Category: Science, Engineering & Technology
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Even if it was a couple of days late, following much-maligned misspeaking by Janet Napolitano, President Obama's comments on the Undie-Bomber brouhaha were right on the money. Napolitano, interview on CNN, Dec 28: "What we’re focused on was making sure that the air environment remains safe, people are confident when they travel, and one think…
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SuperFreakonomics and Geoengineering: The Benefits of Procrastination: The Economics of Geo-engineering: Although procrastination is often a sign of immaturity, in the context of climate change it may not be. In the typical debate over geo-engineering, proponents argue that it is “the” solution to global warming, while the critics worry about all the things that could…
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I have a short piece up in the January 2010 issue of Popular Science about a promising form of music therapy used in the arduous process of healing traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) in veterans. Because of the pervasiveness of IEDs, and because body armor allows soldiers to survive many explosions that might have killed them…
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Oxytocin: it's behind all prosocial behavior, and Wall Street wouldn't exist without it. I'm not quite sure capitalism was the point of the study, but still, that's what I'm choosing to to take out of it. Interesting article.
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Here are the suggestions of Sujatha, the humble not-so-uber-geeky blogger, on C&Ping from webpages when composing blog posts: 1. Focus on Tested Websites, not obscurities. (Psalm 345:1-3) Notice how Sujatha extols Google first. Then, in comparison to Google, she has no need of alternate search engines. "The Google is my light and my salvation; whom…
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Interesting NYT article about the movement for the 2012 DSM-V to get rid of "Asperger's syndrome," as well as "pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified," and make everything fall within the autism spectrum. Link.
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The New York Times has an article about someone who thinks the higgs boson is traveling back in time to stop the Large Hadron Collider (where I do my research) from working. As evidence, we are reminded of project delays, the fact that the Superconducting Super Collider project was canceled in the nineties, and that…
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Norman Borlaug died of cancer last Saturday. Despite being the recipient of numerous national and international honors, the Nobel Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Congressional Gold Medal among them, through his long and productive life Borlaug remained quiet, unassuming and mostly unknown to the public. But the impact of his life's mission on the world is extraordinary. A tireless crusader against world hunger, he was better known in…
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Sometimes man stumbles upon great truths entirely undeservedly. Kamerlingh Onnes just happened upon superconductivity while twiddling around with mercury and refrigerators; Roentgen was playing with himself in electrical ways and realized to his shock that he could see through his skin. Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard neuroscientist, woke up one morning with headache, a stroke…
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Our forefathers were responsible for global warming. I don't know if this article belongs in Joe's friend's blog, NCBI ROFL.
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It's the month of August and once again, as the International Astronomical Union (IAU) is about to convene for its general assembly meeting in Rio de Janeiro to discuss matters astronomical, my thoughts turn to Pluto, the planet / unplanet. Apparently, since its high handed and mostly unpopular ouster from the line up of planets three years ago, Pluto has lost its lobbying…
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The longest total solar eclipse of this century started in India on Wednesday morning and is sweeping eastward. The New York Times has a report by a blogger who is chasing the eclipse. My previous post on total solar eclipse is here. As per Anna's suggestion (see comments), I have since then read Annie Dillard's essay, "Total Eclipse."
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A spirited debate is underway at NASA on whether the next big space exploration project should focus on sending astronauts back to the moon and installing a permanent lunar base or if the money and effort will be better spent in attempting a manned landing on Mars. Buzz Aldrin, one of the two Apollo 11 astronauts to set foot on the moon,…
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