Archive for March, 2007
Saturday, March 31st, 2007
Bloggingheads.tv
My old friend Robert “Bob” Wright, who has transcended the humble niche of science journalism to become a metaphysicotheologicocosmonigologist (free drink to the first to say who coined this term), has created a website, Bloggingheads.tv, in which pairs of pundits banter about Brokeback Mountain, the Academy Awards, Ann Coulter, Scooter Libby, “the surge” and other political and cultural topics. It’s a genuine innovation in the blogosphere, which has attracted the attention of critics at the New York Times, among other media. I was thus delighted when Bob asked me and George Johnson of the New York Times to do a show on science, which bloggingheads has heretofore neglected. So yesterday George and I spent an hour chatting about… well, see for yourself at http://bloggingheads.tv/. Can’t wait to do it again.
3 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Wednesday, March 28th, 2007
“Redesigning Humanity” Review
My biggest disappointment with the “Redesigning Humanity” debate last Wednesday was the physical appearance of the transhumanist “J” Hughes. (Apparently transhumanists, since they can’t get new bodies yet, give themselves new names, like Wry Sententia, which is incredibly cool, and “J,” which is, well, not quite as cool, sorry J.) I hoped J would show up with snapon-tools for hands, a skulljack, ultraviolent-sensing goggles, or at least tattoos, pierced lips
3 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Monday, March 26th, 2007
Zorpette’s “Re-Engineering Iraq” Honored
Phil Ross, an editor at IEEE Spectrum, just sent me the note below about his colleague Glenn Zorpette, Spectrum’s executive editor. Here’s Phil’s note:
My colleague, Glenn Zorpette, is too modest to mention this, but yesterday he took home the biggest passel of prizes that IEEE Spectrum has seen in some time for his coverage of the difficulties in rebuilding Iraq’s electric grid. Yesterday he won
2 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Wednesday, March 21st, 2007
Was Homo Erectus Our Peak?
For several years, my neighbor Kirkpatrick Sale, the anarchist/Luddite/journalist/historian/poet, has been toiling on a book that promotes a variant of the peaceful noble savage hypothesis. Kirk argues that humanity peaked during the Homo erectus era, when we enjoyed harmonious relations with nature and with each other. But climate changes disrupted our arcadian existence some 70,000 years ago, and we became voracious big-game hunters. Our relations with nature and with each
10 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Tuesday, March 20th, 2007
Begley Back at Newsweek
After a five-year stint as the science columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Sharon Begley has returned to Newsweek. This is good news for Newsweek, which sorely missed her talent for elucidating research without hyping it or dumbing it down. It’s also good news for cheapskates like me, because unlike the Wall Street Journal Newsweek provides free online access to its contents. To see why I admire Sharon’s work, check out her new cover story “The Evolution Revolution,” which reports on how neuroscience and genetics are “rewriting the story of human origins” and is inspired by an exciting new exhibit at the Museum of Natural History (gotta take my kids there).
4 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Monday, March 19th, 2007
Steve Hall on Height and Transhumanism
The science writer Steve Hall has thought as long and hard about the pros and cons of technological human enhancement as anyone I know. His last two books, Merchants of Immortality and Size Matters, consider life extension and height extension, respectively, with great sophistication and clarity. The latter book is particularly poignant, because Steve describes his own struggles with being a shorter-than-average child. I’m thus delighted that Steve
11 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Friday, March 16th, 2007
Are You a Transhumanist?
On March 21, the Center for Science Writings is hosting “Redesigning Humanity,” a debate between bioethicists Thomas Murray and James Hughes about technologies for human enhancement. The details right here on our homepage. To promote the event, Stevens senior Suhas Sreedhar designed a poster that presents a kind of manifesto for transhumanism, which advocates the technological transcendence of our limitations. Here is a condensed version of the poster’s message:
5 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Thursday, March 15th, 2007
Mooney on Broad on Gore
New York Times slams Gore…and frankly, I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner. Let me be clear: I have seen An Inconvenient Truth, and I found it almost entirely accurate. Gore has done a tremendous job of drawing attention to this issue and he gets the science right by and large. But my question as a point of strategy has always been: Why include the 1 to 5 percent
2 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Wednesday, March 14th, 2007
Who’s Hyping Global Warming?
Brian will love this. That was my first thought when I read “From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype,” in yesterday’s New York Times. William J. Broad (who spoke at Stevens last year about his book The Oracle) reports on the concerns of some scientists about Al Gore’s film Inconvenient Truth. “These scientists argue that some of Mr. Gore’s central claims are exaggerated and erroneous,” Broad
6 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Monday, March 12th, 2007
Preserving Free Will
John Timpane–a poet, editor for the Philadelphia Inquirer oped page and, most importantly, CSW Friend–shares my obsession with free will. In his wonderful, wise little essay, headlined “It has been a core belief for ages. Now, it seems to be threatened by some scientific experiments,” John suggests how free will can be reconciled with our increasingly deterministic view of human thought and behavior. By the way, Jeffrey Rosen also touches on the tension between free will and scientific determinism in his cover story for yesterday’s New York Times Magazine, “The Trials of Neurolaw: How advances in brain science could transform our legal system.” The debate over the (non)existence of free will is so much more interesting than the debate over God!
5 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Saturday, March 10th, 2007
Legislating Science
Wired News reported yesterday that New Mexico state legislators are voting on a bill that will declare Pluto a planet after all, at least “as Pluto passes overhead through New Mexico’s excellent night skies.” The bill is misguided in legislating scientific classifications, but Pluto was discovered by a scientist working in New Mexico, so a day of recognition–March 13 would become Pluto Planet Day–may well be appropriate.
12 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by admin
Friday, March 9th, 2007
The Crochet Coral Reef
When practiced by someone as creative as Margaret Wertheim, science journalism can take you down some strange and delightful paths. Author of Pythagoras’ Trousers and Pearly Gates of Cyberspace, Wertheim is the founder and director of the Institute for Figuring. An excerpt from its manifesto:
Throughout history humans have developed a vast variety of methods for investigating and constructing different types of figures – what we might term
1 Comment » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Tuesday, March 6th, 2007
Friends of the CSW, Welcome!
On February 23, I wrote my last post for Horganism, my blog for Discover. I enjoyed raving there for the last five months, but it’s good to be back here at stevens.edu/csw, where I used to rant as “The Scientific Curmudgeon.” For now, rather than using either of those tags, I’ll just jabber here on the CSW blog.
This site has added a few items recently.
2 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan