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• Fit!

  The fact that "smart" flies had shorter lives than "dumb" ones isn't necessarily an indication that smartness is an evolutionary disadvantage. Maybe "smart" flies reproduce more. Maybe "smart" flies, while leading shorter lives *on average*, have more total individuals who live long enough to reproduce. Getting your genes into subsequent generations is a better yardstick of evolutionary fitness than living a long life.
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  • Date: May 08 2008
  • Posted by DirtyFiveThirty

• Shrooms

  Check out the April 27 article in the NY Times, "Saddled With Legacy of Dioxin, Town Considers an Odd Ally: The Mushroom". Mushrooms are being used to clean up the site of a former mill in Fort Bragg, CA.
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  • Date: May 05 2008
  • Posted by baughmanzuclazed

• Wow

  Remind me to send my child, if I ever have one, to that kid's school. I honestly don't think I know two people that know that. This kid seems like a pretty exceptional 11 year old.
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  • Date: Apr 03 2008
  • Posted by cmsquyres

• Refreshing

  I think that Jeremijenko's work is so refreshing. She is an artist/scientist who chooses to directly involve her viewers without dumbing things down. It is so sad when people dumb things down because they assume that the general population is somehow unable to comprehend them. Thank goodness for cultural hybrids like Jeremijenko!
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  • Date: Mar 30 2008
  • Posted by Corrie

• What happens when we die?

  http://www.betweenaduck.com/phpBB3/viewforum.php?f=34
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  • Date: Feb 27 2008
  • Posted by BigTalkProject

• I've seen it!

  When my daughter was just a few months old, and a very cheerful baby, she would cry and act distressed every time a certain "friend" of my husband was near her. Over time it became clear that this man had a deeply hateful attitude toward just about everyone - even his purported "friends," and he would happily use anyone to achieve his ends. My daughter knew first!
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  • Date: Feb 02 2008
  • Posted by jessejo

• Breaking! Babies rely on intuition!

  The recent study from Yale "Social evaluation by preverbal infants" published in Nature is being heralded by mainstream media as a major breakthrough that will advance understanding of human behavior. "Babies are good judges of character long before they learn to speak, according to a new study. Infants as young as six months preferred characters which helped rather than hindered others in a simple puppet show," wrote a NewScientist journalist. The surprising thing to me is that this is news to so many. Of course babies can "judge character." Humans are born with many abilities and senses for a reason. We can sense danger before we see it. When the hair raises on the back of a neck, it's the senses interpreting and responding to a potential If two people repeat the same set of words to us, our internal reaction to that person will not be identical. There are chemicals, body language, and energy at play that will bring about a unique reaction. On the other hand, individuals begin their re-education at birth. We are socially shaped to rely less on our instincts and perceptions and more on approved values and responses that are demonstrated in our communities, and reinforced through media. Perhaps next week the big news will be that dogs can be trained to salivate when anticipating a reward.
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  • Date: Nov 24 2007
  • Posted by Shagawa

• Why Sci-Fi should get respect...

  Science fiction writers have been pondering "what-if" scenarios like this (and global warming, corporate takeovers, environmental disasters, global terrorism, etc.) for decades. A lot of them propose real, hard-science solutions. Some are really great literature as well. Just sayin'.
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  • Date: Dec 14 2007
  • Posted by jailbird

• Science is now Trendy

  What ultimately will be most effective about Dr. Jeremijenko's health clinic and the push for sustainability or "going green" so to speak, is that it has become to trendy thing to do. It is rare that issues of science and pop culture intersect, each one tending to fear the other. Hopefully with cooperation, the thinkers (scientists) and the doers (the citizens) will be able to mesh and produce a new type of person with environment concerns and the knowledgeable initiative to build on them.
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  • Date: Nov 23 2007
  • Posted by AcomsRazor

• Watson and Crack

  Watson may have gone over the line from genius to whacko, and if so, he joins a long line of geniuses in many fields. However, his genius is not up for debate as the author claims, at least not among most people who understand his scientific contributions. Rosalind Franklin deserved more acknowledgment than Watson and Crick gave her for her X-ray defraction work that was important to their discovery, but if there are lots of people who think Watson stole the DNA discovery from her, those "lots of people" are people who don't understand the discovery path of DNA. Perhaps they have read polemic books written by other people who similarly don't understand the path. Watson may have become disgusting. The same can be said of Michael Jackson and Ludwig Wittgenstein. But Jackson was a genius at performing and Wittgenstein was a genius at philosophy. You can attack them and Watson for what makes them disgusting without gratuitously and inaccurately denigrating the evidence of their genius.
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  • Date: Oct 21 2007
  • Posted by GoodpersonMaybe