Month: July 2008
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The Internet is a Mirror…
Hermit Tarot Card I test out INTJ (Introverted iNtuitive Thinking Judging) on the Myers and Briggs personality test, meaning I’m like Isaac Newton, Niels Bohr, and Ada Lovelace. My Riso-Hudson Type Indicator ranks me as Thinker(8), Peacemaker(6), Reformer(4), Skeptic(4), Artist(4), Motivator(4), Helper(3), Generalist(3), Leader(0). I am the Hermit Tarot Card. According to the Are You…
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A Classic Chess Fable
(Reposted in honor of Martian Chess (HT BMF)) Continuing the Chess train of thought from earlier this week. I was reminded of one of my favorite legends surrounding Chess. Before the game had a King and Queen, in Persia, where the Chess was invented, it had a Shah and Vizier. The Shah is a Persian…
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Why a Base-10 Number System?
In Olaf Stapledon’s 1935 science fiction novel “Odd John,” an evolutionary leap of a human child wonders why we built our number system on units of ten. After all, the number twelve has six factors, meaning it is divisible by six numbers, {1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 12}, while ten only has four factors, {1,…
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Cyberfeminism, Sadie Plant’s zeros + ones
Then she got into the lift, for the good reason that the door stood open; and was shot smoothly upwards. The very fabric of life now, she thought as she rose, is magic. In the eighteenth century, we knew how everything was done; but here I rise through the air, I listen to voices in…
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10 Things in My Yard
Following TGAW’s Thread responding to the No Child Left Inside Coalition’s claim that “young people could identify 1000 corporate logos but fewer than 10 plants or animals native to their backyards,” I decided to take a shot at naming ten things in my yard. FAIL. If I counted the fruit trees, the mimosa tree, and…
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Flash SF Story: The Way of the Dinosaurs
“I don’t understand why we have to leave Earth for a stupid space ship anyway,” Tory, my 10-year-old daughter, griped. She had been a muttering, grumpy bundle of joy all day as we loaded belongings into our assigned shuttle. “Because it’s time for the human race to grow up and join the galactic community,” I…
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How to Turn Your PC into a Science TV
Step the First Download Miro Player, the free and open-source RSS aggregator for video podcasts. I’m sure there are others, but Miro is, to my experience, the sleekest and most user friendly. Miro (Formerly “Democracy Player”) Step the Second Subscribe to the following shows: Nova’s Science Now presents engaging science from a longtime standard in…
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Envirowacko Harry Reid Says “Coal Makes Us Sick”
Is there anything more amusing than watching dittheads work themselves up into a frothing, impotent rage when confronted with Reality’s liberal bias? Most recently they’ve started rolling around, slobbering all over themselves over this video of Harry Reid pointing out that “Coal makes us sick:” How dare he say that Oil and Coal makes us…
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Science is Free (as in Beer)
One of the things I loooooooooove about science writing is all the free stuff. Scientists aren’t like those crummy jerks at the Associated Press, scientists want you to talk about what they’re doing. They want us bloggers to quote them, link to them, post their photos. Scientists give away tons and tons of intellectual property…
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Published at the SCQ: Explaining Our World: Science VS Creationism
My latest article is up at the Science Creative Quarterly: Explaining Our World: Science VS Creationism. My previous articles are still available there as well: Tragedy of the Commons Explained With Smurfs Science Fiction VS Fantasy: An Opinionated Guide How To Fly Enjoy! The Coccyx, or Tail Bone Science: Our predecessors had tails, and we…
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Putting Microbes to Work for Us
“civilization is a race between education and catastrophe.” – H.G. Welles It took life on Earth millions years to figure out how to digest cellulose, the hard wall that makes up the cells of plants, efficiently to get at the energy inside it. In fact, complex lifeforms, such as Cows and Termites, have to take…