Search Content

Displaying results 55051 - 55100 of 87947

Wes Elsberry Responds to Joe Carter

As a follow-up to the previous post concerning Joe Carter's response to PZ Myers on the subject of Stephen Meyer's misleading citation of the scientific literature, Wes Elsberry has written a brief response to Carter's criticisms on his message board. He points out the quite obvious concerning Meyer's citation of Brocks' 1999 article. Meyer cites Brocks to support this claim: For over three billion years, the biological realm included little more than bacteria and algae. PZ had already pointed out one problem with this citation, which is that it only dealt with trace evidence of bacterial…

Barnett takes on Bork and Bainbridge

Randy Barnett has a post on the Volokh Conspiracy that is quite interesting, concerning criticism leveled at him by Stephen Bainbridge and a letter to the editor from Robert Bork in the Wall Street Journal. Professor Barnett, as usual, makes the point about judicial activism that I've been making repeatedly on my blog: Both posts beg the question: what exactly IS judicial activism? Unfortunately, apart from his reference to "democratic values," Professor Bainbridge does not tell us, but given that he has chosen to single me out let me ask: Is discovering and enforcing the original meaning of…

Walmart Employee Quits Over Gay Issue

And the Worldnutdaily is hot on the story. The Ohio woman, after hearing the shocking confirmation directly from the mega-corporation's international headquarters that the company is, in fact, contributing to the financial and moral agenda of the nation's "gay" chamber of commerce, she quit. And she's not a bit worried. "I got God backing me. That's where I stand on it," she told WND in an interview. I don't think God is gonna help you get unemployment benefits. And you're gonna love the rest of the article: Baird had worked for the corporation, in various branches including Sam's Club and…

Sending Sandefur Business

Sandefur's full time job is as a litigator for the Pacific Legal Foundation, specializing in eminent domain and economic rights cases. One of the cases he is involved with now is one that I brought to his attention with a post here last year. It's in Minnesota, where the state, bravely defending consumers against low prices, fined a company $140,000 for selling gas too cheaply at its 4 stations in the Minneapolis area. He writes at Positive Liberty about the brief he just filed with the court of appeals on behalf of Midwest Oil. There is another potential case that I brought to his attention…

Weekend Diversion: Stop-Motion Post-Its!

"There is an energy with stop-motion that you can’t even describe.  It’s got to do with giving things life...  to give life to something that doesn’t have it is cool, and even more so in three dimensions, because, at least for me, it feels even more real." -Tim Burton Of course we always like to think of the world as being constantly in motion, with time flowing smoothly and continuously from one moment to the next. Living in our bodies, it feels -- as Ozomatli would say -- like no matter what, you Can't Stop. But our perceptions fool us. It's why you can take a series of stationary images,…

Accountability for Educators, If Not Op-Ed Writers

Inside Higher Ed has a puzzling opinion piece about science and math education by W. Robert Connor of the Teagle Foundation. It's not his arguemtn that's puzzling, though-- that part is perfectly clear, hard to disagree with: Public and private funders have spent billions of dollars -- sometimes wastefully -- on education initiatives like those in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines without rigorous assessment and evaluation. Not asking for documented results when so much money is on the line misses a golden opportunity to determine whether such programs are…

O'Reilly, Reali, What's the Difference?

A couple of days ago, Brad DeLong hoisted a proposal from comments (originally suggested by Bernard Yomtov): A reporter should not be assigned to cover subject X unless he has as good an understanding of X as a baseball writer is expected to have of baseball. Kevin Drum isn't sold on the idea: Man, does this seem backward. If you asked me what was wrong with big-league political reporting in this country, I'd say its biggest problem is that is has too much in common with big league sports writing. Reporters like Adam Nagourney and John Harris don't lack for expertise in politics, after all.…

Bubble Fusion Gets Weirder

The bizarre saga of Rusi Taleyarkhan (which I've mentioned before) keeps getting stranger. Previously, Purdue University had announced that it conducted an investigation of Taleyarkhan's work and cleared him of any misconduct, without saying, well, anything much about the investigation. Now, after pressure from Congress on the question, the New York Times reports that they're opening a new investiagation. The letter from Congress that triggered this contains the first real details of the earlier investigation, including this absolutely boggling couple of paragraphs: Up to now, Purdue has…

