A lot of people have commented on this New York Times article on science budgets, mostly echoing the author’s lament about the negative effects of operating at 2006 funding levels. I really don’t have much to add to that, but it’s worth reminding people where the blame for this belongs: Last year, Congress passed just… Continue reading Blame Where Blame Is Due
Category: Science
Cosmic Jackpot by Paul Davies
Paul Davies’s forthcoming book Cosmic Jackpot is subtitled “Why Our Universe Is Just Right for Life,” so you know that he’s not going after small questions, here. The book is a lengthy and detailed discussion of what he terms the “Goldilocks Enigma,” and what others refer to as “fine-tuning”– basically, how do you account for… Continue reading Cosmic Jackpot by Paul Davies
Wanted: Rocket Scientists
Via Tobia Buckell, Jeff Bezos is looking for a few good geeks: Blue Origin; Blue Origin wants you! Actually, Blue Origin needs you and wants to hire you … assuming you’re a hard working, technically gifted, team-oriented, experienced aerospace engineer or engineering leader. If you might be interested in joining us, please keep reading. We’re… Continue reading Wanted: Rocket Scientists
Come On In, the Methane’s Fine
The Times has an article announcing the discovery of methane lakes on Titan: The discovery, reported yesterday by an international team of researchers, was made by a radar survey of Titan’s high northern latitudes by the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn and its retinue of satellites since July 2004. One of the mission’s… Continue reading Come On In, the Methane’s Fine
One Sentence
Some time back, Dave Munger called me out for the one sentence challenge, originally phrased thusly: Physicist Richard Feynman once said that if all knowledge about physics was about to expire the one sentence he would tell the future is that “Everything is made of atoms”. What one sentence would you tell the future about… Continue reading One Sentence
Scientific Optimism
As usual, John Brockman has asked a large number of prominent science types to answer a broad and general question, and posted the results to the Web. This year’s question: WHAT ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC ABOUT? WHY? Many of the answers are of the form “I am optimistic that my personal research topic or political obsession… Continue reading Scientific Optimism
Kids and Space
James Nicoll, one of my go-to sources for odd information about space related issues, is attempting to determine whether it’s true that space enthusiasm is for older people. Unsurprisingly, given who he is and what he writes about, his comments have turned up lots of examples of people born after 1980 who are wild for… Continue reading Kids and Space
Press Release Bursts
One of the fun things about following science news through the Eurekalert press release aggregator is that work done by big collaborations tends to show up multiple times, in slightly different forms. Take, for example, the gamma-ray-burst results being released in Nature this week, which show up no less than five times: one, two, three,… Continue reading Press Release Bursts
New Online Magazine: Inkling
A couple of the women behind Inkycircus have decided to launch a new online science magazine, called Inkling. As they put it, their mission is: [to] cover the science that pervades our life, makes us laugh, and helps us choose our breakfast foods. If you like the stuff you see in Seed, you’ll find similar… Continue reading New Online Magazine: Inkling
Know Your Science Labs
We recently acquired some lab space that was previously occupied by a biologist, and will be offering part of it to whoever we hire for our job opening. The space will probably need some extensive remodeling, both because it hasn’t been touched in years, but also because it was set up for biology work. Thinking… Continue reading Know Your Science Labs