Eureka!

On Uncertain Principles, Chad Orzel counts up toward the birthday of that most holy of men: Sir Isaac Newton. Each day Orzel will (hopefully) unveil a new gem that didn't make it into his exciting new book. On Day 1, Chad wrote about the apocryphal moment of inspiration—in a bathtub—that led the Greek polymath Archimedes to first exclaim "Eureka!" And for Day 2, Orzel considers the scientific origin of art among prehistoric peoples in southern Africa. He writes, "The pigment-grinding process wasn’t a simple thing that might happen by accident, but a multi-step process, involving grinding then…

On Pharyngula, PZ Myers criticizes a stirring new short film imagining humanity's presence on the far-flung worlds of our solar system. PZ writes, "There’s nothing in those exotic landscapes as lovely and rich as mossy and majestic cedars of the Olympic Peninsula, or the rocky sea stacks of the nearby coast." So let's not get ahead of ourselves in turning Earth into a dust bowl. On Respectful Insolence, Orac considers the demerits of a new monograph on 'integrative oncology,' saying it's a false dichotomy polarizing aspects of actual science and pure wishful thinking. And on Uncertain…