Science

The Big Idea

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You may or may not have attended university. Maybe you studied science.  Or wish you had.  Or will.  Still, nothing prepares you for the big idea, presented with charisma that is as impressive as the idea.  Click to the right (Krulwich wonders) to see this idea laid out courtesy of one of our favorite science communicators:

Here it is, in a nutshell: The logic of science boiled down to one, essential idea. It comes from Richard Feynman, one of the great scientists of the 20th century, who wrote it on the blackboard during a class at Cornell in 1964.

Zimmer Jive

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The ever clever science writer, Carl Zimmer, has an item in the new issue of National Geographic, accompanied by a lovely short video illustration, which you can see by clicking the image above (also see a sample of the opening below):

The Common Hand

Humans, of course, have them. So do bats, cats, dolphins, elephants, and frogs. Our artwork takes you inside these useful appendages.

By Carl Zimmer

Illustration by Bryan Christie Continue reading →

Selective Pantheon

/ Crist Inman / 1 Comment

The Guardian, more than most newspapers, investigates and reports stories of historical-scientific “cabinet of curiosities” value that match our interests on this site.  This slide show below is an example, and is worth a visit.

It is a side show, actually, from a story the paper covered titled “How a book about fish nearly sank Isaac Newton’s Principia” (also worth a visit) and had the subtitle “Poor sales of lavishly illustrated book forced Royal Society to go back on promise to finance publication of Newton’s Principia;” so if pictures intrigue you visit their site and read the captions for each image.

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Less Light, Please

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Click the image to the right to go to the Guardian’s article in today’s paper about a campaign to reduce light pollution.  We tend to like these stories, and that publication, and have been known to support pollution-reducing schemes in our own communities; but quoting our favorite cosmos guru ensures attention: Continue reading →

Sweet Sounds

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Click the image above for the fourth installment, and best yet, in a series of short posts on Smithsonian’s website, discussing the relationship between food and sound:

The sound of food matters. So does the sound of the packaging and the atmospheric sounds we hear when we’re eating. We’re all synesthesiates when we sit down to dinner.

Continue reading →

Do You Remember These Dates?

/ Crist Inman / 6 Comments

On July 20-22, 2007 all these people attended a workshop of sorts.  On those exact dates I was with my family on a small island in the Adriatic sea, watching off in the distance as fire fighters in airplanes performed their heroics in the forests surrounding Dubrovnik.  Little did I know that Daniel Kahneman was leading a master class for Edge (and those attendees) titled “A SHORT COURSE IN THINKING ABOUT THINKING.” Continue reading →

Yoga & Evolution

/ Crist Inman / 1 Comment

A few months ago there was an article in The New York Times that apparently caused a ruckus (click the image to the left to read The Guardian‘s coverage of that aftermath) in the Western yoga community.  Maybe it is because I am not a member of the Western yoga community that, when I read the article originally I thought:   Brilliant.  Eastern tradition meets Western science.  Evolution.  Improvement.

Today I had a reminder about that article, and my response to it, while listening to this podcast.  The journalist (a Pulitzer-toting science writer who also has practiced yoga for more than 40 years and recently published The Science Of Yoga) writing that article says something about half way through that rings true: Continue reading →

Canopy Capture

/ Organikos / 1 Comment

Click the image above to go to a story covered in Wired about a novel approach to mapping threatened rainforest, using existing technology in an innovative manner:

A small, twin-propeller plane flies over the Amazon rainforest in eastern Peru. The scale of the vegetation is extraordinary. The tree canopy stretches as far as the eye can see — an endless array of broccoli florets bounded only by haze and horizon. Greg Asner, 43, has seen the rainforest from this vantage point many times before, but he still stares out of the window in rapt fascination.

Continue reading →

Photographing New Frontiers

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At first glance, we want to go there.  Is it somewhere in the southwest of the United States, or maybe those amazing mountains in Jordan where the dwellings of Petra might be just around the corner? Continue reading →

Celebrating Difficulty

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Meg’s post, considering the image and the beginning, might have taken a different turn.  Click the image above to go to a short blog post by astrophysicist Adam Frank, which has a photograph remarkably similar to Meg’s as its header.  Where Frank goes, we follow. Continue reading →

Temporal Mapping

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Thanks to The Morning News, and Rosecrans Baldwin in particular, for bringing this book out of the specialty section and to our attention:

Selections from a captivating history of timelines—from time circles to time dragons, to a history of the world drawn on a single piece of paper.