Toward a Saner Sports Media Culture

About fifteen minutes from now, my Giants will take the field against the Redskins. The Giants are coming off a bye week (in which they somehow managed to trail by 10 going into the fourth quarter), so the big story leading up to the game has to do with the always-volatile Jeremy Shockey, who popped off after a bad loss at Seattle, and said the team was outcoached. This has led to a lot of hand-wringing about whether the team is in crisis, or whether Tom Coughlin should bench Shockey, and the sports pundits have had a field day analyzing every aspect of the story. The consensus seems to be…

Discussion of the History of Neurobiology

In PZ's class we're reading and discussing Soul Made Flesh by Carl Zimmer. This non-fiction book follows the journey that neurobiology has made throughout its history. The details of this history that most prominently catch my attention are the logic, methods, and observations upon which early discoveries were built. Plato got the ball rolling with his theory that the body consists of three souls. The human soul resides in the head where it can sense surroundings and and divinely reason about their meaning. The vegetative soul resides in the abdomen where it initiates growth, lustful…

Cover Songs That Shouldn't Be

As noted a little while back, I recently bought Tom Waits's Orphans collection, which includes a number of covers that are given his "lounge singer from another planet" treatment. Most notable among these is probably "Sea of Love," which I first heard through the Robert Plant side project the Honeydrippers, but has been covered by approximately a billion people. Waits's take is weird and creepy, but actually kind of interesting. A little more recently, I bought the Alabama 3 album La Peste, which includes a cover of "Hotel California." A pretty bad cover, actually-- I junked it almost…

Dorky Poll: Scientific Hopes

A little while ago, the Corporate Masters asked us to answer a couple of questions for possible inclusion in the first '08 issue of Seed. I originally posted this back in November, but got asked to take it down because the issue was hush-hush. The street date for the magazine in question was this week, though, and I busted up my wrist playing basketball yesterday, so I'm dragging it back out because typing hurts. The question is: What scientific development do you hope to be blogging or reading about in 2008? The original question was more general, asking us just what we'd like to be…

Simple Answers to Needlessly Complicated Questions

Kevin Drum is thinking about debate formats: Now, there's nothing wrong with a few beachballs. Giving every candidate a couple of minutes to simply explain their healthcare plan -- or whatever -- without interruption is fine. But then what? Do we really want several months of "debates" in which candidates do nothing but rattle off bits and pieces of their stump speeches endlessly? The problem here is that he's asking the wrong question. There are far too many words in that last sentence, which really ought to be shortened to: Do we really want several months of "debates?" The answer is "no…

Book Report

It's been a while since I did one of these, so here's your book progress update for the last couple of weeks, with the obligatory dog picture. This is probably the halfway point for the first draft, more or less. Introduction Current Revision: 1 Total Words: 430 (dialogue only) Chapter 1: Particle-Wave Duality Current Revision: 5a Total Words: 5,279 Chapter 2: The Uncertainty Principle Current Revision: 7 Total Words: 4,499 Chapter 3: The Copenhagen Interpretation Current Revision: 2 Total Words: 4,801 Chapter 4: The Many-Worlds Interpretation Current Revision: 3 Total Words: 4,869 Chapter 5…

links for 2007-11-06

Gesturing helps grade-schoolers solve math problems Hand-waving is the key to any calculation. (tags: academia education math) Easily Distracted » Blog Archive » In Which I Pick Some Nits A historian reads Novik's Temeraire books. (tags: books SF) slacktivist: Gay-Hatin' Gospel (pt. 5) The conclusion of the series: "I think it has very little to do with religion and everything to do with politics." (tags: politics religion US gender culture society) slacktivist "It reminds me, somehow, of a little kid doing art therapy in the school guidance counselor's office, drawing elaborately…

Links for 2010-08-26

"Mumble mumble shoulder something": R.E.M., Guided By Voices, Ghostface, and the pleasures of lyrical ambiguity | Music | The A.V. Club Blog | The A.V. Club "The Stipe of R.E.M.'s early recordings uses words to create abstract compositions. It's not the only way to approach lyric-writing in rock music, or even the best way. Some of my favorite lyricists favor strong statements and clear narratives. Bruce Springsteen's "Stolen Car," to choose just the first example to spring to mind, is an extraordinarily effective, deeply sad song that would lose much of its power if Springsteen were to…

