Random Thoughts
Hank |
George Clooney used to copy my haircuts.
People who knew me in the 1990s always marveled at my classic, parted-on-the-side, immaculately coiffed style. It was retro, just like the term "marvelous' is today. Prior to that, I had a classic Caesar no-part look. He showed up in the television show "E.R." sporting that and I dismissed it as coincidence but when he then jumped onto my "Mad Men without the goop" look, I became suspicious and switched again, to a slicked-back "1980s martial arts villain" look, before changing to what I have now; a random part, more California, less Northeast serious…
Hank |
Hot on the heels of the incident I wrote about in Even Seattle Yogis Can't Live On Sunshine And Water, GreenMedInfo mystical guru Sayer Ji is promoting this light business again, but calling it biophotonics rather than calling himself an inediate or using the term breatharianism.
Why must biophotonics be real?
Because we exist.
Mind. Blown.
In reality, the probability that we exist is obviously 100% but he doesn't understand basic statistics (he does understand his market - the money he rakes in, and the traffic that site gets, dwarfs us and every other science site), because he starts…
Hank |
http://news.sciencemag.org/education/2014/06/data-check-u-s-producing-mo...
So when President Obama was Senator Obama and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress in 2007, they decided to replace plastic spoons with biodegradable spoons made from corn that melted in soup instead of caring about science.
despite the failure of Congress to approve most of the new programs and hefty federal investments recommended by high-profile panels and requested by the White House.
Well, what does that even mean? The president spent the first few years printing money to give away so how can…
Hank |
Charles Hard Townes (AP Photo)
Charles Townes has a lot going for him; he just saw his 99th birthday and 500 people showed up to cheer for him. He has a Nobel prize and a younger wife - Frances is 98.
Oh, and he invented the laser, which just about everyone on planet Earth has heard of.
In 1900, Max Planck figured out the relationship between energy and the frequency of radiation and called it quanta. In 1917, Albert Einstein proposed the of stimulated emission - stimulating electrons to emit light - but it all came together in 1951 when Townes, then at Columbia University, sat at…
Mission Accomplished. Now it's time to go back home.
After two space shuttle missions and almost two decades, astronaut Mike Massimino has left NASA for Columbia University in New York. During the final servicing mission of the Hubble Space Telescope in 2009, Massimino became the first astronaut to tweet from space, and he now has nearly 1.3 million followers.
Massimino is a native of New York and got his undergraduate degree from Columbia University. He joined NASA in 1996 where he served in the Astronaut Office Robotics Branch and in the Astronaut Office Extravehicular Activity…
Hank |
In 2015, damage after heart attacks will become a thing of the past.
In the UK alone, over 100,000 people die from heart attacks each year, but in many cases people who are successfully treated still suffer from progressive ripple effects after resuscitation. When the heart begins working again, there is a sudden influx of oxygen-rich blood and it starts killing tissue it has always kept alive.
That damage after blood starts flowing again is called reperfusion injury. Everyone has heard of anti-oxidants, this damage is caused by pro-oxidants - reactive oxygen species - and researchers have…
Hank |
"Going Deep" With David Rees premieres tonight on National Geographic Channel and if you have little time to decide whether or not to watch it, you are in luck because I can be brief - it's a good show.
"Going Deep" is fun for all ages and levels of expertise because he starts into the concepts and then really goes deep, just like he says he will.
The screener I got had three episodes and the first one debuts this evening. It's about ice. He starts with regular ice and why it's valuable in science and then wonders how to get something as pure and clear as ice core ice from 400,000 years ago…
Hank |
How deep is science writing these days? Pretty darn deep.
Way back when Science 2.0 started there were not a lot of great science writers. There were well-known ones, but not great ones. Journalism was in flux and mainstream media didn't respect it much, and scientists respected science journalism even less than media corporations did. The best writers just didn't go into science journalism. One of the reasons that a pillar of the Science 2.0 mission was revamping science 'communication' was because the public had stopped respecting journalists and scientists felt like they got a lot of…
ZOOLOGISTS ANNOUNCED THE discovery of a tiny, super-cute new primate which can kill a human by licking its elbow. I am not making this up.
The new species of loris found in the Philippines has a poison gland at its elbow, says the American Journal of Primatology. If the creature feels threatened, it attempts to grabs a slurp of poison before biting the attacker.
I reckon this fighting tactic totally sucks. Have you tried licking your elbow? It takes AGES to get your arm high enough and your head in place.
Some time after discussing this, I was in an airport and my kids and their friends…
Hank |
http://www.sciencecodex.com/a_physicians_guide_for_antivaccine_parents-9...
I get a few emails each day from people who don't want to leave a comment on an article, they instead think I am going to personally argue with them over email about what I wrote. Maybe it's a modern Internet entitlement mentality, maybe it is my breezy, inclusive style, but a whole lot of people think I am writing an article to them, and so they write me back.
Most of these are anonymous and want to be that way - they believe their keen insight, chock full of helpful facts like "it's all about the money" is so…