Science
grrlscientist | October 11, 2009tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books
"How does one distinguish a truly civilized nation from an aggregation of
barbarians? That is easy. A civilized country produces much good bird
literature."
--Edgar Kincaid
The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature and behavior books that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "Birdbooker" Paulsen, and is edited by me and published here for your information and…
bioephemera | October 11, 2009
Dominik Paquet
Getting on this a little late, but the 35th annual Nikon Small World competition winners are out! See article and gallery from SciAm.
grrlscientist | October 10, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Instead of passively watching football games this weekend, why not write about the physics of football so everyone can enjoy the games alongside you? The Blog Carnival, Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is seeking blog essays about physics, biophysics and kinematics, too, so we would love to include clearly written submissions that are targeted to the public explaining the science that underlies sports.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is…
pharyngula | October 10, 2009Josh Timonen has put up a video of my talk at AAI. Tear into it!
One of the things I neglected to say more clearly, but should have, is that what I'm complaining about is the creationists' blithe conflation of complexity with order. We can build up immense amounts of complexity from nothing but noise, so just babbling about how complicated something is says nothing about the impossibility of its origin from chance events. Order, functionality, and, as Joe Felsenstein defined it, adaptedness are more relevant properties, and we have a natural mechanism for generating those, too. It's called…
drorzel | October 10, 2009In the last couple of weeks, I have suddenly acquired a rather full travel schedule for the coming months. The odd thing is that none of these trips are book-publicity junkets-- they're all basically professional-type appearances, several of them taking place before How to Teach Physics to Your Dog hits stores on December 22. My schedule so far:
October 24, Waterloo, Ontario: I'm a late addition the Quantum to Cosmos Festival, as a panelist for a discussion on "Communicating Science in the 21st Century." This will also be webcast and recorded for television (my itinerary includes a "Speaker…
grrlscientist | October 9, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) was just published recently. This edition is entitled Scientia Pro Publica 13: Nobel Prize Edition.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing targeted specifically to the public that has been published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days.
The host for the upcoming 19 October edition will be Luke at Genetic…
drorzel | October 9, 2009Inspired by yesterday's post about the speed of light, a poll about c:
What do you think of the speed of light?(surveys)
So, how do you feel about the speed of light?
razib | October 8, 2009Copenhagen dreaming: In defense of the scientific method:
As the Copenhagen conference on the successor to the Kyoto Protocol draws near, I want to lay some meta-thoughts out about the scientific method which I think are important, as a context for my general support of the theory of global warrming and the need for decisive action by our own nation to reduce carbon emissions and embrace alternative forms of energy (including nuclear). The next post in this series will then lay out my position on global warming specifically.
pharyngula | October 8, 2009Nicholas Wade has a very peculiar review of Richard Dawkins' book, The Greatest Show on Earth, in the NY Times Review of Books. It's strange because it is a positive review which strongly agrees with Dawkins' position on the central importance of the theory of evolution in biology in the first half…but the second half is a jaw-droppingly stupid attack on a small point in the book. Wade has a very absolutist and wrong view of the definitions of some terms, and he goes on and on, whining about a topic that he doesn't understand himself.
There is one point on which I believe Dawkins gets tripped…
gregladen | October 8, 2009It does not matter what you believe about god, creationism, science, evolution, whatever. If you were raised in a society in which there is an evil enemy that you are convinced intends to arrive some day on your country's shores, take over your government, impose a new social order, marry your sister, and so on, then when this evil foreign government sends the first warning shot in this war and it is an unprecedented and amazing feat of science, then suddenly you love science.
You pay taxes to fund science. Your idolize science. You start demanding that science comes to the rescue. One…
drorzel | October 8, 2009A couple of days ago, I answered a question from a donor to the Uncertain Principles challenge page in this year's Social Media Challenge (we've raised $1,807 thus far-- thank you all). If you'd like a question of your own answered on the blog, all you need to do is send me the confirmation email for a donation of at least $20, and your question.
The donor from the other day, Lauren Uroff, had a second question as well, also on behalf of her teenager:
He's an avid Discworld fan (where the speed of light seems to be variable) and wants to know what would happen in our real world if the speed…
pharyngula | October 7, 2009The Digital Cuttlefish tells me in rhyme that a new ring has been discovered around Saturn, a huge (13 million km radius) but low density cloud of dust that is responsible for splattering Iapetus with dark material. Very cool.
The Cuttlefish also informed me that lazy ol' Phil Plait hasn't covered it yet because he's distracted with some TAM in London, so how could I resist scooping him?
pontiff | October 7, 2009The Nobel in Chemistry for 2009 has been awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath for "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome." And because I am (or was, or am, or..whatever) a physicist, I will note that Venkatraman Ramakrishnan has a Ph.D. in physics :)
And today is even more busy than yesterday!
drorzel | October 7, 2009Prompted by working on lecture notes for Quantum Optics last night, a Dorky Poll about the mathematical formalism of photon number states
What's your favorite photon operator?(polls)
I know it's hard to pick, but choose only one.
bioephemera | October 7, 2009
This stunning photo was taken not by the Hubble space telescope, but by some guy (Rogelio Andreo) out in the desert. Sure, he needed several thousand dollars in digital camera equipment to do it, but still - that's well within the reach of many hobbyists. Are we seeing a surge in amateur earthbound astronomy photography?
Read this Wired article to find out all about Andreo's process. If you happened to read my earlier post about data and scientific visualization ("You want raw data? You can't handle raw data") you know that I think filtering and processing data is an inevitable part of both…
oracknows | October 7, 2009As you may have noticed, I've fallen into a groove (or, depending on your point of view, a rut) writing about anti-vaccine lunacy. The reason is simple. While I was busy going nuts over Bill Maher's receiving the Richard Dawkins Award, the anti-vaccine movement has been busy, and there are some things I need to address that had backed up while I was distracted. There's one more thing I need to address before I move on to other topics.
Over the last couple of months, I've noticed something about the anti-vaccine movement. Specifically, I've noticed that the mavens of pseudoscience that make up…
drorzel | October 7, 2009The 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, Thomas A. Steitz and Ada E. Yonath "for studies of the structure and function of the ribosome." I know just about enough to recognize this as something biochemical, but I'm sure there will be plenty of commentary about this around science blogdom.
"Curious Wavefunction" is the name left by the commenter who predicted Yonath would win in this year's betting pool, and thus wins the right to author a guest post here. Congratulations, Curious. Send me email from the address you left in the comment form, and we can set…
grrlscientist | October 6, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) was just published recently. This edition is entitled Scientia Pro Publica 13: Nobel Prize Edition.
Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing targeted specifically to the public that has been published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days.
The host for the upcoming 19 October edition will be Luke at Genetic…
drorzel | October 6, 2009We're six days into the DonorsChoose challenge, and at the time of this writing, ten people have contributed just over $1,700 to the Uncertain Principles challenge entry. That's an impressive average, and I thank you all for your generosity.
I also offered a number of incentives, and Lauren Uroff is claiming one:
I'd like to take you up on your offer to answer questions. The first question I'd like help with is telling me how to tell my teenager about wave-particle duality, the classic experiments that show light is both a particle and a wave, and why he should care.
As It happens, I have…