Search Content

Displaying results 7951 - 8000 of 87947

Gene discovery may aid in development of drought-tolerant crops

Parts of the Southeastern U.S (where I live) have been experiencing severe drought conditions for months. Droughts can have significant environmental and economic impacts on a community. According to this press release, aridity is on the increase across the globe, as is the world population, and it is important that increasingly dry areas should be taken into cultivation to ensure food production. Researchers from the University of Helsinki and the University of California in San Diego have discovered a plant gene that could help in the development of drought-tolerant crops. Here's a…

Sometimes You Just Need To Be Angry

Here's the story: Samia was hacked off about something. I know I recommended white science bloggers link to other bloggers in a show of link-lovin, but some of the stuff I see just seems tokenizing/LOOK AT ME I'M OPENMINDED! Ew. Fuck a bunch of wannabes. This kinda got Isis hacked off. What the fuck??? No, I mean seriously. What the fuck?... ...So what has you upset Samia? Is it a particular incident or the blogosphere in general. Either way, you've got to offer more guidance than today's brief blog-lashing. You've established yourself as an advocate for diversity and as someone who is…

Greg Beck, R.I.P

I apologize for not noting this earlier, but the one and only Greg Beck died last week. I knew Greg through his astonishing blog, and had the pleasure of meeting him in person a few times as well. Like the rest of the KC blogging world, I'm stunned and shocked. There's very little to be said about Greg that he didn't say already. His blogging represented the peak of the form; it was personal, raunchy, opinionated and, without fail, interesting. His years as a bouncer in the nightclubs of Kansas City gave him a wealth of material to work with, and he retold those stories in a voice that…

Nabokov Was Right

Nabokov always said that the only thing he enjoyed more than writing novels and solving chess puzzles was studying butterflies. As he notes in Strong Opinions: Frankly, I never thought of letters as a career. Writing has always been for me a blend of dejection and high spirits, a torture and a pastime -- but I never expected it to be a source of income. On the other hand, I have often dreamt of a long and exciting career as an obscure curator of lepidoptera in a great museum. Even after Lolita made Nabokov (in)famous and rich, he continued to put his scientific knowledge to work, and layered…

Significant figures what are they for and what do they have to do with uncertainty?

Suppose I am working on a problem and I wish to calculate the density of something. I measure the mass to be *m* = 24.5 grams and the volume is *V* = 10 cm3. In this case the density would be:  ALERT! ALERT! ALERT! This is not a test!!!! Something is drastically wrong! Clearly I messed up. How can I have the mass measured to **3** significant figures, the volume measured to **1** significant figure, but the density calculated to **3** significant figures? Isn't this a violation of some fundamental…

Expensive Wine

The latest Men's Vogue has a rather interesting article (not online) by Jay McInerney on a small group of real estate moguls who like to drink very, very expensive wine. For these oenophiles, a 1982 Romanee-Conti is a young wine - even their champagne is typically several decades old - and a $500 bottle is borderline plonk. It's not uncommon for these winos to consumer $30,000 worth of rotten grape juice at a single dinner. Not surprisingly, these expensive wines are often highly praised, with descriptions that feature some very purple prose. And while I would certainly love to drink a 1945…

Music and Math

The latest Seed has a very interesting article on the complicated geometry underlying Western music, and the intuitive mathematical understanding demonstrated by composers: The shapes of the space of chords we have described also reveal deep connections between a wide range of musical genres. It turns out that superficially different styles--Renaissance music, classical and Romantic music, jazz, rock, and other popular forms--all make remarkably similar use of the geometry of chord space. Traditional techniques for manipulating musical scales turn out to be closely analogous to those used to…

First Impressions, In Person and Online

There was a faintly awful essay by Melissa Nicolas at Inside Higher Ed yesterday, giving MLA job candidates advice on how to dress: Let's start with your shoes. Anyone who has been to MLA knows that it is a big conference, and whether you are on a search committee, attending sessions, or interviewing, you are most likely going to be doing a lot of walking. In a city. Often in the cold (though not this year!). While it is certainly inappropriate to come in your Wellies, teetering into the room on heels that are as stable as a university's endowment sends the message that you might not be a…

The ultimate homeopathic remedy

It's one of those things that can't be repeated too many times, but homeopathy is ridiculous. In fact, so ridiculous is homeopathy that I don't usually write about it all that often. The reason is that, like homeopathic dilutions, a bit of skeptical blogging about homeopathy goes a long, long way (although I'm not sure whether diluting the blogging makes it stronger). True, anti-vaccine ideas are often just as ridiculous, but they're also dangerous to children, which is why I'll sometimes write about nothing but anti-vaccine nonsense for several days in a row. Homeopathy, on the other hand,…

Rosie O'Donnell vs. David Kirby on the "causation" issue of autism: Guess who loses?

