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Why I hate April 1st

You just can't trust anything posted to the web today. Take, for instance, this story about Howard Ahmanson. In case you don't know who he is, he is an extremely wealthy Californian who also happens to be one of those Christian Reconstructionists — a follower of R.J. Rushdoony, who thinks we ought to have a literal Christian theocracy — and is a major contributor to the Discovery Institute and other evangelical/fundamentalist causes. So I have to read this with a bit of skepticism. WHY I REGISTERED DEMOCRAT> By Howard Ahmanson About six weeks ago, I, a known leader of the Religious Right…

Kent Hovind is still in jail, and he's going to stay there for a long time

Hovind's followers, however, are still treading the long and candy-sprinkled road of self-delusion. I've been sent a letter pleading for help in his case — they want to take it to the Supreme Court. I will be very surprised if this gets anywhere. Greetings from Adrienne Gilbert in Kentucky... An alarming situation with Dr. Kent Hovind of Creation Science Evangelism is putting every American's first amendment rights in jeopardy. I have been following this case since its beginning, so I wanted to share with you briefly what needs to be done and why. Summary of situation: Dr. Kent Hovind is in…

New and Exciting in PLoS Biology

Bioethics Grows Up: When I taught my first course in bioethics to first-year students at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons in the spring semester of 1981, bioethics was still in its formative years. There were scant few textbooks around and even fewer anthologies, and I could not assume that any of my students had ever read anything by a bioethicist or about bioethics. The key institutions in the field at that time, the Hastings Center, then in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York, and the Kennedy Institute at Georgetown University in Washington, DC, were barely over a decade…

Irwin Neher: Chemistry helps neuroscience: the use of caged compounds and indicator dyes for the study of neurotransmitter release

Ah, a solid science talk. It wasn't bad, except that it was very basic—maybe if I were a real journalist instead of a fake journalist I would have appreciated it more, but as it was, it was a nice overview of some common ideas in neuroscience, with some discussion of pretty new tools on top. He started with a little history to outline what we know, with Ramon Y Cajal showing that the brain is made up of network of neurons (which we now know to be approxiamately 1012 neurons large). He also predicted the direction of signal propagation, and was mostly right. Each neuron sends signals outwards…

The Evolution-Creation Struggle

Even though Michael Ruse is an evolutionary philosopher, he also is a self-described deist, so I probably should have been ready to be disappointed. Instead of saving my hard-earned money, I optimistically purchased his book, The Evolution-Creation Struggle (2005, Harvard University Press), with the expectation that it would explain the history that underlies the conflict between science and religion regarding the origins of life on earth, particularly as it is being acted out in science classrooms in America -- which it did accomplish. Kinda. Sorta. In this book, Ruse defines and explores…

Doris Lessing's Reaction To Her Nobel Prize

tags: humor, Nobel Prize in Literature, Doris Lessing, streaming video This streaming video shows Doris Lessing's reaction upon learning that she won the Nobel Prize in Literature [0:10] "Oh, Christ!" British writer Doris Lessing won the Nobel Literature Prize for five decades of epic novels that have covered feminism and politics, as well her youth in Africa. Lessing, who will be 88 on October 22, is only the 11th woman to have won the prize since it was first awarded in 1901. The Swedish Academy described her as "that epicist of the female experience who with scepticism, fire and…

Mystery Bird: Western Sandpiper, Calidris mauri

tags: Western Sandpiper, Calidris mauri, birds, nature, Image of the Day [Mystery bird] Western Sandpiper, Calidris mauri, photographed at Smith Point, Texas. [I will identify this bird for you tomorrow] Image: Joseph Kennedy, 7 September 2008 [larger view]. Nikon D200, Kowa 883 telescope TSN-PZ camera eyepiece 1/1000s f/8.0 at 1000.0mm iso400. Rick Wright, Managing Director of WINGS Birding Tours Worldwide, writes: Quick: big or little? Even without careful measurement of the diameter of the surrounding water molecules, it's obvious that this is a small bird, compact, even stumpy, and I…

Open Laboratory 2010 - submissions so far

Under the fold are entries so far, as well as buttons and the bookmarklet. The instructions for submitting are here. ============================ A Blog Around The Clock: What does it mean that a nation is 'Unscientific'? A Blog Around The Clock: My latest scientific paper: Extended Laying Interval of Ultimate Eggs of the Eastern Bluebird A Blog Around The Clock: Evolutionary Medicine: Does reindeer have a circadian stop-watch instead of a clock? A Meandering Scholar: Back to basics: The Evolution of a Postdoc Anna's Bones: The Ape That Wouldn't Grow Up Anthropology in Practice: The Irish…

