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I’ve mentioned before that many (most?) Muslims are Creationists, broadly understood. According to Pew’s Religious Landscape Survey 42 percent of American Muslims accept that evolution is the best explanation for the origin of human life on earth. This is roughly in line with the American public, if a touch on the Creationist side. The numbers [...]
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A few years back I was rather fixated on issues of maternal fetal health. In particular I was worried about gestational diabetes in relation to my wife because I come from an ethnic group with an elevated risk for these sorts of problems, and the effect when you are in mixed-race marriages seems to be [...]
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Synopsis: My considered reaction to the suggestion that I may be destroying educationOn Thursday, the Philosophy department of San José State University released an open letter to Michael Sandel, instructor of a Harvard edX MOOC. I reacted to the letter in my post, "Lessons in social justice from MOOCs". I combined a statement of approval for the SJSU department's aims with some pointed disagreement about the logic behind their arguments.
Since that post, I have gotten questions from
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The jazz quartet that plays Saturday mornings at Tate Street is tearing it up today. I popped over Free Comic Book Day for a few minutes to see the costumes, but had too much work to do to wait in line for hours. Fortunately writing exams and blog posts is work that I can do [...]
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Timelapse of fern sprouting. Saturday like.
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There are several factors to consider when thinking about purchases. Obviously, the price of the purchase is pretty important. How much money you have available for the purchase determines whether you will make the purchase at all. But (especially in our modern internet age) you can spend some time (which is considered a cost) and [...]
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NPR has a short piece with an interesting historical story about old-time back-to-nature fitness fanatics: "Paleo Diet Echoes Physical Culture Movement Of Yesteryear"
As Hamilton Stapell, a historian at the State University of New York, New Paltz, found when he went digging into the archives of physical culture, there are striking resemblances to the paleo movement today. And, he argues, this shows that people seem to romanticize a healthier past in the midst of great societal upheaval: the
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Mobs can be pretty ugly; unruly mobs even more so. When they all surge in the same direction their energy is like being caught in a tsunami. Kids, senior citizens, small electric vehicles, all get bowled over in seconds as the relentless mob rolls on. An NFL offensive line wouldn't stand a chance. Checked the time; it was still a few minutes before 8 AM, which was when our annual arboretum plant sale was scheduled to begin, but this morning cabin-fevered
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Her paws are a bit muddy.
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The New York Times joins the Neandertal anti-defamation league with an editorial by David Frayer: "Who’re You Calling a Neanderthal?".
Neanderthals lived much richer lives than ever presumed. They were not exactly like us, but they bred with us and their genes and behavior are part of our heritage. So, be careful when you call someone a Neanderthal. You’re speaking about part of yourself.
Frayer covers many of the last 5 years of discoveries of Neandertal cultural complexity, as well as
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These are tent caterpillars, the larvae of the moth called Malacosoma americanum. In late April and early May, these caterpillars appear in their little tents in just about every black cherry tree (Prunus serotina), and during certain years, they actually denude the trees of nearly all their leaves.
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Clever, informative, beautiful.Via CZ, and many of the more discerning parts of the Internet.◼
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Recently discovered exoplanet Kepler-62e is the most "Earth-like" planet ever discovered. However, this discovery also forces us to reconsider what we mean by "Earth-like" and how we should think about exoplanets in the future.
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Whenever I visit someone’s house, particularly the house of a fellow scientist, I like to browse their bookshelves, partly because I’m curious about what other people are reading and partly [...]
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I am really missing the States right now. Today marks the most exciting sport event in my book, the 139th Run for the Roses, the most exciting 2 minutes in Sports: The Kentucky Derby! I can’t even watch it on TV. (Pole sana for me.) But I was scanning my Twitter feed and discovered that [...]
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The internet is a place where people go to fight with strangers. And because one can make one’s online identity virtually anonymous, one suddenly realizes that one has license to be as crazy and vindictive as possible. The people who do this as a hobby are known as trolls, but even accounting for those people, [...]
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The leaves have started to com out in full now. About 80 percent of the trees are in full leaf now, which creates the beautiful jungle of May.
