In the book of Genesis, Adam and Eve eat from the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil on the serpent’s advice, “know their nakedness,” and are thrown from the garden to a life of toil and want – the original sin that in Christianity, …
Read MoreDestroying Budapest
My science-fiction work-in-progress is set in a single city, and I needed to see it to imagine living in it. Welcome to Pest! Only walk on gray parts…. Budapest was a proxy in the One-Day War between Greater Russia and Umoja East Africa. Buda is …
Read MoreThe STEM and the Flower (Education)
Thanks to Fareed Zakaria for his recent column calling out the recent obsession with STEM education — science, technology, engineering and mathematics. I urge its wide readership. The issue is not STEM, of course, but obsession — and it’s not really obsession, in the end, but …
Read MoreRevolutionary atheists vs Stockholm syndrome (John Gray)
Esteemed cosmologist, and my old friend, Andrew Jaffe just posted a quick retort on his blog to a long essay by philosopher John Gray. Gray has an objection to the strident challenging tone of modern atheist thought-leaders like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. I am not …
Read MoreWe might be the first intelligent life
The Economist this week reports on the work of Tsvi Piran and Raul Jimenez, calculating the frequency of gamma-ray bursts. This is not an arcane question. Gamma-ray bursts are incredible yet short-lived generations of energy, cause as yet unknown, great enough to kill all life …
Read MoreScience blinded by vocabulary
The New York Times Magazine recently had a fascinating article about the quest to establish a scientific basis for bisexuality. It discussed the early work of researcher Michael Bailey, who first used studies of penile inflation while watching both gay and straight porn to conclude …
Read MoreAmerican, in my genes?
Over the last few years I have begun to wonder how many of our human differences are actually heritable. Specifically: if Americans, both North and South, are and are growing biologically different from the descendants those who didn’t leave their home countries. It’s not as …
Read MoreAmish barn poo and the undoing of damage
I am loath to question scientists, who are vastly more informed than I am about their field of study. But even the smart can be unwise. A recent New York Times opinion essay, breathlessly titled “A Cure for the Allergy Epidemic,” described a search for …
Read MoreScience and the Jinx
A recent issue of Science News featured marvelously detailed images of cellular division — images that recently would have been considered impossible, since cell structures are tinier and more delicate than the very light used to image them. This is a familiar story, the impossible …
Read More