Archive for September, 2007
Saturday, September 29th, 2007
Carl Zimmer on Bloggingheads.tv!
The science writer Carl Zimmer and I talk about the origin of life, extraterrestrial life, non-DNA-based life, group selection, the evolution of cooperation, parasitic neurosurgeon wasps, definitions of life, transhumanism and other big biological mysteries on Science Saturday, the weekly feature of Bloggingheads.tv. Check it out here.
1 Comment » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Thursday, September 27th, 2007
Popcorn, anyone?
Introducing Ben Stein: intelligent design’s latest and greatest weapon to date.
A story in this morning’s New York Times talks about an upcoming film called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, a documentary that bats for the ID team and features the likes of Richard Dawkins and P.Z. Myers as examples of the arrogant, intolerant, and cruel academia that shuns and punishes people of faith when they
4 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by Suhas Sreedhar
Wednesday, September 26th, 2007
Taubes and More Trouble
Couple addendums to my last post:
First: I get home and tell my wife Suzie, “Hey check out my blog! I mention you!” So she reads it and says, “Oh, so you’re the deep-thinking man reading about Iraq in the New Yorker, and I’m the shallow woman reading about losing weight in New York.” Let me set the record straight: Suzie is not shallow, she is the furthest
No Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007
Taubes Stirs Up Trouble Again
Last night, as I lay in bed reading an article in the New Yorker about whether the U.S. can bring peace to Iraq, my wife lay beside me reading an article in New York about whether exercise can help you lose weight. Whereas I found the New Yorker article (by George Packer, highly recommended, but depressing) all too persuasive, my wife had doubts about the New York piece. She kept
21 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Monday, September 17th, 2007
Nisbet, Taubes and “Irresponsible” Framing
Depending on whom you ask, “framing”–the meme that journalist Chris Mooney and communications prof Matt Nisbet have been peddling lately–is spin, slant, or perspective, and it’s a good thing, a bad thing or just a given of human communication. Mooney addressed framing last week when he came to Stevens to talk about his new book Storm World, and George Johnson and I touched on it in the latest Science
No Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Monday, September 17th, 2007
Steven Weinberg, Jason and Vietnam
On our most recent “Science Saturday,” George Johnson and I, whom some Bloggingheads.tv fans affectionately call “these boring old farts,” talked about, among other things, Draino, swan poop, Chris Mooney’s “framing” schtick, Freeman Dyson’s contrarianism, “Fantastic Voyage,” Rachel Welch in a wetsuit, group selection, the demise of the earth in five billion years, space colonization, Alex the parrot, Mario the parrot and CIA recruiting techniques. We also discussed Jason,
2 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Saturday, September 15th, 2007
Kurt Vonnegut’s War Fatalism
After Kurt Vonnegut died last spring, I experienced intense 60s nostalgia and ordered three of his books from Amazon: Cat’s Cradle, Slaughterhouse-Five and Galapagos. (It took Amazon months to fill my order. What’s up with them?) I’m now re-reading these classics and enjoying them immensely. Vonnegut’s bittersweet, cynical affection for humanity holds up well, better than a lot of 60’s schtick. It’s not just me. I persuaded my 14-year-old son
2 Comments » - Posted in The Scientific Curmudgeon by John Horgan
Wednesday, September 12th, 2007
Storm World with Chris Mooney – 12 September 2007
Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle over Global Warming. Journalist Chris Mooney, correspondent and blogger for SEED magazine and author of the controversial bestseller The Republican War on Science, discussed Storm World, his fascinating new book on politically fraught research linking global warming and hurricanes such as Katrina at Stevens Institute of Technology.
No Comments » - Posted in Events, Multimedia by Rand HOPPE
Monday, September 10th, 2007
Mooney Storms Into Stevens
Our current hurricane season has already yielded two huge, Category 5 storms. Is global warming to blame? Science journalist Chris Mooney offers an intelligent, nuanced take on this question in an essay in the LA Times. “When it comes to the hurricane-global warming relationship,” he writes, “neither outright alarmism nor dismissive skepticism are warranted. Rather, taking the limited information that we have and making the most of it should