Harry Potter: Final Chapter

JK Rowling (pictured), the author of the successful Harry Potter series of books, says that, even though she has not finished the last book yet, she is "well into it now." When asked how she felt about Book Seven when she gave a reading at Buckingham Palace in honor of the Queen's 80th birthday, she said, "I am feeling sad as it is the last one. But so far, so good." When asked about the book's progress, she said, "I'm doing well I think. You can never really tell till you get near the end. I am not quite there yet." Unfortunately, the upcoming Harry Potter book, the last in the series, looks…

moral consequences

Lubos makes a provocative comment to my contemplation of Griffin's comments on climate change I can't resist following it up, despite its inappropriateness. Consider war. People are killed in war, but we as a culture distinguish the manner and motive. Let us ignore the issue of "who started it" and just consider the process. People fighting the war kill their opponent, it is a matter of kill or be killed and is broadly considered justified. People die incidentally to the process of fighting. The "collateral casualties". This is an inevitable consequence of the process as it is conducted in…

Tenure and War

The debate over the tenure process that Rob kicked up at Galactic Interactions continues with Chad worrying about senior academic complacence and the Incoherent Ponderer pondering some more the latter makes a good point - the big hurdle is moving from postdoc to tenure track, that is anecdotally where most of the involuntary attrition takes place (a lot of people who stop after PhD seem to do it by choice, they've had a taste and decided to do something else, thank you). Once on the tenure track, the odds are better; the real issue seems to be the process, not the outcome. It is a brutal…

Rational Religion II: axioms

Earlier I argued that religion is axiomatic, rational and wrong, and that science methodology pushes religion either into allegorical distinct domains through heterodoxy, or it faces direct conflict with orthodox religions. I want to argue that any particular religion really is axiomatic and that the axioms are "arbitary" in the same sense that the axioms of geometry are arbitary, there is freedom to choose different, incompatible axiom sets that lead to different inferences. We can consider religion as a social structure, that communicates its precepts among both its adherents and to…

liveblogging the high redshift universe

The first two billion years of galaxy formation: the reionization epoch and beyond. The Aspen Center for Physics is a physics hostel of sorts, and a very nice one it is too. The Aspen Center, which is located adjacent to the Aspen Institute on the edge of town, runs a series of (currently five) weekly workshop in january and february of each year, bringing in typically 50-100 physicists for intense workshops on a rotating series of "hot topics" in research. In the summer there are four months of overlapping series of longer 3 week workshops where an effort is made to mingle the participants…

retroactive liability

so, this week is, yet again, decision time on the mystifying FISA Amendments Act this is an abominable piece of legislation which simultaneously manages to gut parts of the US Constitution, set historically bad precedents and violate centuries of hard fought legal principles It is not science, and not something I like to harp on, but I keep getting these flashbacks to the Late Roman Republic... One aspect of the amendments is to provide retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies that co-operated with government requests for surveillance without warrants under the current FISA act.…

Pop-sci book meme

Jennifer Oullette has put together a pop-sci book meme (and John Lynch has joined in). It's the usual thing, a long list of books and you're supposed to highlight the ones you've read, this time with the theme being that they're all about science somehow. I detect a physics bias in Ms. Oullette's choices, however, despite the excellent beginning — and it's to that I ascribe my poor performance. That and some weird choices: since when is Neuromancer pop-sci? Stephenson's Baroque Cycle or Cryptonomicon or Snowcrash would be better choices if we're going to throw fiction in the mix, or Sterling'…

on the importance of ranking

there are many ways to rank a program: including its reputation, its performance, and more subtle quantitative indicators, some of which are contradictory and mutually inconsistent. Rankings are also generally lagging indicators and imperfect indicators of future performance, they are vulnerable to demographics and individual star performers which may not be there in the future, or may fail to live up to their reputation. Yet, considering the stakes, rankings are endlessly mulled, weighed, hashed, disputed as storied programs slip in the rankings, and celebrated as outsiders surge up the…

Holiday Gift Ideas

Image: Philadelphia City Paper You only have one week left before Christmas eve arrives, so I assume that you might be getting ready to panic and spend your hard-earned money on just anything, so you can say you gave your loved ones gifts. So I thought I'd help you spend your money wisely by compiling a list of holiday gift ideas based on clever and much-appreciated gifts that my readers have given me throughout the year as well as some gift ideas that I've used in the past. DVDs; The Life of Birds: A must-have for kids and adults who are interested in birds. I also recommend this series…