Pity poor David Kirby. After all, he made his name by hitching his star to a losing hypothesis, namely that the mercury in thimerosal in vaccines causes autism. He wrote a book about it, Evidence of Harm, back in 2005 and has milked that sucker dry ever since. Most recently, his appearances culminated in a "debate" last month with Arthur Allen, whose book Vaccine: The Controversial Story of Medicine's Greatest Lifesaver just garnered a very favorable review in the New York Times, during which he did a most amusing dance around the issue by pointing to "other sources" of environmental mercury…

After SB 277, online medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates are now for sale

After writing about the failure of state medical boards to discipline physicians who practice quackery and an apparent notable exception in Tennessee just yesterday, my attention was brought back to California and the topic of SB 277, the law enacted last year that, as of July 1 this year, eliminated non-medical exemptions to school vaccine mandates. As anyone who’s read this blog for more than a year knows (or anyone who’s just paid attention to the political battle to pass SB 277 lsat year in the wake of the Disneyland measles outbreak), once the battle was over and antivaccine activists…

Vicarious Travelers and the Poison in the Gift

A trip overseas, especially with today's fuel prices and other changes in the airline industry, is different now than it was even a few years ago. This is especially true in regards to the topic of this post: How to deal with the problem of vicarious travelers and their need for trinkets, as well as your desire to bring trinkets to everyone you know when you go on a trip. At the very outset I want to tell you this: There is precious little in the way of legal trinkets that a traveler can find anywhere in the world they may go that can not be obtained at the local trinket shop in your own…

I Actually Agree with...Huckabee?!?

In an interview (in which I think Huckabee was trying to ensure he wouldn't be chosen as the Republican vice presidential nominee), Mike Huckabee critiques conservative economic thought (italics mine): The greatest threat to classic Republicanism is not liberalism; it's this new brand of libertarianism, which is social liberalism and economic conservatism, but it's a heartless, callous, soulless type of economic conservatism because it says "look, we want to cut taxes and eliminate government. If it means that elderly people don't get their Medicare drugs, so be it. If it means little kids go…

Note to Krugman: This Is Not a Centrist Healthcare Bill

In the battle of ideas, what things are called matters (e.g., the 'death tax' instead of the estate tax). So I'm utterly puzzled as to why Paul Krugman is calling the current state of play in healthcare centrist: The fact is that the Senate bill is a centrist document, which moderate Republicans should find entirely acceptable. In fact, it's very similar to the plan Mitt Romney introduced in Massachusetts just a few years ago. This is not a centrist bill. After one considers everything that those left-of-center bargained away, it's hard to see how this bill could be any farther to the right…

Dogs killed in Korean bird flu cull

There's been a lot of notice that the South Koreans are responding to two outbreaks of bird flu (H5N1) not only with the culling of poultry by the hundreds of thousands, something that has become quite routine, now, but also the slaughter of neighboring dogs and pigs. Pigs are a well known host for influenza and dogs are susceptible to several subtypes, although there have been only a few reports of infection with H5N1. The South Koreans insist that dogs have also been killed elsewhere but the fact not publicized. I don't know if it is true or not. The big news in the West is killing the dogs…

Don't Delay Rule on Lead in Children's Toys

By Jerome Paulson Starting on February 10th, companies won't be able to sell children's products that contain more than 600 parts per million total lead. The Consumer Product Safety Commission recently clarified the requirements under the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, and put to rest the fear that thrift stores and consignment stores would have to go through lead certification processes for all of the many products they sell. But some consumers and businesses are still concerned that the costs of third-party lead testing will be too high for small toymakers, and have started a…

Open letter to Douglas M. Steenland, president and CEO, Northwest Airlines

Dear Mr. Steenland, I would contact you using more conventional means, but getting through to even a minor lackey at your company is next to impossible. Thank you in advance for reading this. I hate your company. They are perhaps the most difficult company I have ever dealt with as a consumer, and I won't be sorry to see them go, although I doubt it will change anything. Let me give you a little background. In December, my in-laws planned a family trip for their 50th anniversary. I'll spare you some of the details, but let me give you the basics---an elderly couple, and two young couples…

