Science
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Science Media News More on teaching creationism
Posted by Michael Miner on 05.01.12 at 02:02 PM
I hope the earlier post isn't giving the impression that I think it should be. What I wrote, putting my thoughts into the mouth of the governor of Tennessee, was, "I want every graduate of the public schools of Tennessee to understand the theory of evolution and why people believe in it and the theory of creationism and why people believe in it. Science and faith are the twin foundations of America and our kids deserve to be as thoroughly grounded in both as their country is."
In other words, if science and faith can give such extremely different answers to fundamental questions, we cheat children if we don't explain to them the wellsprings of those answers. I doubt if my last post would have occurred to me if I hadn't just read a review of the new book When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God, by T.M. Luhrmann, a psychological anthropologist.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Science Music Considering the caveman Hendrix
Posted by Miles Raymer on 04.24.12 at 02:54 PM
Is music just a byproduct of human culture? Or is it more innate, possibly even genetic? That's the foundation of Marcus and Miller's discussion, and over the course of it they bring up a number of fascinating subtopics, like singing Neanderthals and the possibility that "rock star" isn't simply a Western cultural construct but an evolutionary tactic with roots going back to the earliest days of human existence. So much nerd boner material.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Science Media News David Brooks and homicidal fantasies
Posted by Steve Bogira on 04.19.12 at 09:46 AM
- 16 Miles of String
- New York Times columnist David Brooks
"When somebody who seems mostly good does something completely awful, we’re rendered mute or confused," David Brooks wrote in the New York Times last month. "But of course it happens all the time. That’s because even people who contain reservoirs of compassion and neighborliness also possess a latent potential to commit murder. . . . We're natural-born killers."
Brooks was ruminating on the massacre of 16 Afghan civilians in March, allegedly committed by Staff Sgt. Robert Bales. As evidence of our latent murderous potential, the op-ed columnist pointed to the research of evolutionary psychologist David Buss of the University of Texas. Buss "asked his students if they had ever thought seriously about killing someone, and if so, to write out their homicidal fantasies in an essay," Brooks said. "He was astonished to find that 91 percent of the men and 84 percent of the women had detailed, vivid homicidal fantasies."
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Science Eco Food Chain Food & Drink New Chicago Beer Company moves out of the Plant
Posted by Julia Thiel on 04.17.12 at 04:45 PM
- Julia Thiel
- The New Chicago Beer Company space last summer
The Evans brothers and their plans were the subject of a story I wrote last summer; they said at the time that they expected to open in March 2012 and anticipated producing 12,000 barrels of beer in their brewery's first year. They also said their brew would eventually be available in a 2,500-square-foot tasting room that they were planning.
Monday, April 9, 2012
Science Food Chain Food & Drink Breaking ambergris news
Posted by Julia Thiel on 04.09.12 at 12:48 PM
No one has ever seen a sperm whale excrete ambergris, although sperm whale expert Hal Whitehead of Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, admits that it is assumed the voiding takes place as fecal excretion, because when first cast out, he says, "Well, it smells more like the back end than the front."
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Science Boom! Silence vs. Noise Week Retweet it, only louder
Posted by Kevin Warwick on 04.05.12 at 08:07 AM
- John A. Anderson/Shutterstock
- A sparrow
According to a recent study conducted in the Presidio district of San Francisco, sparrows have been forced over 35-some-odd years to raise their voices in order to compete with the city's escalating clamor. Researchers David Luther of George Mason and Elizabeth Derryberry of Louisiana State studied the reaction songbirds had to calls recorded in the park in 1969 and in 2005. Guess what happened?
Wednesday, April 4, 2012
Science Grammar Wordplay Week No pun left behind
Posted by Steve Bogira on 04.04.12 at 06:39 AM
- neurollero
- Brain cells firing in the insular buttock during punning
I myself am of the punning perversion. So I agree with the poet Ernest Hartsock, who once wrote that puns "are mainly objected to by Puritans" and that great literature "must arise from a healthy and daring experimentation with words"—an experimentation epitomized by punning. "I have a suspicion that a reason for the disdain of some of our pedants toward puns is a natural inability to grasp wit of any kind," Hartsock said, "—yea, to grasp anything except an air of dignity."
Hartsock's essay, "In Defense of Punning," was published in the linguistic journal American Speech. "The stigma of the pun has been long enough with us," he observed. And he wrote this in 1929.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Science Silence vs. Noise Week 3 AM tweeting, the other kind
Posted by Kevin Warwick on 03.30.12 at 06:59 AM
- Wikimedia Commons
- A bird
And that's OK, because in addition to having a delicate 30-year-old body actually complete menial weekend tasks, I'm also able to avoid the eerie, discombobulating early morning chorus of the songbirds. As if having the bar lights dialed up to tanning-bed-level brightness isn't sobering enough, stumbling out the front door into 4:30 AM Chicago and hearing bird chirps bounce around alleyways and off apartment buildings is a dizzying kind of surreal.
Thursday, March 22, 2012
Science Whoa Food & Drink Whale vomit in history
Posted by Julia Thiel on 03.22.12 at 07:06 AM
- Peter Kaminski
Monday, March 19, 2012
Science Music A sight for sore ears
Posted by Miles Raymer on 03.19.12 at 05:30 PM