U.S. House passes Camp Lejeune compensation bill

By Dick Clapp After years of diligent and effective advocacy by former Marines and family members, the House voted on July 31, 2012 in favor of the Honoring America’s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act (H.R. 1627). The House version was amended by the Senate and passed earlier in July and the final version now goes on to President Obama for signing into law.  The first section of the bill is named after Janey Ensminger, the nine year-old daughter of former Marine Jerry Ensminger, who was conceived and born at Camp Lejeune and lived there until she was diagnosed with leukemia,…

Another member of Congress wants to micromanage research funding

Last week, the House of Representatives approved an amendment to a 2013 spending bill that would prohibit the National Science Foundation from devoting any of its budget to its political science program, which, according to Inside Higher Ed, allocated around $11 million in peer-reviewed grants this year. The amendment was the brainchild of Congressman Jeff Flake of Arizona, who objected to NSF funding studies that "might satisfy the curiosities of a few academics" without benefiting society. Among the previously funded studies Flake apparently considers to be poor use of taxpayer funds are…

BIG company, but small OSHA penalties for workplace fatalities

While we're on vacation, we're re-posting content from earlier in the year. This post was originally published on February 28, 2011. By Celeste Monforton Roxanne Moyer wondered why managers at her husband's worksite would allow an obvious dangerous condition to exist. Workers could be so "close to molten steel [that it] just poured over on them." Her husband, Samuel Moyer, 32 died earlier this month at Arcelor Mittal's LaPlace, Lousiania steel mill in exactly that way. He was fatally burned with molten steel. Mrs. Moyer sounds like a generous and forgiving soul, saying: "I don't want it to…

New Guidebook Brings Public Health, Climate Change Connection into Focus

By Kim Krisberg Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. Climate change will affect, in profoundly adverse ways, some of the most fundamental determinants of health: food, air, water. In the face of this challenge, we need champions throughout the world who will work to put protecting human health at the centre of the climate change agenda. -- Margaret Chan, MD, MPH, director-general, World Health Organization, 2008 Human health may not be the first image that pops to mind when it comes to climate change. People often envision melting icebergs or desperate polar bears…

Anticipating Labor Dept's regulatory agenda for new worker safety rules

It shouldn't be long now before Labor Secretary Hilda Solis releases her semi-annual regulatory plan for new worker health and safety rules. This document is required by the Regulatory Flexibility Act and Executive Order 12866, and is supposed to be published every April and October. The Labor Secretary's most recent regulatory agenda wasn't issued until December 2010, the 20th to be exact. We''ll have to wait and see how tardy this one will be. In that December 2010 document, OSHA and the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) listed about a dozen regulatory initiatives in the pre…

New York state approves country's most generous paid family leave law

New York State's new budget deal includes a paid-leave program that will offer the most paid leave in the nation once it's fully implemented in 2021. California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island have already established programs that partially replace workers' salaries when they take time off work to care for a new child or family member with a serious health condition, or to address their own disabling condition. These programs allow for a maximum of four weeks (Rhode Island) or six weeks (California and New Jersey) for family care; New York will allow for up to 12 weeks. Like the other states,…

Are RCTs the best course of action in global health?

As most people in any empirical or scientific field know, the gold standard for experimenting and establishing causality is the randomized controlled trial (RCT). In an RCT, subjects are randomly assigned to one of two conditions: an experimental group or a control group. The experimental group receives the intervention or drug and the control group receives standard care or a placebo (basically, the equivalent of the status quo). The idea behind the randomized controlled trial is to control the circumstances surrounding the experimental question as much as possible. This allows researchers…

Study: Cuts to Medicaid dental benefits led to increased emergency room use in California

Just another example of how cuts to health care funding simply shift the costs and endanger people’s health. This time it’s a study on the impact of eliminating adult dental coverage within the California Medicaid program. Not surprisingly, the cut resulted in a significant and immediate rise in people seeking help in hospital emergency departments. While federal rules require Medicaid programs to cover children’s dental care, covering adult dental care is up to state policymakers. California lawmakers decided to stop offering dental care to adult Medicaid beneficiaries in 2009, which left…

