Quick, who was the feared hitter that legendary baseball numbers guru Bill James says lost more career home runs due to playing in his home park than any player in history?    If you…

In two hours, under my guidance, a small group of 5th and 6th graders built a drawbridge. We were operating using a plan essentially sketched on the napkin, with the napkin left at home. We had a…

Little Pigeon-Boxes It seems to be a universal characteristic of humans that we like to label each other, often in simplistic binary fashion.  Friend or foe, left-wing or right-wing, smart or…

As I’ve often mentioned in this blog, philosopher David Hume famously said that “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood…

I’ve written about network neutrality before. It’s a difficult topic because of its different aspects, and because there are vehement opinions on all sides of it. Before I left the Internet…

Electronic memory chips may soon gain the ability to bend and twist, thanks to  engineers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)(1).   Not too exciting, right?  …

Harmless gossip with a girlfriend can do wonders for a woman's mood and a University of Michigan study says they have an answer why: feeling emotionally close to a friend increases levels of the…

When women  apply for faculty positions in math, science, and engineering at major research universities, they are interviewed and hired at rates equal to or higher than those for men, says a…

ELAD, the Extracorporeal Liver Assist Device,  is a bedside system that treats blood plasma, metabolizing toxins and synthesizing proteins just like a real liver does. Artificial livers have…

Scientists here have determined that combining bed bugs' own chemical signals with a common insect control agent makes that treatment more effective at killing the bugs.  The researchers found…

In these days of jaw-dropping trillion-dollar budgets and deficits along with current retirement obligations 7X the size of our economy, $6.3 billion may not sound like much.  But, hey, a…

Mercury, closest planet to the sun, is as hot as you would expect, with daytime temperatures of 800 degrees Fahrenheit/450 degrees Celsius and because of its small size, its gravity is weak, only…

When Things Smell A Funny Color I have often heard people in Britain say in jest something like: "I don't like that, it smells a funny color." From time to time our senses play tricks with our brains…

There is beauty in strange places. An ordinary life can leave traces of us that gather into something oddly appealing. Something more than the sum of its parts. Those of you who live near the sea…

Swine flu is a hot topic for many health care related professionals. However, the receptors specific for human, swine or avian influenza viruses are still unclear, because that conflicting…

Random Noise #14 : Colorless Green Syntax Formal grammar is heavily based in syntax.  It is possible to generate sentences by using word lists and rules in a computer program, but the output…

At the opening of last week’s Nobel Laureate symposium, US Energy Secretary Steven Chu endorsed a low-tech tool to keep climate change at bay: white paint.  According to Chu’s colleague Art…

An indignant letter in this month's Chemistry World has drawn my attention to a forthcoming ban on the use of dichloromethane, except by the most professional of professionals. EU sidesteps Reach to…

The Real Ira Hayes The world's largest statue is a bronze sculpture 110 feet high.It depicts six Marines.  Each figure is about 32 feet tall.They are hoisting an American flag on the island of…

The following position arose from a blitz chess game played on the Internet Chess Club this afternoon. I am white, and black is to move. As you can see, material is even; white has all his pieces but…