The Western Undergraduate Problem

A few years ago, we ended up trading some classroom space in the Physics part of the building to Psychology, which was renovated into lab space for two of their new(ish) hires. This turned out to be a huge boon not only for the department (the lab space we got in the swap is really very nice), but for our majors. Most of the psychology experiments on campus use student volunteers, and pay a small amount to boost participation. Since the new psych labs were right next to the physics student lounge, our majors were taking part in four or five studies each, and racking up the study participation…

Links for 2010-05-07

Microsoft's PowerPoint isn't evil if you learn how to use it. - By Farhad Manjoo - Slate Magazine I've seen more terrible slide presentations in my life than good ones, but that stat isn't necessarily an indictment of the program--I've also encountered a lot more terrible books than terrific ones, and I've certainly seen more ugly Web sites than pretty ones. Yes, PowerPoint--and slide software in general, a category that includes Apple's Keynote--can be heroically misused. But if you use it correctly, slide software can help you captivate and inform an audience in a way that a speech alone…

I give you Senator Al Franken

Here is Al Franken being sworn in to the U. S. Senate: Do you remember The Ad? The ad that made everyone in Minnesota who kinda didn't like Norm Coleman go over the line and realize that Norm Coleman is the scum of the earth? You can read about that here but I'll summarize it for you briefly and tell you why I even bring it up. When Al Franken was running for the Senate, he would often tell a particular story about Paul Wellstone. In this story, Senator Wellstone is running along side his son, who is, in turn, running second or third in a cross country race as part of his high school…

Questions about Missionaries

As you know, there has been quite a bit of discussion about missionaries in the Congo on this blog. This is the central post pointing to everything else, and at Minnesota Atheists you'll find a link to today's radio show on the topic. It turns out that a number of calls and emails did come in to the station today but we were unable to get to them. Among the emails, there is this two parter from from Jason Thibeault: I have a two part question for Greg Laden. In conversations on your blog related to the topic prior to this show, you mentioned that there are secular missions to many of…

Spirit could use a push

The Spirit Mars Robot is getting stuck in the dust, but it is still sending back data. But mostly about dust. From NASA: PASADENA, Calif. -- The five wheels that still rotate on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit have been slipping severely in soft soil during recent attempts to drive, sinking the wheels about halfway into the ground. The rover team of engineers and scientists has suspended driving Spirit temporarily while studying the ground around the rover and planning simulation tests of driving options with a test rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "…

A particular elephant

This particular elephant was one of the nicest elephants I've ever met. click for a larger picture I was leading a tour group in the vicinity of the Kruger National Park in South Africa. The local guide suggested that we could take a walk along a particular trail, as long as vehicles stayed near by in case of trouble. This is a pretty standard thing to do with tourists in Africa. They get tired of being in vehicles all the time. If you know an area well enough, and have the vehicles near by, you can walk around a while. This gives us a chance to show people things like plants and insects…

Gustav cf Katrina

This is a rough sketch of the actual path of the eye of hurricane Katrina compared to the current projected path of the eye of hurricane Gustav. Now, this is NOT Gustav's actual path. We don't know what the path is going to be. But this graphic allows for a few key points to be made. First, realize that in the counter-clockwise spinning hurricane, the right hand side, and in particular, the 'front right" quadrant, of the storm is where the winds are strongest ... because we need to add together both the forward motion of the storm, maybe between 10 and 15 mph at landfall in this case, with…

If only the teachers had guns.... (Texans = Morons)

A tiny Texas school district will allow teachers and staff members to carry concealed firearms to protect against school shootings, provided the gun-toting employees follow certain requirements. The small community of Harrold in north Texas is a 30-minute drive from the Wilbarger County Sheriff's Office, leaving students and teachers without protection, said David Thweatt, superintendent of the Harrold Independent School District. The lone campus of the 110-student district sits near a heavily traveled highway, which could make it a target, he argued. "When the federal government started…

PZ Myers Death Threat Confession

Charles Kroll is the presumed husband of "Melanie," the person who's work email account was used to send PZ Myers a very nasty death threat. This is the death threat: You have two choices my fucked up friend, first you can quit your job for the good of the children. Or you can get your brains beat in. The threat was issued via an email account from a florist that you've likely used if you've sent flowers more than a few times. Well, a person I assume to be Mr. Melanie sent me an email this morning. In it he takes responsibility for having written the email and explains that it is a shame…

Monarch butterflies in the classroom

Continuing with our discussion of the Evolution 2008 conference ... Karen Oberhauser talked about the "single species" approach to pedagogy. This involves focusing on a single species and using it throughout an entire course. Karen has taught classes on this approach for teachers' professional development programs. The species she uses is the Monarch Butterfly. Karen is a world class expert on this insect, and runs a major research project with them. The idea of a single-species approach is that a student learns a great deal about one particular species, to the extent that this…

Everyone Likes Cat Pictures!