New FDA rules mean better drug info for pregnant women

Last week, the US Food and Drug Administration published a final rule that updates requirements for what prescription-drug information must disclose about potential effects for pregnant and breastfeeding women and their babies. Under the old labeling rules, drugs were placed in one of five categories -- A, B, C, D, or X -- depending on research findings (or lack thereof). An "A" designation meant that human studies did not find adverse effects in pregnant women or their babies, while and "X" designation meant that studies in humans or animals found a risk of problems to the baby and that…

Halland Archaeology Journal

Back in February I wrote about a new issue of Halland County Museum's periodical Utskrift. And now I have already received two new issues! I'll talk a little about #12 here as I haven't read #11 yet. The volume is an homage to Lennart Lundborg on his 80th birthday. Lundborg is a beloved figure in Halland archaeology and a former employee of the museum. Fittingly, five of the twelve papers deal with the Bronze Age in Halland province, the man's main field of study, and three with other aspects of his work, including the many comics he's drawn! The three longest papers (all 14 pp.) are a report…

Alopecia: Charm Quark's Non-Cancer

Here's a guest entry from Charm Quark, one of the bloggers at Skepchick Sweden. When I read it there I asked her to give me a translation for Aard. I have alopecia, an autoimmune disease in which hair follicles go into a resting phase, causing hair loss. The form I've got, alopecia areata, causes hair to fall out in in patches. The disease continuously regresses and relapses, and I have gone trough several bouts since the age of seven. Luckily, the disease is completely harmless and I have no other symptoms, but you appear to be very ill indeed when you have no hair/eyebrows/eyelashes.…

What does Klaus think? Freedom, not climate, is at risk?

Vaclav Klaus says We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough - irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent - for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now. and for good measure goes on to quote the egregious Crichton. He's said it before, of course. [Thanks (?) to Lubos for pointing this post out] He goes on As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the…

The New Age

The following article is a guest post by H. E. Taylor, who you might recognize as the one who graciously provides us with the weekly GW news roundups. Enjoy! The New AgeAn Argument for Geo-engineeringIf you study civilizations of the past which have collapsed [1, 2, 3, 4], a curious fact emerges. Look at Rome, Sumeria, the old kingdom of Egypt, the lowland classic Maya, the Olmec, the Huari Empire of the central Andes, the Chacoan and Hohokam of southwestern America, the Minoans, the Harrapans of the Indus valley, Easter Island. These cultures all had different religions, different economic…

The Tragedy of the Detainee Treatment Act

Famed libertarian legal scholar Richard Epstein testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee a few days ago about the detainee bill that was just passed and awaits Bush's inevitable signature. What he said is very important. Far more is at stake than lawsuits haggling over prison conditions. At stake is the fundamental right of any prisoner to test the lawfulness of his detention. Truth must count. Innocence must matter. An optional system of limited judicial review sidesteps both. Only habeas corpus can meet the need. To strip the federal courts of habeas jurisdiction for…

Washington Court Upholds Ban on Gay Marriage

Another state court, Washington this time, has upheld their state's ban on gay marriage. This ruling was long awaited, to the tune of 17 months since the case was actually heard. I haven't read the ruling yet, and probably won't get to until tomorrow, but Dale Carpenter has his usual thorough and evenhanded analysis at Volokh. I'm interested to read it because of what Carpenter says about the suspect class analysis in the ruling, which I'll post below the fold because it's so long: Unlike the New York Court of Appeals, the Washington court dealt substantively with the question of suspect-…

DaveScot's Continued Absurdity

The ever intrepid DaveScot has responded yet again on this question of why the Dover school board didn't rescind the ID policy on Dec. 5th, 2005. And while his prior messages were just based on ignorance, he's now added lying to his bag of tricks. He writes: Ed responded again this time his lame excuse is the board didn't have time to discuss rescinding the ID policy at the first meeting. Bzzzt. Thank you for playing, Dave, but this is either A) a lie or B) you're just too stupid to understand your native language. Nowhere in my response did I say anything about the board not having time to…

A Squabble of Kerfuffles

Well, it's as good a guess at a collective noun for "kerfuffle" as any other... There have been three moderately heated bloggy controversies that I've been following over the past week, that I haven't commented on. Mostly because I don't really have that much to add to any of the arguments, or at least, not enough to merit a blog post. I do want to note their existence, though, and maybe by combining them together, it won't feel so much like a pointless fluff post. So if you're dying to know my opinions on the crimes of fanfic, Oliver Stone's casting decisions, or Hooters, click on through to…

