ideonexus

interweaving ideas

  • My Genetic Ancestry

    Paternal Ryan Somma’sPaternal DNA Results I participated in the Genographic Project last year, an ongoing effort to chart the migration of the human race across the earth using DNA testing. It was $110 for the kit, which is a bit pricey, but I was curious and glad I did it. After processing the results of…

  • Great Books: “Flatland, A Romance of Many Dimensions”

    Flatland, A Romance of Many Dimensions Square is a lawyer living in Flatland, a two-dimensional world that has height and width, but not length. In Edwin Abbott’s book Flatland, Square serves as our tour guide, describing both the physical and social characteristics of living in a world without depth. Flatland works on two levels: as…

  • Letter to the Editor: Case closed on warming’s cause

    This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: I applaud The Daily Advance’s new “Green Living” section on your Web site and Robert Kelly-Goss’s recent highly-informative article on global warming. However, the article did contain one factual error that needs…

  • Letter to the Editor: Tattoos about style, not sex

    This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: A recent letter criticizing the Currituck Board of Commissioners’ decision to relax zoning restrictions on tattoo parlors serves as yet another reminder of how quaintly behind the times we are here in…

  • “Planetes” a Great Anime About Space Exploration

    “That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.”      – Neil Armstrong Planetes The space age began in the 1950s with the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik 1, which was followed by a Space Race that lasted until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Without milateristic competition between our countries, all we…

  • The Port Discover Science Center

    Port Discover Science Center Science in my first life. The Port Discover Science Center located in downtown Elizabeth City provides me with my most rewarding philanthropic exersizes and volunteer activities. The center runs on a shoe-strig budget of a little over $50k a year. With that it must rent a space in a downtown location,…

  • Science in Cyberspace

    Professor Ozymandias Spark Science benefits from working on an open source model. Peer review, publication and dessemination of experimental results, public education, access to higher education, all of these contribute to a large number of people with the tools and resources to help them contribute productively to our collective body of knowledge. Peers on the…

  • Should Scientists be the Only One’s Allowed to Talk About Science?

    Dr. Moran has essentially written one big justification for intellectual laziness in his post “Lessons from Science Communication Training,” where he rationalizes and credentializes away any social responsibility scientists have to educate and persuade the public. I can understand the political naivety I’m reading in this article; after all, natural scientists are notoriously out of…

  • Letter to the Editor: Hail the printed word — online

    This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: Robert Kelly-Goss’ recent column, where he argues the superiority of printed texts over their electronic counterparts, reminded me of a quote from author Douglas Adams: “Anything that is in the world when…

  • Letter to the Editor: Electoral College Unfair to Larger States

    This is a letter to the editor I published at the Daily Advance. Posted here for posterity, since they have no online archive: North Dakota gets three Electoral College votes for its 642,200 residents, one vote for every 214,067 people. New York gets 33 votes for its 19,190,115 residents, one vote for every 581,519 people.…

  • Review of Thomas Paine’s “The Age of Reason”

    “I have always regarded Thomas Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic.”         – Thomas Edison The burial location ofThomas Paine inNew Rochelle, New York In Catholicism, when a child reaches seven years of age, they become responsible for their moral actions, capable of…

  • Anthropogenic Global Warming

    “Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.“ – Mark Twain Photo released by the Canadian Ice Service Friday Feb. 2, 2007 A DrudgeReport headline this fall read, “SUMMER 2006 TEMPS FAIL TO BREAK RECORD SET IN 1936.” Conservative blogs, like