In 1989, the communist dictatorship oddly named Union of Soviet Socialist Republics reached the extent of a third giant hole in the Arctic Circle, Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3, where they'd been drilling for 19 years. It clocked in at nearly 8 miles deep.
I have to be honest, if a casual question arose like 'who would you believe on science topics, Michael Shermer or Lady Gaga?' I would side with Shermer.I know, I know, that is a vicious stereotype and I haven't read every single thing Lady Gaga has said regarding science, some of which might be correct, and then compared it to every speculation someone might have overheard Shermer say somewhere, which might have been incorrect - and because I have not been able to do that sort of comparison, some fringe pseudo-science apostates will claim it is entirely possible that Lady Gaga knows more about cell phones than Michael Shermer and therefore I am big ol' repressive science media if I do not give them equal time. So here I go.
Living in California now, I follow my third 'home' team in my life. Growing up in Vero Beach, FL I was (and remain) a Dodgers fan because they held spring training there for 60 years. As an adult living in Pittsburgh I was (and remain) a Pirates fan because they were the new home team.
We've had any number of discussions about the changing face of academic research given the fact that we keep being told America doesn't do enough science education but there aren't enough jobs in research to go around.With success in an ever-more competitive post-doctoral environment requiring more excellent science than ever to achieve the next step, it's not a surprise some will boost their standing by holding others back.
"So did you watch "Big Trouble In Little China?" I asked Patrick. He did, he replied, while coding away."So you saw what I mean. Chinese people got a lot of Hells, which is bad, but at least they're apparently easy to find. Western religion has just one, but good luck locating it. In that movie they just go under some old guy's house and there it is and they get to fight Raiden(1) and stuff and save the world. If I want to find Hell, I am stuck going into "Revelations" and that isn't much help at all."
In the wake of the Pepsigate scandal at Scienceblogs.com and the departure of some two dozen bloggers, a variety of companies decided to capitalize on the disarray and start their own blogging networks - PLoS started a blog network for outside contributors, as did Wired and soon Nature Publishing Group will tackle it one more time at Scientific American.
Climate science is in a difficult position. On the one side, climate scientists like James Hansen say that the data behind IPCC media talking points is too easy to misinterpret so people shouldn't have it, but to hard science people, climate science accuracy, in the science data sense, is far too inaccurate for claims that its people make. No one in physics could get away with the accuracy levels climate scientists regard as settled.
I am something of a historical repository for my family. So I have some cool stuff from way back, like a photograph of my great-great-great grandfather, and then also more recent items, like one of my mother's 'ration' books (coupons still attached!) from World War 2 and a wax record my grandfather made for her at a USO(1) before he left to occupy Japan at the war's conclusion.
I occasionally get questions about usage of Science 2.0 that go beyond the FAQ so I decided I would write up a short article on using the site for non-beginners. The FAQ covers the basics - what Science 2.0® is, the experimental nature of this open writing site for science, etc. along with the basic functionality, like the dashboard - but due to the way the site has grown some other features may not be evident for newer members.How to find good stuff to write about?
There was a time a few years ago when the music industry was in the doldrums. They blamed MP3 piracy, though it made no sense unless you were the kind of person who believes 'jobs saved or created' is also a valid metric for beneficial impact of government stimulus plans - basically, claiming that every pirated piece of music was a lost sale was unrealistically hopeful. Most pirates may download something, but they weren't going to buy it anyway.Yet capitalism began to reshape the music industry even when they couldn't figure out how themselves. iTunes made it elegant for people to buy songs, and so they did, and now capitalism is at work in the music itself.
It's been a mantra that more money has to be spent on outreach for women in academia, or even quotas implemented. Why? Women PhDs are now the majority, at least in the US. This was an obvious trend since there were more underclass and graduate program females (60%).But like any sort of cultural agenda, it is perpetual, so now it will be the case that not enough department heads are female. This was the same in the NBA, where after it became 70% black there were no calls to recruit more whites or latinos, but rather calls to have 70% of the coaches be black.
Does expertise make the difference? It depends. When it comes to climate change, having a Ph.D. and a faculty position does not mean as much to the public as it does for researchers in other fields.The difference? Climate change researchers are perceived as being part of the cultural discourse rather than part of the objective science one, so if the scientist is taking a position different from yours, he is not an expert, he is just in the mud with politicians and environmental or industrial corporations trying to get money. Unfortunately, the same is true for both sides in the global warming discussion, and that is bad for science all the way around.
Even though Halley's Comet has a regular orbit it's not an easy task to map its appearances throughout history - and it may be that one of those appearances matches an ancient Greek testimony and has only now been realized, write Daniel W. Graham and Eric Hintz in the Journal of Cosmology, which would make it the first scientific claim about the famous extraterrestrial event.In 1705, Edmond Halley used Newtonian theory and predicted the return of a comet seen in 1682. It did return as predicted, in 1758, putting Halley on the stellar map and driving a stake into the evil hearts of competing theories to Newton.
