighborhood shopping area and visit one or another bookstore. I live in a college town, so my neighborhood shopping area has some of the best bookstores anywhere. Not just a university bookstore (which, like many, is part of the Barnes and Noble College Division and not independent), but also what I consider the best independent bookstore anywhere. Since the Reveres try not to reveal any of our locations, I don't get to give it a plug except to say it has the name of a prestigious…
tfk | September 18, 2009Jean Kazez, a philosopher at SMU, blogs a nice critique of the bone I picked with Jerry Coyne. She sees in my argument:
a kind of defense by decimation. First you cut down the pretensions of religion; then you say religion is alright.
Rosenau says that if religious scripture doesn't deliver scientific knowledge, like a physics textbook, it can still deliver some kind of knowledge. It can deliver knowledge like novels do. When you understand fiction as fiction, you understand that it's true in vampire stories that there are vampires. What's true out there is only that power can come from…
drorzel | September 17, 2009
KFC's Double Down Sandwich | Update | A.V. Club
"God clearly did not mean for humans to eat chicken, bacon, and low-quality, gelatinous cheese at the same time. I was suddenly struck with a strange urge to keep kosher. Each bite became a grueling endurance test, as the cheese and grease began to override the chicken breasts, and the sandwich grew more revolting-looking with each bite."
(tags: food avclub silly)
Dresden Codak » Archive » 42 Essential 3rd Act Twists
"Schedenfreude proves unruly."
(tags: comics writing literature theater fantasy mystery sf silly)
AAUP: Creating LGBTQ-…
mspringer | September 16, 2009Let's say you've got a water molecule. It doesn't have to be water, but it helps if it's one we can easily picture:
You can imagine water vapor as an ensemble of many of these molecules flying and bouncing around in their container. This translational motion is not the only kind of motion they're executing. They're also rotating, and each impact with another molecule can change the speed and direction of that rotation. Not only are the molecules translating and rotating, they're also vibrating. The relative positions of the two hydrogen and one oxygen atom are not fixed rigidly, but in…
dmunger | September 15, 2009We've talked a lot on Cognitive Daily about change blindness: the inability to spot visual differences between images and even real people and objects right before our eyes. The most dramatic demonstration might be Daniel Simons' "experiment" that took place before participants even knew they were being studied:
More recently researchers have uncovered a similar phenomenon for sounds: Change deafness. Listeners are asked to listen to two one-second clips separated by 350 milliseconds of white noise. The clips are composite sounds, combinations of four different familiar sounds:
If one of…
laelaps | September 15, 2009
In 1916 the paleontologist H.F. Osborn published one of the strangest books on evolution I have ever read. Titled The Origin and Evolution of Life: On the theory of action, reaction and interaction of energy, the volume was an attempt to "take some of the initial steps toward an energy conception of Evolution and an energy conception of Heredity and away from the matter and form conceptions which have prevailed for over a century." Osborn hoped that by distilling the study of life to exchanges of energy the why of evolution would finally become apparent. (As I have mentioned before, Osborn…
mikethemadbiologist | September 10, 2009A dissertation committee member who will remain nameless once told me, "Mike, in the end, it all comes down to those stupid fucking natural history facts." This might have been the only worthwhile thing said committee member ever told me. More about this in a bit.
Anyway, I bring this up because I think much of the commentary on Paul Krugman's recent NY Times piece about the problems with the current state of macroeconomics is missing the real problem. The problem wasn't with the theory.
Well, alright, the theory was bad. But the real problem is that there was no de facto mechanism to…
cortex | September 8, 2009In the latest issue of Outside Magazine, I profile Clay Marzo, a rising star on the pro surfing circuit. In December 2007, Clay was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, a mild form of autism. What's so intriguing about Clay's story is that his Asperger's isn't a hindrance or handicap. Instead, it's a crucial part of his success, allowing Clay to focus, for hours at a time, on nothing but the physics of waves and the mechanics of surfing:
Clay Marzo has been waiting all morning for waves. He's standing with his surfboard next to a NO TRESPASSING sign on the edge of a pineapple field, looking…
pontiff | September 2, 2009Trip to Zurich for 8th Symposium on Topological Quantum Computing, Zurich 29th-31st August 2009.
