Hamlet, the lead character in one Shakespeare's best plays, was a Danish prince - but he may actually have been Irish, according to a piece in the Review of English Studies. Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.Rather than being based on Amlethus, from the 13th century "History of the Danes," or even farther back in Amlothi, from a 10th century poem by the Icelandic poet Snow Bear, Lisa Collinson of the Centre for Scandinavian Studies at the University of Aberdeen contends Hamlet really derives from Admlithi of Eire in an Irish tale called the "Destruction of Da Derga's Hostel."That it should come to this!
In newspaper cartoon serials 100 years ago and in real life for millenia, babies have said "goo goo" and "gaga" - but one recently famous pop music star, who lifted her moniker from Queen's "Radio Gaga", somehow thinks she owns it now.
If we're being honest in retrospect, the first decade of the 2000s was bad for science journalism. Too many journalists decided they wanted to be cheerleaders for science or, worse, had scientist envy and wanted to be included in cool discussions about the mysteries of the universe. Basically, journalists stopped asking the awkward questions of scientists that journalists in other fields know makes their careers (see: Dan Rather and Richard Nixon).
Many of us agree that 'golf is a good walk spoiled' but not for the reasons a group of environmental lobbyists in San Francisco do. The Wild Equity Institute, the Center for Biological Diversity, the National Parks Conservation Association, the Surfrider Foundation, Sequoia Audubon, and Sierra Club have instead determined that the 90-year old Sharp Park Golf Course in Pacifica is endangering two species.Wait, hasn't the golf course been there for 90 years? Let it go. That sort of common sense is why you don't work for Club Sierra...errrr, I mean Sierra Club. If you've ever been to their offices you know how easy it is to make a mistake with the name.
When I was a young Army officer with ridiculously low body fat, I once lost our unit's physical fitness 'Iron Man' competition (not an Iron Man race, but rather the top aggregate score in the military's three fitness tests) to an overweight woman in her mid-30s despite being dominant in each event.Army Physical Fitness tests, being so heavily weighted by age and gender, need a makeover, I remember laughing at the time. And she was embarrassed by the silliness of it all as well.
RealClearScience Editor and Science 2.0 fave Dr. Alex Berezow does a Science Cafe on genetic modification. Using humor and great examples, he punctures the anti-science hysteria surrounding GMOs in this video presentation, including the history and its benefits and concerns. His endorsement of Wikipedia as a science source is suspect but otherwise we are right there with him.Take a look:
Why would a researcher spend long nights for little money in search of the hopelessly obscure?
Never heard of Blankaholm, a small village on the Baltic coast of Sweden between Kalmar and Västervik? Okay, I hadn't either. But this weekend was the fourth annual Blankaholm conference on Swedish east coast archaeology.Grassroots archaeology conferences certainly have a Science 2.0 feel to them and for that, Swedish archaeologist Dr. Martin Rundkvist gets to be a cool link for bringing it to everyone's attention.
It seems to make sense that if you have what they call 'football instincts' and an ability to memorize plays you can be successful in the NFL regardless of IQ.That doesn't mean general managers, who are risking a lot of money and so have to make the safest choices they can make, agree - if a player is too smart. Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy scored twice the average of NFL quarterbacks on the Wonderlic test the NFL uses. And it may cost him positioning in the draft.Is Alabama quarterback Greg McElroy too smart for the NFL? - ScienceAndSupermodels.com
