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carlyo | December 11, 2012Amazing! Read about the impressive life of this Physician Specializing in Aerospace Physiology. To read the full biography of Edwin Muñiz and other role models in science and engineering, click here.
jrosenhouse | December 10, 2012I am happy to report that my back is doing much better now. Not quite good as new yet, but rapidly getting there.
In this previous post I mentioned that spending a lot of time flat on your back does allow you to get a lot of reading done. Lately I've been having a go at Bleak House, by Charles Dickens of course, first serialized in 1852 and 1853. The upside of a Dickens novel is that he wrote truly beautiful sentences. The downside is that he was never in much of a hurry to move the story along. But that's just perfect for my present situation, since I haven't been doing much “moving…
carlyo | December 10, 2012Exercise the brain? Click here to read more about how Neurologist Eleanor Maguire studied the training of London Taxicab drivers to challenge the belief that the adult brain is inflexible.
gregladen | December 10, 2012A very humorous but fake study from the conservative "The Intelligence Institute" has been circulating around the Internet. The headline: "Intelligence Institute Study shows Fox News viewers have an IQ that is 20 points lower than the U.S. National average" The good news, the study says, "...an IQ of 80 is well above the score of 70, which is where psychiatrists diagnose mental retardation. P. Nichols says an IQ of 80 will not limit anyone's ability to lead happy, fulfilling lives."
Again, that is fake.
But it turns out that there is something else going on.
The underlying conclusions of…
gregladen | December 8, 2012I'd like to call a truce on the War on Christmas. The true meaning of this holiday is, of course, the presents, and pursuant to that I have some suggestions for you in case you are stuck.
Dr Who Presents
The Doctor Who TARDIS Cookie Jar is a must have because is is a Dr. Who Thing, it is a TARDIS and it is for holding Cookies.
This particular cookie jar has light and sound effects. And, if you run out of cookies it is relatively easy for you and your companion to go back in time and get more.
This TARDIS does not come with cookies.
TARDIS stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space…
gregladen | December 8, 2012I'm pretty sure that for a long time people who were supposed to know what they were talking about were explaining the Higgs Boson wrong. This led other people to think of it the wrong way as well. I'm not even speaking here of the whole "god particle" thing. That's a whole nuther, equally annoying, issue. But eventually, the real story started to get around and I think it is possible to get a reasonable idea of what the thing is without being a theoretical physicist or particle expert.
Let me try. Here's my current version of the Higgs Boson. There seems to be three things to know about…
carlyo | December 7, 2012Nobel Prize winner Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin was another amazing woman that changed the world with science!
To read the full biography of Dorothy Crowfoot Hodgkin click here
carlyo | December 6, 2012Read about this Chemist from the Big Easy who may have had a hand in developing the shirt on your back!
To read the full biography visit our Role Models in Science & Engineering Achievement page here
gregladen | December 6, 2012Whinging About Skepchick
A critique of a talk by Rebecca Watson is very likely heavily influenced by the critiquer’s membership in one group or another as defined by The Great Sorting. This not because Rebecca is a polarizing person. It is because she has been outspoken on issues that tend to polarize people, like feminism. This polarization is enhanced by the fact that a break-off group of skeptics have chosen to join the haters rather than the thinkers and doers. Also, she leads a group of women who have tried to open up the Skeptical Community to having more female participants and to more…
carlyo | December 5, 2012WASHINGTON, DC – The USA Science & Engineering Festival today announced Lockheed Martin as its founding and presenting host, unveiled a new website, and detailed year-round activities leading up to its return to Washington, DC on April 24-27, 2014.
The USA Science & Engineering Festival creates the thrill of hands-on science for America’s youth, getting them interested at an early age so more students will pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math.
“This nation suffers from a severe shortage of up-and-coming scientists and engineers,” said Dr. Ray O. Johnson, senior…
gregladen | December 5, 2012Rachel Maddow can be very scary, because she's like, all truth and stuff. For example, she claims that evolution is real and the moon landing was real! Imagine that!
But seriously the question is, how can people get things like this, and lots of other things (Obama's place of birth, what really happened at Benghazi, etc.) so wrong.
Many misconceptions are politically motivated, but they are so absurd that it is hard to understand how they are spread and maintained. Recently, Rachel threw a few "truth bombs" and discussed the "truth" bubble that conservative politicians and the conservative…
carlyo | December 4, 2012Here's one for the Math lovers! For the full biography of David Blackwell, visit our website: http://ow.ly/fPuLK
illconsidered | December 4, 2012(The following is posted by het)
I have noticed some comments here about Fukushima and I thought it might be useful to have one post to capture that conversation. So please, have forth here.
I live in the middle of Canada. Fukushima is on the other side of the world. The only information I have about what goes on there is what I get via the media. And therein lies a problem. Basically, who do you trust?
There are the mainstream media who are liable to print almost anything.
There are TEPCO, General Electric and the Japanese government.
There are regulatory agencies NISA, JAEA, IAEA etc.…
gregladen | December 4, 2012I am having a conversation with my friend, Pat. We are talking about the way we talk when we have a chance to spend some time, or the way our emails seem to go.
“I tire of being asked what I think about something only to have the conversation derailed at the first ‘bump’ in my logic, at the first self-contradiction,” Pat says, of life in general.
My response: “I savor your contradictions. It's my desire to explore them with you and to experience the change that happens when you wrestle with them.”
“Yes, I think you get it. How refreshing.”
As you can see, Pat and I have a deeply meaningful…
gregladen | December 4, 2012You know about Atheists Talk because I mention it now and then. I've done several interviews on the radio show. of sciency people like Neil deGrasse Tyson and Ira Flatow, and most recently George Church. I've also been interviewed on it. And I've done the TV now and then as well.
Here's the thing.
It costs the Minnesota Atheists quite a bit of money to keep the radio show on the air. So, we had a meeting the other day and decided to try to continue to do this next year (pending board approval) but also to ramp up our presence a little more in order to potentially increase the trickle of…
gregladen | December 4, 2012I was just looking at the newly released Time Top Ten Space (science) Moments of the year. This is a little unfair, actually. The year is not over. Something could easily happen between now and January 1, 2013. Anyway, there are things on this list I didn't know, so I therefore assume that you did not know them either.
It appears that the Moon sunk the Titanic. At first this sounds silly, but it is actually quite possible and even if an exaggeration of sorts, interesting. On January 4th, before the Titanic sailed, there was a Spring Tide. This is the monthly (in lunar months, obviously)…
gregladen | December 4, 2012Thursday, at 7 to 9 PM in Room 412 of the Science Teaching and Student Services Building on the East Bank. A few of us involved with Atheist Voices of Minnesota: an Anthology of Personal Stories will be doing a thing called "Telling our Stories."
The event is run by the UMN Campus Atheists Skeptics and Humanists, and will include August Berkshire, Robin Raianiemi, Eric Jayne, Stephanie Zvan, and Me. Details are here.
illconsidered | December 3, 2012Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup
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Another Week in the Planetary Crisis
Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years
December 2, 2012
Chuckles, Doha - COP18: Misc., Irony, Kyoto, Finance, Dailies
Grafton, Bednarek, Rahmstorf, Shepherd, Subsidies, WB, Equador, Cook
Fukushima Note, Fukushima News, Nuclear Policy
Melting Arctic, Polar Bears, Methane, Geopolitics, Antarctica
Food Crisis, Fisheries, Food vs. Biofuel,…
carlyo | December 3, 2012This environmental crusader was a voice for our beautiful planet- she is an inspiration!
For the full biography of this incredible woman, visit our website: http://ow.ly/fN7pM