Archive for the ‘It’s Only Rocket Science’ Category
Black Holes and Physicists' Jokes
A couple of weeks ago, when the world did not end by getting sucked into a black hole newly created by the just-energized Large Hadron Collider (at CERN), it seemed that journalists were casting their lines very widely to find any related story about physicists and CERN and human- or hadron-interest that they could write […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Laughing Matters
Park Validates Ars Hermeneutica's Mission
Here is one item from this week's "What's New", by Bob Park (5 September 2008 issue). I take it as validation of Ars Hermeneutica's view that increasing science literacy in America is vitally needed and will help enfranchise voters who find themselves at a loss to judge the words or deeds of politicians when it […]
In: All, Briefly Noted, It's Only Rocket Science, Snake Oil--Cheap!
What Would It Have Looked Like?
Spending a bit of time online with Richard Dawkins (I was spending time with him whereas he spent no time with me–the net works that way), I listened to a reasonably interesting TED talk in which Dawkins talked about how our perceptions of reality are shaped by the evolution of our brains to help us […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, It's Only Rocket Science
The Majestic Unity of the Natural World
Awhile back I was doing my lunchtime reading in the very interesting book The two-mile time machine : ice cores, abrupt climate change, and our future, by Richard B. Alley. In short, the book is about deep ice cores taken from the ice cap in Greenland and the incredible amount of information they give us […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science, Reflections
Beard of the Week XLIV: Infinity and Beyond
This week's beard belongs to Georg Cantor (1845–1918), the German mathematician who advanced set theory into the infinite with his discovery/invention of transfinite arithmetic. Why I hedge over "discovery" or "invention" we'll get to in a moment. I first encountered Cantor's ideas in college in my course of "mathematical analysis", which was largely concerned with […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, It's Only Rocket Science
Update: Science-Book Challenge 2008
The year–that would be 2008, if memory serves–is now half over so it seemed like a good time for me to give a brief update on the official Ars Hermeneutica "Science-Book Challenge 2008". I am pleased to report ample success at the same time I can note the year is only half over and anyone […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
Beard of the Week XLI: In Pursuit of the Gene
This week's very smart beard, which might live up to calling it a van Dyke, belongs to geneticist and cellist Edmund Beecher Wilson (1856–1939). On the Columbia University Website, where he is one of their "Living Legacies" (despite his being deceased these last 70 years), he is hailed as the first "cell biologist", with which […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, It's Only Rocket Science
Beard of the Week XL: Plant Pigments
This lovely beard, a beautiful example of a mid-twentieth-century schnauzer, belongs to the chemist Richard Willstätter. I confess that his name was not familiar to me despite his having won the 1915 Nobel Prize in chemistry. Here are two short excerpts from his Nobel biography that summarize his prize-winning research. As a young man he […]
In: All, Beard of the Week, It's Only Rocket Science
Lightning Safety Awareness Week 2008
Yesterday I had a press release from NOAA letting me know that this week, 22-28 June, is "Lightning Safety Awareness Week". Apparently it is the seventh such declared week. The motto of LSAW comes from the mouth of Leon the Lion: "When Thunder Roars, Go Indoors!" The National Weather Service, operated by NOAA, maintains a […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, The Art of Conversation
It's Ice!
This news from NASA and the Phoenix Mars Lander seems to be traveling around with near light speed: Bright Chunks at Phoenix Lander's Mars Site Must Have Been Ice 06.19.08 TUCSON, Ariz. – Dice-size crumbs of bright material have vanished from inside a trench where they were photographed by NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander four days […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science
On Reading Despicable Species
Last week I finished reading Janet Lembke's, Despicable Species : On Cowbirds, Kudzu, Hornworms, and Other Scourges (New York : The Lyons Press, 1999. xi + 216 pages, illustrations by Joe Nutt). You might like to read my book note about it. I like the author's portrait inside the back cover: the gracefully maturing lady […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
Send Your Name to the Moon!
NASA is preparing its Lunar-Reconnaissance Orbiter mission. The orbiter is being built by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, which interests us because it's not far from here and we have friends who work there. The orbiter is apparently nearing complete and is to be launched no earlier than 24 November 2008. (That sort […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science
On Reading American Prometheus
In truth it was last summer* when I read the book by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus : The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York : Vintage Books, 2005; 721 pages). It's only today, however, when I finally got around to assembling my notes into the requisite book note. […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
On Satellite Dishes Looking in the Same Direction
I recently finished reading Richard Dawkins' Climbing Mount Improbable (New York : W.W.Norton & Company, 1996, 340 pages). It wasn't bad, but it wasn't his best by any means. All of the little things that irritate me about Dawkins' writing seemed emphasized in this book. There's more in my book note, of course. Dawkins is […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
Notes to The Map that Changed the World
I recently finished reading Simon Winchester's excellent book, The Map that Changed the World : William Smith and the Birth of Modern Geology (New York : HarperCollins, 2001, 329 pages). It's the fascinating story of William Smith (1769—1839) and how he came to draw the first geological map of England (the first in the world, […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science
On Not Reading Singh's Fermat's Enigma
For a few days recently I was reading Simon Singh's book, Fermat's Enigma : The Quest to Solve the World's Greatest Mathematical Problem (New York : Walker and Company, 1997, 315 pages). However, I stopped reading after about 80 pages. The reason had nothing to do with the subject, which was interesting and developing reasonably […]
In: All, Books, It's Only Rocket Science, Writing
Park on EMF Non-Dangers
Just in case you came in late, or you don't remember the events of the time, and never realized the terror that could be induced by toasters, Robert Park updates us on the utter lack of danger associated with electromagnetic fields (EMF). HYBRIPHOBIA: REMEMBER WHEN POWER LINES CAUSED CANCER? EMF stopped causing cancer in 1997, […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science, Snake Oil--Cheap!
Fast-Tack Evolution
The story, as it's told online in National Geographic News,* goes like this. n 1971, scientists transplanted five adult pairs of [Italian wall lizards] from their original island home in Pod Kopiste to the tiny neighboring island of Pod Mrcaru, both in the south Adriatic Sea[, off the coast of Croatia]. Genetic testing on the […]
In: All, Eureka!, It's Only Rocket Science
Edward Lorenz and His Butterflies
The image at right is a gorgeous rendering† of a mystifying object known as the Lorenz Attractor. It shares its name with Edward Lorenz, its discoverer, who died earlier this month at the age of 90.* Edward Lorenz is sometimes called "the father of chaos", and the Lorenz attractor is the reason. Lorenz was a […]
In: All, Curious Stuff, It's Only Rocket Science
Differences in Celsius & Fahrenheit
Here's an unexpected bit of innumeracy. I'm about to finish up a book by Colin Tudge called The Time Before History : A Million Years of Human Impact (New York : Scribner, 1996; 366 pages). I expect there will be a book note soonish. Anyway, here are two quotations from two nearby pages. See if […]
In: All, It's Only Rocket Science