Clipmarks | Science Clips

Educating evolution

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 17:49:29 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: It is so amazing that after so many years and progress; educating youth about evolution is still considered revolutionary.
this must be evolved

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash

In February, the Florida Department of Education modified its standards to explicitly require, for the first time, the state’s public schools to teach evolution, calling it “the organizing principle of life science.” Spurred in part by legal rulings against school districts seeking to favor religious versions of natural history

over a dozen other states have also given more emphasis in recent years to what has long been the scientific consensus: that all of the diverse life forms on Earth descended from a common ancestor, through a process of mutation and natural selection, over billions of years.

“If you see something you don’t understand, you have to ask ‘why?’ or ‘how?’ ” Mr. Campbell often admonished his students at Ridgeview High School.

On the projector, Mr. Campbell placed slides of the cartoon icon: one at his skinny genesis in 1928

one from his 1940 turn

another of the rounded

“How,” he asked his students, “has Mickey changed?”

Tags: evolution, religion, education

The Uncertain Science of Sleep

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 01:40:06 GMT

clipped by: titicy

Clip Source: blog.wired.com

The Uncertain Science of Sleep

Dolphins sleep with one eye open. Cockroaches are immune to sleep deprivation. Bullfrogs can sleep through an electric shock without opening an eye.

Apart from the fact that all animals sleep, scientists really don't know much about it. Does it work the same in every species? Update memories? Refresh unused synapses? All of the above?

As paper author Giulio Tononi writes, "Everybody knows that sleep is important, yet the function of sleep seems like the mythological phoenix ... that there is one they all say, where it may be no one knows."

Science Battles Ignorance

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:14:16 GMT

clipped by: AtlLiberal
clipper's remarks: By ignorance I mean literally ignoring reality and substituting myth and superstition. The solution is simple. If the students insist on replacing reality with dogma on science tests let them be graded accordingly.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

A Teacher on the Front Line as Faith and Science Clash

But in a nation where evangelical Protestantism and other religious traditions stress a literal reading of the biblical description of God’s individually creating each species, students often arrive at school fearing that evolution, and perhaps science itself, is hostile to their faith.

Tags: school, evolution, biology, florida

A question science can't answer?

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 10:49:55 GMT

clipped by: JohnWaterman

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

"Can anybody think of a question science can't answer?"

"Is there a God?" shot back a boy near the window.

"Good," said Mr. Campbell, an Anglican who attends church most Sundays. "Can't test it. Can't prove it, can't disprove it. It's not a question for science."

I despise that chicken-hearted answer. There are two reasonable ways to address that. One is to accept the usual open-ended, undefined vagueness of the god entity and point out that the reason it can't be answered is that it is a bad question — it's not even wrong. Science doesn't answer it, but then no discipline can, because it's a garbage question like "what color are invisible elephants?" If that's what window-boy intends with his petty little gotcha, he deserves to have the inanity of his idea disparaged.

The other approach

pin the question down. What god? What actions has it taken in the natural world? How does it influence us specifically? Then you can tackle that god with science by testing the purported effects it has

Tags: religion, science, atheism, god

Robots are also elegant

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:09:47 GMT

clipped by: Duck-x
clipper's remarks: "HRP-2 is the final robotic platform for the Humanoid Robotics Project headed by the Manufacturing Science and Technology Center (MSTC)..."
http://www.kawada.co.jp/global/ams/hrp_2.html

Clip Source: www.youtube.com

[Video]

Tags: robotics, technology

Sour into sweet

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 09:36:18 GMT

clipped by: laptopdj2

Clip Source: www.coolest-gadgets.com

Miracle Berry Fruit Tablets turn sour into sweet

Imagine taking a bite into the most sour lemon you can possibly conceive of. The thought alone will likely make your mouth start to pucker and your tongue start to tingle. I love the flavor of lemon, but if the juice isn’t diluted, there’s just no way for me to eat a lemon without taking one bite and spitting it right back into the trash.

The Miracle Berry Fruit Tablets magically makes sour and bitter foods taste sweet. Similar methods have been around since at least the 1700s, yet science is still yet to figure out a true cause of this effect. It has something to do with a protein called miraculin, but that’s as far as science has gotten us. ThinkGeek put the Tablets to the test and were so impressed that they now sell them.

Tags: tablets, fun, sour, sweet

Biden's embellishments

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 00:45:45 GMT

clipped by: sillysam
clipper's remarks: Full academic scholarship (nope)
Graduated top half of class (nope)
Outstanding student in Political Science (nope)
Graduated with 3 degrees (nope)

AS for the IQ, I don't know Frank.

Clip Source: www.rushlimbaugh.com

This is on C-SPAN, it's an exchange between a man identified only as Frank and Biden, and Frank asks Biden a question: "What law school did you attend, and where did you place in that class, and the other question is..."

