How Seed magazine’s web site was built
How Seed magazine’s web site was built using Movable Type. It’s not just for blogs anymore. (via airbag)
Advertise here with Carbon Ads
This site is made possible by member support. 💞
Big thanks to Arcustech for hosting the site and offering amazing tech support.
When you buy through links on kottke.org, I may earn an affiliate commission. Thanks for supporting the site!
kottke.org. home of fine hypertext products since 1998.
Beloved by 86.47% of the web.
kottke.org posts about science
Scientists have created photo prints from bacteria. “
Scientists have created photo prints from bacteria. “The results are not only much sharper than what can be produced with a photo printer, but also point the way to a new industry — building useful objects from living organisms.”
Jim Holt ponders the US population’s ignorance
Jim Holt ponders the US population’s ignorance of (and hostility toward) science “at a moment when three of the nation’s most contentious political issues - global warming, stem-cell research and the teaching of intelligent design - are scientific in character”.
Good review of Philip Tetlock’s new book
Good review of Philip Tetlock’s new book about expert predicitons, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? “Human beings who spend their lives studying the state of the world, in other words, are poorer forecasters than dart-throwing monkeys, who would have distributed their picks evenly over the three choices.” Marginal Revolution’s Tyler Cowen calls Tetlock’s book “one of the (few) must-read social science books of 2005”.
The social networks of the rap music
The social networks of the rap music world “differ from all other human networks”. By and large, successful rap artists don’t collaborate/hang out with one another, as usually happens in other human social groups. (via cd)
Interview with “incompetent design” theorist Don Wise. “
Interview with “incompetent design” theorist Don Wise. “The only reason you stand erect is because of this incredible sharp bend at the base of your spine, which is either evolution’s way of modifying something or else it’s just a design that would flunk a first-year engineering student.”
Scientists have found a probable carrier for
Scientists have found a probable carrier for the ebola virus: fruit bats. According to the WHO, ebola causes death in “50-90% of all clinically ill cases”.
Scientists in the UK have quantified the
Scientists in the UK have quantified the beer goggle effect. (via cd)
Why is the incidence of cancer in
Why is the incidence of cancer in India so much lower than in the US?
Having not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the
Having not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, the US is now refusing to work on its successor. Says Elizabeth Kolbert, “Without the participation of the United States, no meaningful agreement can be drafted for the post-2012 period, and the world will have missed what may well be its last opportunity to alter course.”
Sunken forest of Nantucket
Scientists have found evidence of a sunken forest off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts. (thx, malatron)
Is Taipei 101, the world’s tallest building, causing
Is Taipei 101, the world’s tallest building, causing earthquakes? “The considerable stress might be transferred into the upper crust due to the extremely soft sedimentary rocks beneath the Taipei basin. Deeper down this may have reopened an old earthquake fault”. (thx, malatron)
I think I have a new favorite
I think I have a new favorite liquid: ferrofluid. Apply a magnetic field to it and you get some pretty and pretty weird patterns. Watch the videos…the formation of a rotating “H” mongram in the first linked movie is mesmerizing (almost literally). (thx, alex)
The Scientific American 50, the 2005 “research, business and
The Scientific American 50, the 2005 “research, business and policy leaders of technology”. The flu, nanotech, stem cells, and climatology are among the hot topics this year.
Richard Dawkins’ letter to his daughter Juliet
Richard Dawkins’ letter to his daughter Juliet on good and bad reasons for believing. “Is this the kind of thing that people probably know because of evidence? Or is it the kind of thing that people only believe because of tradition, authority, or revelation?”
There’s a Charles Darwin exhibition at the
There’s a Charles Darwin exhibition at the Natural History Museum in NYC through May 2006. A tidbit not reported in the US press: the exhibition failed to attract corporate sponsorship because “American companies are anxious not to take sides in the heated debate between scientists and fundamentalist Christians over the theory of evolution”. Pussies.
Update: This letter sent into TMN throws some doubt on the whole lack of corporate sponsorship angle. (thx, chris)
German researchers are studying the mysterious phenomenon
German researchers are studying the mysterious phenomenon of people waking up shortly before their alarm goes off. I’ve been getting better and better at doing this. A friend of mine (can’t recall who exactly) doesn’t use an alarm clock but gets up on time by setting his/her internal alarm clock. Also, this sounds like something Feynman would have been into.
