Month: January 2008
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50th Anniversary of America Entering the Space Race
“At the time, we didn’t know a great deal, but we felt comfortable that we could put something up. And we liked the difference between our satellite and Sputnik. Ours flew science, the Van Allen experiment.” – Carl Raggio, a mechanical engineer on the Explorer team Explorer I Image by NASA 50 years ago, at…
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Harnessing the Incredible Brainpower of Sports Fans
Flash Gordon Quarterback, NY Jets One day I decided I was going to become an American Football fan. I went to a sportswear shop in the mall and picked out a Raiders cap. The Raiders were going to be my team. That afternoon, I arrived at my dishwashing job at the college cafeteria, proudly sporting…
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What a Wonderful Trip It’s Been: Y the Last Man
Y the Last Man I would love to go back and read through all the graphic novels I’ve bought collecting this series from its beginnings, but they’ve all been loaned out to people who loaned them out to other people and so on and so on. I did recently have the time to review my…
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Beyond Belief, Enlightenment 2.0
Daniel Dennet I had the delightful fortune to discover the Salk Institute’s Beyond Belief Conference online about this same time last year. I ended up spending an entire weekend hanging out near my computer, soaking up every single lecture in order while sipping hot chocolate in my pajamas. 2006’s Beyond Belief program was Science, Religion,…
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Flying Spaghetti Monster on My Desk (Shhhh… Let’s see if they notice.)
A friend gave me this ultra-nifty handy-dandy spifferific crocheted FSM for the Winter Solstice Holiday Season, and since FSM is my co-pilot, I’ve placed it on my desk for all to appreciate. FSM is My Co-Pilot Here’s the thing. I work for the Federal Government on a Coast Guard Base. We are prohibited from religious…
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Carl Sagan Appears in Atomic Robo!!!
Note: I’m getting a lot of hits on this post, so visitors might like to know that Carl Sagan made a second bad-ass appearance in “Atomic Robo” a little more recently too. In issue #4 Robo gets knocked out and has a dream where Carl “Cosmos” Sagan asks Robo to fly shotgun on the Viking…
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The National Zoological Park, Reptiles, and Invertebrates, and Brains, oh my!
The Invertebrate Exhibit Giant Hermit Crab Awesome moment at this exhibit was getting to see one of Zoo staff feeding the Pacific Octopus. It ballooned up from a little white ball into a red explosion of tentacles. The Zookeeper fed it a muscle and a hermit crab, and had to fight octopus a bit to…
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Thinking Beyond Science Debate 2008
Science Debate 2008 The Union of Concerned Scientists, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Federation of American Scientists, the Scientists & Engineers for America, Audubon… World Wildlife Fund… the Society for Amateur Scientists… the Sierra Club… The list of activist organizations representing the multitude of issues important to Scientists and the Scientifically…
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Dr. Jay Hosler’s “Clan Apis”
Clan Apis Clan Apis chronicles the life and times of a single worker honey bee, Nyuki, who’s delightfully wise-ass and wholly enchanted with her life in a hive where her personal experiences are no different from those of the her thousands of neighbors. Dr. Jay Hosler’s understanding of entomology, evolution, and natural science allows him…
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Yahoo Answers Sucks Butt
I figured out that something was seriously wrong with Yahoo Answers recently when I was looking for serious academic research into possible selective breeding practices of American Slave Owners, and found this ignorant racist crap posing as a serious question: Dumbass (Note the Skinhead Avatar) Worse than this, however, is that the questioner then got…
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“The Reluctant Transhumanist” Posted at Oort-Cloud
I’ve posted my short story The Reluctant Transhumanist to Oort-Cloud. It’s about a young man sacrificing his humanity to pursue his dreams. I’m gonna work on getting more stuff up there in the coming months. I’ve got a backlog of SF stories I need to get out of my writing folder that I keep getting…