Headline of the week: “Horniest male beetles
Headline of the week: “Horniest male beetles have the tiniest testicles”. Bravo!
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kottke.org posts about science
The future of science: celebrity photography. While
The future of science: celebrity photography. While in Venice for the World Conference on the Future of Science, prominent philosopher Daniel Dennett squeezed off a shot of Paris Hilton arriving at the hotel for, one would assume, activities unrelated to the scientific proceedings.
Stephen Hawking is making an Imax 3D
Stephen Hawking is making an Imax 3D film about “cosmology and the meaning of existence”. The film “will be like Groundhog Day meets Star Trek”.
Bob Holmes imagines an earth without people
Bob Holmes imagines an earth without people in New Scientist. “All things considered, it will only take a few tens of thousands of years at most before almost every trace of our present dominance has vanished completely. Alien visitors coming to Earth 100,000 years hence will find no obvious signs that an advanced civilisation ever lived here.”
Update: Derek Miller notes that even after human traces have vanished from earth, evidence of our civilization would remain on the moon and in space.
The Ghost Map
The Ghost Map is a book about:
- a bacterium
- the human body
- a geographical map
- a man
- a working friendship
- a household
- a city government
- a neighborhood
- a waste management system1
- an epidemic
- a city
- human civilization
You hooked yet? Well, you should be. As the narrative unfolds around the 1854 London cholera epidemic, author Steven Johnson weaves all of these social, geographical, and biological structures/webs/networks into a scientific parable for the contemporary world. The book is at its best when it zooms among these different scales in a Powers of Ten-like fashion (something Johnson calls The Long Zoom), demonstrating the interplay between them: the way the geography of a neighborhood affected the spread of a virus, how ideas spreading within a social context are like an epidemic, or the comparison between the organism of the city and the geography of a bacterial colony within the human colon. None of this is surprising if you’ve read anything about emergence, complexity, or social scale invariance, but Johnson effectively demonstrates how tightly coupled the development of (as well as our understanding of) viral epidemics and large cities were across all of these scales.
The other main theme I saw in the book is how inherently messy science is. Unlike many biographies, The Ghost Map doesn’t try to tie everything up into a nice little package to make a better story. The cholera epidemic and its resolution was sloppy; there was no aha! moment where everyone involved understood what was going on and knew what had to be done. But the scientific method applied by John Snow to the situation was solid and as more evidence became available over the years, his theory of and solution to cholera epidemics were revealed as actual fact. Johnson reminds us that that’s how science works most of the time; science is a process, not a set of facts and theories. During the recent debate in the US over evolution and intelligent design, I felt a reluctance on the part of scientists to admit to this messiness because it would give an opening to their detractors: “haha, so you admit you don’t know what’s going on at all!” Which is unfortunate, because science is powerful in its nuance and rough edges (in some ways, science is what happens at the margins) in helping us understand ourselves and the world we live in.
[1] Had Mark Kurlansky written this book, it would have been called “Shit: How Human Effluence Changed the World”. ↩
The population of earth fell into “ecological
The population of earth fell into “ecological debt” with the planet yesterday. “The date symbolised the day of the year when people’s demands exceeded the Earth’s ability to supply resources and absorb the demands placed upon it.” In 1987, ecological debt day fell on December 19.
Jim Holt reports on a pair of
Jim Holt reports on a pair of books that argue that string theory is hurting theoretical physics. The article contains a good overview of the history and current status of the theory. For those looking to discover which book is better, Holt recommends Smolin’s The Trouble with Physics.
Chad and Dave over at ScienceBlogs concocted
Chad and Dave over at ScienceBlogs concocted an experiment to compare the SAT results of high school students with those of bloggers. The result? Short answer: the bloggers lost. More results here.
Brooke Greenberg is the girl who won’t
Brooke Greenberg is the girl who won’t grow up. She’s 12 years old but is physically and behaviorally stuck as a nine-month-old.
Ecological footprints: if we all lived Tom
Ecological footprints: if we all lived Tom Cruise’s lifestyle, how many earths would we need to maintain that level of consumption? A: 2700 earths. (Well, sort of. Go read the post for the actual answer.) Find out your ecological footprint.
A paleontology grad student, while idly inspecting
A paleontology grad student, while idly inspecting a bronze cast of a dinosaur skeleton on the wall of the subway station, notices that the dinosaur in question was not cannibalistic as previously believed. Man, good science can be done *anywhere*.
Richard Dawkins’ latest book is out: The
Richard Dawkins’ latest book is out: The God Delusion. (Guess what it’s about!) Here’s a clip of Dawkins discussing the book where he namechecks the Flying Spaghetti Monster. And here’s a recent presentation Dawkins gave at TED.
Several episodes of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series
Several episodes of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos series are available on Google Video. They were all there at some point, but it looks like some got taken down.
Nobel Prize winning physicist Gerard ‘t Hooft
Nobel Prize winning physicist Gerard ‘t Hooft on how to become a good theoretical physicist. He lists the subjects you need to learn (from languages to quantum field theory) and resources (both online and off) for learning them. A note on the ‘t in his name.
