As part of their conversation series with scientists, the NY Times this week runs an interview with Harvard’s Eric Mazur featuring the headline “Using the ‘Beauties of Physics’ to Conquer […]
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California’s varied landscape has stood in for half the world in Hollywood movies. Here is Paramount Studios’ 1927 map of international filming locations, all set in California.
Are some of our elegant symbols of modernity — smartphones and so on — fueling slaughter and rape in Congo? The New York Times on the campaign for “clean” minerals.
One of the eerier themes in psychology papers is the extreme susceptibility of people’s thoughts and acts to incidental details in their surroundings. For instance, this paper from a recent […]
n n Abraham Simpson never explained what his problem with the Show-Me State was, but Homer’s cranky old dad did offer this reason for owning a 49-star American flag: “I’ll […]
I am taking a couple of weeks off. But while I’m away, I thought I’d share with you some of the what I consider to be this year’s essential readings […]
Next week there will be big news on the science communication front. In anticipation, I was just going back over some things that I have written on the topic over […]
Part 1 of a volcanic tour of the Mariana Islands, hosted by Eruptions guest blogger, Dr. Ed Kohut.
The fourth in my ongoing “Volcano Profile” turns our attention to the southernmost (known) active volcano, Mt. Erebus in Antarctica.
A new study in Nature finds that magma from the Chaiten eruption sped through the crust – and you can ask the author about it!
Not merely a nice flower, but also a political tool
Even one of the world’s most comically small countries can look back on centuries of territorial bigness.
Growing up, I spent many a rainy or wintry Saturday afternoon watching classic old horror films such as Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man or Dracula Vs. Frankenstein. It always seemed […]
The Eyjafjallakokull eruption in Iceland added some explosivity to its bag of tricks, but so far it seems to be just steam-driven explosions.
In Expelled, Richard Dawkins recounts how learning about science “killed off” his faith. And PZ Myers tells us that the more science literacy we have in society, the less religion […]
The Sunday Washington Post leads with a story that greenhouse gas mitigation proposals in Congress are likely to stall, in part because several key lawmakers believe (or at least claim) […]
Back in 1920, native-born Parisians were a minority in their own city
I’ve been critiquing the Tea Party since its first stirrings in 2009. I’ve blogged, tweeted, reported, and even given public lectures about its roots in the socially conservative New Right, […]
Economists find dating websites extremely useful, not to find the love of their lives because they provide an opportunity to observe a fascinating market in action: the market for marriage.
n Over 18.000 votes have been cast in a poll to determine once and for all the answer to the burning question: Combien de bises? That’s French for ‘How many […]
n They did a lot of crazy stuff in the Sixties, man. Especially at universities like Berkeley, a hotbed of political radicalism, of experiments with free love and cheap drugs (or […]
n A pene-enclave is almost an enclave in the same way that a peninsula* almost is an island. But only on a strictly lexical level. If we descend from the […]
German commentators think Barack Obama is in danger of turning into an idealistic, one-term president like Jimmy Carter, explains Michael Scott Moore.
This fall in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that individuals and groups are using the internet to alter […]
n n I first encountered the term ‘galoshes’ in the same Russian novels that also introduced me, albeit equally theoretically, to the samowar*. Subsequently, I’ve always thought of galoshes (also […]
Everybody was getting ready for conflict, but at least they all agreed this map was funny
Instead of reacting to the Sunday morning political shows, I figured I’d beat them to the punch. “Cheney’s Katrina” has a nice ring to it. All the guests seem to […]
Alan Boyle, the science editor for MSNBC.com, answers our questions about science, the mainstream media and the fallout of the Chilean earthquake coverage.
This semester in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that Americans are using the Internet to alter the nature […]