Mar 06 2012
Click to enlarge. The phenomenon of climate change is well established within the scientific community. Unfortunately, the science is not what you see in the popular media. At one extreme, you have people denying that climate change is real. At the other extreme, you have movies like The Day After Tomorrow showing widespread planetary destruction. …
Aug 23 2011
Click to enlarge. Intelligent Design is a crock. It’s a way to sneak Creationism into public schools and public discourse. Proponents of Intelligent Design (or “I.D.” as it is often known) use “sciency” sounding terminology and sleight-of-hand obfuscation to confuse people who are not up to speed on evolution. And they have been pretty successful—not …
Jul 08 2011
Yes, Futurama is back on the air, but today is a sad one for science fans. The final Space Shuttle mission goes off today. While NASA isn’t Star Trek’s Federation and real space exploration isn’t like the movies, all things need to start somewhere and the fact that this nation has turned its back on …
Apr 22 2011
Click to enlarge. Celebrate Earth Day the old fashion way: do nothing. Global climate change is here. It’s not about preventing it anymore. We’ve pumped so much CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere that even if we were to stop burning all fossil fuels today (which we won’t), we’d still be looking at …
Feb 08 2011
Click to enlarge. It’s cold in the winter. Some people think that cold weather disproves global warming. That’s because they don’t understand the difference between weather and climate. Weather measures the local environmental conditions, typically on the scale of hours or days. Climate measures the average environmental conditions over larger scales of time, typically on …
Aug 03 2010
I had heard of this book some time ago. I was at a friend’s party and about half the people there had met through me. Marshall said I was what the book calls a Connector, someone who provides relationships between people (it’s a compliment although I think I’m closer to a Maven, someone who provides …
May 05 2010
Briscoe, Simon and Hugh Aldersey-Williams. Panicology: Two Statisticians Explain What’s Worth Worrying About (and What’s Not) in the 21st Century. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2009. Tackling a panoply of modern day fears, Panicology offers a thoughtful treatise on the differential between what we are afraid of and how likely it is to affect us. Authors …
Feb 16 2010
Krauss, Lawrence. The Physics of Star Trek. New York: HarperPerennial, 1996. When I was younger, I watched Star Trek for the action and adventure. As I grew older, I was interested in the social commentary. I always liked the characters. But I never watched Star Trek for its grasp of science; and the more I …
Dec 05 2009
Click to enlarge. It snowed today in Houston, an admittedly rare event in this part of the world. In addition to icy water, such an episode releases a flurry of right wingers and people who got no better than Cs in science telling me how “this proves Al Gore wrong.” Setting aside the misdirected animosity, …
Aug 30 2009
Sick of newscasts where reporters try to freak you out (“Is America losing control of its borders and allowing al-Qaeda terrorists with dirty bombs access to your children’s cell phones? We distort, you comply.”)? These two authors briefly discus a cornucopia of issues and break them down scientifically into levels people are panicking over them, …
Feb 06 2009
Mazur, Joseph. The Motion Paradox: The 2,500-Year-Old Puzzle Behind All the Mysteries of Time and Space. New York: Dutton, 2007. From Zeno (ca. 450 BCE) to today’s String Theory, Mazur paints a fascinating look at the history of scientific development as it seeks to grapple with fundamental questions of time and space. Although written for …
Nov 24 2008
Hubbell, Sue. Shrinking the Cat: Genetic Engineering Before We Knew About Genes. Mariner Books, 2002. In Shrinking the Cat, Hubbell follows the natural history of several species, including the silk worm, corn, the apple, and the cat. Indeed, the book might have been titled Mutating the Moth, except that I suspect that cat books sell …
Aug 25 2008
Eberhart, Mark E. Why Things Break: Understanding the World by the Way It Comes Apart. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003. From humanity’s earliest attempts at rock sharpening to today’s high-powered materials design labs, Why Things Break relates the story of our attempt to discover (or create) the unbreakable material. Eberhart discusses the history of …
Jul 29 2004
Pyenson, Lewis and Susan Sheets-Pyenson. Servants of Nature: A History of Scientific Institutions, Enterprises, and Sensibilities. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1999. The Pyensons present a rigorous history of all mediums for dispensing and promoting science. From the growth of universities, to the building of museums, to the publishing of journals and maps, …
Jul 20 2000
click to enlarge Launch Date July 2000 Notes One of the areas that I wanted to explore with the pen was the background hatching that you see in the 3rd, 4th, and 5th panels. I think it was actually more effective in the earlier Noetal strip. Here, there is just a poor balance between the …
Jul 10 2000
click to enlarge Launch Date July 2000 Notes I needed a break form Existential Dick, so I thought I’d try my hand at some other areas that I wanted to explore. I have wanted to try to put to paper some of the scientific ideas that I read about in the various physics books that …
Mar 30 1999
Click to enlarge: Launch Date March 1999 Concept This one more closely fits the criteria of “do something you’ve been talking about doing.” Ever since I was little, I’ve been fascinated by the size of the universe. In the last few years I’ve been reading a lot about cosmology and physics, and I’ve always wished …
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