BIDEN: I think I probably have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect! I went to law school on a full academic scholarship, the only one in my -- in my class, uh, to have a full academic scholarship. And the first year in law school I decided I didn't want to be in law school and ended up in the bottom two-thirds of my class and then decided I wanted to stay, went back to law school and in fact ended up in the top half of my class. I won the international moot court competition. I was the outstanding student in the political science department at the end of my year. I graduated with three degrees from undergraduate school and 165 credits -- I only needed 123 credits -- and I'd be delighted to sit down and compare my IQ to yours, if you'd like, Frank.

essay on creationism vs evolution

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 16:39:55 GMT

clipped by: kroqben
clipper's remarks: long essay talking about how many who defend evolutionary theory need to rethink their approach because often their responses to creationists are inflammatory (thus hundering honest open debate) and/or do not reflect actual science. the essay deals specifically with the origin of life, and is a response to a couple other essys/blogs that are linked to.

Clip Source: pandasthumb.org

What critics of critics of neo-creationists get wrong: a reply to Gordy Slack

My take: It is high time all of these statements be discarded or highly modified. They are basically lazy, all-too-easy responses relying on hair-splitting technicalities or nearly philosophical assertions of the “even if the creationists were empirically correct on this point, which they aren’t but I’m too busy to back it up right now, it wouldn’t matter” variety. And the worst part is that these sorts of statements mis-describe the actual state of the science among the people who work in the field. It is simply not true that we, the scientific community, know almost nothing about the OOL (what an individual who spent a career working on fossils or fruit flies or speciation might know personally is a different question).

Over the Top

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:04:28 GMT

clipped by: AtlLiberal
clipper's remarks: When I first saw this piece I was sure it was a parody, possibly from The Onion. But no! This guy seems to be for real. He's associated with the Creation Science Association of Mid-America and this was published in the CSA News. Hmmm, I wonder if their secessionists too?

Clip Source: scienceblogs.com

Krazy Kansas Kook wants to eliminate all biologists

After declaring evolutionists incompetent, unproductive, dangerous, at war with Christianity, and to have demanded the elimination of Christians (what powers of projection he has!), Willis finally explains what must be done with us.

Labor camps.

Require them to wear placards around their neck, or perhaps large medallions which prominently announce "Warning: Evolutionist!

Since evolutionists are liars and most do not really believe evolution we could employ truth serum or water-boarding to obtain confessions of evolution rejection.

An Evolutionist Colony in Antarctica could be a promising option.

Kansas ~~breeds~~ attracts the most amazing kooks. (I have been informed that quite a few of the looniest creationists in Kansas come from elsewhere.)

Tags: creationism, science, evolution

"Dudes, It's the 21st century Evolve! girl can be smart & sexy, science-y & sleek" ;-)

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 08:08:29 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: "When physicist Lisa Randall posed for Vogue a couple of years ago, there were all sorts of outrageous criticisms of how she was playing into appearance-obsessed stereotypes and hurting the image of women in physics, blah, blah, blah. No one stopped to marvel at how incredible it was that Vogue -- which reaches millions of women around the globe each month who would never, in a million years, pick up a book or article about science -- chose to feature a woman scientist in its pages at all. If even a fraction of those millions of readers worldwide had their perceptions of female scientists changed for the better, huzzah! "

Clip Source: twistedphysics.typepad.com

smart = sexy

Clip Source: www.nerdgirls.com

Clip Source: twistedphysics.typepad.com

the Nerd Girls: a Website, blog, and collection of curricula aimed at celebrating "smart-girl individuality" and challenging "stereotypes and myths about women in science and engineering.

Apparently this site is controversial because it depicts smart women who are pretty, have a sense of style

young girls in particular are subjected to immense social pressure to look and act a certain way, and this can lead to low self-esteem, eating disorders and the like.

there is an annoying tendency for guys in science and engineering fields to act surprised and become, shall we say, overly enthusiastic at discovering a girl is both science-y smart and "teh hawt."

And Randall Monroe captured the problem perfectly in the classic XKCD comic

Dudes! It's the 21st century! Evolve already

these are serious issues. The mistake many people make

My hope is

this question of whether a girl can be both smart and sexy, girly and geeky, science-y and sleek, will have become entirely moot.

A Teacher On The Front Line

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 12:19:25 GMT

clipped by: debbyski
clipper's remarks: For me there is no conflict between science and religion; I don't need scientific proof of the character of God. Perhaps the people who are arguing about all of this need to keep their minds occupied from avoiding justice, poverty, and war.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

ORANGE PARK, Fla. — David Campbell switched on the overhead projector and wrote “Evolution” in the rectangle of light on the screen.

