Artist: Science

Chicago hipster hip-hop duo The Cool Kids just wrapped up a five-week North American tour that took them pretty much everywhere in the Midwest except, it seems, for St. Louis. Still, the pair have a s... Continue reading "The Cool Kids' Connection to St. Louis" >

So the sinkhole of liberal heathenism best known for annoying baseball fans, drunken Kennedy's, drunken college kids, gay marriage, taxes and Good Will Hunting has one more trick up its sleeve . Their students are really, really, really good at math and science. And to say I couldn't be prouder right now of the students and teachers in Massachusetts is something of an understatement. Massachusetts students significantly outperformed their peers nationwide on a prestigious math and science exam, putting the state on an elite international tier, according to results released yesterday. [...]

A commentary in today's issue of Nature authored by a group of attorneys, psychiatrists, M.D.'s and journalists proposes making cognitive-enhancing drugs (so called brain boosters) available to mentally healthy people. The argument that the group puts forward is that enhancing our brains is something that we should strive for as a species, making use of any available technologies to do so. Cognitive-enhancing drugs (CEDs) are generally stimulants like Ritalin , Adderall and Provigil that are used to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other neurological conditions. Seems that there is quite the [...]

• Panda Bear - Take Pills

These snowflake photos were taken by Kenneth Libbrecht of CalTech, using a specially-designed snowflake photomicroscope. They show real snow crystals that fell to earth in northern Ontario, Alaska, Vermont, the Michigan Upper Peninsula, and the Sierra Nevada mountains of California.

Various studies indicate that unregulated chemicals released into the environment are causing male animals and humans to take on feminine characteristics. Thousands of chemicals released into the environment are interfering with animal and human endocrine systems, resulting in physical changes. Comprehensive research indicates that these chemicals, nicknamed "gender-benders," are causing the males in many species to become feminized . More...

Various studies indicate that unregulated chemicals released into the environment are causing male animals and humans to take on feminine characteristics. Thousands of chemicals released into the environment are interfering with animal and human endocrine systems, resulting in physical changes. Comprehensive research indicates that these chemicals, nicknamed "gender-benders," are causing the males in many species to become feminized . More...

Well we've all heard of the leap year when every four years we had a day to the calandar.?? But this December 31 will be special as an extra second is added to the calandar . Earth's trip around the sun - our year with all its seasons - is about 365.2422 days long, which we round to 365 to keep things simpler. But every four years, we add 0.2422 x 4 days (that's about one day) at the end of the month of February (extending it from 28 to 29 days) to [...]

Let's imagine that Jim Morrison hadn't died at the age of 27. Okay, he'd probably have died at 28, or 29, or 30. But what if - somehow - he had lived. What would he look like today? Like Kurt Russell , reckon some scientists who have produced an computer-aged image of him. They've only done the face, though, and haven't gone as far as to stick him in a studio recording an album with Rick Rubin, or halfway down the Sunday bill at Glastonbury.

Sure Discover Magazine left out the Crepuscular Rays and double or triple rainbows, but we shouldn't hold that against them for their list of amazing sky phenomenon. One of the things I loved about living in Syracuse, NY was the severe amounts of pollutants in the atmosphere gave sunsets a chartreuse haze to them.?? The sunsets were so amazing I have yet to see anything compare to them.?? It probably helps that I was watching them from the top of a hill, with an observatory behind me.

According to the Wall Street Journal , the mid-career median salary for a philosophy professor is more than that of a chemistry professor. Interesting to see which professors make some bank. And yes, I realize that I'm picking my data points to make a larger point and that if I look at all the "science" related salaries they probably outweigh the non-science related salaries. Still, it's worth noting the discrepancy in the job salaries. Salaries of course, are analogous to which fields are more respected, not unlike athletes. [ via ]

For reasons that aren't entirely clear, scientists at the University of Granada have come up with a way of telling the difference between "genuine" and "pirated" CDs: Through the new technique proposed by the scientists of the Department of Optics of the UGR it is possible to identify if a CD has been recorded using a method or a device different to those used in industrial processes, which allows to differentiate between original CDs and copies. This technique uses the phenomenon of light diffraction on a CD surface to appreciate the differences between original and bootleg [...]

It's one of my great pleasures to make it through the work week and tune in to Science Friday on NPR every Friday (duh) around 11 a.m.?? This week was a particularly good show for two reasons. The first was their look into the recent study that happiness is contagious. The happiness of an individual is associated with the happiness of people up to three degrees removed in the social network. Happiness, in other words, is not merely a function of individual experience or individual choice but is also a [...]

Patricia Churchland Patricia Churchland reaffirms the importance of experimental data offered by neurobiology to philosophy in general in her recent article, The Impact of Neuroscience on Philosophy . She criticizes the tendency of philosophers to declare something to be absolute with a priori reasoning. She probably has John Searle's thought experiment, Chinese Room argument or Frank Jackson's Mary the Scientist argument in mind. To certain extent, I agree with her. I think many philosophers are doing something similar to what philosophers of early 20th century did with Einstein's theory of relativity. Philosophers in their armchair speculated that [...]

Two of my favourite artists coming together here, Scarface and Bilal, both of them people who I think really see sense... anyway check the vid, it's powerful - 'Get Right' Can't Get Right Feat. Bilal

I'm quite pleased to host this month's Mendel's Garden - a blog carnival featuring the best genetics writing on the internets for the last month. Since it's my party, I've picked out a few of my favorite topics to feature. But in the way of introduction for the neophytes in the crowd, let's define our terms. The first question I ask my students on their first exam is "What is a gene and how is it regulated?". I'm looking for them to talk about Mendel's description of units of inheritance and the modern DNA based definition. Well, [...]

• R.E.M. - Gardening At Night

A rare astronomical event aligned the stars on December 1st: Venus and Jupiter twinkle like two eyes above a crescent moon. This is an amazing shot.

First the honey bees seemed to be leaving us for unexplained reasons and now in Washington D.C. it's the acorn. The idea seemed too crazy to Rod Simmons, a measured, careful field botanist. Naturalists in Arlington County couldn't find any acorns. None. No hickory nuts, either. Then he went out to look for himself. He came up with nothing. Nothing crunched underfoot. Nothing hit him on the head. Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the [...]

The term "peak oil" gets thown around so much that it's connotation has lost all meaning, especially with gasoline prices not connected to traditional supply and demand economics. Worldchanging's Alex Steffens has written a piece on "peak population" and how that notion is incredibly important for the future of the planet - maybe more so than peak oil. Steffens main point is that now is the time to make changes because the population is going to crest and ideally it will happen sooner with less people rather than later with more people. At some [...]

About midway through Yann Martell 's Man Booker Prize winning novel "The Life of Pi" , the protagonist finds himself washed up on an island populated solely by meerkats. After a time on the island he begins to suspect that all is not as it seems - the meerkats take to the trees every night and one day Pi takes a bite of a fruit growing from one of the island's trees and finds human teeth inside. It begins to dawn on him that the island is carnivorous, each night digesting anything that has the misfortune [...]

• The Kinks - Plastic Man

How amazing is that?