The scientific community assumes the same rules of communication are always applicable and rational, that people are attentive, open minded, persuaded by facts and believe that those who are presenting information are people of goodwill, and not deliberately trying to manipulate them. But none of those things are true ( Read more... )

Physicists announced that Fermilab almost found the Higgs boson and CERN will be holding a press conference on Wednesday which might have some Higgs boson news from the Large Hadron Collider. Of course, with bosons and hadrons, it's hard not to giggle at elementary particles.
Originally posted by rufushonkeriv at post

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Via cheetahmaster, a New York Times article about folks who recently published an explanation of colony collapse disorder among honeybees, using homeland security biological weapon analysis systems among other things. The article is a little odd, working in a reference to the atom bomb, but seems to faithfully describe the research. We got a bag of bees and ( Read more... )

If one monkey gets a cucumber while another gets a grape, the first thinks it's unfair.

I don't know if I've talked about my favorite phylum on this journal, but let me state for the record that arthropods are awesome.

Evidence.Kids science shows were fond of pointing out that you couldn't have an invasion of giant spiders because they would collapse under the weight of their exoskeletons. But a 2.5 meter scorpion is an arachnid ( Read more... )

In the shower last night, I came up with an interesting idea. Partly it's about using scientific techniques in humorous ways, but there may be something worthwhile. I don't claim it's anything resembling a perfect model of the world, but hopefully it's at least entertaining.
People often talk about a "sexual orientation continuum" where gay is ( Read more... )

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. Therefore ... in the Old Silurian Period the Mississippi River was upward of one million three hundred thousand miles long ... seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long ( Read more... )

Smegging grrfurgenama. I just typed a long post and then, instead of hitting the Done button, remembered a note I was going to add to my previous post and selected it to edit, which replaced my text without asking me if I wanted to save. That is so not a feature. Let's see how much I can reproduce.

A few days ago I finished reading The Alphabet ( Read more... )