ideonexus.com

I’ve got a huge backlog of photos I need to get up on Flickr, enough to cover several months worth of Saturndays. Here’s two sets from the Smithsonian Natural History Museum:

Hall of Bones

Man and the Manlike Apes

The Hall of Bones does a great job of illustrating the incredible biological and adaptation diversity of a tool all animals share, an internal skeleton. Without this scaffolding on which to drap our skin over and attach our muscules to, we’d be just a bunch of blobs, oozing from place to place… Well, that could be pretty cool too.

Visit the flickr set here.

Hall of Mammals

Morganucodon oehleri Common Ancestor to Us All

While the Hall of Bones fascinated me and was immensely instructional, the Hall of Mammals was fairly disappointing. Yes, the huge collection of diversity in the Class Mammalia is pretty amazing. Yes, the exhibit is very educational. It’s certainly not without merit.

However, I saw this exhibit the day following an all-day adventure at the Zoo, seeing real live animals, fully animated with their biological clockworks running with near indecipherable and irreproducible complexity.

Compare this to a collection of taxidermied animals, frozen in time, and positioned best as possible to appear as they do in real life, but still unconvincing enough to trigger my Uncanny Valley response.

That’s why we have to keep them alive.

Visit the flickr set here.

Author or editor of over 500 books, including the incredible Foundation Series and I, Robot books. I was led to Asimov by my favorite author at the time, Kurt Vonnegut, who lavished much praise on his prolific friend. Asimov and Vonnegut are now equal in my eyes, Vonnegut for his humanity, Asimov for his down to Earth brilliance, both were presidents of the American Humanist Association

Despite being a member of Mensa (like myself), Asimov was very concerned with bringing complex subjects within the realm of understanding of everyday human beings. He advocated the elimination of English grammar, which he believed was so illogical as to promot illiteracy, deconstructed the Bible so thoroughly it took multiple volumes to cover it, and explained complex scientific subjects with a simplicity that promoted science in common discourse.

I got a treat yesterday as I was listening to NPR, and learned that, despite writing extensively about space travel, Asimov was too afraid to ever fly in a plane. I’ve read Asimov’s own accounts of his longtime resistance to word processors, which, once overcome, dramatically increased his productivity.

He would be 87 today.

Happy New Year! Here’s what happened during my recent hiatus:

There was a smattering of science-themed movies this year. Flock of Dodos came out in 2006, but didn’t arrive at my local theaters until 2007. Randy Olson’s film explored personality differences that made creationists more likable than evolutionists. In the Shadow of the Moon took what might be the last walk down memory lane with the only human beings to set foot on another world. Disney’s Meet the Robinsons was an animated film that made scientists the heroes (however zany). Jerome Bixby’s The Man from Earth provided a surprise treat, an engaging science fiction film that takes place entirely at one location and relied heavily on engaging intellectual dialogue.

In books, Natalie Angier’s The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science achieved what I always wanted in a science book, an adventure from the quantum to the microscopic to the macroscopic to the astronomic realms of science. Steven and Lucy Hawking’s Book George’s Secret Key to the Universe achieved what I never realized I’d wanted in a children’s book, hard science fiction. Howtoons: The Possibilities are Endless brought the Do It Yourself movement to children (and adult-children, like myself), and supplemented it with an awesome website.

Michael Pollan’s incredible NYT article “Unhappy Meals” provided the best, most conclusive dietary advice you’ll ever need: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Make it your mantra to healthy living.

Microscopic Rodin’s Thinker Credit: Dong-Yol Yang et al., Applied Physics Letters

In the art world, the Brown Hall of Entomology offered 25 cents per cockroach for a display on the “sanitary engineers” of the insect world. Korean researchers crafted a microscopic Version of Rodin’s “The Thinker”, about twice the size of a red blood cell. Scientists at Harvard and MIT genetically modified mouse neurons to fire “tracers,” which produced colorful Brainbows.

Relationships Among Scientific Paradigms Information Aesthetics

While on the Internet, Information Aesthetics Relationships Among Scientific Paradigms free downloadable wall chart presented a fantastic visualization tool that provokes hours of examination and reflection. The Science Creative Quarterly hit it big with their Order of Science Scouts Badges, an Internet meme I hope to see become a standard. E.O. Wilson’s Encyclopedia of Life went online, but then failed to produce much of anything by way of content, while Google Space took the prize for the coolest new software toy of the year free or otherwise.

Happy Winter Solstice (in the Northern Hemisphere) to all my fellow Secular Humanists out there! At 6:08 this morning the Sun reached its greatest distance opposite the Earth’s equatorial plane relative to the Northern polar hemisphere, making it the longest night of the year and our days will only get longer an brighter from now till Spring! Hooray!!!

Also celebrated on or around this day are Amaterasu celebration, Beiwe Festival, Choimus, Christmas, Deuorius Riuri, Deygan, DongZhì Festival, Goru, Hogmanay, Inti Raymi, Junkanoo, Karachun, Koleda, Lenæa, Lucia, Makara Sankranti, Meán Geimhridh, Midvinterblót, Modranicht, Perchta ritual, Rozhanitsa Feast, Sabe Cele, Sanghamitta Day, Saturnalia, Seva Zistanê, Sol Invictus Festival, Soyal, Tekufat Tebet, Wayeb, Yule, Zagmuk, and
Happy Holidays to All!!!

