Science Debate is an organization that has been trying to get the presidential candidates to directly address important science policy issues. After several months of meeting and convening and conversing among top science organizations and seeking public input, Science Debate Dot Org has nailed down what questions they feel should be asked at a presidential debate. Without further ado, here is the press release from that organization just as it came to me moments ago: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—JULY 19, 2011 Organizations List Top Science & Environmental Questions Obama, Romney Should…

John Abraham is a friend of mine who works in climate science. Pretty soon you'll get to hear him and some other doods talking about climate change, in a special edition of Skeptically Speaking. Meanwhile, you can read an excellent, just posted interview at FutureDude magazine, where some dood interviewed my dood-man John. It is here.

In June. Bill McKibben has an important piece in Rolling Stone about climate change: Global Warming's Terrifying New Math We probably are having the warmest year ever recorded by science, and one of the warmest years in a couple/few hundred thousand years as recorded by proxyindicators. Bill's piece talks about three "terrifying" numbers: 2 degreec Celsius, 565 Gigatons, and 2795 Gigatons. And there are other numbers too: ...The week after the Rio conference limped to its conclusion, Arctic sea ice hit the lowest level ever recorded for that date. Last month...Tropical Storm Debby dumped more…

An exoplanet smaller than the Earth may have been identified in some far away solar system. Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope have detected what they believe is a planet two-thirds the size of Earth. The exoplanet candidate, called UCF-1.01, is located a mere 33 light-years away, making it possibly the nearest world to our solar system that is smaller than our home planet. Exoplanets circle stars beyond our sun. Only a handful smaller than Earth have been found so far. Spitzer has performed transit studies on known exoplanets, but UCF-1.01 is the first ever identified with…

This one is a little different. It was an air to air missile, and five guys were thrilled to stand underneath it when it went off several thousand feed above them: More on this film here.

I just got a copy of The Linux Command Line: A Complete Introduction. I read one review of it a while back which was quite positive, suggesting that the book was both really useful and really not boring. Here's the description from the publisher: You've experienced the shiny, point-and-click surface of your Linux computer—now dive below and explore its depths with the power of the command line. The Linux Command Line by William Shotts. No Starch Press. Image from the publisher. The Linux Command Line takes you from your very first terminal keystrokes to writing full programs in Bash,…

The Olympics are old. The first ancient Greek Olympic game may have been held in 776 BC in the Greek city of Olympia. Almost 1,200 years later, when Greece was being Christianized, Theodosius I decided that the Olympics would not be played any more, so the last games of the original series was probably in 394 AD. These games had their own origin myth, and according to that myth, the first event was a race between two gods. Apparently, the first actual (as in non-mythical) game was a race among women to decide who would be the Priestess for the goddess Hera. Later, a race was added for men…

Ten questions make up this AP style quiz provided by the Washington Post. Click here.

Derek Muller is the Creative Director of Veritasium, a science video blog with 90 films based off of interviews with Australians about issues such as global warming, seasons and the scale of the universe.

Before getting into this, I just want to give you the best quote about physics from a physicist I've seen in a long time. In describing the phenomenon we are discussing here, JPL scientist Slava Turyshev says, "The effect is something like when you're driving a car and the photons from your headlights are pushing you backward." I know, right? I hate when that happens! Anyway, here's the story. Pioneer 10 and 11 are space ships that were launched before most of you were born, in 1972 and 1973. They visited a bunch of places in the solar system, but are now heading out of our solar system…

We've been talking about marriage (here, here, and here). We've established that marriage has a history, it has variability, and that it is hard to pin down a narrowly defined set of functions for it. However, I also suggested that when we strip away a lot of variants that have special explanations (even if those variants are MOST of the variants of marriage) there is a thing we can call marriage that has a limited and understandable set of functions, or at least, there is a thing we can understand in a very basic evolutionary and social way. And we'll get to that. But first, I want to take…

