ideonexus

Month: July 2009

  • Denis Diderot’s Prescience

    “There are things I can’t force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.” – Denis Diderot Denis Diderot By Louis-Michel van Loo Humanities scholars tend to dismiss the Enlightenment, the period of time in Western thought that produced the American and French Constitutions and the…

  • Doctors Support Health Care Reform

    Symbol for the Medical Sciences Health Care is a science issue. Beyond the higher-purposes of discovery and enlightenment, science provides daily improvements to our quality of life through improved agriculture, technological conveniences, and a better understanding of our place in the Cosmos. A large part of this endeavor is the enhancing and extending our quality…

  • National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

    Taxonomy of Flight Walking around this fantastic collection of aircraft, I was immersed in thoughts of the Technium, the idea that technology is the seventh kingdom of life. The technodiversity surrounding me in the main hangar display was overwhelming. The technological adaptations for vertical flight, human-powered flight, jet propulsion, and numerous others are designed by…

  • Why It’s Called the “Dark Ages”

    Triumph of Christianity Tommaso Laureti Academics now refer to it as the “Middle Ages,” because the term “Dark Ages” is biased. It’s not considered politically correct to refer to this millennium-long period of Western Civilization as “Dark” because it suggests the culture of this period was culturally backward and characterized by ignorance. According to extreme…

  • Science Inspiring the Many Versions of Brainiac

    Brainiac by Alex Ross Copyright: DC Comics The 1938 version of Superman was stronger than human beings because his home world, Krypton, was larger than Earth. As a result, the Kryptonians had evolved adapted to survive a force of gravity many times that of the Earthlings. This was a popular idea at the time. H.G.…

  • National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center: James S. McDonnell Space Hangar

    James S. McDonnell Space Hangar It’s a happy coincidence that I had a space-themed flickr set to upload just the day before the 40th anniversary of humans stepping foot on the Moon with the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar. Displays of toys and science fiction models really convey the cultural impact space exploration has had…

  • Understanding the Animal Side of Human Nature

    Grrrrr! Credit: Brian Scott Colin Powell’s appearance on State of the Union recently stirred up many healthy debates on Iraq, Obama’s presidency, and Sotomayor, but I found his thoughts on American families most interesting, especially the following: And I’m kind of a simple guy on things like this, John. I watch National Geographic and Animal…

  • Cap and Trade to Support the Commons

    Awhile back I wrote a column for the Science Creative Quarterly titled The Tragedy of the Commons Explained with Smurfs. It was easily the most buzzed-up thing I’ve every written, earning lots of praise from scientists who understood the reality, and lots of scorn from economists, who are easily offended by reality and prefer to…

  • Virginia Living Museum: Costal Plain Aviary

    Yellow-Crowned Night-Heron Check out the complete flickr set here.

  • Fun With Tick Clockwork

    Dermacentor variabilis, female Credit: National Tick Collection Vicky and I went for a short hike in Chesapeake’s Northwest River Park last weekend, a lovely site filled with marshland and waterways for canoeing, camping, … and ticks. Hot summer days combined with the humidity of the wetlands climate equals lots and lots of ticks, and this…

  • Hydrocarbon Powered Ecovehicles

    I got a fast one pulled on me the other day as I was out for a walk. I saw a car with the following sticker on its rear windshield: Hydrocarbon Powered Ecovehicle I was pretty confused looking at it. The person who had purchased the vehicle was obviously the victim of a very elaborate…

  • Virginia Living Museum Mammals Outdoors

    There were a lot of neat miscellanous exhibits at the VLM, including an indoor bee hive, fossilized dinosaur tracks, and this nifty display of a snake’s fangs opening and closing: Fangs I finally managed to get some photos of a river otter. These are the most playful animals of the all, always hamming it up…