Continue reading →

Leading From Behind

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We avoid politics as a rule, and weapons even more so; but from time to time there are reasons for exceptions.  The photo above represents one such occasion.  Click it to go to the source, which captions the photo:

President Obama reacts as 14-year-old Joey Hudy of Phoenix launches a marshmallow from his “Extreme Marshmallow Cannon” during the White House Science Fair.

Continue reading →

The Cyberspace Jungle

/ James Zainaldin / 3 Comments

Today, we are bombarded with information. Millions of bits–photos, text, video–stream by us every second we’re on the web. And we’re always on the web. Mobile devices on 3G (and now “4G”) and lightweight laptops able to access nearly ubiquitous WiFi hotspots mean that the modern age is certainly the information age. And the Internet continues to grow riotously; like a tropical rain forest, millions of unique niches exist, but they are inhabited here instead by users and data. And much like a natural ecosystem, the internet is also inextricably interlinked and interdependent: hyperlinks, reference pointers, and social media make the Internet a pseudo-organic entity that has its gaze turned not only outward (towards expansion) but also inward (towards connections). In its own way, the internet is an oddly beautiful thing. The freewheeling, ever-shifting topography of the web means that from second-to-second it’s never quite the same place.

But for all its seductive beauty and facile utility Continue reading →

Verticals & Travel

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Is it about the nascent field of urban ecology?  The science of water?  Microscopic adventures?  Click the image above (from the collection of the Wellcome Library in London, an “1828 etching by William Heath depicting a woman dropping her teacup in horror on discovering the monstrous contents of a magnified drop of water from the Thames, at the time the source of London’s drinking water”) to read Mark Dorrian’s captivating means of introducing a film, using a couple ideas and images that

anticipated future expressions of the new adventure on the vertical, perhaps the most striking of which would be Charles and Ray Eames’s short film Powers of Ten.

Continue reading →

Ever Clever

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Click the image to the left to go to Dan Ariely’s always interesting and insightful blog site, where a recent post highlights a grocery whose shoppers are committed to lifestyles of health and sustainability.  The opener contains the key point:

Jared Wolfe, one of the students working with me, took the following pictures at Whole Foods a few days ago.  They illustrate amazing creativity in defining what the term “a deal” means.

1) Regular price is $1.99 and the Sale price is?   Two of the same item for $5 — which according to Whole Foods’ quick calculation is a savings of $1.02.  Amazing.

Continue reading →

The Evolution Of Cooperation

/ Organikos / 5 Comments

Several earlier posts have touched on the topic–how cooperation (or altruism, defined here) comes about, overcoming the problems associated with the potential for free riders and other collective action barriers.  The current issue of Nature contains findings from the research of a team at Harvard Medical School.  If you are a subscriber to the journal click the image above to go to the research.  If you want a four minute synopsis with excellent visuals, jump the jump.

Continue reading →

New Symphony Of Science

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Although we are partial to the Carl Sagan & Cosmos origins of this series, John D Boswell’s latest gift may be his best yet.  Only a few minutes long each, the music-video-remix of scientific explanations is a novel approach to getting the hook in.  This one is about evolution.

Aesthetics are always a matter of taste, so the particular style of music, the fast-cutting images, the lighthearted transition from the speaking voice of a well-known scientist to a singsong dub-repeat-dub–all may have their detractors.  Continue reading →

As Seen From Space

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In retrospect, it seems that everyone I’ve met wanted to be an astronaut at some point in their life. And then we found out about the mind-blowing mental requirements, and hastily adjusted our horizons to firemen or veterinarians, or for the ambitious, treasure hunter. But today’s astronauts aren’t the chiseled-from-fossilized-textbook astronauts of the past (at least, that’s how I’ve imagined them) – besides academic brilliance, creative thunderstorms seem to be commonplace in those launched into space.  Continue reading →

Shankupushpam (Butterfly Pea)

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One of my favourite flowers is the cute Shankupushpam, known worldwide as Butterfly Pea (Clitoria ternatea). The luminescent blue flower with the yellow core is the most striking feature. Continue reading →

Vive La Différence

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One of our favorite phrases comes to mind upon seeing the news that Umberto Eco, whose book on experiential travel is as must-read as it is little-known, is curating an exhibition on lists at a museum.  Long live the difference: the man of letters, whose academic work on semiotics even many scholars are challenged by, can write trash-free page-turners as well as travel books and, why not, curate a museum exhibition.  Long live the difference: the museum that resists the trashy blockbusters can invite a man such as this to open his cabinet of curiosities. Continue reading →