ideonexus

interweaving ideas

  • Clarifying the Science Behind Global Cooling

    “It is easy to lie with statistics; it is easier to lie without them.” – Frederick Mosteller Global Cooling Trend Close-Up of Last Decade Yesterday I posted this image of what climatologists are claiming is evidence of warming in the last decade, and explained how it actually shows a cooling trend; however, it has come…

  • More Global Cooling Evidence Embarrasses the IPCC Orthodoxy

    A recent article that appeared in The Australian, Climate facts to warm to, has the transcript of an important interview with Dr. Jennifer Marohasy a biologist, free market advocate, and Global Warming skeptic. When asked “Is the Earth still warming?” Dr. Marohasy replied: No, actually, there has been cooling, if you take 1998 as your…

  • Between a Rock and a Hardplace: Debating Cranks

    Chris Mooney has an important article online about how scientists debating fringe groups like Creationists and AGW deniers in many ways actually hurts our causes. Sure enough, one of the Expelled trailers features the following quotation from Oxford evolutionary biologist and atheism apostle Richard Dawkins: “If people think God is interesting, the onus is on…

  • NC Museum of Natural History: Mountains to the Sea

    Wildlife-Friendly Backyard At the museum’s center is a huge recreation of North Carolina’s many ecosystems, filled with both living and taxidermied animals. One of my favorite side displays was on how to build an eco-friendly yard that invites, feeds, and shelter’s wildlife. The Four Fundamentals of Wildlife-Friendly Landscapes: Offer a year-round food supply along with…

  • Happy Near Miss Day!

    Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico Image by NASA 19 years ago, March 23, 1989, Apollo asteroid 4581 Asclepius passed within 700,000 km (400,000 miles) of Earth, passing through the exact position the Earth was only six hours before. Had it impacted, it would have generated an explosion thousands of times more powerful than the most…

  • Politicians Need to Improve Their Presentation Skills

    Here’s a question that started nagging me today: Why hasn’t it become standard for politicians to spice up their speeches with Power Point Presentations? Could you imagine a modern-day scientist getting up in front of a conference and try to make a persuasive argument with just an inspiring speech? “Every American must embrace String Theory…

  • “Theoretically” is a Meaningless Word to Scientists

    It’s time we stopped using the word “theoretically,” the word is an oxymoron unto itself, at least in the way we use it: “Is it theoretically possible for science to someday create a real lightsaber? (source)” “Antimatter galaxies theoretically possible, but unlikely (source)” “Critics say the White House’s theoretical arguments may fly in the face…

  • [citation needed] for the Mind

    “What is truth?” – Pontius Pilate Wikipedian Protester Courtesy of xkcd.com Al Gore never said he invented the Internet. You can’t see the Great Wall of China from space. There is no ghost of a little boy in the background of Three Men and a Baby. Goldfish do not have memory-spans only 10-second’s long. Nobody’s…

  • Copyright Infringement on Ideonexus

    I think I’ve gotten really good at this since I started running with ideonexus full speed, keeping the daily posts stocked with photos I get from NASA, wikimedia commons, and other legitimate sources, like flickr creative commons photos. However, I think it’s important to acknowledge that I did violate a photographer’s copyright in my 20071126…

  • Steven Pinker’s “The Blank Slate”

    The Blank Slate I love books that shake up my preconceptions, and reading Pinker’s book was like experiencing one big personal iconoclasm. The thoroughness with which he engaged gender, violence, intelligence, and other aspects of our social understandings unsettled my positions on much of the whole “Nature VS Nurture” debate. While it did not convince…

  • The Scientific Virtue of Being Wrong

    Every year Green Sea Turtles travel 1,300 miles across the Atlantic Ocean from their nesting grounds in the middle of the South Atlantic to their feeding grounds on the Brazilian Coast. Why do the turtles undertake this incredibly taxing journey each year? 135 million years ago, South America and Africa were a single super-continent called…

  • North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences: Nature’s Explorers

    Fish Specimens in Jars I have a morbid fascination with animals preserved in jars, and that’s what drew me into the Natures Explorers exhibit; however, it was not the Cabinet of Curiosities I expected to find. Instead, I met with an exhibit about the lives of those who assemble such cabinets and the history behind…