Science & Society
"Contact", Carl Sagan's 1985 novel about man's contact with extraterrestrial life and where it takes us, was, like all good stories, modeled around real characters.
The book was okay but the movie "Contact" had Jodie Foster, who I would contend had the most convincing portrayal of a scientist in film ever, and that made it special. Where did she get her inspiration? The same place Carl Sagan did; from Jill Tarter, the director of the Center for SETI Research at the SETI Institute.
Mike McRae's Tribal Science: Brains, Beliefs, and Bad Ideas is short, sweet, often humorous and to the point. It's also pithy and full of quote-worthy sentences:
"Since most of the face-like patterns Mary sees every day are indeed faces, her brain's gamble usually pays off. In addition, making the mistake of thinking there is the face of Jesus on her iron isn't costing her much (except a new iron. Nobody likes to do housework with the face of God)."
California faces an identity crisis. The financial mismanagement is so well known that late-night talk show hosts make jokes about getting loans...from
Greece. Three years ago,
third world countries like Romania were safer bonds than California but now Greece is better too? That's kind of sad. The tired old 'we will cut important services for show until you vote for tax increases' strategy seems to have petered out. But California wants to continue to buy friendship from the 'green' contingent even as the money runs out.
Helicopter parents rejoice - when you are not slathering on chemicals to make sure your cherubs never get any sunshine and scraping off deadly pathogens with antibacterial soap, you can further protect your offspring by insuring they catch no debilitating diseases from...a garden hose.
Sure, millions of years of evolution and drinking water a lot more polluted than the municipal kind didn't kill humans but our ancestors did not have to contend with evil BPA.
What, you think BPA is just more health scare journalism during slow news weeks when no miracle vegetable stories are available? Why do you hate children so much?
Science meets society (SMS) has interviewed me. Actually, they took my answers to their list of questions so to make it look like an interview may have taken place. I am thankful for the honor and the exposure and all that, however, I am somewhat concerned about the rewriting. If I had meant that, perhaps I would have written it like that?!? Just saying.
It seems that one Toby Cubitt, a quantum physicist, has done research which proves mathematically that physics is hard. Well no duh. Physics is the subject sane people avoid in college. Compare the conceptual complexity of Louis DeBroglie's work on the wave nature of "solid" material particles to a study of Dr. Shaquille O'Neal Ed.D. on how bosses use humor in the workplace.
When it comes to comparing groups of people, there are always more differences within a group than there are between groups. This truism guards us against racism, sexism and ageism. But the idea is not often applied to adolescents, and it surprises me that I have never heard someone publicly complain, "I've experienced more discrimination as a teenager than as a woman or green-skinned person."
You're in luck. To the consternation of advertisers, we gather almost no information about you so if you are concerned about outsiders learning a lot about you from your visit to this article, fear not. If we were that clever, this site would make a lot of money.
What Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls “frictionless sharing” - like sharing music and book choices with the Internet - isn’t really frictionless – it forces on us the new frictions of worrying who knows what we’re reading and what our privacy settings are wherever and however we read electronically. It’s also not really sharing; real sharing is conscious sharing, a recommendation to read or not to read something rather than a data exhaust pipe of mental activity.
Unless he gets hit by a bus, Mitt Romney is going to be the Republican nominee and be given the opportunity to lose in the election this fall.
Consider two opposing visions. First imagine a commercial from my childhood: a mother and son running in slow motion in a haze through a field of giant daisies. In each core, instead of the familiar yellow inflorescence, they find a chocolate chip cookie. In this world of pureness and goodness, new, synthesized molecules have no place.
When the "all-natural" people hear of any trace of these locust-like invading "chemicals", if they don't run to health food stores, they imagine living in the pristine past in the middle of the woods.
