(This article was reprinted with permission from the edition of that finest of fine publications, n+1) Over the course of the past century, mean global temperatures increased by .6 degrees C. This change seems slight but isn’t: in the winter of 1905 my great-grandfather, a coppersmith, installed the roof on a new reef-point lighthouse two miles from Lake Michigan’s shore. Each morning he drove out across the open ice in a horse and buggy laden with his copperworking tools; today the water that far from shore never freezes, much less to a depth that could support a horse’s weight. Well…
The Science Creative Quarterly
From September, 2006
LET I = GLORIA GAYNOR
In its initial state, I is a member of the set {afraid, petrified}. Hypothesis: U is a necessary condition for I. Under the initial assumptions, we may consider that IU == U, for values of I near 1 and large values of U. However, integrating the function I / (U multiplied by differential di/dm * ewrong) over the range [night1…nightn], I grows strong for moderately large values of n as di/dm * ewrong approaches infinity, reducing the influence of U and allowing I to carry on. As U reaches the limit thus imposed, its initial stratospheric values are iteratively modified…
THE CROCODILE HUNTER BECOMES THE PLANET HUNTER
Dedicated to the man who was one of the funniest things, ever, on television, and we mean that in only the best of ways Cor Crikey! And g’day mate! Right now we’re walking up to Hawaii’s Gemini Observatory on the summit of Mauna Kea. It’s got a beaut of a telescope inside, and we’re hoping to find a new planet today. (Whispering) Here we are at the front door. But we should first give it a bit of space. Patience is important when dealing with telescopes. And we’ve got to be careful with that door. It’s locked! Looks like the…
SCIENCE AND ITS CREDIBILITY, THE 1960S VS. TODAY
Science, according to John Ziman, past physicist, humanist, and author of Real Science, What it is, and What It Means (2000), states that “science is under attack.” In his book, he declares that: “People are losing confidence in its powers. Pseudo-scientific beliefs thrive. Anti-science speakers win public debates. Industrial firms misuse technology. Legislators curb experiments. Governments slash research funding. Even fellow scholars are becoming skeptical of its claims.” If science is under attack, has it always been? Or is this a relatively new problem? To answer this, specific periods in our recent history can be chosen and compared to determine…
IS THERE A NEUROCHEMICAL BASIS FOR FALLING IN LOVE?
Introduction “Nearly everybody gets twitterpated in the springtime. For example: You’re walking along, minding your own business. You’re looking neither to the left, nor to the right, when all of a sudden you run smack into a pretty face. You begin to get weak in the knees. Your head’s in a whirl. And then you feel light as a feather, and before you know it, you’re walking on air. And then you know what? You’re knocked for a loop, and you completely lose your head!” In Disney’s Bambi, the wise old owl gives this memorable, and strikingly accurate, description of…
AN INTRODUCTION TO OCKHAM’S RAZOR
“Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate” Ockham’s razor, states that the simplest explanation tends to be the right one. While the definition is straightforward, application of Ockham’s Razor requires some development. In this paper we are going to investigate the question, “How is simplicity to be determined?” Some philosophers and scientists have suggested that simplicity is determined by a certain kind of elegance or in other cases a level of coherence combined with explanatory power. We suggest that such models are nonsense. We will start off by taking examples from the fields of Psychology and Linguistics before drawing some general…
LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT JOHN MICHAEL GRIFFIN, JR.
Griff, as he was known in high school, was a friend of mine. In fact, late in the first half of our lives, he stood up for me physically and philosophically, for being a science geek. Truth is, John’s endorsement was the first time I was ever deemed cool for wanting to be a scientist. It is also five years ago today, that Griff died an engineer and a hero in the collapse of one of the World Trade Center towers. We lost touch almost twenty years before, but his kindness and generosity formed not only a cornerstone of the…
EVOLUTION MAY PROCEED LARGELY THROUGH MERGER AND ACQUISITION
Introduction In his seminal book, The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin proposed the theory of descent with modification by means of natural selection, a postulate he supported with considerable evidence from myriad observations and exhaustive experimentation. Darwin’s powerful insights can be summarized as follows: Offspring vary from their parents. Some of the variances are heritable. Only a fraction of the total offspring of any organism survives to themselves reproduce. Those heritable variances that are advantageous to an organism are “selected for” by the environment and those that are disadvantageous are “deleted” by the environment. This differential survival is known as…
MASS
Lieserl – age 18, dark, serious girl. Dressed for today’s weather, but her clothes are dark and reminiscent of late 19th century style. Setting: Today, somewhere nearby. A simple over-head projector nearby. NOTES: The public first became aware of Einstein’s first illegitimate daughter, Lieserl, in 1987 when the first volume of his collected papers was published. Lieserl was born to Albert Einstein and Mileva Maric in 1902, two years before they officially married. She was born in Mileva’s home-town in Serbia and was given to members of Mileva’s family to raise. Albert was not there at the birth, nor did…