I was reading about Gallium metal, and got sidetracked by a debate about math software. The point that got my attention is the contention that civilization is based on an institutionalized principle that we all are incompetent in many important fields. The item being debated was the necessity of children…
Howard Zinn, writing at Alternet: On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed. Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag,…
If you Google “Paris Hilton Jail” you’ll get 15 million hits. If you Google “Downing Street Memo” you'll get only 800,000 hits. A terrifying real-world topic, “Greenland ice sheet,” will only return 900,000 hits. I suppose it’s because there are no videos of memos or glaciers having sex. What brought…
Pants, by definition, are: an outer garment covering the body from the waist to the ankle, with a separate part for each leg. One cannot have one pant, although I suppose if one has only one leg and removes the extra part, one might have a pant? My dashboard dictionary…
In the June '07 issue of Scientific American, the article "A Simpler Origin for Life" discusses a new approach for figuring out how life could have spontaneously arisen. The views of evolutionary biologists have evolved over the last few decades from assuming that the extremely unlikely spontaneous formation of simple…