Russ Douthat on the War on Christmas

Russ Douthat of The Atlantic is guest blogging at Andrew Sullivan's place and has an interesting post about the "War on Christmas". He writes: the only thing more annoying than the killjoys who want to keep creches off town greens is listening to Bill O'Reilly or John Gibson rant about how it's all part of an insidious plot, cooked up in some secret lair where Barry Lynn, John Shelby Spong and the editorial board of the New York Times gather to guzzle eggnog and plan the destruction of all that is good and holy. To the extent that the real meaning (or the "original intent," if you will) of…

Moon Coronation Story Goes Mainstream

The Moon Coronation story, which I covered here previously, has finally been picked up by the mainstream media in the last couple weeks. The New York Times, Washington Post, ABCNews, BET, the Pittsburg Post Gazette and the Boston Globe have all picked up the story. The articles range in their accuracy and perspective. The BET article is excellent, while the Boston Globe article is little more than a fawning piece about how everyone likes the Moonies now. True to form, of course, the Moonies are spinning the coronation as proof that America is now bowing before Moon: The "outside" view of…

Links for 2010-01-19

Cocktail Party Physics: a bevy of bloggers (#scio10) "I especially liked Carl's (I think it was Carl) description of this emergent media enterprise as a delicately balanced ecosystem, each segment interdependent on the others for survival. Several weeks ago, Bora! posted one of his occasional rants relishing the collapse of traditional media, in which he baldly stated that he really didn't care if the cost of the revolution was journalists losing their jobs. (I can't find the link, sorry. He's just so damned prolific.) I adore Bora!, but he's wrong about this. He should care that…

Stargate: Universe and the Myth of the Lone Genius

As you may or may not have heard, there's a new Stargate franchise on the SyFy channel with John Scalzi as a creative consultant. It may have slipped by without you noticing, because John is too modest to hype it much... Anyway, given the Scalzi connection, I checked out the pilot on Friday, and it was fine. I'm not a huge fan of the other series in the Stargate family, but they're reliably entertaining when nothing else is on, and this will probably fall into that category. I doubt I'll be re-arranging my social calendar for this, but it was pretty good. The show did do one thing that really…

PROOF GOD EXISTS! Details at 11

Actually, the report in question came on just shy of 11 p.m. Although my local Fox television network affiliate had been promoting its 10 o'clock news report, in which a scientist uses physics to prove the Christian god exists, for several days, the editors didn't think it newsworthy enough to slot it ahead of half a dozen car wrecks and other assorted crimes and offenses to decency. Which shouldn't come as a surprise, because news that someone had actually proved a god's existence would surely lead off any newscast I was directing. Also unsurprising was the discovery of the identity of the…

The Assault on Reason, Open Thread

UPDATE JUNE 30: So. I've finished reading The Assault on Reason. I must say, it's not what I expected. My ultimate takeaway feeling is that this is a very powerful book, whatever flaws it may have. But that's getting close to giving away my review, which I'm still in the process of writing....so in the meantime, let's carry on the great dialogue we have going in the comments. I'll do so by making the following additional points: * In response to Mark Powell: I know you think Gore is making too much of the concept of "reason"--but it's clear that in using this term, Gore doesn't simply mean a…

Ecological tragedy in Vietnam: not a children's story

Wildlife of Vietnam, by Brendan Wenzel This bundle of exotic animals by Brendan Wenzel is whimsical, yet unsettling. On the one hand, it would be perfect for a children's book; I imagine a tale in which the animals overcome their natural animosities, cooperate to free themselves, dump a hapless and ineptly nonthreatening poacher in the river, and return safely to their various homes, in the happiest of ecological endings. But we all know that's not how the story really goes. Wenzel, a New York illustrator who until recently lived in Vietnam, says his work was inspired by the worsening…

Why I'm raising the sprogs vegetarian.

