Science & Society

Medieval Battlefield: Biomechanics And Physiology Of Fighting In Steel Armour

‘Tut! I have the best armour in the world. Would it were day! (W. Shakespeare, Henry V, 1599)  In Medieval Europe, soldiers wore steel plate armor for protection during warfare. Heavier armor would provide greater protection, but would also make it harder ...

Article - Federico Formenti - Mar 29 2012 - 4:53am

Life's Fall

Life's Fall How many years can a mountain exist, before it is washed to the sea? As a rock tumbles from its perch atop a cliff into the water below, impelled by gravitational acceleration, it is potential transformed to kinetic, object to process, no ...

Blog Post - Sean Gibbons - Jul 21 2011 - 1:31pm

Ceci N'est Pas Un Calmar

There's a giant ceramic squid in a New York art gallery. Walking into the gallery, you encounter the 16-foot-long, beached creature, its opalescent, slick-looking flesh seeming to putrefy, lying in a puddle of its own ink. You expect its tentacles to ...

Article - Danna Staaf - Jul 23 2011 - 10:20pm

A tipping point in ethnic advertising- hail to the F(ail)

We've all heard that that the population of whites in the U.S. will be surpassed by non-white minorities in the not-so-distant future. 1  Advertisers have adjusted to the demographic growth and shift by creating multicultural campaigns, and that' ...

Blog Post - Becky Jungbauer - Jul 28 2011 - 5:24pm

Is This A Fishing Expedition?

Is This A Fishing Expedition? In legal circles, a 'fishing expedition' is an illegal attempt to discover unspecified information which may, perhaps, be prejudicial to one party in a legal case.  It is illegal because just about everybody has thi ...

Article - Patrick Lockerby - Jul 29 2011 - 3:55pm

Freethoughtblogs- PZ Myers And Ed Brayton Finally Leaving

Freethoughtblogs.com has now been announced. PZ Myers’ “ Pharyngula ” and Ed Brayton’s “ Dispatches from the Culture Wars ” together with three other blogs start a new network. ...

Article - Sascha Vongehr - Jul 31 2011 - 9:35pm

Women In Science- You Are Oppressed, Even If You Are Not

Some stereotypes are self-reinforcing.   If someone tells you over and over that you are oppressed, if you hit an obstacle and fail, like all of us do at some point in our lives, a convenient excuse is that you are discriminated against. (1) There is zero ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Sep 6 2012 - 5:47pm

The Surprising Math Of Cities And Corporations

The quality of TED talks is in free fall and has gotten only worse since the last time I mentioned this. So it is worth to point to a rare good presentation whenever one comes along. Geoffrey West’s The Surprising Math Of Cities And Corporations shows nic ...

Article - Sascha Vongehr - Aug 6 2011 - 10:11am

Proofiness- How Gender And Pay Statistics Are Used To Do Bad Things

Proofiness, slightly different than Stephen Colbert's truthiness, is basically finding statistics you want to believe to enhance your confirmation bias.  It was coined by Charles Seife,  a long-time science writer who teaches journalism at New York Un ...

Article - Hank Campbell - Aug 5 2011 - 10:12am

Is Wikipedia Sexist Too?

In Proofiness- How Gender And Pay Statistics Are Used To Do Bad Things, I noted that some of the statistics regarding gender and pay in science were misconstrued to make it look like science academia is sexist as opposed to simply being unequal in places. ...

Blog Post - Hank Campbell - Aug 14 2011 - 6:22pm