Now on ScienceBlogs: Will Quantum Fusion Save the Day?
Are bills regulating fireworks there to protect stupid people from themselves? Yes. But don't assume you know a stupid person when you see one. Our governor just vetoed a bill passed by our Pointy Headed Republican Legislature which would have significantly reduced regulation on dangerous fireworks in the state, allowing everyone access to explosives that are...
New Catscans The latest in Cat Scan Research:...
I reject your reality and I substitute my own I don't know if this phrase ... ... originally from Adam Savage or if he's quoting someone. I think it might be his. Today, I was in an internet argument with someone (can you believe how many people on the internet are WRONG???) and I...
Senator Susan Collins (R) plays political games with pandemic preparedness... and your life Collins is all for pandemic preparedness for political reasons, except when she is against it for political reasons.
Near-death, rehashed The story so far: Mario Beauregard published a very silly article in Salon, claiming that Near-Death Experiences (NDEs) were proof of life after death, a claim that he attempted to support with a couple of feeble anecdotes. I replied,...
Around the Web: DRM is a toothless boogeyman, Shaking up the lecture, Copyright in Canada and more Why DRM is a Toothless Boogeyman, Ebooks are like Video Games, and Amazon is the Winner Shaking Up the Lecture Geist: The most expensive copyright insurance policy in Canadian history Open Letter Regarding the Agreement Reached Between Access Copyright and...
Outland It's Not: Billionaires Plan Asteroid Mining I'm about a week late talking about this, but I've mostly resigned myself to not doing really topical blogging these days. Anyway, there was a lot of excitement last week over the announcement that an all-star team of nerd billionaires...
Would you like the USGS to place a seismograph in your home? So you can help them collect data????? OMG, this is so cool! The USGS is trying to achieve a denser and more uniform spacing of seismographs in select urban areas to provide better measurements of ground motion during earthquakes. These measurements improve our ability to...
Soul Warrior This past weekend the Swedish Skeptics celebrated our 30th anniversary with a two-day conference in Gothenburg. It included the annual business meeting of the society at which I was reelected as chairman for a second year. And at dinner,...
Will Quantum Fusion Save the Day? Whether this discovery turns out to be true or false, the question of whether it or anything else can "save" us in the sense most people would like to be saved - let us go on as we have been - is dependent on a number of variables that go beyond "can we build it." At a minimum, it seems wise not to put too many eggs in any basket, for it is perfectly possible to imagine us with a solution at our fingertips that is still out of our functional reach.
Links for 2012-04-30 Confessions of a Community College Dean: Class Dismissed In my darker moments, I sometimes wonder if the root of the problem with public higher education in America is that it was designed to create and support a massive middle...
Another Week of GW News, April 29, 2012 Logging 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...
Preclinical research has a problem, but that doesn't mean religion is better Remember Vox Day? Sure, I bet you do, at least if you've been a regular reader of this blog more than a year or two. If you're a really long-timer, you probably remember him even better. Let's just put it...
Maybe My Next Book Should Be About Atheist Gatherings As you have probably guessed from the blog drought around here, it's the end of the semester. That means tons of grading, office hours, meetings with students, deadlines to meet, and all around not much time for blogging. Final exams...
Profiling and Sam Harris I didn't write about the attacks in Oslo last year because…what is there to say. The bombing and shootings are tragic, the Norwegian people have shown an admirable resilience in the face of terrorism, and wingnuts who initially tried to pin the attack on Muslims have egg on their faces. I was especially struck recently by the charming protest directed at the confessed author of that tragedy, Anders Breivik. In testimony during his trial for murdering 77 fellow Norwegians last summer, Breivik singled out for criticism the song "Children of the Rainbow," a translation of Pete Seeger's "My Rainbow Race."...
Remember that animation of an inflatable flying windmill? Here's the real thing:...
Happy Anniversary ACT UP Technically, it was a few days ago, but I missed it. Here's Rachel Maddow's coverage: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy...
Why do most Americans doubt AGW? Features Michael E. Mann, author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines...
Bear in The Cities For the second time in six months, a wild black bear was found wandering around deep in the urban zone in Saint Paul. I'm not sure what happened to the last one, but this one was killed by Saint Paul police under advisement of the...
It's Organic Pixie Dust, from Fair-Trade Pixies SteelyKid: Daddy, would you like to go to visit Jake and the Never Land Pirates? Me:: In principle, sure. But it's a cartoon. We can't go there, it's not a real place. SteelyKid: Yes it is. Never Land is real,...
Avengers and literary truth Not to dredge up old fights, but a topic we discussed on the blog back in 2009 has cropped up in a couple of recent essays. The issue is whether there is a form of truth that literature can convey, perhaps even a level of literary truth which cannot be conveyed through other means. The topic came up originally in the context of ways we might interpret religious texts, but it applies more generally. So, in this week's New York Times book review section, we have an exchange between the editors and reviewer Mohsin Hamid in which Hamid explains: I’m...
Weekend Diversion: Discover the Night Sky for Yourself! "They will see us waving from such great heights 'Come down now,' they'll say. But everything looks perfect from far away 'Come down now,' but we'll stay." -The Postal Service Whether you're under urban, city skies, where only a few...
Links for 2012-04-28 Learning about science education from the experts: Kids « Boundary Vision By far the best panel on science education I've seen recently was given by a few of the most important people in the field: kids....
Orac 04.13.2012
PZ Myers 06.17.2009
Orac 04.30.2012
Tim Lambert 09.12.2011
ERV 11.26.2011
Casaubon's Book 04.30.2012
Thoughts from Kansas 04.29.2012
Starts With a Bang! 04.27.2012
Pharyngula 04.27.2012
Greg Laden's Blog 04.27.2012
Latest science stories | More at nytimes.com
Some engineers use cranes and steel to make their designs reality, but synthetic biologists engineer using tools on a different scale: DNA and the other molecular components of living cells. Synthetic biology uses cellular systems and structures to produce artificial models based on natural order. Read these posts from the ScienceBlogs archives for more:
Pharyngula May 30, 2007
The Loom January 31, 2008
Discovering Biology in a Digital World July 2, 2006