« December 2007 | Main | February 2008 »

"Great God! This is an awful place...."

Ninety-six years ago this week, Robert Falcon Scott and his four comrades walked to the South Pole and found the first structure ever put there--a tent, half-buried in the snow, left by Roald Amundsen and his team. The Norwegians had...

Continue reading ""Great God! This is an awful place....""

January 14, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (9)

Florida and the E-Word

The Florida Department of Education included the word "evolution" in its proposed new standards for science education, and started brushfires around the state. The school board of Taylor County, for example, on the Gulf Coast, replied with this resolution: (The...

Continue reading "Florida and the E-Word"

January 11, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (401)

Earth: Barely Big Enough

We enjoy a planet that teems with life -- and we should count ourselves lucky, says a team of scientists from Harvard. They say the Earth is barely big enough for its own good. It's long been argued that in...

Continue reading "Earth: Barely Big Enough"

January 10, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (27)

iTunes May Start Movie Rentals

Apple has remade the media business by allowing people to download music and videos, and now there's a new wrinkle. Bloomberg News quotes sources as saying iTunes users will soon be able to rent movies for $3.99 for 24 hours....

Continue reading "iTunes May Start Movie Rentals"

January 9, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (3)

Boeing 787 May Have Security Flaw

Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner, scheduled to start carrying passengers in November, may have the most unlikely of security flaws, according to Kim Zetter, who writes for WIRED. The plane will be equipped with online access, so that passengers can surf...

Continue reading "Boeing 787 May Have Security Flaw"

January 8, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (15)

Killer Bees Wiped Out Dinosaurs!

Well, almost. There's a new book, written by the husband-wife team of George and Roberta Poinar, that says the last dinosaurs may have been killed off by biting insects -- not simply, as prevailing theory has had it, by a...

Continue reading "Killer Bees Wiped Out Dinosaurs!"

January 7, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (34)

Evolution: the Pushback

The National Academy of Sciences has had its say on evolution. The Discovery Institute, which promotes the idea of intelligent design, replies that the academy "manages to celebrate evolution as an unassailable truth, completely misrepresent intelligent design, and rehash the...

Continue reading "Evolution: the Pushback"

January 4, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (421)

Evolution: "Overwhelming and Compelling"

The National Academy of Sciences has released a book called "Science, Evolution and Creationism" -- a strongly-worded answer to the Creationist movement and the doubts about Darwin that many people express in polls and elsewhere. "Evolution is both a fact...

Continue reading "Evolution: "Overwhelming and Compelling""

January 3, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (508)

Ask Mom? Or the Internet?

If you're in trouble -- if you have a medical problem, or the IRS has sent a strangely-worded letter -- where do you turn? According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project: "For help with a variety of common...

Continue reading "Ask Mom? Or the Internet?"

January 2, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (1)

Anyone Out There?

For 40 years now, the antennae of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence have kept up the vigil, patiently scanning the sky for any signal that might have been sent our way by beings elsewhere in the universe, signals that presumably...

Continue reading "Anyone Out There?"

January 2, 2008 | Permalink | User Comments (37)