For those of you that missed it, Italy's judicial system made one of the most ludicrous rulings I have read in a long time.

Italy convicts 7 scientists for failing to warn about earthquake. They face 6 year prison terms.This, combined with that ruling a year ago that crucifixes hanging on the front of classrooms in public schools was NOT a state ( Read more... )

This is just too awesome.

http://dailycurrant.com/2012/08/30/bill-nye-blasts-todd-akin-challenges-debate/

(you may have to reload the page to get it to load)

Today after my CNRS interview and lunch, we decided to do a little sightseeing before heading back to Lyon. We opted for the Grand Galerie de l'Évolution, since it sounded interesting and was conveniently halfway between our hotel and the train station. The building is from maybe the 19th or early 20th century and has dark wood paneling all around ( Read more... )

Today's SMBC was priceless.

This is such an accurate spoof of science reporting (especially by the BBC or CNN)

(hat tip to lingboy)

Persi Diaconis, a statistician who himself has an interesting biography, related at lunch today an interesting aspect of the history of Markov chains.

Apparently, when Communism came into power in Russia, a biologist named Trofim Lysenko became rather influential. He had theories that rejected Mendelian genetics and Darwinian evolution because ( Read more... )

The New York Times had an article today titled "Scientists Fear Visa Trouble Will Drive Foreign Students Away". It certainly caught my eye, being in academia and given our recent visa experiences in France. So I clicked on it. My first reaction was a bellow of laughter. The picture they used to pimp promote the article completely reminded me of my ( Read more... )

There's a large non-functional spy satellite that will be plummeting to Earth within the next two months. Now why a newspaper would decide to publish this article with not one but TWO pictures from the movie Armageddon is beyond me. Is this what scientific journalism has come to in the popular media?

The Ig Nobel prizes have been awarded. I was a big fan of the winner(s) for Literature--they really worked hard to get their stories published around the world, so all could hear their plight.