Back in August, I welcomed Spider the cat into my home. So how did that all work out? That's Spider lounging in his basement room, aka the chess room. To judge from the liberal coating of cat hair, I'd say he likes that futon quite a lot. Spider's not much of a jumper, so I have no fear that he's going to jump on the table and bat the chess pieces around. Here he is wrapped up in the mattress cover he uses as a sleeping bag. That's one of his favorite places to sleep. If he looks a bit nonplussed in this picture it's because I just woke him up. Spider is a very timid cat, and it'…

HIV-1 CTL Vaccine: Did HIV-1 steal Harry Potters Invisibility Cloak?

I have written quite a bit about Cytotoxic-T-Cell-based HIV-1 vaccines here on ERV. Though antibodies can target HIV-1 viruses, and HIV-1 infected cells, CTLs should be the go-to workhorses for killing HIV-1 infected cells. Pimped-up Souped-up Bionic Assassin Lethal Weapon Killer T-Cells as a cure for AIDS? HIV-1 CTL Vaccine: OH SHI- HIV-1 Vaccine: Again, OH SHI- HIV-1 CTL Vaccine: lol, we are screwed. HIV-1: Humans are all pink on the inside. Pink, and CD4+ T-cells. Found another one: HIV-1 CTL Vaccine: $%@#! Because HIV-1 is a virus, it uses all of the host cells machinery to produce…

heh. 'Shrek virus'. heheh.

Theres something Ive always wondered, in a stupid way, about viruses. Like a sloven Creationist musing "IF EVILUTION IS RAEL, Y NO HUMANS HAS WINGZ???", Ive often wondered "IF EVILUTION IS RAEL, Y NO VIRUSES MAEK US SEXAH??" In my defense, I always wonder this while Im in the throes if a terrible cold or mono. But for real! Viruses make us SO GROSS! Sneezing, oozing and dripping from every orifice, puking, pooping, changing colors/acquiring spots, itchy, GROSS. Maybe we only think these effects are gross because we instinctively associate them with disease thus gross, but why are there no…

Barnyard Week: We really dont need to worry about PERVs

I LOVE talking about PERVs on ERV. PERVs. PERVs. EVEN MOAR PERVs. I LOVE PERVs! Well... PERVs as in Piggie Porcine Endogenous Retroviruses. Not pervs as in Catholic Priests and Teh Popes advisers. Thats a different story. Because the need for organs for transplants is so high, and because pigs are pretty great sources for transplants in humans, and because of recent successes with minimal PERV-pigs down-under, a lot of research has gone into PERVs to really try to nail down just how big of a threat they are to humans. The problem is, PERVs can 'infect' human cells. But as some of you who…

ERVs, Epigenetics, and Testicular Cancer

Once again, ERVs, the best goddamn workhorse in the stable, have provided another great example for explaining How the World Works. This time? How a functional ERV protein interacts with normal cellular proteins to cause epigenetic changes that lead to cancer: Human Endogenous Retrovirus Protein Rec interacts with the Testicular Zinc Finger Protein and Androgen Receptor. WARBLEGARBLE!!! FUNCTIONAL ERVs! WARBLEGARBLE!!! EPIGENETICS! EVERYTHING YOUVE BEEN TOLD ABOUT EVILUTION IS WRONG! JESUS IS LORD! heh. That title/abstract looks scary (okay, it is scary. there is a reason I didnt go into…

HIV-1: Scapegoat for religious extremists and biogots

I havent mentioned anything about Ugandas Evangelical-driven quest to kill homosexuals. I figured that you dont really need to have my expertise in HIV-1 to recognize that these people are fucking psycho. But, it doesnt take a whole lot of effort for me to demonstrate that on a scientific level, these people are wrong (not surprising since its religious nuts fueling this fire, and they think the universe began 6000 years ago and believe in talking snakes and shit)-- killing every homosexual in Uganda would have little effect on HIV-1 infections/deaths. Anyway, heres the deal. Percentage of…

HIV infections will never be traced to VA? Liar, liar, pants-on-fire.