In a comment on the last post, zwa asks: I'm curious about your vegetarianism (as one myself) and whether your kids are. If yes, did they choose it, if no did you try to convince them? My kids are vegetarians, and have been since birth -- so they didn't choose it. I have imposed it on them in a stunning act of maternalism. OK, it's actually not that stunning. Anyway, for the curious, here are my reasons for this particular parenting choice: The family dinner table isn't a restaurant. The choices are to eat what I'm serving or not eat it. This was the deal (at least when I was growing up)…

Wii to be replaced in 2012; Preview expected in early June 2010

I've hardly ever played video games, and Julia, growing up, never did either. Then a couple of years ago we got a Wii and now we play it regularly but responsibly. Amanda joins us now and then. After the filing of our 1040s, we realized we could afford to buy a new TV to replace our old energy-hogging tube model, so we did. Now we will be able to see what we are doing when using the Wii. As an indicator of how much we are NOT addicted to game play, I'll note that other than testing that the connection works, We've not used it since installing the TV on Friday. The Wii is great, but it…

Next time you go fishing, be sure to bring a video camera

Newsweek has a story about the capture of the colossal squid, and it sounds like a) there will be video footage released next month, and b) the boat captain made a good bit of money off of it. Dolan, the Ministry of Fisheries observer, remembers being surprised at how docile and sluggish the squid was. "It really didn't put up much of a fight," he says. "Its tentacles were moving back and forth, but that's about it. It certainly wasn't grabbing crew members and pulling them back into the sea." As it happens, Bennett had brought along a video camera in order to film a small documentary about…

Cloud Computing

In general, I try to keep the content of this blog away from my work. I don't do that because it would get me in trouble, but rather because I spend enough time on work, and blogging is my hobby. But sometimes there's an overlap. One thing that's come up in a lot of conversations and a lot of emails it the idea of cloud computing. A lot of people are interested in it, but they're not really sure of what it is, or what it means. So what do we mean when we talk about "cloud computing"? What's the cloud? How's it different from good old-fashioned client/server computing? The idea of cloud…

How the Tea Party Monster Was Created

One of the things to remember about the Tea Party Uruk-hai who run the Republican Party make up the shock troops of the GOP is that they were manufactured--just like the orcs in the Lord of the Rings. Comrade Driftglass explains: Conservatives built this monster. It didn't just wander out of the woods one day, or land here from another planet. The Wingnut Base -- whatever teabagger, Colonial Williamsburg camouflage they're sporting this week, and however hard the media tries to pretend they aren't who we know they are -- was manufactured by the Conservative Movement to win elections. Made…

OSHA standards are game-changers, David Michaels tells American Industrial Hygiene Association members

by Elizabeth Grossman "With what's on the table in Washington now, you may think the technical phrase is 'job-killing OSHA standards' but standards save lives," said David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor of Occupational Safety and Health, in his address to the American Industrial Hygiene Association meeting in Portland, Oregon on May 18th. "OSHA doesn't kill jobs. OSHA stops jobs from killing workers." To occupational health and safety professionals, this is not news - and it's a message that Michaels has taken on the road over the past year - but in the current anti-regulatory…

Popularization Is Its Own Reward?

One of the major problems contributing to the dire situation described in Unscientific America is that the incentives of academia don't align very well with the public interest. Academic scientists are rewarded-- with tenure, promotion, and salary increases-- for producing technical, scholarly articles, and not for writing for a general audience. There is very little institutionalized reward within academia for science popularization. An extreme example of this is the failure of Carl Sagan's nomination to the National Academy of Sciences: According to sources within the academy, Sagan was…

Iain Murray, in favour of payola

Iain Murray, comes out with an article in the American Spectator in favour of pundit payola: An opinion piece -- whether an individual op-ed or a column -- exists to promote a point of view by argument. It does not seek to establish a fact, but to win people over to a particular viewpoint or opinion. Therefore, the strength of the argument is the key factor in determining the effectiveness of the piece. A sloppily constructed, poorly thought-out argument will convince no one -- while a tightly constructed, coherent, and well-written argument can sway minds. That is why opinion pieces are…

Tornado Victims Need Your Help

If you can afford it, please consider kicking in a few dollars to help the tornado victims. Via Monkeyfister: While everyone else was busy watching the Primaries, or "American Idol," the storms that ripped through Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee were busy killing.via Reuters LITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (Reuters) - Tornadoes and thunderstorms ravaged several states in the American South overnight, killing at least 26 people, injuring dozens and causing widespread damage, emergency services and local media said.The violent storms swept across Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and…