He scanned the faces of the sophomores in his Biology I class. Many of them, he knew from years of teaching high school in this Jacksonville suburb, had been raised to take the biblical creation story as fact

“If you see something you don’t understand, you have to ask ‘why?’ or ‘how?’ ” Mr. Campbell often admonished his students at Ridgeview High School.

Yet their abiding mistrust in evolution, he feared, jeopardized their belief in the basic power of science to explain the natural world — and their ability to make sense of it themselves.

Hallelujah!

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:58:50 GMT

clipped by: AtlLiberal
clipper's remarks: Finally a ray of hope in the God forsaken science blasphemies. I'll pray that you stay on the earth.

Clip Source: www.theonion.com

Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory

KANSAS CITY, KS—As the debate over the teaching of evolution in public schools continues, a new controversy over the science curriculum arose Monday in this embattled Midwestern state. Scientists from the Evangelical Center For Faith-Based Reasoning are now asserting that the long-held "theory of gravity" is flawed, and they have responded to it with a new theory of Intelligent Falling.

"Things fall not because they are acted upon by some gravitational force, but because a higher intelligence, 'God' if you will, is pushing them down," said Gabriel Burdett, who holds degrees in education, applied Scripture, and physics from Oral Roberts University.

"Gravity—which is taught to our children as a law—is founded on great gaps in understanding.

Tags: humor, science, satire

Future Drugs Will Make Troops Want to Fight

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 22:29:15 GMT

clipped by: Silkweaver
clipper's remarks: Their report, “Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies,” was released today. It charts a range of cognitive technologies that are potentially powerful — and, perhaps, powerfully troubling.

Here are the report’s main areas of focus:

Mind reading. The development of psychological models and neurological imaging has made it possible to see what people are thinking and whether they’re lying.

Cognitive enhancement. Arguably the most developed area of cognitive neuroscience, with drugs already allowing soldiers to stay awake and alert for days at a time,

Mind control. Largely pharmaceutical, for the moment, and a natural outgrowth of cognitive enhancement approaches and mind-reading insight: If we can alter the brain, why not control it?

Mind control. Largely pharmaceutical, for the moment, and a natural outgrowth of cognitive enhancement approaches and mind-reading insight: If we can alter the brain, why not control it?

Clip Source: noworldsystem.com

Drugs that make soldiers want to fight. Robots linked directly to their controllers’ brains. Lie-detecting scans administered to terrorist suspects as they cross U.S. borders.

These are just a few of the military uses imagined for cognitive science — and if it’s not yet certain whether the technologies will work, the military is certainly taking them very seriously.

“It’s way too early to know which — if any — of these technologies is going to be practical,” said Jonathan Moreno, a Center for American Progress bioethicist and author of Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense. “But it’s important for us to get ahead of the curve. Soldiers are always on the cutting edge of new technologies.”

Moreno is part of a National Research Council committee convened by the Department of Defense to evaluate the military potential of brain science.

Tags: neuroscience, war

what makes a science-inspired image truly "art" Bryan Christie Design -magnificent!

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 08:52:49 GMT

clipped by: einbar
clipper's remarks: "But is it art ? that question prompted quite a bit of debate"

Clip Source: www.bryanchristiedesign.com

singularity android

Clip Source: www.bryanchristiedesign.com

bionic insect

Clip Source: www.bryanchristiedesign.com

steam punk man

Clip Source: www.bryanchristiedesign.com

NFL technology

Clip Source: www.bryanchristiedesign.com

batpod from The Dark Knight

Clip Source: www.bryanchristiedesign.com

Lincoln and Darwin

Clip Source: www.bryanchristiedesign.com

russell athletic football ad

Clip Source: www.bryanchristiedesign.com

android brain

Clip Source: www.bryanchristiedesign.com

piggy dna bank

Clip Source: www.bryanchristiedesign.com

super woman

Clip Source: www.bryanchristiedesign.com

New York Times diabetes art

Clip Source: www.bryanchristiedesign.com

wired Formula 1

Do you know what you eat?-)

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:51:14 GMT

clipped by: balthazarus
clipper's remarks: next time when going out, take a scientist with you...

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

Fish Tale Has DNA Hook: Students Find Bad Labels

Many New York sushi restaurants and seafood markets are playing a game of bait and switch, say two high school students turned high-tech sleuths.

In a tale of teenagers, sushi and science, Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss, who graduated this year from the Trinity School in Manhattan, took on a freelance science project in which they checked 60 samples of seafood using a simplified genetic fingerprinting technique to see whether the fish New Yorkers buy is what they think they are getting.

They found that one-fourth of the fish samples with identifiable DNA were mislabeled. A piece of sushi sold as the luxury treat white tuna turned out to be Mozambique tilapia, a much cheaper fish that is often raised by farming.

What may be most impressive about the experiment is the ease with which the students accomplished it.

The project began, appropriately, over dinner about a year ago.

where more people can participate.”

Tags: food, genetics