Culture

Do you want to participate in an online effort to create free science textbooks that could be downloaded by any school in the world that lacks proper textbook resources? The Physics Department of the University of Cape Town, South Africa is currently supporting this effort and is looking for authors who can dedicate some of their spare time and knowledge. The URL is www.fhsst.org. Click read more, if you'd like to know more about my relation to this effort. Exactly one year ago, I was in Cape Town, South Africa styding physics and chemistry at the Univesrity of Cape Town. Due to…

King Alfred burned the cakes, right? Wrong. For a start they were loaves – and for another thing, the Vikings reckon their terrifying-sounding hero Ragnar Hairybreeks should take the blame for this ninth century catering disaster. University of Leeds professor Rory McTurk says the tale of Alfred and the cakes is probably the one story we all know about the Anglo-Saxon ruler, a detail as closely woven into popular history as Robert the Bruce being inspired by a spider and King Harold getting an arrow in the eye. But he insists it may be mere propaganda, from a time when much of Britain was…

If yours is a mind philosophically bent on pondering the future of humanity, especially the future that awaits us in the next 30 or so years, then you may have come across the thought in your own mind that we are becoming more "god like," as we progress. You may have thought that this is a useful idea to explore, and that it might give you some insight to what lies ahead. The definition of god that I typically like to use is that which is omnipotent. Humanity is becoming more powerful all the time. Whether it is our technology or the connections we are making with other human beings, (like…

For those of you who have been following my entries, I have been focusing primarily on the big question of consciousness. What is it? What causes it? I beleive the answers are coming soon, so I think that rabid discussion about it needs to start taking place. It's no longer a matter of pure philosophy. And to encourage this, I am going to use this article to propose a thought experiment that exposes a little of how we think about consciousness.  First imagine right now are you sitting in front of your computer. (Or if you have more than one computer, pretend you are sitting…

In order to function properly in the future society, will humans of this asuumably "fast paced" civilization be committed to habitually augmenting themselves past what the chances of sexual reproduction have to offer the progeny of such people?  It is not so hard to imagine that in the future, society will regularly get itself outfited with the latest cyborg accessories, just like getting the latest skins for our phones, or our programs in general.  It is already possible to go into the virtual world of Second Life and buy your avatar a body that has been predesigned by an artist.…

There seems to be a trend occuring in society that is trying to unify the science humanity has cultured and cradled  in order to explain objectively the existence of observable phenomena with the relligion that humanity spawned to give explanation to those very same observable phenomena.  Only it was religion who first throned itself dictator of the minds of women and men alike before the birth of science after the Middle Ages.  It is in this very naturally seeming way that the religious explanations of these phenomena proffered by some ancient and contemplative imaginations to…

I have been studying electromagnetism lately, as in the practical application of Maxwell's equations to realistic physical systems. I find it an amazing fact, that even if we assume that point charges send out their electric fields instantaneously as in deliberately ignoring the postulates of special relativity, we none the less can find the wave equation inside of Maxwell's equations, which of course equates the speed of propagation of electromagnetic waves to c, the speed of light. I must mention now that before you read further, that I would appreciate any feed back on the soundness…

Computer simulated reality will soon be on par with the amount of social dedication traditoinally given to physical reality. Synthetic realities are fathomable only as a continuation of the complexity in the universe. If we were to take the postulate that consciousness arises from complexity to its fullest implications, the next step in the chain of reasoning would be to deduce that we are forming higher levels of complexity in nature by our own interactions with each other. Therefore these complexities formed by the entire collective efforts of individual humans, must be producing…

We don't normally like to highlight people funnier than we are but we have to make an exception here - we mean Lee Silver, of course, not Stephen Colbert, though he might be pretty funny also. Taped last summer, now you can get the six-minute lesson on stem cell research, how science is threatened by the left and the right, and why sometimes "mother nature is a real nasty bitch." Lee Silver on Vimeo

Stem cell technique helps women grow their own implants Daily Mail - Women have grown their own breast implants through pioneering stem cell treatment, it emerged yesterday. Scientists harvested the stem cells from the women's own fat and encouraged them to form breast tissue... Global-warming skeptics cite being 'treated like a pariah' Washington Times - Scientists skeptical of climate-change theories say they are increasingly coming under attack -- treatment that may make other analysts less likely to present contrarian views about global warming... What is sexsomnia? The Register -…