bill nye
gregladen | January 31, 2015The Great DeflateGate Controversy
This year's Super Bowl will be, as of this writing, tomorrow, late afternoon, between the New England Patriots and the Seattle Seahawks. Both teams have a 14-4 record for the season, so it should be a good game. Also, the game will be held in a stadium located in an arid and warm region of the country, in a stadium with a covered roof. So, there is no chance of a cloudy with a chance of deflated-balls scenario.
You have probably heard that an accusation has been made against the New England Patriots regarding their balls. It has been claimed that they…
carlyo | October 15, 2014Nearly 800 volunteers and exhibitors brought the Lockheed Martin 2014 USA Science & Engineering Festival pavilion to life last April 25-27, including more than 40 hands-on demonstrations from across the corporation in the areas of nanotechnology, data analytics, robotics, energy, advanced aeronautics, and scientific discovery.
A photo album is available online here, where you will see participants, young and old, flying cockpit simulators, trying on Antarctica cold weather gear, building and flying gliders, learning about 3D printing, and enjoying the many others activities in our…
carlyo | May 9, 2014Guest Blog by Festival X-STEM Speaker Dr. Joe Schwarcz
How do you inspire students toward careers in science, and combat scientific illiteracy at the same time?
First, you spend two years planning the USA Science & Engineering Festival, the largest of its kind in the world. Then you rent the gigantic Washington Convention Center to host it and line up 3,000 displays, many of which feature hands-on activities.
You organize more than 150 stage presentations by Nobel laureates, athletes, astronauts, engineers and scientists of all kinds. You invite the likes of Bill Nye the Science Guy,…
gregladen | April 17, 2014You will recall that last February, Bill Nye, the Science Guy, debated Ken Ham, the Not-So-Science Guy, on the question of creationism as a viable explanation for the Earth's history. The debate was held in Ham's home territory, at the infamous Creation Museum in Kentucky. Nye didn't really debate Ham. He ate him for breakfast. Form now on we shall call him Ken Bacon and Eggs.
Anyway, people, including me, who have been engaged with the "debate" between science (evolution) and not-so-science (creationism of one kind or another) were very concerned when we heard that this debate might…
carlyo | March 25, 2014The 3rd USA Science & Engineering Festival, the nation's largest celebration of STEM, is just one month away! This FREE and open to the public event will take place April 26 & 27 at the Washington, D.C. Convention Center. Over 250,000 attendees will experience the weekend of a lifetime with 3,000 hands on exhibits, 150 stage shows, including presentations from science celebrities Bill Nye and Michio Kaku, teacher development workshops, a Festival Book Fair and much much more!
Here is just a sampling of the upcoming stage shows at the Festival Expo Finale:
Learn From Mike Rowe of TV's…
carlyo | March 13, 2014
By Larry Bock
Co-Founder of USA Science Science & Engineering Festival
No doubt, the influences that move individuals into their chosen field of science, technology, engineering or mathematics (STEM) are often as different as night and day, but one thing seems constant: most STEM professionals, in remembering how they made their selection, can trace that ¨A-ha!¨ moment back to a pivotal experience in their lives that connected them on an emotional level for the first time with their chosen line of work.
That moment for scientist James E. West, inventor of the foil electret microphone,…
gregladen | March 4, 2014Very nice piece on MSNBC's The Reid Report. Spread this around.
Nice job, Michael Mann and Bill Nye.
carlyo | February 27, 2014By Shawn Flaherty
What is the universe made of? What does science have to do with extreme sports? And how would you survive a zombie invasion? The answers to these questions and more are at the 3rd USA Science & Engineering Festival Expo and Book Fair, hosted by founding and presenting sponsor Lockheed Martin. Designed to inspire the next generation of innovators, the Festival Expo is a free, family-friendly expo that allows kids and adults to participate in more than 3,000 hands-on activities and see more than 100 live stage performances.
“Science is amazing…that’s our message to kids…
gregladen | February 25, 2014There's this new thing. Quarterly.co has this thing that when I first heard described I didn't quite understand, and was not sure if I liked it or not, so I dug a bit deeper and it turns out I think it is cool. Here's the idea. Quarterly has assembled a bunch of people they call "Curators." These are famous people among whom you are likely to find someone you admire or respect or perhaps stalk in your own Internety way. The curators then work with Quarterly to assemble a box of stuff. Then, you, as Quarterly's customer, arrange to have the box sent. There are four a year (quarterly…
milhayser | February 13, 2014As an alternative to biblical creationism, Intelligent Design infers a less obtrusive God to explain life on Earth. This deity doesn't hurl bolts of lightning, unless it's with the express purpose of sparking abiogenesis in the primordial soup. On EvolutionBlog, Jason Rosenhouse dismisses probabilistic arguments against the likelihood of complex organisms, explaining that even the most improbable-seeming outcome of natural selection is more or less inevitable. As a flawed analogy, he imagines flipping a coin 500 times. This will always manifest a sequence of heads and tails that only had a…
gregladen | February 5, 2014Bill Nye "The Science Guy" went to the Creation Museum to debate "is creation a viable model of origins in today's modern scientific era?" After the debate, Bill Nye came to the Last Word to discuss his faceoff with the founder of the Creation Museum, Ken Ham.
