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gregladen | February 23, 2013American currency uses the phrase "In God We Trust" which is a clear violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. This is to the First Amendment roughly like saying "No Guns Allowed" everywhere would be to the Second Amendment, but if we did that to the Second Amendment people would be up in arms (as it were). But since it is merely the First Amendment nobody cares.
Anyway, that is what our money says now, but in the past, it did not say that. The "In God We Trust" was added during the Red Scare, when American started putting screenplay writers in jail and neighbors turned in…
carlyo | February 22, 2013Celebrating Black History Month with another Role Model in Science & Engineering!
The story of George Washington Carver is fascinating! This Botanist and Inventor possessed a "burning zeal to know everything" about nature from an early age. He used botany and other sciences to create products that would benefit the economic and agricultural productivity of poor black farmers. Read more about George Washington Carver including why Gandhi sought his expertise here.
gregladen | February 21, 2013"Thank you to the nearly 50,000 who demonstrated on Presidents Day Weekend at the Washington Monument, the thousands at 20+ solidarity rallies across the country, and the more than one million online activists who stood up and spoke out to tell President Obama that right now its time to move Forward on Climate."
gregladen | February 21, 2013This is not new, but I just found out about it from Paul Douglas's blog. Back in 2011, an F3 tornado touched down and went straight for over 60 km. The beast (that's the technical for a big-scary-tornaod) was almost a kilometer wide. It left an impressive scar, which you can see in this photograph:
More recently, when so called "Nemo the Storm" swept across the same region, the scar became plainly visible, as shown in this image:
The first image is from here, the second is from here.
jrosenhouse | February 20, 2013I spent the last weekend in scenic Parsippany, NJ, participating in the annual chess extravaganza known as the U. S. Amateur Team East. As big a chess fan as I am, I am mostly retired from tournament play. It's too hard and stressful! For the first time in a long while, however, I managed to make some decent moves, so you can be sure that you will hear all about it shortly! Alas, since I am digging out from all the work that didn't get done while I was away, that might have to wait for the weekend.
In the meantime, you can take some comfort from this article, that appeared recently in…
gregladen | February 19, 2013I just put up a post in 10,000 Birds reporting on a recent study of duck stamp sales and duck hunting. There have been changes in recent years in the patterns of both waterfowl hunting and the purchase and use of federal duck stamps. Waterfowl hunters are required to have a duck stamp, and about 90% of the funds raised through the sale of these artistic quasi-philatic devices are used to secure wildlife preservation areas. For decades, duck population numbers and duck stamp sales were closely correlated, but recently this correlation has broken down. Read the post to find out the details and…
carlyo | February 14, 2013Celebrating Black History Month with another Role Model in Science and Engineering:
Marie M. Daly was a Chemist and the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. in Chemistry in the U.S. She became known for her groundbreaking work investigating how diet, cigarettes and other factors affect the heart and the circulatory system. Her research has saved countless lives! What prominent woman chemist at Columbia University in 1944 played a key role in Marie Daly's admission to that institution to obtain a Ph.D.? Read her full biography here.
jrosenhouse | February 14, 2013I am slowly working my way through the anthology Circles Disturbed: The Interplay of Mathematics and Narrative, edited by Apostolos Doxiadis and Barry Mazur. The book includes an excellent essay by mathematician Timothy Gowers titled, “Vividness in Mathematics and Narrative.” It makes a point that has often bothered me about mathematical discourse.
Gowers opens with two passages meant to describe the beginning of an academic year. Here's the first:
It is September again, and the campus, which has been very quiet for the last couple of months, is suddenly full of cars bringing students…
pgleick | February 14, 2013Invest in the future. And especially, invest in sustainable, effective job creation in the water sector. The result will be millions of new jobs – a significant result.
That is the key message from a new analysis just released today by the Pacific Institute on sustainable water jobs in the United States. That study, Sustainable Water Jobs: A National Assessment of Water-Related Green Job Opportunities, finds that proactive investments increasing efficient water use, improving water quality, expanding smart water treatment and re-use, and more will address growing problems associated with…
pgleick | February 13, 2013We’re bombarded with numbers every day. But seeing a number and understanding it are two different things. Far too often, the true “significance” of a figure is hidden, unknown, or misjudged. I will be returning to that theme often in these blog posts in the context of water, climate change, energy, and more. In particular, there is an important distinction between accuracy and precision.
Here is one example – reported cases of cholera worldwide. Cholera is perhaps the most widespread and serious water-related disease, directly associated with the failure to provide safe drinking water and…
gregladen | February 12, 2013So, I posted something at Daily Kos you might find interesting:
As we wrestle with hard science and hard policy and the interaction between the two, the real problem we face are made much harder to solve because of the seemingly incessant drumbeat of science denialism.
Climate change is real and is mainly caused by humans, but climate change science denialism is an industry, a cottage industry, or a hobby for many. Big oil pays for the production of anti climate science rhetoric and activism. Anti climate science activists exhibit bizarre non-scientific behavior that goes beyond denying…
gregladen | February 12, 2013Minnesota has three things you may have heard about: Cold weather, “Minnesota Nice,” and a vigorous training program in Passive Aggressive Behavior (PAB). Unless you know about things, you probably didn’t know any of that.1
The part about the cold weather is neither here nor there with Global Warming causing it to go away. The latter two are interrelated and complex, and can only be understood through a great deal of analysis. And, since we don’t have time to put everyone in the state into Freudian therapy, I’ll just give an example.
This week we celebrate Darwin’s Birthday, and Abe Lincoln’s…
sciencepunk | February 12, 2013Following some conversations with fellow writers over the weekend, I've been thinking critically about writing - both my own and that of others. When I first started writing about science, it naturally stemmed from reading the work of very good science writers, and true to form my first steps were wholesale imitations of these people. Lately though, I find myself reading far more fiction authors, who tend to have a much richer style, elements of which I hope I can bring across in to non-fiction. There's a trend lately for narrative-led long form in the vein of breathless pop fiction novels,…
sciencepunk | February 11, 2013Witchcraft!
It reminds me of the "plasma polymer" coating developed some years ago by DSTL, Britain's defence research organisation. I wonder if the technologies are related?
gregladen | February 11, 2013I already told you about this. In a BBC/David Attenborough special on Africa, this specific statement was made: That part of the African continent had warmed by 3.5 degrees. This was corrected by Leo Hickman. That datum is invalid. Africa has indeed been affected by climate change, but that specific factoid is incorrect. Now, the BBC is patting itself on the back for correcting the special, but they are doing it wrong.
From the BBC Story:
The presenter then commented on the additional challenges presented by climate change, adding that parts of Africa now face higher temperatures.
However…
gregladen | February 11, 2013Today, a new Climate SOS Blogathon starts at the Daily Kos. I'll be contributing a post tomorrow, which I'll let you know about. The other contributors include an amazing list of bloggers, scientists, policy experts, and at least one federal level elected official of which I'm aware.
The first blog posted is: Keystone XL pipeline is not in the U.S. National Interest by A. Siegel who blogs at Get Energy Smart. NOW!!!!.
The list of posts will be managed HERE.
jrosenhouse | February 10, 2013Philosophers William Lane Craig and Alexander Rosenberg recently debated everyone's favorite question: the existence of God. You can find the video here. The entire event is close to three hours long, and so I have not yet watched the whole thing. I watched the twenty-minute opening statements, and then did a bit of random sampling from the remainder of the debate. Just in case you're not familiar with these gentlemen, Craig is the theist and Rosenberg is the atheist.
From my perspective as an atheist, Rosenberg was pretty disappointing. Stylistically Craig was the clear winner. He is a…