The NASA Curiosity Rover will land on August 5th. NASA has provided a way to follow along with the show, using a special web based plugin which is set up for Mac and Windows, but not Linux. As NASA's Mars Rover Curiosity prepares to land on Mars, public audiences worldwide can take their own readiness steps to share in the adventure. Landing is scheduled for about 10:31 a.m. PDT on Aug. 5 (1:31 a.m. EDT on Aug. 6), at mission control inside NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. Martian fans can help NASA test-drive a new 3-D interactive experience that will allow the public…

Why can’t a baby bird just hatch out of the egg and fly away, or at least, be able to fly a little and not require weeks of constant feeding and attention? I suspect they CAN do this but just refuse to in order to steal parental investment, which is, after all, a very valuable resources. Baby turtles and crocodiles are born as miniature versions of adults. Some birds do this a little. Baby ducks and chickens s are the mensches of the bird world; they don’t spend all that time sitting there uselessly and constantly demanding attention. Sure, turtles and crocs are tiny and vulnerable and most…

The following letter to Secretary Clinton was released a short while ago. It will be delivered later on this week. Also later on in the week, there will be a place where you can add your comments. Also, there will be a related piece in Rolling Stone's next issue (this week). I imagine there may even be a petition or two! Also, you will find more discussion and other relevant links HERE. The 350.org web site will have more, and I'll pass on anything I get. Dear Secretary Clinton, We are writing to ask that the State Department conduct, as part of its evaluation of the Keystone XL pipeline…

This is baby bird week on 10,000 Birds. From the intro post: Somehow it seemed fitting that after our last theme week – Bird Love Week – that we should spend a full seven days examining what could be the results of that theme. It’s Baby Bird Week on 10,000 Birds and the adorable, fuzzy-wuzzy, itsy-bitsy, baby birdies will be everywhere! Can you handle the cuteness? If you go to the bottom of that post, you'll see a current listing of posts...as of this writing there are four beyond the intro...so you can explore them all. My contribution will be up tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.

We're getting closer to the Impossible Landing that NASA is going to attempt on Mars, and the space agency has sent out a new press release. The area where NASA's Curiosity rover will land on Aug. 5 PDT (Aug. 6 EDT) has a geological diversity that scientists are eager to investigate, as seen in this false-color map based on data from NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU NASA's most advanced planetary rover is on a precise course for an early August landing beside a Martian mountain to begin two years of unprecedented scientific detective work. However, getting…

I want to tell you about a cool book, but first, here's something interesting about Dragonflies. Terrestrial animals (like humans) require long chain fatty acids but don't synthesize them from basic parts. Higher terrestrial plants don't make the biggest of these molecules either, but plants do make molecules that can be turned into things like EPA and DHA in animals. So, while terrestrial animals can get what they need by consuming other animals or by starting out with plant molecules, it is a long slog from a bunch of readily available simple molecules to large and hard to get but very…

Louisiana is preparing to spend over $11 million to send 1,365 students to 20 private schools that teach creationism instead of science as part of Governor Bobby Jindal’s new voucher program. It is time to halt the implementation of this creationist voucher program. It is increasingly clear that one of Governor Jindal’s primary education goals is the teaching of creationism. He supported, signed, and defended the Louisiana Science Education Act (LSEA), Louisiana’s 2008 stealth creationism law, which allows teachers to sneak creationism into public school science classrooms by using…

Google and Apple, you ruined my daughter's birthday! Well, it wasn't that bad, but it could have been. Anyway, this is a warning to anyone who uses Apple products of any kind and who uses gmail as their main mail. Google has started putting email from Apple directly into the spam folder. On her birthday, I sent Julia an iTunes gift card. She is overseas, and this is something she can use there. It never arrived. I checked my Apple account and apparently it had been sent, but I never received the usual email telling me I had been charged for it. Suddenly, it dawned on me. Google and…

There are all kinds of reasons why it does not matter, apparently, that the US Athletes participating in this summer's Olympics in London will be wearing uniforms made in China. These reasons are things like "Everything is made in China" and "They don't make clothing in America anyway" and so on and so forth. But there are also reasons that it matters and that team should, in fact, be wearing uniforms made in US shops. Union shops. Did you know that when a political party runs a candidate or pushes an issue, and they make t-shirts, bumper stickers, and other artifacts of rhetoric, they get…