Random Thoughts

Who is to blame for the latest weekly decline in Cosmos ratings? The Walking Dead, NCAA basketball games, a mass exodus due to its opening effort to be culturally in-your-face? There is always going to be competition on TV, just like there will always be competition for a government R01 grant. No point in whining about that. And Cosmos still takes shots at religion, but it isn't devoting 25 percent of episodes to it any more. Across the cultural spectrum, it's been much better during the last two weeks. In Cosmos Ratings Are Not A 'Disaster' For Fox last week I stated that the ratings…

In the absence of any evidence for why different people perform differently in school - other than that people are different - pundits have invented everything from genetic math anxiety to stereotype threat as an explanation. Imagine the stereotype threat if you are the only student taking the test. If you do poorly, it means all of humanity looks stupid. That's some real pressure, no amount of playing Gender Bias Bingo will cure it. Olle Johansson, the first college student in Sweden, at Uppsala University, in 1477, seemed pretty relaxed, though. They still have his notes - 5 years…

The Drudge Report is saying that "Cosmos" ratings are a disaster and, I as I discussed in Is "Cosmos" Suffering From Unrealistic Expectations? the overnights showed numbers down from the premiere, but that is hardly a disaster. 1) It's a science show. That a science show was on a prime time broadcast network - and took third place in its premiere - I would say is bordering on miraculous. 2) The overnights for "Cosmos" showed more viewers watched it than watched either "Family Guy" or "The Simpsons".  "Family Guy" is, of course, "Cosmos" producer Seth MacFarlane's keystone program.…

Malaysia Airlines MH370 - A Faint Trace? Edit - please see new article -Could A Fire Have Caused The Loss Of MH370? The latest information coming from official sources suggests that MH370 was heading towards the Andaman Islands when last tracked by radar.  Straits Times reports: "We are using our helicopter to search the western side of Andamans and Nicober islands,'' said Inspector-General VSR Murthy of the Andaman and Nicobar Coast Guard. Now that the search for missing Flight MH370 has shifted focus I have looked again at the LANCE MODIS Rapid Response images covering the area and day…

Malaysia Airlines MH370 - Verifiable SourcesEdit - please see new article -Could A Fire Have Caused The Loss Of MH370? This is a follow-up to MH370 - Pieces Of The Puzzle, in which I said: There has been a great amount of idle speculation and misinformation about the missing flight MH370 in the media and around the web.  Much of the news story has been colored by idle speculation bordering on xenophobia regarding the stolen passports. The best way to solve any puzzle is to separate the available information into what is known, what is probable, what is plausible and what is mere…

I play guitar but I don't play out for money. Aside from a high level of stage fright about playing guitar in public I think doing it for money would take away a lot of the relaxation. That doesn't apply to all things. I write every day and always enjoy that. So at first blush I might be inclined to think a job tasting beer would be a bad thing, but perhaps it is just like writing and if you would do it for free anyway, you might as well get paid for it. Biologist Elizabeth Belden of Kansas City - the Missouri one, not the Kansas one, yes, there is a Kansas City, Kansas and a Kansas City,,…

In The Federalist Today, I have a piece titled Five Things Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos” Gets Wrong.  So why do I say 4.5 in my title here? One of them is more of a style issue than an error. I could have made it a solid 5, by talking about the gaffe wherein space travel is portrayed as zipping around a minefield of asteroids - in reality you are even less likely to get hit by an asteroid in space than you are on Earth, space is that big - but if the asteroid error is of interest, Brian Koberlein at Universe Today devotes a whole article to it. I had already wondered why we were hearing…

MH370 - Pieces Of The Puzzle Edit - please see new article -Could A Fire Have Caused The Loss Of MH370? There has been a great amount of idle speculation and misinformation about the missing flight MH370 in the media and around the web.  Much of the news story has been colored by idle speculation bordering on xenophobia regarding the stolen passports.  That is no way to solve a puzzle. The best way to solve any puzzle is to separate the available information into what is known, what is probable, what is plausible and what is mere speculation.  This may be compared to a well-…

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality - Carl Sagan I missed the big Carl Sagan thing when it happened. I was in high school when Cosmos came out, we lived in the country and if you wanted to watch a different television network, you had to go up into the attic and turn a giant antenna with a pipe wrench. Sports and girls and D&D were more of a priority than television. Yet even though I didn't watch it when it came out, shortly afterward I could still tell you who said "billions and billions" with that special emphasis.  That and…

For THE WIRED WORLD IN 2013 annual prognostication issue, predictions for the year by some of the luminaries in science media, I predicted that one of the Big 5 organs would be created. The benefit is obvious; organs created from a patient's own adult stem cells mean no chance of rejection and no need for expensive immunosuppressive drugs. Science-fiction/ethical scenarios like raising animals or people for 'harvesting' by wealthy elites are off the table because a customized organ could be grown in the lab. And it had proof of concept - a trachea had already been created and transplanted…