Thursday 8/27 - 7:30am SEA to 3:30pm IAD, 6:00pm IAD to 8:00am ZRH. Attempt to upgrade first leg failed which is too bad as it was the international version of the 767-300 which has a pretty nice (by American carrier standards) business class. Both flights are completely full. Am I the only one who often goes to the self check kiosks by the gates and attempts to move my seat to one beside an empty seat? Sleep approximately 2 hours. Why does the lady behind me think that it is okay to start a…
drorzel | September 2, 2009
Pimp My Novel: Self-Publishing: Great Idea... or Worst Idea Ever?
"Very occasionally, a self-published novel will be something that was somehow overlooked by the publishing industry as a whole and is actually quite good and/or salable. 99%+ of the time, however, these books are either written by the functionally illiterate, are tangled messes of inane plot and one-dimensional characters, do not appeal to the vast majority of readers, are way too long or way too short, or some combination of all of these. In short, most self-published novels are crap."
(tags: books publishing writing…
gregladen | August 26, 2009The following may serve well in a home study environment, or for the parent to keep up with what the school kid is doing or for the overachieving youngster to get ahead of the teacher!
Natural history for the kiddies:
Birds: Nature's Magnificent Flying Machine
Two dinosaur books
Math and science for middle schoolers on up:
Fins into Limbs (Evolution, Development)
The Young Birder's Guide: A Bird Book for the Middle Schooler
Idiot's guide to Pre-Algebra
Black Bodies and Quantum Cats (physics)
Unmasking Europa
Head First Physics
Home Chemistry (by a regular commenter on this blog!)
laelaps | August 24, 2009
Earlier this month I shared with you a review of Stories in Stone, a new book on urban geology by David Williams. It was a very enjoyable read, but I had a few questions about it. Fortunately David was glad to answer them, and you can see my interview with him below;
[Brian Switek] What got you interested in geology in the first place, and urban geology in particular? When did the idea for Stories in Stone first strike you?
[David Williams] An intro to physics class sparked my interest in geology. After getting a 16% on a three-hour quiz, I realized I wasn't cut out for physics.…
drorzel | August 21, 2009
Liberal Arts Rankings - Best Colleges - Education - US News and World Report
The annual clown show begins anew. Williams is #1, Union #43, for those who care.
(tags: academia education silly us-news)
Francis Collins' "Five Themes" for the NIH : Respectful Insolence
"In the end, I don't give the proverbial rodential posterior what Francis Collins' religious views are, as long as they don't directly impact NIH science policy, and I see no evidence from his track record that there's any reason to be concerned that he'll be somehow injecting them into the NIH or using them to determine policy…
grrlscientist | August 19, 2009tags: Scientia Pro Publica, Science for the People, biology, evolution, medicine, earth science, behavioral ecology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, blog carnival
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The summer has caused the carnival contributions to be reduced to a minimal number, but as always, all of the contributions are valuable and interesting reading. I am sure that the number of submissions will increase as soon as school begins soon.
Astrophysics
This thoughtful analysis describes cloud…
jstemwedel | August 19, 2009At Philosophers' Playground, Steve Gimbel ponders the pedagogically appropriate way to label William Dembski:
I'm wrapping up work on my textbook Methods and Models: A Historical Introduction to the Philosophy of Science and have run into a question. ...
The evolutionary biology track's final piece deals with William Dembski's work on intelligent design theory. Therein lies the question. The way the exercises are laid out is in three parts labeled The Case, The Scientist, and Your Job. The second part is a brief biographical sketch (a paragraph, just a couple sentences about the person's…
jstemwedel | August 18, 2009Recently, Steinn brought our attention to some of the difficulties involved in getting a scientific journal to publish a "Comment" on an article. He drew on a document (PDF) by Prof. Rick Trebino of the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Physics detailing (in 123 numbered steps) his own difficulties in advancing what is supposed to be an ongoing conversation between practicing scientists in the peer reviewed scientific literature. Indeed, I think this chronology of exasperation raises some questions about just what interests journal editors are actually working towards, and about how…