The Overton Window: The Inflation Estimate Edition

Unfortunately, Mark Twain's aphorism, "lies, damn lies, and statistics", has been used so many times that it's become trite. But, as I say repeatedly around these parts, you have to understand your data. A key economic statistic is core inflation, which is estimated by the Federal Reserve's Open Market Committee (FOMC). Basically, if the Fed believes that inflation is about to rise*, it clamps down on the money supply and slows down the economy (you didn't really want to be employed, did you?). So that estimate of inflation is really important. By way of Paul Krugman, we discover a very…

Sniff Once for "Yes": New Neurobiology Papers

Even severely paralyzed people on respirators can do it: They can sniff. That is, they can at least partially control the movement of air through their nostrils. And if they can sniff, they can use this action to write on a computer screen or steer a wheelchair. That's the principle behind a new device developed by Prof. Noam Sobel, students and electronics engineers in the Weizmann Institute's Neurobiology Department. After teaching healthy volunteers to play computer games using a "sniff control" in lieu of a mouse or joystick, the Weizmann team entered into collaboration with Dr Nachum…

Tweetlinks, 10-26-09

Follow me on Twitter to get these, and more, in something closer to Real Time (all my tweets are also imported into FriendFeed where they are much more easy to search and comment on, as well as into my Facebook wall where they are seen by quite a different set of people): Swine flu parties: I doubt anyone is that dumb, but I've been surprised before Run, do not walk, to register for ScienceOnline2010 A PhD is not a 9-to-5 Wowd - a Real-Time search engine of 'what's popular'. Interesting.... RT @Bex_Walton: Images related to #PLoS ONE spider study in the NYT; 3rd story in 3 weeks: Science in…

The Scientist article on science blogs

The April issue of The Scientist contains a good article on science blogging, titled Scooped by a Blog by David Secko (Vol. 21, Issue 4, page 21) focusing on publishing data on blogs, running an Open Notebook lab online, and the way blogs are affecting the evolution of science publishing. The main story of the article is the story about the way Reed Cartwright's quick comment on a paper led to his co-autorship on the subsequent paper on the topic. But you can read all about it on his blog, including the article excerpt on the story. Others interviewed for the story are Larry Moran and…

Astrobiology Chair

Visiting Astrobiology Chair in DC: research and engagement. Applications and nominations are open for the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology. "Established in the Fall of 2011, the Blumberg Astrobiology Chair is a distinguished senior position at the Library’s Kluge Center. The incumbent conducts research at the intersection between the science of astrobiology and its humanistic aspects, particularly its societal implications, using the collections and services of the Library. The incumbent is expected to be in residence at the Kluge Center for a period of up to…

Two Workers Dead at Alaska Gold Mine

Congress has given significant attention over the last 18 months to the dangers facing US coal miners, but many fatal hazards claim the lives of other miners, such as those working at sand and gravel quarries, limestone and salt mines.  This year, nearly twice as many miners have died at US metal and non-metal mining operations compared to coal mines.  But, like most workplace fatalities, the deaths typically occur one miner at a time.  These means the deaths rarely attract national attention.  On Thursday, July 19, Craig Bagley, 27 and Tyler Kahle, 19, were working in a lift…

Triangle Blogger Bash at DPAC

Ah, it takes me so long these days to actually blog about events I attend! This one was last Thursday! But here it is. I went to the Triangle Blogger Bash in Durham, organized by Ginny of 30THREADS (find them on Twitter as well) and hosted by the Durham Performing Arts Center. I am bad at estimating crowds, but there were at least 50 local bloggers there, some new to me, some old friends like Lenore, Anton, Will, Sheril, Ayse, Wayne and Ginny. There was a nice spread of food and a cash bar. The hosts gave out nice prizes (I never ever win stuff like that). You can see some blog reports here…

Science Blogging, etc.