More Jobs in Science

The latest jobs in science post has prompted a lot of responses, several of them arguing that we need to expand the definition of acceptable careers for Ph.D. scientists. For example, there's Nicholas Condon in comments: When I hear this incessant handwringing about jobs in "science," it seems like it frequently comes from people with two characteristics: they seem to believe that the only viable destination for a Ph.D. scientist is a professorship, and they who work in subfields that are oversupplied (biology) or have very limited non-academic employment opportunitites (HEP) and they mistake…

Science Is Not a Path to Riches

There have been a number of responses to my Science Is Hard post over the last several days, and I've been trying to come up with something to say about them. This is the second of two posts responding to comments by some of my fellow ScienceBloggers. Turning to Steinn's first post on the subject, I actually hadn't intended to link the "Science Is Hard" post to the "Why They're Leaving" post. Those two subjects just happened to catch my eye on the same day. Their juxtaposition was not meant to imply that students leave science because science is hard-- in fact, the particular difficulties I…

How the Other Half Grades

My Quantum Optics class this term is a junior/ senior level elective, one of a set of four or five such classes that we rotate through, offering one or two a year. We require physics majors to take one of these classes in order to graduate, and encourage grad-school-bound students to take as many as they can fit in their schedule. Students in all majors are also required to take five "Writing Across the Curriculum" classes, which are intended to be courses with a strong writing component that should build their writing skills both in their discipline and out. As you might imagine, the bulk of…

The Obama failing

Apparently, Barack Obama did well in the recent primaries, increasing the chances that he'll be the Democratic candidate for president. Right away, we're seeing an old video of an Obama speech (transcript here) being refloated. This is the same speech that prompted me to say I would never vote for Obama. It really is a ghastly exercise in self-delusion and post hoc justification of religious bigotry; I'd say he was pandering to his audience, except that I think he really believes the nonsense he was spouting. Just reading it again pisses me off, it's so full of stupidity. Look at this: And…

Sea ice, part 2

Or perhaps part 3. I've lost track. Sea ice - and now for something just a tiny bit different refers, as does the earlier This year's sea ice. Yes, it looks like being part 3. The above is the IJIS sea ice. Nothing very exciting at the moment (NSIDC have some nice pix. April 2011 was bang-on trend). As you recall, we're trying to agree a bet or bets. I want to bet on monthly extent and some of the others want daily. After too much equivocation, I've decided to stick to my guns: monthly it is, and if you don't like that, you'll need to find someone else to bet with. Or, you can apply a handy…

India 'arrogant' to deny global warming link to melting glaciers?

Says the Grauniad. Their not-very-useful article is about a Discussion Paper (as it calls itself) of Himalayan Glaciers, A State-of-Art Review of Glacial Studies, Glacial Retreat and Climate Change by V.K.Raina, Ex. Deputy Director General, Geological Survey of India. The Telegraph of India has an opinion. No idea if it is at all representative. Maribo has a lot of sense about the report; go read that and come back here if you need any more. Back? OK then. 0) For the science, they say (I presume correctly) All the glaciers under observation, during the last three decades of 20th century have…

A late Quaternary climate reconstruction based on borehole heat flux

By S. P. Huang, H. N. Pollack, and P.-Y. Shen, also known as HPS. This is a very interesting paper. To understand why, you'll need to at least browse The borehole mystery and More boring. To recap: the image shown was being shamelessly abused by the septics as purported proof that the MWP was much warmer than today and this vital evidence was being suppressed by the IPCC using black helicopters and the usual kind of stuff. I thought that the major point is that the HPS '97 graph (the one here) just isn't used anymore by anyone and wondered why not (not even H, P or S used it). They say: The…

The Bottleneck Years by H. E. Taylor - Table of Contents

  The Bottleneck Years by H.E. Taylor My thanks go to Marlene for listening and to Kaeren and Rick at the Sal's for their many helpful comments.ISBN: 978-0-9881321-0-8 Copyright(2012) by H.E. Taylor     Table of Contents     Chapter Title Date Page 0 Edie May 11, 2055 5 1 The Burning Lake May 11, 2055 9 2 Externalities May 11, 2055 13 3 Electronic Democracy May 11, 2055 17 4 Matt May 18. 2055 23 5 FabNet May 18, 2055 27 6 The Great Hunger May 19, 2055 30 7 Teaser June 4, 2055 35 8 Jacy June 7, 2055 38 9 Henry June 10, 2055 40 10 Robert Fontaine July 18, 2055 52…

