Wow. Just wow: At first glance the reassembled gray blocks look like a nine-foot-long sculpture of a dinosaur. A bony mosaic of armor coats its neck and back, and gray circles outline individual scales. Its neck gracefully curves to the … Continue reading →
The answer is “maybe.” But not easily. And the results would be unpredictable. But it was the second paragraph here that especially caught my interest: Assuming that a living passenger pigeon embryo can be “resurrected” (or perhaps, some would prefer … Continue reading →
…then those with an opposing view become apostates. That’s especially true if the topic is one with very high stakes, such as AGW (anthropogenic global warming). Think about it this way: if a person is—(a) convinced that AGW has been … Continue reading →
I try to follow the general outlines of the current theories of theoretical physics, but it goes without saying that I don’t understand the math, and that I miss a lot of the details. So although I’d never even heard … Continue reading →
First, I learned a new word today: “satnavs,” for satellite-guided navigators. Next, this is exactly what I intuitively sense when I use my navigator to help with driving directions: ”˜Our results fit with models in which the hippocampus simulates journeys … Continue reading →
In the most recent Scientific American, there’s an article on theories related to cosmic inflation: On March 21, 2013, the European Space Agency held an international press conference to announce new results from a satellite called Planck. The spacecraft had … Continue reading →
The researchers don’t call it that, but that’s what it appears to be. And they found something very interesting: Why do people express moral outrage? While this sentiment often stems from a perceived violation of some moral principle, we test … Continue reading →
Apparently there’s an eighth continent in the southwest Pacific. A huge landmass, mostly submerged beneath the ocean, bears all the hallmarks of a continent, according to a new study published by the Geological Society of America. You may have heard … Continue reading →
Wordsworth wrote: “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting…” Now researchers indicate that sleep itself is a forgetting: In 2003, Giulio Tononi and Chiara Cirelli, biologists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, proposed that synapses grew so exuberantly during … Continue reading →
Anyone who has read Jane Goodall’s books knows that chimpanzees can be very very violent to others of their species. It came as a shock to Goodall, who had lived with the animals for years before she observed the violence: … Continue reading →
I haven’t yet read Heather Mac Donald’s City Journal article on the Chicago torture case and how it relates to the larger culture, but a lot of people have recommended it. I’ve only had time to very briefly skim it, … Continue reading →
There’s a big mystery under the Antarctic ice: Scientists believe a massive object that could change our understanding of history is hidden beneath the Antarctic ice. The huge and mysterious “anomaly” is thought to be lurking beneath the frozen wastes … Continue reading →