Everybody I know who has back problems swears up and down that sleeping on a really firm mattress is key. My father used to have a big plywood board under his side of the mattress, so that his side of the bed would be less soft (I think they have since bought a new mattress […]
Category: Life Science
Preventative Bacon
I’m waiting for the toaster when the dog trots into the kitchen. “You should give me some bacon!” she says. “Why is that?” I ask. “To prevent swine flu!” “Look, there’s no chance that I’m going to get swine flu from eating pork products. I know you saw some people on the Internet saying that […]
Dead Dinosaurs and Denialism
Yesterday, EurekAlert served up a press release titled New blow for dinosaur-killing asteroid theory, reporting on Gerta Keller of Princeton, who says that the Chicxulub crater isn’t really from the asteroid impact that killed the dinosaurs. Keller thinks the crater had nothing to do with the extinction event, and claims to have found evidence that […]
Advantix Makes Dogs “Ticklish”?
I’d like to interrupt the ongoing discussion of how we’re in the early chapters of The Stand for a quick question about what really matters: the cute behaviors of my dog. There’s probably a technical term for that thing dogs do where their back legs twitch when you scratch them in just the right spot. […]
Watch Your Back, David Attenborough
One of my colleagues in biology just finished his Comparative Vertebrate anatomy course. For the final class projects, he has teams of students make little videos presenting the results of their research into some aspect of vertebrate anatomy. Such as, for example, this Sesame Street episode on flying snakes: The full set of videos are […]
Martin Rees Against Fundamentalism
There’s a really good article from Martin Rees in the latest issue of Seed, on the scientific challenges that won’t be affected by the LHC: The LHC hasn’t yet provided its first results, the much-anticipated answers to questions we’ve been asking for so long. But they should surely come in 2009, bringing us closer to […]
Random Physics We Don’t Understand
I’ve already mentioned two of the program items I was on at Boskone (global warming and quantum physics for dogs). I should at least comment on the other two, “Physics: What We Don’t Understand” and “Is Science Addicted to Randomness?” They both featured me and Geoff Landis, but other than that were very different. “Physics: […]
Darwin’s Birthday Baby Blogging 021209
It’s Darwin’s 200th birthday today, and SteelyKid is wearing her ladybug outfit to celebrate: If you can’t make it out, the outfit is pink, and covered with little pink and orange ladybugs. The feet are larger ladybugs, complete with antennae. Why is this an appropriate Dawrin’s Birthday outfit, you ask?
Denis Dutton Goes On About Art
There’s a mini media blitz underway promoting Denis Dutton’s new book The Art Instinct. He was on the Colbert Report last week, he’s reviewed in the Times, and he’s featured in this week’s Bloggingheads Science Saturday: While it’s kind of entertaining to listen to John Horgan struggling to get a word in edgewise, I’m kind […]
From Mooney to Zimmer
Looking for a way to kill some time on a Sunday morning? You could do worse than yesterday’s bloggingheads.tv Science Saturday conversation between Chris Mooney and Carl Zimmer: It’s a wide-ranging conversation, covering what to expect from the Obama administration, artifical life, the possibility of life on Mars, Sanjay Gupta, and the future of science […]