There's no place like home

From BoingBoing:

In 1988, Leon Lederman shared a Nobel Prize in Physics for his work to understand elementary particles called neutrinos. ScienCentral set Lederman up with a desk on a street corner and encouraged curious passersby to ask science questions. The two-part video was part of SciCentral's Web show series called "Street Corner Science." Lederman talked about time travel, nuclear power, and, particle physics.

Watch part one and part two.

I saw this video over on the Angry Toxicologist's blog and man is it hawt!



Of course, it's the Dandy Warhols!

Brian Cox gives a wonderful talk at TED about the Large Hadron Collider. Brian is a "rock star physicist" who can put high physics concepts in language that even I can understand.

Make sure you watch all of the video because near the end he expounds on our current understanding of the birth of the universe and it's an amazing explanation.



Here is the page with the video and the comments. There are of course the usual "Gawd Did It" people there. sigh

From over at PZ's pad comes this hilarious rap video:

PZ Myers gave a talk to the Freethinkers group at St. Olaf the other day. I wish I had been there.

He has the transcript up and I think you should read it.

I am here to bring you some good news.

The universe is about 13.7 billion years old, plus or minus a few hundred million, and the earth itself is about 4.6 billion years old. How do we know this? The work of astronomers in measuring cosmological constants, in calculating the age of stars and the size of our universe; the work of physicists on principles of radioactive decay, and measurements of the age of rocks; the work of geologists in charting the many layers of rock and puzzling out the mechanisms of change.

Here's an interesting video about Global Warming. It's by a science teacher and instead of trying to convince people that Global Warming is true, he instead works the risk management angle.

As I was watching it, it seemed to sound a lot like a version of Pascal's Wager, and at the end, he puts up a slide that acknowledges that and apparently he has a series of videos that address more questions too. I'll have to watch them also.

In any case, this is well worth a watch, whether you think Global Warming is true or not.



(p.s. He's wearing a League of Awesomeness t-shirt!)

I just bought this bumper sticker. It's totally awesome.


Go buy one.

(h/t to Crooks and Liars)

After reading this article, I no longer "Believe" in Evolution.

You don't "believe" in scientific facts and theories. They either are true or they are not. There is no "belief" involved.

Am I arguing semantics? Well, yes, but that's my point - words and their meanings are powerful and can define the argument. When it comes to science in general and evolution in particular, belief has nothing to do with it - or at the very least it doesn't have anything to to with its veracity.

The other night my mother-in-law cooked a "Turducken" (you know, a chicken stuffed inside a duck stuffed inside a turkey). My wife asked which type of meat she had on her plate and a variety of quips followed - "Poultry", "Some kind of fowl", "Something that had feathers", etc. I answered with "Something that descended from dinosaurs". Facetiously (I hope), she quipped back "Only if you believe in evolution" to which I said "Actually, they descended from dinosaurs whether or not you believe in evolution". Belief (or lack of it) doesn't change facts.

However, scientific evidence has lead to the conclusion that evolution is at work.

PZ Myers has a great big long post up about an editorial by Ben Bova that references a story called The Marching Morons.

Ben Bova says this about The Marching Morons:

The most prescient — and chilling — of all the science fiction stories ever written, though, is "The Marching Morons," by Cyril M. Kornbluth, first published in 1951. It should be required reading in every school on Earth.

PZ takes the storyline of The Marching Morons to task and throughly deconstructs it's premise. I recommend you read his post.

I would suggest to Mr. Bova that the most prescient — and chilling — of all the science fiction stories ever written is actually If This Goes On by Robert Heinlein, first published in 1940.

In If This Goes On, we are introduced to a United States that has become a (corrupt) Theocracy. Nehemiah Scudder, a backwoods (fundamentalist) preacher, was elected President. He is the last President elected as he appoints himself as the "Prophet" of the United States.

The story is about a rebellion to overthrow the theocracy.

The reason that I believe it to be one of the scariest SF stories ever written is that I feel that the United States is not far from becoming a Theocracy. And the President is doing his damnest to grab all the power he can, and the next step would be dictatorship.

More information on the story If This Goes On.

More information on the President's grab for more and more powers.

From over at Pharyngula comes this wonderful news:

The gang at the NCSE have put together Padian's testimony at the Dover trial with the slides he used. You may have already read the transcript, but with the figures added it acquires a whole new dimension — it's basically a wonderfully done primer in the basics of macroevolutionary biology. Next time some creationist tries to simper at you that he accepts microevolution, but that there's no evidence for macroevolution and he refuses to believe it, point him at this page. It's aimed not at scientists, but at the judges and lawyers at a trial, so it's eminently comprehensible to any intelligent layman … and it crushes the bogus rejection of macroevolution that they are so fond of using.

This is a wonderful transcript that explains evolution. I have not made it all the way through, but I will.

I read Monkey Girl recently, and it's very interesting to read the real court transcript of this testimony.

Thanks PZ!