A nice article in The Economist today, about science blogging, Science 2.0 and publishing: User-generated science: By itself this is unlikely to bring an overhaul of scientific publishing. Dr Bly points to a paradox: the internet was created for and by scientists, yet they have been slow to embrace its more useful features. Nevertheless, serious science-blogging is on the rise. The Seed state of science report, to be published later this autumn, found that 35% of researchers surveyed say they use blogs. This figure may seem underwhelming, but it was almost nought just a few years ago. Once…

Science Blogging Conference (and Anthology) planning update

After meeting Anton Zuiker a few days ago, I also managed to catch up with Brian Russell and Paul Jones, catching up on everything, but most importantly, shifting the organization of the 2nd Science Blogging Conference into a faster gear. The wiki needs only a few more tweaks (some of the links are to the 2007 equivalents instead of the 2008 pages) which will be all fixed by the day we open the registration - on September 1st (mark your calendars). I know the 1st is a holiday, but this will save our server as thousands of interested participants will spread themselves over a few days…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (Media 2)

There are 60 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. The anthology should be published in time for the event. There are already 139 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 200). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Kristin Fellows is the broadcast consultant for Wired Science and…

Not an “accident”: Timothy Dubberly, 58, suffers fatal work-related injury in Fernandina Beach, FL

Timothy Dubberly, 58, suffered fatal traumatic injuries on Friday, July 15 while working for Kinder Morgan at the Port of Fernandina. KTXL reports: Mr. Dubberly was doing electrical work on a crane. "It appears a [crane] cable snapped, causing the operations cab he was in to fall about 100 feet.” the accident occurred at the Kinder Morgan Nassau Terminal. Kinder Morgan is the “largest energy infrastructure company in North America.” The firm operates 180 terminals including one at the Port of Fernandina. Using OSHA’s on-line database, federal OSHA and the States that operate their own OSHA…

They should rename it again to The Journal of Delusional Rationalization

If you want to take a look at one of the sources of creationist thought, the workshop where the red-hot anvil of pseudoscience and the inflexible hammer of theology are used to forge the balloon animals of creationism, The Journal of Creation (formerly the Creation ex nihilo Technical Journal) is now online … or at least part of it is. They're working on it. For now, it's enough that you can browse through several issues and see how they put up this superficially persuasive façade of analyzing matters objectively and scientifically, while somehow coming to the weirdest and most nonsensical…

Why wikipedia is like eternal life

Well not in all respects of course. Sometimes people die. But before I get on to that... Have you noticed that I haven't posted much recently? I've been on holidays. Wales is very nice, I recommend it. I'll go again. That is Castell-y-Bere, if you don't recognise it. Where was I? Oh yes... The thing I'm referring to is the way memories fade. There is a wonderful book by KSR called "Icehenge" which you should read, wherein parts of the plot revolve around the way that, although people live for centuries due to strange drugs, they still have the same brains and the same fallible memories…

Catching up...

I meant to get online yesterday, but hubby had to work all day so it was just me and the kiddos--so we just played all day and I didn't bother to get to a computer. Anyhoo, I've missed a few things. I know this was linked on a few other of my virtual neighbor's websites, but in case you didn't see it, DarkSyde over at DailyKos has an interview with Welsey Elsberry of the NCSE (and a founder of Panda's Thumb). Like Ken Miller, Wesley is a Christian and a staunch defender of keeping nonsense like Intelligent Design out of our classrooms. Second, the Challenger disaster. Seed asked for…

links for 2008-01-30

The Edublogs Magazine : Who Are the Top Edubloggers? "Aseem Badshah has created a listing of the Top Education Bloggers or edubloggers based upon Technorati's rankings." This page reviews some of them. (tags: blogs education academia) The Other Side of Graduate Admissions | Cosmic Variance How the faculty at UW's Astronomy department choose next year's class. (tags: academia education astronomy physics science) The Sociology of 'Hooking Up' :: Inside Higher Ed :: Jobs, News and Views for All of Higher Education An interview with a sociologist studying campus sexual culture. (tags:…

The Greatest Chess Tournament in the History of Chess Tournaments

The start of the school year, coupled with the looming deadline for the book I'm coediting, has left little time for blogging. I do, however, feel compelled to point out that six of the world's top ten chess players have gathered in St. Louis for what is arguably the greatest chess tournament in the history of chess tournaments. Six different countries are represented and, interestingly, none of them are Russia. Hikaru Nakamura is representing the United States. The other five players are Magnus Carlsen of Norway, Levon Aronian of Armenia, Fabiano Caruana of Italy, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave…

Science in the 21st Century

The Perimeter Institute will be hosting a workshop in September on "Science in the 21st Century": Times are changing. In the earlier days, we used to go to the library, today we search and archive our papers online. We have collaborations per email, hold telephone seminars, organize virtual networks, write blogs, and make our seminars available on the internet. Without any doubt, these technological developments influence the way science is done, and they also redefine our relation to the society we live in. Information exchange and management, the scientific community, and the society as a…