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Beetles, bottles, and enraptured togetherness
Robert Krulwich wrote an essay about the beetles/bottles discovery that resulted in the 2011 Ig Nobel biology prize. That prize was awarded to Darryl Gwynne (of CANADA and AUSTRALIA and the UK and the USA) and David Rentz (of AUSTRALIA and the USA) for discovering that a certain kind of beetle mates with a certain kind of Australian beer [...]
Extraocular Phototransduction: more than meets the eye? (part 2)
We recently drew attention to the 1998 discovery at Cornell regarding the possibility of tweaking one’s cicadian rhythms by shining a bright light at the back of one’s knees. But continuing research into extraocular (outside the eye) light stimuli has turned to the possibility of a more direct route. Why not shine a light directly [...]
Bill Nye the Science Guy brings his smarts to your smartphone
When "Bill Nye the Science Guy" went on the air in 1993, one of the smartest smartphones around was an $899 brick-sized contraption called the Simon Personal Communicator. Today, Simon is ancient history — but Bill Nye's smarts are still circulating, on video, on the Web, a …
The New American Enemies List
Victor Davis Hanson writes yet another report on the Decline of the West. This owl of Minerva catalogs and explains from the comfort and security of his Hoover Institution perch, but I would like to hear some suggestions from him...
More Pottery, More Problems
About two weeks ago, I was feeling pretty good about the date our our basilica at the site of Polis. We dated the church on the basis of five or six fairly secure deposits associated with the construction or modification of the church. The pottery in these contexts is largely the locally(ish) produced fine ware, […]
Murky Research, Monkey Research
June 19, 2013 Posted by Jay Livingston Marc Hauser left his professorship at Harvard after an investigation found that he had committed scientific misconduct. Basically, he made up the data for some of his published articles. It wasn’t the irony that got me – Hauser’s research focused on morality. Show More Summary
How to draw a line on a road
This brief video by Koki Tanaka shows one way to draw a line on a road:
Sally Ride and Neil Armstrong: Space icons get new round of remembrance
NASA is paying renewed tribute this week to Sally Ride, America's first woman in space, as well as to Neil Armstrong, the first human to walk on the moon, almost a year after their deaths.
Ride's latest day in the spotlight came on Tuesday, for a simple reason: It's been 30 year …
‘At the Desert’s Edge’ Gives a Glimpse of China’s Massive Desertification Challenge
In may not be surprising that China, home to so many other superlatives, also faces desertification on a grand scale. According to China’s State Forestry Administration, over 27 percent of the country now suffers from desertification – more than 1,000,000 square miles, or about one-third of the continental United States – impacting the lives of [...]
Space station crew opens Europe's Einstein cargo ship after fungus flap
It doesn't take an Einstein to see that international differences can still crop up on the final frontier: Take the case of the European Space Agency's Einstein cargo craft, for example. Russian concerns about some potentially moldy cargo bags caused a holdup in the schedule for …
NASA wants you ... to join Grand Challenge to hunt down asteroids
NASA's latest "Grand Challenge" is a biggie: Can you think of better ways to find potentially threatening near-Earth asteroids and do something about those threats? Your ideas could become part of the space agency's vision for the next decade. The Asteroid Grand Challenge was ann …
Domestic Behavior as Both Gendered and Raced: Who Does What for Airlines?
While the flight attendant might be a quintessentially feminized occupation today, the first “stewardess” was, in fact, a “steward.” Pan American had an all-male steward workforce — and a ban on hiring women — for 16 years. It was forced...Show More Summary
Modern Social Problems and Vintage Technology: Google’s Project Loon
As our society becomes increasingly technological, I love stories that remind us of the value of simpler ways to solve problems, like a faux bus stop to catch escapee nursing home residents or dogs that are trained to sniff out cancer (both stories here). This weekend we were treated to another such story, this time by Google. Show More Summary
The Evolution of Hula: Traditional, Contemporary, and Hotel
Earlier on SocImages, Lisa Wade drew attention to the tourism industry’s commodification of Polynesian women and their dancing. She mentioned, briefly, how the hula was made more tourist-friendly (what most tourists see when they attend...Show More Summary
Obscene Gestures from Around the World
The phrase “social construction” refers to the fact that things, symbols, places, sounds — basically everything — is devoid of meaning until we, collectively, agree as to what something means. Once that happens, it has been “socially...Show More Summary
Unique experiments on ocean acidification (video; in Swedish with English subtitles)
What will the ocean look like in a hundred years and which marine plants and animals will be left? About 60 scientists are currently studying the effects of acidification in Gullmarsfjorden, as part of a unique international research initiative. This is a project of BIOACID Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (Geomar). University of Gothenburg […]
Does Anyone Really Believe in the Muslim Paradise?
Sam Harris reports on the curious views of one Scott Atran, anthropologist: According to Atran, people who decapitate journalists, filmmakers, and aid workers to cries of “Alahu akbar!” or blow themselves up in crowds of innocents are led to misbehave...
Laser scans flesh out the saga of Cambodia's 1,200-year-old lost city
Laser-scanning technology reveals that the Cambodian lost city of Mahendraparvata, dating back to a time before Angkor Wat, was much more extensive than previously thought. The latest word about the high-tech hunt for hidden ruins came over the weekend in an on-the-scene report f …
Assorted links
1. The forthcoming push for (more) Chinese urbanization. 2. In The Great Reset, there is probably no Nashville Symphony Orchestra. 3. Robin Hanson TEDx talk on robot society. 4. Markets in everything: guinea pig armor edition, and more on seasteading. 5. The face slimmer exercise mouthpiece from Japan. 6. Medicare cost growth is driven mostly [...]
Assorted links
1. Greg Mankiw on income inequality (pdf). 2. Elysium official trailer #2. 3. Mistakes in German architecture, a three-way interview. Pretty amazing, and full of lessons about management and infrastructure and social capital and fiscal policy and principal-agent problems, not to mention the future of Europe: “The pure truth doesn’t get you far in this [...]
- NASA's Mars Science Laboratory
- Mars Gale Crater
- SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory
- The Supreme Court
- National Security Agency
- Edward Snowden
- Tropical Storm Andrea
- Metadata to Find Paul Revere
- Gulf of Mexico
- Affordable Care Act
- Papua New Guinea
- Mars Exploration Rover
- World Oceans
- Bronze Age
- Hubble Space Telescope
- Monterey Bay Aquarium
- Civil War
- Grand Challenge
- University of Oxford
- House of Representatives
