My mother is actually getting a kick out of hearing stories about our little vegetable patch, because when I was growing up she had to threaten me with no more Star Wars toys, ever, if I didn’t get out and help with the garden. In my defense, our current patch is very small, nothing at all like the half-acre we’d planted in my youth, and our present plants
Category: Science & Evolution
Followup: The artful dodger
In the previous post, I took Philosopher of Science Elliott Sober to task for a relatively simple question that he’s been flogging at the expense of huge amounts of oxygen and electrons – and at the same time, ripped philosophy in general. I’ll be honest and say that I would really like someone
Final answers aren’t
Over at EvolutionBlog and Why Evolution Is True, Drs. Rosenhouse and Coyne have taken down the same philosophical question posed by Dr. Elliot Sober, to wit: Can science establish that genetic mutations are not caused by god?
It is questions like this that have guided my abiding dislike of philosophy,
A year goes by fast
Last year about this time, I published a post about my little friends the fishing spiders, whom I call ‘friends’ not because we hang out and hammer down Pepsi together, but because my first photo sale featured one as a subject. Lately, a few have been making themselves obvious, clearly begging to
The road’s longer than it looks
Okay, let’s do a variation of an exercise I perform with my students sometimes. I’ll preface this by saying, this isn’t a trick question, nor is there a ‘right’ answer. It’s simple: look at this image and tell me what you can glean from it.
Well, it’s a stream or pond, with a rock at the edge or perhaps in the middle. The air appears reasonably still, from
… and part two
There are actually two themes I’m continuing here. The first is the limits of our knowledge, which is a “half-empty” perspective there’s a better way of expressing it, which we’ll get to in a moment. The second theme being continued here is special efforts made by scientists to communicate their work to the general public. The previous example (last
There isn’t always a complete answer, part one…
For those of you who have been hanging on the edge of your seat, checking thrice daily to see if I’ve offered an update, I apologize for keeping you in suspense. Actually, no I don’t – suspense is good for you, and anxiety strengthens the heart. Well known fact.
That’s 154 to you and me
On this date 22 years ago, the Hubble Space Telescope was borne into space on Shuttle Discovery, the one that recently did its last flyby over DC (well, okay, it had help) before delivery to the Udvar-Hazy center. The Hubble will be retired
Back atcha
Last year, I did a post on macro photography that featured some detail pics of a Giant Water Bug, also called an Electric Light Bug but better known by the scientific name Belostoma flumineum. This post totally rocked the internet, and by that I mean, was just another post on just another blog,
How’s that sound?
This is a follow-up to the earlier book review of Brain Bugs, by Dean Buonomano. The author raised an interesting bit of speculation within that I wanted to examine – first noting that the likelihood to establish any such speculations as accurate or even worthwhile is pretty slim. This is more of a thought exercise.
In chapter 8, Buonomano admits to leading away from the clinically-supported