A recent study concludes that in terms
A recent study concludes that in terms of life expectancy, there are eight different Americas, all with differing levels of health. “In 2001, 15-year-old blacks in high-risk city areas were three to four times more likely than Asians to die before age 60, and four to five times more likely before age 45. In fact, young black men living in poor, high-crime urban America have death risks similar to people living in Russia or sub-Saharan Africa.” If I’m reading this right, it’s interesting that geography or income doesn’t have that big of an impact on the life expectancy of Asians; it’s their Asian-ness (either cultural, genetic, or both) that’s the key factor. Here’s the study itself. (via 3qd)
Sources cited by The Independent say that
Sources cited by The Independent say that George W. Bush is planning “astonishing U-turn” on his global warming policies, which, as Elizabeth Kolbert notes in this week’s New Yorker, have been anything but helpful. Those who oppose Bush will give him a lot of crap for doing this just so he can salvage something from his shoddy Presidency, but if something genuinely gets done on the issue, I’ll be happy…who gets credit for what and when needs to take a backseat here.
A classic article by Stephen Jay Gould
A classic article by Stephen Jay Gould on the changing biological features of Mickey Mouse. Over the years, Mickey has become more well-behaved and his appearance more juvenile (larger eyes, short pudgy legs, relatively large head, short snout, etc.). “When we see a living creature with babyish features, we feel an automatic surge of disarming tenderness.”
Is “dwarf planet” an ironym? “Pluto is
Is “dwarf planet” an ironym? “Pluto is a dwarf planet, but we are now faced with the absurdity that a dwarf planet is not a planet.” (thx, adriana)
Pluto mnemonic device contest results
After hearing the news that Pluto had been demoted from its full planetary status in the solar system, Meg and I decided to hold a contest to find a new mnemonic device for the planets, replacing the old “My very elegant mother just served us nine pizzas” (among others). The mnemonic could work for either the new 8 planet line-up, the 8 major + 3 dwarf planets, or the old 9 planet arrangement in protest of Pluto’s demotion. Thanks to everyone who entered; we received a bunch of great entries and it was hard to choose a winner. But first place goes to Josh Mishell for:
My! Very educated morons just screwed up numerous planetariums.
Josh’s protest mnemonic is memorable, topical, and goes beyond a simple description of the shameful proceedings in Prague to real-world consequences. As the winning entrant, Josh will receive a print from HistoryShots…we’re suggesting Race to the Moon. Congratulations to Josh.
Now, some runners-up. These came very close to winning:
Many Very Earnest Men Just Snubbed Unfortunate Ninth Planet (Dave Child)
“My vision, erased. Mercy! Just some underachiever now.” (Delia, as spoken by Pluto discoverer Clyde Tombaugh)
Most vexing experience, mother just served us nothing! (Bart Baxter)
There were several entries that referenced vegetarianism and veganism; this haiku by Evan Norris was my favorite:
most vegans envy
my jovian silhouette,
not usually
Update: A reader noted that Evan’s haiku incorrectly swaps the positions of Neptune and Uranus. Happily, “usually not” works just as well. (thx, peter)
The honorary mention for lack of sophistication goes to Andrea Harner and Jonah Peretti for:
Molesting Very Excitedly, Michael Jackson Sucks Underage Nipples
Best foreign language award goes to Bernardo Carvalho for his Portuguese mnemonic (remember, “Earth” is something like “Terra” in Portuguese so the t fits. And we’ll ignore the e too…):
minha velha, traga meu jantar: sopa, uva, nozes e pão (Translated: “Old woman, bring me dinner: soup, grapes, nuts and bread”)
And here are some of the best of the rest:
Mollifying voluminous egos means judiciously striking underappreciated named planetoid (Bruce Turner)
Most Virgins Eventually Marry Jocks So Unscrupulously Naughty (Aaron Arcello)
Morons Violate Every Map Just So UFOs Navigate Poorly (Sean Tevis)
My violin emits minimal joy since union nixed Pluto (C.D.)
Maximum velocity earns many joyous shouts, unless not planetary (Scott Tadman)
Thanks again to everyone who entered!
The seven warning signs of bogus science. #2: “
The seven warning signs of bogus science. #2: “The discoverer says that a powerful establishment is trying to suppress his or her work.” (via cd)
A new species of sea urchin has
A new species of sea urchin has been discovered on eBay. For once, that name seems to make sense.
Yesterday, almost 30 years after it was launched,
Yesterday, almost 30 years after it was launched, the Voyager spacecraft crossed the 100 AU boundry, meaning it is 100 times farther from the Sun than the Earth is. The article is worth a read. (via sb)
Carl Zimmer on the origin of whales,
Carl Zimmer on the origin of whales, baleen and non. “Baleen whales evolved baleen long after splitting off from other whales. Their baleen-free ancestors apparently thrived as leopard-seal-like hunters for millions of years.”
The AAAS, the organisation which publishes Science
The AAAS, the organisation which publishes Science magazine, has produced a book called The Evolution Dialogues. “Meant specifically for use in Christian adult education programs, it offers a concise description of the natural world, as explained by evolution, and the Christian response, both in Charles Darwin’s time and in contemporary America.” (thx, mike)
Public acceptance of evolution is relatively low
Public acceptance of evolution is relatively low in the US and is getting lower. “American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalist.”
Update: Here’s a graph of the results. Yikes.
Satellites measuring the earth’s gravity from orbit
Satellites measuring the earth’s gravity from orbit detected a change in gravity from the massive earthquake that caused the tsunami in the Indian Ocean. “The gravity at the earth’s surface decreased by as much as about 0.0000015 percent, meaning that a 150-pound person would experience a weight loss of about one-25,000th of an ounce.”
The Biology of B-Movie Monsters, or why
The Biology of B-Movie Monsters, or why you just can’t scale living things up (a la King Kong) or down (like in Fantastic Voyage) without consequence. One key problem: with a theoretical 20 foot tall human, mass increases much faster than bone strength and at some point, his skeleton wouldn’t be able to support the weight.
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