Science & Society

For my initial article, I would like to talk about what I intend for this blog to accomplish as well as who I am and what interest I have in science as a whole and physics in general. My name is Kari Wolfe and you can find me in other locales such as my personal blog, Imperfect Clarity, articles on eHow.com for various assorted subjects and more.  I am a freelance writer and a stay-at-home mother of an autistic three-year-old who is quite the handful. More to the point, I have a Bachelors in Physics and Mathematics from Marshall University in Huntington, WV, and am in the midst of a…

Everyone's got a book idea kicking around somewhere in their heads, even though most of us won't admit it. For some time now I've been working on an idea for what I call an inverse post-apocalyptic book, that is, a book that falls squarely in the post-apocalyptic genre in terms of themes and style, but it takes place in humanity's deep past. To put it another way, since post-holocaust novels often feature reversions to a primitive lifestyle, why not view the primitive life of the deep human past (we're talking 20,000+ years ago) as equivalent to a post-apocalyptic setting? All sorts of ideas…

So, I told you that I have an odd job. Though I’m a veterinarian, I work at a large human medical center, behind the scenes, in the animal laboratories. Few of my friends are scientists or medical people, so they don’t always understand how a human medical center could keep a vet employed ---- or a team of 6 vets and a dozen veterinary technicians. After all, if the point is to make animals sick so you can study their diseases, wouldn’t a vet be beside the point? Science lab needs to care about animal health and welfare, for several overlapping reasons. All of these I’ll talk more about…

If the question were asked, what is the primary purpose of business, the most likely response would be "to make money".  However, this is an unsatisfactory answer since it clearly doesn't provide sufficient justification for businesses to exist.  There is no question that we all need and use money in our daily lives, but similarly this would be an unsatisfactory answer to justify why we work. If we considered economics from the barter perspective, the answer of "making money" would seem peculiar because we could only loosely translate it as "wanting stuff".  Clearly if we were…

Sex crimes against pre-teen children are no higher during Halloween than at any other times of the year and diverting law enforcement places people at more risk, according to a study in Sexual Abuse: A Journal of Research and Treatment.   That's not to say parents shouldn't use caution or supervision but the findings raise questions about the wisdom of law enforcement practices aimed at dealing with a problem that does not appear to exist. Using the National Incident-Base Reporting System, the study looked at more than 67,000 non-family sex offenses reported to law enforcement in 30…

I am not the first to point out PhD snoobery.  This is an account from 1903 which appeared in the Harvard Monthly. Quote: Some years ago, we had at our Harvard Graduate School a very brilliant student of Philosophy, who, after leaving us and supporting himself by literary labor for three years, received an appointment to teach English Literature at a sister-institution of learning. The governors of this institution, however, had no sooner communicated the appointment than they made the awful discovery that they had enrolled upon their staff a person who was unprovided with the Ph.D.…

Global climate reminds us it is one world afterall. NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center released the September temperatures. Separately, the combined global land and ocean surface temperature or the average land surface temperature proves September the second warmest on record, behind 2005. The former was 1.12 degrees F above the last century's average of 59.0 degrees F while the latter 1.75 degrees F above the last century's average of 53.6 degrees F. In addition, the global ocean surface temperature was tied for the fifth warmest on record for…

When I was 12 years old, I entered the seventh grade quite unremarkably.  Short, scrawny, and high-voiced, I saw nothing too exciting about my future.  Perhaps worse, those around me saw nothing either.  It was during this time I met Mrs. Klingensmith, otherwise known as Rata.  She was the first teacher I’d known who didn’t mind students using her first name.  In fact, she encouraged it.  Rata taught a one-quarter pre-biology course in which I was accidentally assigned.  “Thomas, you have a curious mind.  I’ve never met a…

The conventional family has changed over the last few decade but regardless of parent genders or family structure, adolescents' perception of proper family functioning has changed little, says a new study. Previous studies have pointed to families without a regular structure, such as headed by a lone parent or including the children of other partners, etc. as leading to a greater risk of teenagers living in such families turning to drugs or being violent, having mental health problems or even exhibiting criminal behavior. According to the new study by the Working Group on Adolescence of the…

Finally thanks to the sheriff we have some actual scientific information on this whole story.   The sheriff with the actual balloon on hand and in consultation with a professor took measurements.  The balloon could not have held the boy due to an 18 lb discrepancy in it's measured weight and the weight reported by Richard Heene.  The balloon was made of duct tape, tarps, plywood, and tinfoil.  The sheriffs department put it back together and it supported the weight of the boy.    He cited a Colorado state rule which keeps him from stating if polygraphs were…