Talk about clickbait
I simply had to click on this headline in the NY Post: “Skull of ‘dinosaur from Hell’ discovered with sword jutting from its head.” Alas, not a sword. No duel with a dinosaur. The find was, “the skull of a … Continue reading →
Category Archives: Science
Deregulating climate change policy and the war on cars
Trump deregulates climate change policy: This last week, the Trump administration reversed a 2009, Obama-era finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, thus effectively ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that, so the … Continue reading →
On trying to understand higher-level science
I’ve long tried to understand the upper reaches of scientific thought, often to no avail. Even as a very young child, I tried reading books about cosmology or higher-level physics, and although every now and then I managed to absorb … Continue reading →
Fresh water under the ocean
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. This intrigues me: A giant reservoir of “secret” fresh water off the East Coast that could potentially supply a city the size of New … Continue reading →
My guess at the Brown/Brookline killer’s motive
From a professor in Portugal who had taught Neves Valente, the man who killed the two students at Brown and the MIT physics professor in Brookline: Professor Bruno Gonçalves remembers teaching Claudio Neves Valente at the Instituto Superior Técnico in … Continue reading →
Iran’s having a drought
And it’s a serious one; there’s been talk of possibly having to evacuate Tehran. So cloud-seeding was begun – and then came floods: Rainfall caused floods in parts of western Iran on Monday, after months of drought led to the … Continue reading →
James Watson of double helix fame dies at 97
I must admit that my first reaction on reading the news of the death of one of the discoverers of the structure of DNA, James Watson, was to think in wonder: he was still alive? It was so very long … Continue reading →
Are we seeing the start of an “Ozempic for all” movement?
In yesterday’s post on the expansion of the definition of obesity to include 70% of Americans, I wrote: Who’s celebrating? The makers of diet drugs and the purveyors of diet programs. Well, today I saw this article: The study, published … Continue reading →
Jane Goodall has died at 91
Goodall was sui generis. Even as a young woman, she radiated a quiet calm that was both soothing and unusual. She had patience galore, which is probably why famed anthropologist Louis Leakey decided she would be well-suited to an intensive … Continue reading →
Dragon stones and lighthouse blocks
This sort of report reinforces my sense that human beings were more advanced earlier in the past than we used to give them credit for. I’d never heard of dragon stones before, but here’s the story: A new study has … Continue reading →
The quest to prove Einstein right
Here’s an entertaining documentary on Einstein. It focuses on the efforts of others to prove whether Einstein’s general theory of relativity was correct by photographing the sun during an eclipse in order to see whether it bends the light of … Continue reading →
Now the EPA feels the heat
It was Nixon who established the EPA by an EO in December of 1970, later ratified by Congress. It seemed well-intentioned enough: At its start, the EPA was primarily a technical assistance agency that set goals and standards. Soon, new … Continue reading →