In the "Orbital Mechanics" panel, Bob Mahoney and John Gibbons acted orbital mechanics out with a globe hanging from a microphone stand, hula hoops, and styrofoam noodles. You can see pictures of that under the lj-cut. They used lots of words too, of course. :-)

( 'Grab my asymptote' )

Wil McCarthy, a scientist and science fiction author, was the Guest of Honor at ApolloCon 2009. He gave a talk on the work he's been doing in programmable matter. He started off by showing the audience a piece of clear glass. Then he heated the glass with a hair dryer. An irregularly shaped reflective blob grew on the glass -- the heat turned the ( Read more... )

Dr. Michael J. Ryan from University of Texas was one of the speakers who gave a talk at the CFI Darwin Day celebration. It was "Sexual Selection, Darwin's Second Great Theory: Why males are dying to mate". A provocative title, somewhat -- and indeed, the idea of sexual selection was thought to be provocative and radical in Darwin's times. To me it ( Read more... )

Center For Inquiry celebrated Charles Darwin's 200th birthday on February 15 (3 days after his actual birthday, but we had to wait for the weekend) with a day full of educational activities for children, lectures for grownups, and a dinner. There were three hour-long lectures of evolution. That's a lot to sit through in one chunk of time, but the ( Read more... )

Finally, a last post from this year's Fencon ( Read more... )

"Science -- fact or crap?" was a game played by a team of pros against a team of fans... I think. The most prominent pro on the team was Gregory Benford, a physics professor, science fiction writer, and Fencon guest of honor. The purpose of the game was to score points by answering science-related questions. Each question had two parts: a fact-or- ( Read more... )

On "Getting the Biology Right in SF" the panelists skewered writers for common biology-related blunders we see in books and movies. The aspects of biology covered in this panel ranged from human anatomy and physiology to ecology.

As an emergency room physician, Kimberly Frost was uniquely qualified to educate writers on what kind of injuries a ( Read more... )

The Itch: Its mysterious power may be a clue to a new theory about brains and bodies (New Yorker) is one freaky article. You might not think of itch as a Job-like misfortune, but in the cases featured in the article, it is. Those cases are almost biblical in their bizareness, too. :-) There's a woman whose head itched so persistently and ( Read more... )

Turns out, cavemen loved to sing, says an article headline on msnbc.com. How, one wonders, do modern scientists figure out such things? This article is interesting not just in that it reveals specifics of life of prehistoric civilizations, but also that it shows how scientists reach conclusions about things as nebulous as leisure preferences of ( Read more... )

It's an amazing book. It's been long since I've gotten so much enjoyment out of reading a popular science book, even though at the beginning I thought it was a bit too basic for me. At first it seems to be aimed at an audience with a very minimal understanding of science. For example, Dawkins considers it necessary to clarify that a computer model ( Read more... )