ideonexus

interweaving ideas

  • The Evolution Store, Science and Art in Soho, New York

    Evolution Store in Soho When my sister came across the Evolution Store in Soho, New York City, she knew I absolutely had to see it. This store has everything you need to make some high-quality additions to your home Cabinet of Curiosities. From insects, fossils, minerals, taxidermy animals, seashells and corals, skulls and skeletons, this…

  • National American History Museum: Science in American Life

    Futurama at the New York World’s Fair Walking through this exhibit, we find a love/hate relationship between Americans and science. We love the modern conveniences of plastic, birth control, and cheap energy, but hate the chemical poisons contaminating our environment, radioactivity, cancer, and innovations in warfare that come with them. Displays that are hopeful for…

  • Will James Cameron’s Avatar Escape the Uncanny Valley?

    Two recent trailers have got me thinking about human progress on the Uncanny Valley dilemma, the phenomenon where, as an artificial facsimile of a human being becomes more lifelike, its flaws become more apparent and we find it disturbing. The characters in the computer animated film Beowulf suffered from this phenomenon, as did Final Fantasy,…

  • Enlightenment Truths and Metaphysical Inaccuracies in Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol

    Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol I strongly disagree with avid Plotz’s commentary, Dan Brown’s Washington, which argues that the real story of Washington is in the political players, not the spiritual and philosophical history which is the focus of The Lost Symbol. Dan Brown’s power as a writer is in having his characters take an…

  • Living Waters Ministries’ 150th Anniversary Edition of Origin of the Species

    Living Waters’Origin of the Species As was covered in Science Etcetera, the Living Waters Ministries has started a campaign to distribute copies of Darwin’s Origin of the Species on College Campuses, to which Ray Comfort, a critic of evolutionary theory, has added a 50 page introduction attempting to refute evolution. The link to a free…

  • The Norfolk Botanical Gardens

    Mountain Laurel This set is a work in progress, as one must visit botanical gardens at many points in the year to see all the various flowers in bloom. Check out the incomplete flickr set here.

  • Norfolk Botanical Gardens: Azaleas in Bloom

    Vicky with Azaleas The azalea is unique among species of rhododendron in that, rather than blooming in clusters or “stripers” as they are known, every terminal branch on the azalea bush produces a flower, resulting in the spectacular displays they bring each April. Check out the complete flickr set here.

  • Norfolk Botanical Gardens: Rose Garden

    God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December. ~ J. M. Barrie Norfolk Botanical Gardens Rose Garden Shakespeare wrote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet;” however, psychologists have found this is not true, that words impact the way…

  • CIS515 Strategies for Database Systems: The O/R Problem: Mapping Between Relational and Object-Oriented Methodologies

    A PDF of this Paper is available here. Introduction Relational databases are set of tables defining the columns of the rows they contain, which are also conceptualized as relations defining the attributes of the tuples they store. Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) abstract the normalized relational structures underlying the system away from the user, allowing…

  • A Letter to Roger Ebert Concerning a Misconception About Evolution

    Dear Roger Ebert, In your recent review of “Extract,” you made the comment about the film “Idiocracy” that “those Idiots had the benefit of a few hundred years during which to refute Darwin by evolving less intelligence.” I know that you are a man who appreciates science, and thought you should know that your statement…

  • Norfolk Botanical Gardens: Bonzai Show

    40 Year Old Bonzai Yew Tree Artist: Walter Lisicki / Joseph White It was merely a happy coincidence that Vicky and I paid a visit to the Norfolk Botanical Gardens at the same time they were having a Bonzai tree show and competition. It fascinates me how artists can spend decades nurturing these trees and…

  • Google Book Fail

    Found on page 241 of The Library of Congress: the art and architecture of the Thomas Jefferson Building: Google Book Fail It’s a wonder we don’t see more pages like this, considering the Google Geeks have hundreds of thousands of books to scan.