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The science behind shyness, an “affliction” shared by 30% of the population (the lurkers in real life). Reminds of the fantastic Caring for Your Introvert from The Atlantic Monthly a couple of years ago. Sadly, the article has disappeared behind the Atlantic’s pay wall, but I posted a short excerpt here.
Update: The complete Caring for Your Introvert article is available on the author’s web site. (thx chris and several others)
Quick interview with Bobby Henderson, Prophet of the church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Profile of Robert Trivers who “came up with the first Darwinian explanations for human cooperation, jealousy and our sense of justice that made genetic sense, and he showed how these arose from the same forces as act on all animals, from the pigeons outside his window to the fish of coral reefs”.
Scientists are having a bit of fun wondering about the genetics of wizardry in Harry Potter. “This suggests that wizarding ability is inherited in a mendelian fashion, with the wizard allele (W) being recessive to the muggle allele (M). According to this hypothesis, all wizards and witches therefore have two copies of the wizard allele (WW).”
Here’s a sampling of the rest of the AIGA Design Conference, stuff that I haven’t covered yet and didn’t belong in a post of it’s own:
1. Design is the easy part.
2. Learn from your clients, bosses, collaborators, and colleagues.
3. Content is king.
4. Read. Read. Read.
5. Think first, then design.
6. Never forget how lucky you are. Enjoy yourself.
For more of what people are saying about the conference, check out IceRocket. There’s a bunch of photos on Flickr as well.
A couple of guys calculated the average color of the universe to be turquiose. Then it turned out they had made an error and the actual color of the universe is beige.
Odd story of one astronomer possibly “stealing” another astronomer’s discovery of a large trans-Neptunian object. The original discoverer alleges that the usurper looked at a couple of Web sites that detailed the discovery and where the discover’s telescopes were pointed…the astronomy equivalent of stealing signs.
Animal Reviews is (duh) a site that reviews animals, including giving them a rating. The dolphin gets 0.8/10 while the duck-billed platypus gets a 6.3.
Papalotzin is a project to follow the migration of the monarch butterfly from Canada to Mexico in an ultralight airplane (they call it their big butterfly). They’ve made it as far as NYC so far and are blogging and taking pictures as they go. (via gurgly)
The human brain may have undergone “substantial evolution” in the past 60,000 years.
March of the Penguins has become a favorite for conservative moviegoers, who cite it as making a good case for monogomy, intelligent design, and a pro-life stance on abortion. I wonder if liberals watch the film and come out advocating universal health care…all those dead penguin babies could have been saved with proper medical care.
Elizabeth Kolbert (who wrote three articles for the NYer on global warming earlier in the year) discusses global warming as a possible cause for Hurricane Katrina. Like the climate scientists on RealClimate contend, Kolbert notes that no particular storm can be caused by global warming, but that the long-term patterns don’t look good…increased greenhouse gases = warmer oceans = more destructive hurricanes. Paul Recer downplays the connection as well and cautions environmental groups who want to make political hay with scientific evidence that doesn’t support their claims.
WolframTones lets you generate and download ringtones based on patterns created by cellular automata systems. Anything’s better than the Crazy Frog, yeah?
A sequel to Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time: A Briefer History of Time. “More Accessible. More Concise.”
Scientists in Singapore have developed a battery powered by urine. Urine is rich in ions and ions are what make electricity go whoosh. (thx jeff)
Physicist Stephen Hawking has been reduced to blinking to control his helper computer.
Adriana: “I thought you might be interested in a post I wrote a while back about a former editor of Elle who communicated for the last year of his life via blinks”.
According to paleontologist Gareth Dyke, “fossil evidence that [predatory] dinosaurs were feathered is now ‘irrefutable’”. Digitally remastered Jurassic Park can’t be too far down the road.
In case you’ve never looked into it, here’s an overview of what the scientific method is; it explains what hypotheses, theories, and laws are in the context of science. As this article states, “a theory in science is not a guess, speculation, or suggestion, which is the popular definition of the word ‘theory.’ A scientific theory is a unifying and self-consistent explanation of fundamental natural processes or phenomena that is totally constructed of corroborated hypotheses.”
Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne on intelligent design: “You cannot have it both ways. Either ID belongs in the science classroom, in which case it must submit to the discipline required of a scientific hypothesis. Or it does not, in which case get it out of the science classroom and send it back into the church, where it belongs.”
Daniel Dennett on why intelligent design isn’t science. “Evolutionary biology certainly hasn’t explained everything that perplexes biologists. But intelligent design hasn’t yet tried to explain anything.”
Lengthy examination of what makes people gay by the Boston Globe. “What makes the case of [identical twins] Patrick and Thomas so fascinating is that it calls into question both of the dominant theories in the long-running debate over what makes people gay: nature or nurture, genes or learned behavior.”
A small ocean microbe called Pelagibacter has the smallest genome of any self-sufficient organism with 1,354 genes. It also doesn’t appear to have any extra DNA…no junk or redundant copies of genes.
Interview with Frans de Waal about his work with primate behavior and politics. “I call the human species the most bipolar ape, meaning that we go beyond chimps in our violence, which is systematic and often results in thousands of dead, and we go beyond the bonobo in our empathy and love for others, so that human altruism is truly remarkable.”
Pharyngula rips Deepak Chopra a new one regarding his skepticism of evolution. Skepticism is fantastic, but Chopra seems to be deeply engaged in an impressive display of uninformed hand-waving. Deep, put down your cup of invigorating tea and at least read a little about what evolution is so that next time, you actually sound like you know what you’re being skeptical about.
Evolution shocker! The discovery of a dinosaur footprint on the wall of a contemporary Brooklyn school proves that the earth is less than 6000 years old (and, perhaps, that dinosaurs could walk vertically). No word on the Flying Spaghetti Monster’s involvement.
Biologists are beginning to simulate living things by computer, molecule by molecule. They’re starting with E. coli, but they’ve still got a long way to go.
Spirals on nanoparticles show order, specifically our friend the Fibonacci sequence, which can be seen in places like seashells and plants. In the case of the nanoparticles, the Fibonacci pattern results from minimizing the stress energy in the system.
Can we out-collaborate a pandemic? Alex Steffen challenges the blogosphere to sound the alarm about the avian flu. The WHO says: “never before [has] any avian influenza virus caused such extremely high fatality in humans”.
When bent, why does dry spaghetti break into three or more pieces instead of two? This was one of the simple problems Richard Feynman amused himself with but never solved. Someone’s come up with the answer: when the first breakage occurs, it causes a local increase in the curvature of the two pieces, resulting in more breakage. (thx dj)
Explaining what a scientist is using Goofus and Gallant as an example. Goofus and Gallant have also been pressed into service to explain 21st century etiquette, politics, and journalism.
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