Free 1200-page physics textbook, available online or
Free 1200-page physics textbook, available online or for download. I have no idea if it’s any good or not. Is anyone using this in their high school or college classroom?
Scientists have extracted ice cores from Antarctica
Scientists have extracted ice cores from Antarctica that date back 650,000 years (the previous high was 400,000 years). The cores show that modern levels of carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide levels are the highest they have ever been.
Introduction from Edward O. Wilson’s new book
Introduction from Edward O. Wilson’s new book on Charles Darwin’s “Four Great Books”.
Not only is Intelligent Design bad science,
Not only is Intelligent Design bad science, it’s also bad religion. “Self-defeating and incoherent, Intelligent Design is worse than useless, not only as science but also, one imagines, for religious folks who might be attempting to understand God by working backwards from the world as their body of evidence.”
Profile of Ray Kurzweil on the occasion
Profile of Ray Kurzweil on the occasion of the publication of his latest book, The Singularity is Near. “This individualistic, mechanistic ethos, his critics argue, also blurs Kurzweil’s predictive power, because it ignores all the ways in which technologies are bounded by social forces.” Gotta love his quest for immortality though.
Kansas is in quite a state
I know I’m not supposed to be paying attention to anything other than my Asia trip, but I read about the Kansas Board of Education approving the teaching of “theory” of intelligent design in public schools in the South China Morning Post this morning and…
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGH!!!!!!!!!
What the hell, Kansas? And those poor science teachers in Kansas public schools…what are they supposed to do? Teaching pseudoscience as real science, that’s like asking the math teachers to tell the kids that 2+2=5 because God said so. You can’t quit, because then those kids will really be lost. If you don’t teach that ID is valid science, you’ll probably get reprimanded or fired. So what to do? I have a couple of suggestions:
1) Teach your students about evolution, and then tell them about intelligent design, just as the state curriculum says. Then spend some time going over what science is, what a theory is, and so on. Apply the definition to each. That way, you’ve taught ID by the books and then demonstrated its relationship to science.
2) Or, as long as you’re teaching your students that a higher power designed the world/universe, why not take it a step further and tell them about your personal and scientific belief in The Flying Spaghetti Monster? As long as science can include anything now, why not a supernatural being made from pasta?
Update: There appears to be hope. In Dover, Pennsylvania:
In that small, relatively conservative Pennsylvania town, voters booted all eight Republican pro-intelligent design school board members who were up for re-election and replaced them with Democrats who oppose the curriculum policy. Dover is not some bastion of liberal politics; it’s more like Kansas than parts of Kansas are.
(thx, steve)
Fascinating and disturbing video of a handful
Fascinating and disturbing video of a handful of hornets completely annihilating an entire colony of honeybees. (via cyn-c)
Women with higher levels of estrogen judged
Women with higher levels of estrogen judged more attractive than those with lower levels.
Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum have proposed
Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum have proposed some ideas about gravity, extra dimensionality, and string theory that may be testable when the Large Hadron Collider goes online at CERN in 2007.
Transcripts from 42 hours of presentations by Buckminster
Transcripts from 42 hours of presentations by Buckminster Fuller. “These thinking out loud lectures span 42 hours and examine in depth all of Fuller’s major inventions and discoveries from the 1927 Dymaxion house, car and bathroom, through the Wichita House, geodesic domes, and tensegrity structures, as well as the contents of Synergetics.” (thx avi)
Ever seen a crab get sucked into
Ever seen a crab get sucked into a pipe through a 3mm-wide slit? This is your chance.
Jim Holt asks Freeman Dyson, Lawrence Krauss,
Jim Holt asks Freeman Dyson, Lawrence Krauss, Ed Witten and other in trying to figure out how the universe will end. Further reading: Time Without End by Freeman Dyson, Frank Tipler’s Omega Point theory, and The Physics of Extra-Terrestrial Civilizations by Michio Kaku.
Socials & More