Nye said he accepted the debate challenge because the spread of creationism "frightens" him. "I don't think I'm going to win Mr. Ham over any more than Mr. Ham thinks he's going to win me over," Nye said. "Instead, I want to show people that this belief is still among us. It finds its way onto school boards in the United States."
Ham,…
gregladen | February 5, 2014In the Spring of 2010, evangelical Bible scholar Bruce Waltke, in speaking about the overwhelming evidence for evolution, said “To deny that reality will make us a cult, some odd group that is not really interacting with the real world.”
In response to this, Ken Ham, president of Kentucky’s Creation Museum, commented, “What he is saying ultimately undermines the authority of God’s word.”
Both statements seem to be true. (I don’t think you necessarily need to have faith in a god to accept the basic logic of Ham’s statement.) Also, that’s really all you need to know about young earth…
gregladen | February 4, 2014See the link?
It is pretty obvious to me.
It seems that terrorists who are really serious, reasonably numerous, presumably well funded, and certainly experienced have threatened to attack the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia (both of them). The fallback plan, it is assumed, is that they can't attack Sochi so they pick some other random locations, maybe in Russia, maybe not, and attack them. (That is the part about terrorists being cowards, I assume.)
The Russians have security that is probably second to none in the world, or at least on par with the countries that have a lot of…
gregladen | January 26, 2014Bill Gates has this thing called Gates Letter addressing three myths:
Poor Countries Are Doomed To Stay Poor
Foreign Aid Is A Big Waste
Saving Lives Leads To Overpopulation
That these are myths is discussed in detail HERE.
In a related project, Bill Nye has made this video dispelling an overlapping set of myths:
And here's Bill Gates' "Viral Video"
Important cause. Not sure if that video is going to go viral, though.
carlyo | January 12, 2014Are you wowed and awed by the mysteries of the Universe, the courage of astronauts, innovative space technologies, and stunning images from other worlds? Want to learn how you can become a space explorer?
Well, get ready to find "Your Place in Space" with The Planetary Society – the largest and most influential space interest organization on Earth – as the Society returns once more as a major Festival sponsor and presenter this April in Washington, D.C.!
Just as it did in the first two Expos, the Society will ignite enthusiasm for space science. Founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray,…
gregladen | January 9, 2014As you know, Bill Nye has agreed to engage in a debate about evolution with Ken Ham at the Kentucky Creation Museum. You may also know that I suggested that this debate was a bad idea, not so much because it is Bill Nye doing it (he’s a great spokesperson for science and science education) but because the whole idea of a debate is questionable for a number of reasons (discussed here).
Bill recently made a few comments on the debate on CNN.
Here, I’d like to list a handful of the points I’d make if I was doing this debate.
It is not necessary or even possible to argue against “creationism…
carlyo | September 25, 2013Bill Nye -- scientist, engineer, comedian, author, and inventor -- is a man with a mission: to help foster a scientifically literate society, and to help people everywhere understand and appreciate the science that makes our world work. Making science understandable, entertaining, and accessible is something Bill has been doing much of his life, starting with his days as a math tutor in high school and later studying under Planetary Society co-founder Carl Sagan in college and working as a stand-up comedian. Following in Sagan's footsteps, Bill now serves as Chief Executive Officer of the…
illconsidered | December 26, 2012I first saw this video at Planet 3.0 a fair while ago and have seen it posted again since. I find it very uplifting despite being a jaded climate blogger of many years. There are many other science-based music videos at www.symphonyofscience.com and I have listened/watch most (all?) of them, but this is the best as well as being on topic here.
I think it is just about the perfect mix of the various elements of outreach needed to motivate the general public: explanation, urgency and optimism.
gregladen | September 4, 2012This is a response to Critiquing the “Critique” and the “Critique of the Critique” of Bill Nye’s Video at UrbanAstro.org. In that post, FURYGuitar addresses both Critiquing the Critique of Bill Nye’s Video by me and Bill Nye’s “Don’t Teach Creationism…” Video Dissected by Business Communication Expert in which scientist and marketing expert Marc Kuchner writes in a guest blog for Scientific American Blogs an interview with communication expert Patrick Donadio.
The background is that Bill Nye made a video called Creationism is Not Appropriate for Children that some viewed as controversial…