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Tag: science

  • The National Zoological Park Part I

    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…

  • Science Gift Ideas: RoboRally

    Roborally Allow me to introduce you to one of the coolest board games you’ve never heard of. In RoboRally, players steer robots around a factory filled with lasers, pits, and conveyor belts in a race to reach the finish line. Each round, players are dealt a random set of instruction cards, with which they must…

  • Science Gift Ideas: Howtoons, The Possibilities are Endless

    howtoons.com Cloud of Legends I was all about Do It Yourself (DIY) as a kid. I built a crossbow out of tree branches that shot bamboo arrows, a boat out of an innertube and piece of plywood, and was forever tricking my dirt bike out. Inventors Dr. Saul Griffith and Dr. Joost Bonsen and comic…

  • Science Gift Ideas: Snap Circuits

    Snap Circuits Junior Set I picked up a Snap Circuits Junior kit online, and it is undeniably fun. This is like an erector set for electronics. There are 101 experiments listed in the instruction manual, and I managed to run through most of the experiments over two nights of playing with it. I did come…

  • Holiday Light-emitting Diodes (LEDs)

    LED Holiday Tree at Port Discover LEDs are the future of light, and may soon overtake Compact Fluorescent bulbs as the best choice for efficient home lighting. LEDs don’t have filaments, the part that easily burns out in ordinary bulbs, and they do not product heat like incandescent bulbs. LEDs also last far longer than…

  • Futurama Fans Rejoice!

    All Hail Hypnotoad! I finally got to pick up a copy of the First Carbon Neutral DVD from FOX, Futurama: Bender’s Big Score, this weekend, and I’m very much enjoying my geek-humor fix. Some big brains go into making Futurama. Executive Producer David X. Cohen has a master’s degree in computer science from UC Berkeley.…

  • The Complex William Jennings Bryan

    Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan A family friend was giving a talk at the American Anthropological Association’s Annual Meeting in DC this last week, which exposed me to a wide variety of interesting and intellectually diverse subjects from many different speakers. One brief lecture that hit close to a subject I hold dear came…

  • “Life Flows on Within You Without You”

    World clock in Ulm, Germany Tempus Fugit In the last second, cesium-133 atoms around the world oscillated through 9,192,631,770 radiation cycles in atomic clocks measuring International Atomic Time (TAI)*. While you read the previous sentence, 400,000 billion neutrinos from the sun passed through you*. By the time you finish reading this paragraph, you will have…

  • Global Dimming – Yet Another Complication in Climate Modeling

    Detail of Chris Jordan’s Jet Trails Depicts 11,000 jet trails, equal to the number of commercial flights in the US every eight hours. This research is old news, and complicates the whole Global Warming debate even further. Air pollution might be behind observations that the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth’s surface has gone…

  • Happy Evolution Day!

    Charles Darwin (1809-1882) Photo by J. Cameron, 1869 On this day, 148 years ago, Charles Darwin first published The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (wikipedia). Although the book and specifics of Darwin’s orginal theory have been improved upon, as the evolving body of scientific knowledge perpetually works out the myriad details of…

  • Review of Michael Crichton’s “State of Fear”

    LOLQuack Michael Crichton So I found a copy of Crichton’s book, State of Fear, in a box labeled “Free Books!” at the Coast Guard base, and figured I should go ahead and read it. I’ve read most of his other fiction, which is equally disposable, but usually a fun and brainless way to burn some…

  • We Live in the Cosmic Boondocks

    I hate living in the boonies. No, I’m not referring to Northeastern North Carolina, I’m referring to our location on a scope that surpasses geography and ventures into cosmology. Our sun is one of about 200 billion stars swirling around in a galaxy that’s a 100,000 light years across. If only 10 percent of those…