Obama answers Science Questions
This brought tears of happiness. I can’t wait for a President who actually believes in Science.
Beyond Belief: Enlightenment 2.0
Another Beyond Belief conference has come and gone. The central theme for this one was the Enlightenment, both in its history and whether or not we can ever have a second enlightenment. Some excellent lectures here. My favorites were from Jonathan Haidt and Patricia Churchland. Their talks about the sociological and neuropsychological basis of religion really made sense. The whole disagreement between Scott Atran and Sam Harris made for interesting moments.
Science Cafés
I just think this is the coolest idea. Carl Sagan once called science “A Candle light in the dark”. So this is a start in making that glow a little brighter. Now we can have a double tall mocha with whipped cream with that enlightening talk on solar neutrinos and nano technology. Now why didn’t I think of that!
http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2007/12/science_cafe
Comet 17P/Holmes
I saw the comet tonight! I’ve been looking for it the last week but every time I go out to look it’s been overcast skies and it’s hard to see in the city. It’s in the constellation Perseus almost a little east from the zenith at around 8:00 PM in the evening. If you can find Cassiopeia (the letter A with one leg missing), it’s a little east and south in the next constellation. It looks like a round smudge on a camera lens with binoculars. Cool!
More info :
http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/11/05/brighter.comet.ap/index.html?iref=newssearch
Pushing all the right buttons
I’ve watched all the Democrat and Republican Presidential debates on YouTube thus far and I’d have to say that I have not been impressed with any of the front-runners. Every candidate has been lack luster in the extreme. Bill Richardson has been the only candidate that I can’t seem to disagree with on any point. So it was gratifying when I saw this article in Wired Online that really pushes all the right buttons for me:
By Sarah Lai Stirland WIRED Hillary Rodham Clinton took another sharp jab at the Bush administration as she outlined her science policy Thursday. The front-runner in the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign unveiled her agenda for the scientific community at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. Under her administration, she said, the federal government would return to funding “ethical embryonic stem-cell research,” ban political appointees’ interference with government scientists’ conclusions, elevate a science advisor to report directly to the president, and boost research into space exploration, the earth sciences and alternative energy. Many scientists have criticized President Bush, charging that he’s had political appointees interfere with the conclusions of scientific research, muzzled agency officials who have independent points of view, and not paid enough attention to evidence that human activities are causing global climate change. Clinton used the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch to outline a broad science policy that would reverse Bush’s overall approach to federally funded science programs. She also addressed the science community’s increasingly vocal allegations that the Bush administration has politicized scientific research. “For six-and-a-half years under this president, it’s been open season on open inquiry,” Clinton said in a statement… MORE http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/10/clinton_science
Hillary Clinton Stands Up for Science, Slams Bush
Google Sky
Google introduced a new feature to Google Earth recently called Google Sky. Google sky is built right into Google Earth and is free to download.
http://earth.google.com/sky/skyedu.html
With many of us living in cities, we have lost that connection to the night sky. Google helps to bring that wonder back. You can zoom in on a patch of sky and reveal a myriad of stars and deep space objects. With the number of suns in the universe totaling more than number of grains of sand in all the beaches of earth, it puts your life in perspective. You can see this for yourself in google sky. The images are stitched together from telescope surveys. Check it out!
Beyond Belief 2006
I just finished watching a three day conference entitled “Beyond Belief 2006, Science, Religion, Reason, and Survival.” Hosted by The Science Network, the conference assembled an all-star cast of scientists, philosophers and authors such as Ann Druyan (CEO and co-founder of Cosmos Studios and Carl Sagan’s wife), Richard Dawkins (author and biologist at Oxford), Neil deGrasse Tyson (Host of PBS show “NOVA science NOW”, and director of the Hayden Planetarium), Steven Weinberg (Nobel Prize winner in physics) and many others. There was some really good discussion about the nature of religion and the issues that surrounds it from a scientific perspective. I would highly recommend watching this to anyone interested in this subject.
More deaths than Sept. 11
Our society moves in the right direction, slowly but surely, but only because of mounting evidence and pressure from group like the American Lung Association. The latest semi-heart warming news comes from the EPA and their new standards of fine particulates in air quality. But the EPA did not go far enough and we know the reason why they stopped short, “Industry groups don’t like the new EPA standards either, they say they’re too strict.” Personally, I think it’s always better to error on the side of health and safety when it comes to any aspect of our lives than to have a couple extra bucks in some CEOs wallets.
I bike to work often and I know what it’s like to get behind a huge diesel truck and breathe in that soot. Why should bikes and pedestrians have to breathe in this garbage? Is it healthier to just get in that air filtered car and sit in traffic and not get any exercise? It just might be. To read the full article go to, EPA Unveils Tighter Rules on Particles in Air
A Bargain
I’m so glad our government knows how to set priorities on what to spend on. Take these two stories from Reuters :
“The U.S. Senate voted on Thursday to reinstate a special CIA unit hunting for Osama bin Laden as it passed a $469 billion Pentagon funding bill. ” The full article here
“Lockheed Martin Corp. has won a five-year, $3.9 billion contract to build a capsule-like U.S. spacecraft called Orion to take humans back to the Moon and beyond, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said on Thursday.” The full article here
$469 billion to burn in the next year with uncertain results and $3.9 billion to take humans into the future of space travel for the next 25 years. You do the math, it’s a bargain.