142-150/366: On-Deadline Catchup

I've been neglecting the photo-a-day thing for the last week-and-a-bit, but for a good reason: I had a deadline of, well, today, to finish a chapter I was asked to contribute to an academic book. And while I fully realize that actually hitting that deadline is not typical academic behavior, I have A Thing about that, and was going to make damn sure I finished by the end of the month, as I had promised. So a lot of stuff got neglected, to the point where there were a few days in that stretch where I didn't take any pictures at all. So, you get another catch-up post. I owe nine photos, but I…

Electronic Frontier Foundation Messes Up

I just realized that the Electronic Frontier Foundation has filed a brief with the court in relation to Mann vs. the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the National Review, Mark Steyn, and Rand Simberg (variously). This is disappointing and will probably color my opinion of EFF going forward on whatever else they do. Their brief isn't just ethically wrong, or something I disagree with. It is unintelligent and poorly considered. They simply got it wrong, as though they did not know anything about the law suit. It is embarrassing. I wonder how they got talked/roped into this? I would really…

Feeding Wild Birds

When the Texas A&M University Press asked me to consider reviewing Feeding Wild Birds in America: Culture, Commerce, and Conservation by Paul Baicich, Margaret Barker, and Carrol Henderson, I had mixed feelings. Was this just another backyard bird feeding guide? That would be nice, but not too exciting. After all, feeding birds is just a matter of getting a bird feeder and keeping it full, right? Was it an indictment of what some might consider a bad practice, because it brings birds in close contact with killer windows and cats, and causes them to become dependent on fickle human…

Will the Democrats take the Senate?

At the moment, this is a nail biter. There is a theory that a strong showing by one party at the top of the ticket brings along those lower down. However, that theory does not apply this year for several reasons. I think it works better for Republicans than for Democrats, for many the top of the Democratic ticket is less inspiring than ideal for this to work (though for no good reason), and this is the oddest election year ever, so in expecting the expected, expect the exceptional. The Democrats hold 46 seats, and the Republicans 54 (slightly simplified numbers). This is a year in which…

Royal Society Puts Matt Ridley And His Friends On Notice

The Royal Society is the world's oldest extant scientific society. And, it is a place where scientific controversy has a home. Both Huxley and Wilberforce were members back in the 19th century, when young Darwin's ideas were first being knocked around. More recently, just a few weeks ago, the Royal Society accidentally agreed to host a talk by coal baron and formerly respected science writer Matt Ridley. Matt Ridley has been a great disappointment to us scientists and science teachers. Many of us used his book as a supplementary reading in our evolution courses, for example (Ridley was a…

How Far Can You Drive With An "Empty Tank" Warning?

So, many years ago, Amanda and I got a new car. The first thing we did was to switch get rid of my old Rodeo, and I took her old Subaru sedan, and she drove the new Forrester. So, thereafter I drove her old car, and she drove our new car. One day I was on my way back home, and I noticed that the gas gauge needle was on E, but the Empty Tank Warning Light was not on. So I figured I'd get gas at the place near home, rather than stopping sooner. Driving down the highway, the car sputtered and stopped working. I got it over to the side of the highway. Knowing that it was not out of gas, because…

Captain. We've found an M-Class Planet

The star that is nearest our own has a planet that could be habitable by Earthlings. This is very important news. The news comes to us from this research paper in Nature: A terrestrial planet candidate in a temperate orbit around Proxima Centauri by Guillem Anglada-Escudé, Pedro J. Amado, John Barnes, Zaira M. Berdiñas, R. Paul Butler, Gavin A. L. Coleman, Ignacio de la Cueva, Stefan Dreizler, Michael Endl, Benjamin Giesers, Sandra V. Jeffers, James S. Jenkins, Hugh R. A. Jones, Marcin Kiraga, Martin Kürster, Marίa J. López-González, Christopher J. Marvin, Nicolás Morales, Julien Morin,…

How you can figure out the Age of the Universe!

"I admitted, that the world had existed millions of years. I am astonished at the ignorance of the masses on these subjects. Hugh Miller has it right when he says that 'the battle of evidences must now be fought on the field of the natural sciences.'" -James A. Garfield, future U.S. President, in 1859 You will find all sorts of ideas out there on how old the Earth, the Galaxy, and the Universe are. Some contend that it's only a few thousand years old, while others contend that it's infinitely old. You and I are free to believe whatever we want, of course. But before you decide what you…