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President Obama has just signed the health care bill into law. Well, that was easy. OK, next problem?
The relationship between art and science today "is a little bit like romance," said Lynn Fellman. What's being learned about our species and about each other "is like getting to know someone new," she said. "It's surprising; It's a sense of discovery," one that artists, who speak through a visual language, respond to. "You know that there's beauty in the idea of evolution," she said, adding that art can express that beauty. The Minneapolis-based artist, a member of the bio-art movement that seeks to bridge the worlds of art and science, uses recent discoveries about the human genome as the…
RT @AlexConnor At UK space launch. There is an astronaut, a load of well-badged kids, a couple of lords and a soldier wearing gold rope. Sent from Echofon - http://echofon.com/ David Dobbs Typos courtesy of thumbs and iPhone Posted via email from David Dobbs's Somatic Marker
Mike Dunford of Questionable Authority was born this day some years ago. Wish him a happy birthday.
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux). Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power) -- Sir Francis Bacon. The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is less than two weeks away and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me or by volunteering to host this carnival on your blog? Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and medical writing that has been published in…
An item from the Union of Concerned Scientists: Certainty vs. Uncertainty Understanding Scientific Terms About Climate Change Uncertainty is ubiquitous in our daily lives. We are uncertain about where to go to college, when and if to get married, who will play in the World Series, and so on. To most of us, uncertainty means not knowing. To scientists, however, uncertainty is how well something is known. And, therein lies an important difference, especially when trying to understand what is known about climate change. In science, there's no such thing as absolute certainty. But, research…
Creative Commons was fortunate enough to be involved in a fascinating workshop last week in New York on Open Hardware. Video is at the link, photos below. The background is that I met Ayah Bdeir at the Global Entrepreneurship Week festivities in Beirut, and we started talking about her LittleBits project (which is, crudely, like Legos for electrics assembly - even someone as spatially impaired as me could build a microphone or pressure sensor in minutes). Ayah introduced me to the whole open hardware (OH) world and asked a lot of very good, hard to answer questions about how to use CC in…
Creative Commons was fortunate enough to be involved in a fascinating workshop last week in New York on Open Hardware. Video is at the link, photos below. The background is that I met Ayah Bdeir at the Global Entrepreneurship Week festivities in Beirut, and we started talking about her LittleBits project (which is, crudely, like Legos for electrics assembly - even someone as spatially impaired as me could build a microphone or pressure sensor in minutes). Ayah introduced me to the whole open hardware (OH) world and asked a lot of very good, hard to answer questions about how to use CC in…
... this would be a good time to "attend" the "A" Week on Facebook event. Click here and RSVP and put the big A in there as your face.
But that it has always been true does not excuse ... The Catholic priests who abused children--and the men who covered it up--must be prosecuted By Christopher Hitchens LINK Boy Scouts Accused of Massive Sex-Abuse Coverup LINK
Observations of a Nerd has migrated from its ancestral home on Blogger.com and invaded Science Blogs! Aloha! For those of you who don't know me, my name is Christie. I've been blogging since 2008, and I write about whatever tickles my fancy, from science news to cute critters. I like to keep things upbeat and informative, but most of all, fun to read. I've imported my old Blogger posts (though my Blogger Site will remain as an archive and back-up in case Science Blogs is destroyed by a plague of locusts), so you can look back in time and see what Observations of a Nerd is all about (I…
Over the weekend, I had a little essay in the Times on some new research on why dream at night. When I can't sleep, I think about what I'm missing. I glance over at my wife and watch her eyelids flutter. I listen to the steady rhythm of her breath. I wonder if she's dreaming and, if so, what story she's telling to herself to pass the time. (The mind is like a shark -- it can't ever stop swimming in thought.) And then my eyes return to the ceiling and I wonder what I would be dreaming about, if only I could fall asleep. Why do we dream? As a chronic insomniac, I like to pretend that our…
I came across this news article by Sharon Begley: Mind Reading Is Now Possible: A computer can tell with 78 percent accuracy when someone is thinking about a hammer and not pliers. The article came out in 2008. I'm just wondering what's been happening since in this area.
.... I had a feeling this was going to happen.... Anyway, praise FSM, I'm talking about him being gay, not being, like, a climate change denialist or something. Check it out. In truth, this is not really all that interesting. I mean, like, whatever. But the guy is the original skeptic, he's 81, and he always has interesting stuff to say. So it is really all that interesting after all.
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux). Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power) -- Sir Francis Bacon. The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is less than two weeks away and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me or by volunteering to host this carnival on your blog? Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and medical writing that has been published in…
I had an assignment this weekend to shoot preserved insects as if in a museum display collection. Dead bugs aren't normally my thing, but there's something to be said about subjects that stay put and allow me to arrange lighting without scurrying off. I pinned the insects in foam-bottomed trays and reflected the strobe off an overhead white board. More photos below. Photo details (all): Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D ISO 100, f5-f11, 1/40 sec, indirect strobe
Felix Salmon gives the story. I haven't read the research articles, but it's an interesting story. As Salmon frames the book, it's Freakonomics-the-book vs. Freakonomics-style empirical analysis. P.S. I'm assuming that both numbers above have been rounded to the nearest billion.
Duwayne is a friend, regular commenter, and fellow blogger. He blogs here. Go wish him a happy arbitrary day of the year fest.
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux). Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power) -- Sir Francis Bacon. The next edition of Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) is less than two weeks away and as usual, it is seeking submissions and hosts! Can you help by sending URLs for your own or others' well-written science, medicine, and nature blog essays to me or by volunteering to host this carnival on your blog? Scientia Pro Publica is a traveling blog carnival that celebrates the best science, environment, nature and medical writing that has been published in…
No, not the earthquake. This.