More Grumbine Science

Last week was hiatus because I was working on things that didn't quite make it to completion.  This includes evaluating last year's sea ice estimates (Alastair won both his bets with me so is now even), and writing up this year's estimates (all our estimates are lower than last year this time, but not as low as last year's observations). This week, it is that I away from home and had a hard computer failure.  I don' like long typing on a touch screen, which is what I'm doing at the […]

XKCD captured perfectly where scientists start from in terms of relating to others about their subject:What we do, the part of the universe we study, is wonderful, fascinating, and we want to run around sharing our wonderful discoveries with everybody.  Including when it's dog vomit slime molds.  See also my niece's write up from jr. high about knight anoles.And that's what makes the Spock problem such a problem.  What I mean by this is that there is heavy cultural (in the US at […]

I've been active on twitter lately (@rgrumbine).  The 140 character limit poses the problems to me that regular readers would expect.  140 words is pretty short for me.  Still, there are some good things out there (I'll be posting a raft of links from my twitter feeds Real Soon Now).  And sometimes a short comment is sufficient, but reminds me of things worth more than 140 characters.One short comment, bizarre to me, was that scientists don't criticize each other's […]

Carl Zimmer, whose work I've enjoyed for years, recently had an article on how we're all (those of us with any European ancestry at all, which is more than you might think) related to Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus, Very great grandpa Chuck) and each other.  I contributed a few comments, and the scientist author of the article 'cousin' Carl was writing about entered the discussion.  I took the chance to grill, er, ask a couple of questions.  I've read many a book on historical […]

Some of us carry science with us throughout our life.  I'm one, and think we tend to have more fun in our lives.  That's the method aspect.  To my mind, the absolutely central aspect of science is "try to learn more about how the universe works".  All of us can do this, in almost any circumstance.  Some don't choose to do it, but even if you're not doing it at a professional level, you can do it.  Learning things about the world _you_ didn't know before is, still, […]