Random Thoughts

Guns

I’m going to go out on a limb, and write about guns. Specifically, handguns and so-called “assault weapons.” I’m not going to opine about what the law should or shouldn’t be, but only about the personal advisability of owning these kinds of firearms. Likew ...

Article - Fred Phillips - Feb 11 2013 - 10:38pm

Political Science Overturns Biology, Finds Genetic Components For Voting Preference

A group of political scientists says a growing field of research has found links to genetics and political preferences- well, sort of. ...

Article - News Staff - Feb 15 2013 - 3:05pm

Is Thor Mighty Or Just Magic?

If you are a long-time Thor comic book reader, you know Thor's hammer used to be really, really heavy. That means Thor used to be really, really strong.  Somewhere along the way Big Hulk lobbyists decided that the green guy should be the strongest cha ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Oct 22 2015 - 6:50pm

Italian Elections: Berlusconi, Grillo, And The Stalemate Scenario

Next Sunday Italians will vote to change the composition of the two houses of parliament: the "lower" Camera dei Deputati and "upper" Senato della Repubblica. And as often happens with Italian politics, things are complicated. So, despi ...

Article - Tommaso Dorigo - Feb 25 2013 - 11:26am

Banning Coffee Didn't Make The French Less French

Legislation to restrict guns is a lot like legislation to restrict abortion- it's a tough sell at the federal level because of that pesky Constitution so it requires a friendly court and and a lot of lawyers. States, of course, can do it more easily. ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Apr 5 2015 - 12:10am

Statistical Averaging Of Entertainment Magazines Picks The Oscar Winner

I believe in the wisdom of crowds. If I take one PhD in science and ask them to guess the number of pennies in a jar, it's not going to be close, but if I ask 1,000 regular people to guess, the mean average of their answers is going to be eerily accur ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Feb 20 2015 - 3:27pm

How To Transition From Scientist To Science Writer

Are you a science undergraduate or graduate student (or even a post-doc) who has discovered you love science but aren't crazy about the idea of doing research in a narrow field?  Science is a big place and there are lots of other ways to be in the wor ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Mar 7 2013 - 4:30am

More Natural Foolishness

I've determined that I won't write blogs about dumb science unless I encounter at least three in a row.  I probably won't actually adhere to that, but it seemed like a convenient excuse to write this piece. For the record, the first two were ...

Blog Post - Gerhard Adam - Mar 18 2013 - 6:49pm

The Feynman Point And Pilish Poetry

When I was a kid, I would happily play around with both words and numbers – I still do. Both have their aesthetic appeal. Whether it is constructing and deconstructing mathematical puzzles or cryptic crosswords, they appear as small artefacts that reveal a ...

Article - Richard Mankiewicz - Nov 8 2013 - 9:12am

Technical Communication- Twitter Account Is Back

To those who follow my twitter account: my account was hacked over a week ago, and only today could I get it back to work (the twitter support team is not-hehm- a prize-winning one). So while I am busy deleting the >200 tweets that were (I believe autom ...

Blog Post - Tommaso Dorigo - Apr 2 2013 - 8:55am