Because we support our troops and honor our father and mother SO MUCH in the USA (GOD BLESS the USA!), we treat our veterans like shit. Literally. Case in point: Instead of properly cleaning colonoscopy equipment, physicians/nurses at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals have been using the same equipment allllllll day long, exposing patients later in the day to bodily fluids from patients earlier in the day (and for all we know, patients from days before). Now, shock of shocks, patients are popping up with HIV-1 and hepatitis. Fantastic. The VAs response to this? Dr. Jim Bagian, the VA…

Torture — what's it good for?

One little post about waterboarding seems to have stirred up the mob, but at least the majority seem to agree that it is torture. How could it not be? It's a process for causing pain and suffering, nothing more. At least the commenters here, even the ones I disagree with most strongly, are more honest than our politicians, many of whom seem to be in a state of denial. But then the argument becomes whether torture is a useful procedure. I'm going to surprise some people and agree that torture is an extremely powerful tool. It's just useless for gathering information. There's just no way you…

Irons on Abraham

The inimitable Peter Irons has been hot on the trail of the Nathaniel Abraham case, the ditzy creationist who is upset because he got fired from an evolutionary biology lab. There are some interesting tidbits below, specifically the fact that Abraham claims the job ad did not make reference to acceptance of the theory of evolution as fact, yet when Irons dug up the job posting, it does say that this is work on evolutionary relationships. It's a bad sign when you've got to misrepresent the facts in your court complaint. Those who have been following the Nathaniel Abraham case might find the…

The Importance of Bloggers

Perhaps you've heard of Andrew Keen? He showed up on Colbert recently to discuss his new book The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture. One of his points is that bloggers in particular are mere amateurs who inevitably coarsen the public debate and threaten professional journalistic enterprises with their ceaseless and ill-informed attacks. This, of course is total nonsense. You can always find dark corners of the internet where ignoramuses get into silly flame wars with one another. But the best blogs, and the ones that generate most of the traffic, are…

Academic Science Is Complicated, Like Scrabble

Blogging will continue to be light to nonexistent, as it's crunch time in a lot of ways at the moment, including our double tenure-track search. Which it would be inappropriate to talk about in any more detail than "Wow, this is a lot of work." There are, however, two academic-job-related things that I probably ought to mention briefly. One is this Inside Higher Ed Essay about metaphors for the academic hiring process, which rightly points out a lot of the problems with the "lottery" analogy that lots of people like to use. In fact, Gerry Canavan argues, it's best understood as a game: But…

On Academic Scandals

Two very brief notes about high-profile scandals in academia: 1) While it involves one of my faculty colleagues, I have no special insight to offer into the case of Valerie Barr's firing by the NSF over long-ago political activity. I know and like Valerie as a colleague, and she did some really good stuff as chair of the CS department, but that's all I know. As reported by Science, the government's actions in this case seem like that very special kind of stupid that you get in extremely large organizations, where this probably isn't really about her at all. Either somebody in a position to…

A Bright Spot for Israel

It hasn't been the best week for Israel. President Obama gives a perfectly sensible speech saying publicly what everyone already knows, and the vile right-wing noise-machine presents it as “throwing Israel under the bus.” As Jeffrey Goldberg explains, Netanyahu seems hell-bent on a course that seems so obviously suicidal that you have to wonder what he could possibly be thinking. Still, there has been one piece of good news for Israel this week. We now have an official challenger for the World Chess Championship, and he is Boris Gelfand, formerly of Belarus, but now an Israeli citizen…

Farrell and Rosenau, Stating it Plain

If you are looking for some popcorn reading, have a look at this post from John Farrell, over at HuffPo. He takes John West of the Discovery Institute to task for parroting ye olde “Darwin was a big, fat racist!” canard. Here's the conclusion: So, what is one to make of these ceaseless ideological attacks on Charles Darwin? Apparently, having failed at the Dover Trial to get their revised "intelligent design" philosophy into public school science classes, the Discovery Institute now resorts to the only strategy they have left to undermine science and science education: smear the…

Billy Dembski, pious and deluded

There goes Bill Dembski again, revealing both his religious delusions and his ignorance of the state of modern biology in an interview. 4. Does your research conclude that God is the Intelligent Designer? I believe God created the world for a purpose. The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God. The focus of my writings is not to try to understand the Christian doctrine of creation; it's to try to develop intelligent design as a scientific program. There's a big question within the intelligent design community: "How did the design get in there?" We're very early in…