Here’s a classic dancing Holiday Lights video set to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Wizards in Winter:”

My Legoland Avatar

This free software is available for download, and is a great way to introduce your child to 3-D Modeling software. It’s also free and didn’t cause my computer to explode, so you’ve got nothing to lose by trying it out.

A huge selection of Lego parts are available in the application, which also allows for zooms and 360-degree rotations. In fact, this software is so much like other 3-D design tools I have used, that I started calling it “Lego Cad.”

Once your child has built a model they want to have in real life, they can order the exact parts they need online, and the software will walk the child through the process of assembling their model in real life. Although I haven’t had the opportunity to order any parts through this software, Lego is an established brand, and I don’t have any doubts that they are a safe company to buy from online.

This is software is a really neat toy in and of itself. I had very few problems learning my way around the program, and am confident that most children will fall right into the Lego virtual world, and, like most computer-related things, become better at it than their parents possibly could.

I mentioned it’s free and you don’t have to brave the consumer feeding frenzy at the stores for this last minute gift right?

Lego is also a big-time exercise in imagination too…

Lego Imagination Ad

If you like the above Lego ad, also check out these other creative Lego ads.

ZomeTool’s connector balls are small rhombicosidodecahedrons

I started playing with Zome Tool after watching the college lecture series Joy of Thinking: The Beauty and Power of Classical Mathematical Ideas on DVD, which required no mathematical background and I highly recommend for anyone interested in learning about why Math totally rocks from a humanistic perspective. I wanted to try out some of the geometrical concepts the lecture series talked about and needed a construction set that would suit this need.

Zome Tool is like an errector set, only incredibly geometrically well thought-out. The vertices, connector balls, for the Zome Tool are small rhombicosidodecahedrons, one of the 13 types of Archmedean Solids (this link has 3-D examples that you can rotate). This means that there are three types of connections for the edges, a pentagon, rectangle, and equilateral triangle; and for this reason, the edge pieces come in three different color-coded types.

The length of these edge pieces are related to one another along the Golden Mean, a proportion found throughout nature, art, and architecture, and one that allowed me to build three interlaced golden rectangles inside an icosahedron.

Icosahedron with Three Interlaced Golden Rectangles

I later added another layer to this, by putting the icosahedron inside the dodecahedron with it’s verticies touching the middle of each of the dodecahedron’s faces.

Also on a Holiday note, check out a Zome Christmas Tree

Secularists are realizing more and more the importance of organization. Religious folk propagate and reinforce their beliefs with weekly gatherings at formal institutions called “churches,” where they develop an extended social network of other human beings sharing the same beliefs. It’s a fantastic tool for community building and providing a support group that helps to ensure the health and well being of its members.

That’s why I support the idea of Atheist Sunday Schools, recently covered in Time Magazine.

There are all ready many communities online and off, like Atheist Parenting Groups and the American Humanist Association.

The American Founding Fathers can provide guidance on how to conduct such a weekly community-building exercise. Many of them were Deists, who believed that god’s word was found in the natural world, not in books written by men. Secularists don’t need to find god in nature, but there’s nothing wrong in finding meaning and purpose in the appreciation of the natural world.

I could imagine Atheist Sunday Sermons beginning like this:

Let us now read from the Jurassic period, where the fossil record describes a time when…

Let us now read from the field of Quantum Theory, where experiments reveal to us a world where…

Let us now read from the Hubble Telescope, and appreciate the unfathomable enormity of the cosmos and quintillions of possibilities available within its scope…

Where religious Sunday schools are an exercise in imaginative fantasy, atheist Sunday schools should be an exercise in appreciating measurable, quantifiable, and reproducible reality, fostering the virtues of free inquiry and healthy skepticism.

I made a trip to DC to take in some science a while back, and I’m just getting to posting the photos.

Today we take in Mammals from all over the National Zoological Park and the Amazonia exhibit there as well.

Red Panda From my Mammals Photo Set

I see zoos as a sort of bank for preserving species. It’s too monumental a task to prevent short-sighted people from destroying their environments, so we shelter these animals in reserves in anticipation of a time when more enlightened minds take charge.

Arapaima From my Amazonia Photo Set

George’s Secret Key to the Universe

George is a restless child. His parents are well-meaning, but oppressively strict environmentalists. They are so anti-technology, that they won’t even let George have a computer. One day George’s pet pig gets out, leading him to meet his strange next door neighbor Annie.

Annie’s father, Eric, is a scientist, who invites George to join the Order of Scientific Inquiry for the Good of Humanity, and learn about the amazing Universe surrounding him through the most powerful computer in the world, Cosmos, which can open portals in time and space to anywhere in the charted galaxy.

But first George must take The scientist’s Oath:

I swear to use my scientific knowledge for the good of Humanity. I promise never to harm any person in my search for enlightenment.

I shall be courageous and careful in my quest for greater knowledge about the mysteries that surround us. I shall not use scientific knowledge for my own personal gain or give it to those who seek to destroy the wonderful planet on which we live.

If I break this oath, may the beauty and wonder of the Universe forever remain hidden from me.

Annie and George take a ride on a comet through the solar system, where they find both danger and enlightenment in this extremely well-told tale that has many twists and turns, villains and heroes, all told with scientific accuracy only one of the world’s leading physicists can provide.

Lucy & Stephen Hawking have written a Hard Science Fiction children’s book, and it’s awesome. I highly recommend it.

I managed to pick up a copy autographed by Lucy Hawking at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum a few weeks back:

Lucy Hawking’s Autograph

Available at Amazon