The Logo Problem

Speaking of conferences (as we were a little while ago), the Female Science Professor has a post on the phenomenon of logos in talk slides: Do you put your institution's logo in your talks and on your posters at conferences? If you put a logo in your talk, do you put the logo on every slide or just on the title slide? Is institutional logo-ing more common on some continents than on others? Logos on slides are one of those things that in principle, ought to be annoying. In practice, I'm usually just grateful that they're not using one of the godawful default slide layouts that come in…

links for 2009-05-09

The Final Frontier: The Science of Star Trek: Scientific American "To get a sense of how much actual science has made its way into the science fiction universe of Star Trek, ScientificAmerican.com spoke to Lawrence Krauss, author of The Physics of Star Trek, the first edition of which appeared on bookshelves in 1995. [...] We asked Krauss about the plausibility of crossovers from the Trek universe, including warp speed, humanoid aliens such as Klingons and, of course, whether anyone will be "beamed up" by Scotty or otherwise, anytime soon." (tags: science astronomy physics culture…

Links for 2011-02-10

Beer Batter Is Better: Scientific American "If you've ever sat down at a pub to a plate of really good fish and chips--the kind in which the fish stays tender and juicy but the crust is supercrisp--odds are that the cook used beer as the main liquid when making the batter. Beer makes such a great base for batter because it simultaneously adds three ingredients--carbon dioxide, foaming agents and alcohol--each of which brings to bear different aspects of physics and chemistry to make the crust light and crisp." (tags: science food chemistry physics) Swans on Tea » Q & A A nice…

Links for 2011-01-31

Rutherford's alchemy solved Atom's mystery "He was the first to achieve the alchemists' dream of changing one element into another, yet he wasn't an alchemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry, but he wasn't a chemist. The work for which he received the Prize was carried out in Canada, but he wasn't a Canadian. He achieved the first man-made nuclear reaction, but he doubted nuclear energy could be controlled by man. He was Ernest Rutherford, pride of New Zealand, England, Canada and McGill University." (tags: science physics history nuclear atoms biography) The Urbanophile »…

De-Clutter the Internet!

offers a suggestion that I heartily endorse. He quotes James Joyner on the problem of feeling obliged to comment: I frequently see a headline or story somewhere, decide it's not worth my time, and then get drawn into it hours later when I see conversations about it on Twitter or my blog feed reader. Sometimes, it's just a function of "well, this must be important so let me say something." and counters with the obvious solution: I have a solution: don't do it! If it's not something that you personally care much about, just skip it. I, for one, would actually enjoy the blogosphere more if…

Links for 2010-11-10

Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds - CNN.com "Twinkies. Nutty bars. Powdered donuts. For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too. His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most -- not the nutritional value of the food. The premise held up: On his "convenience store diet," he shed 27 pounds in two months…

Links for 2009-11-13

Physics Buzz: Best physics inventions of 2009 "TIME magazine has announced the 50 best inventions of 2009. NASA's Ares family of rockets was a shoo-in for best invention, given the recent launch of Ares 1-X, the family's test rocket. I'll give them that; NASA could certainly use the cheerleading. But I was surprised to see "Teleportation" sixth on the list. When did I miss this? Has everyone else been teleporting to work while I've been trudging in the rain? How can I get my hands on a teleporter?" (tags: science physics quantum blogs physics-buzz) The 10 weirdest physics facts, from…

links for 2009-04-19

Star Formation: The Game | DISCOVER Magazine Play the Hand of God and place supernovae to produce star-forming regions in a cloud of gas. My best score is just over 2000. (tags: science astronomy games internet) Questions for Steven Chu - The Science Guy - The Green Issue - Interview - NYTimes.com "Was anyone in your family impressed when you won the Nobel Prize in Physics? Probably, but who knows? I called my mother up when they announced the Nobel Prize, waiting until 7 in the morning. She said, âThatâs nice â and when are you going to see me next?â" (tags: science physics energy…

links for 2009-03-15

Cocktail Party Physics: measles, mumps, rubellaor autism "Let me throw just a few statistics at you, just to illustrate how important vaccines have been in the increasing quality of public health in the US alone. * The incidence of polio dropped to nearly zero by 1960 (polio vaccine introduced in 1955) * Measles cases dropped sharply between 1955 and 1970 (measles vaccine introduced in 1963) * The incidence of congenital rubella syndrome dropped from an estimated 20,000 in 1964 to 7 in 1983 (the rubella vaccine was introduced in 1967)" (tags: science society medicine history…