Science in everyday life
jstemwedel | February 8, 2010Here are some of the thoughts and questions that stayed with me from this session. (Here are my tweets from the session and the session's wiki page.)
This was sort of an odd session for me -- not so much because of the topics taken up by session leaders Tamara Krinsky and Jennifer Ouellette, but because of my own sense of ambivalence about a lot of "entertainment" these days.
The session itself had lots of interesting glimpses of the work scientists are doing to help support filmmakers (and television producers, and game designers, and producers of other kinds of entertainment) who want to…
jstemwedel | January 18, 2010Session description: What is a sellable idea? How do you develop one? Is your idea enough for a book, is there more you can do to develop it, or should it just be a magazine article or series of blog posts? This will be a hands-on nuts and bolts workshop: Come with ideas to pitch. Better yet, bring a short (1 page or less) written proposal to read and workshop. This workshop will provide handouts on proposal writing as well as sample proposals you can use to help develop your own in the future. Useful for anyone hoping to someday write for print or online publications.
The session was led by…
jstemwedel | January 18, 2010Session description: Over the past several years, the Internet has tangibly changed the way that movies and TV shows are produced and marketed. Blogs will call out ridiculous scientific errors found in stories and the critique can go viral very quickly; therefore, science advising is on the rise in an attempt to add some semblance of plausibility to your favorite flicks. As tools on the web continue to evolve, filmmakers and television creators are finding new ways to connect with and market to their viewers. For some shows, this has meant tapping into the science featured in their content,…
jstemwedel | December 21, 2009Here in the Northern Hemisphere (of Earth), today marks the Winter Solstice. Most people have some understanding that this means today is the day of minimum sunlight, or the longest night of the year. Fewer people, I think, have a good astronomical sense of why that is the case.
So, in honor of the solstice, let's do some old school astronomy. Really old school.
Let's consider the two-sphere cosmos:
To the ancients, it was perfectly reasonable to assume the earth is stationary. (Indeed, it wasn't until Galileo that there was a really persuasive argument that an Earth-in-motion was…
jstemwedel | August 13, 2009I'm not a regular reader of USA Today, but Maria tweeted this story, and I feel like I need to say something about it or else risk leaving it rattling around in my head like marbles under a hubcap:
About 70% of Americans agree, either somewhat or strongly, that it's beneficial for women to take her husband's last name when they marry, while 29% say it's better for women to keep their own names, finds a study being presented today at the American Sociological Association's annual meeting in San Francisco.
Researchers from Indiana University and the University of Utah asked about 815 people a…
jstemwedel | May 5, 2009You know and I know that science is cool, but for some reason kids can be suspicious of our declarations to this effect. (Maybe it has to do with our enthusiasm for vegetables that they don't like, not to mention naps.)
However, Susan the Scientist is on a mission to let kids know that science rocks! Here's a taste:
Using science experiments to solve problems that come up in everyday life is cool. Playing with fire is cooler. (I dig the music, too, but let's pretend I didn't say that, lest it convince the kids that the music is lacking that Jonas sais quoi.)
Of course, Susan the…
jstemwedel | April 22, 2009
The Urban Homestead: Your guide to self-sufficient living in the heart of the city.
by Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen
Port Townsend, WA: Process Media
2008
In honor of Earth Day, here's a brief review of a fascinating book about making your lifestyle more sustainable. While some friends of the blog jokingly refer to this as "that hipster survivalist book," The Urban Homestead is not a book about how to be a green poseur. Rather, it is a book that breaks down various elements of living greener and lays out a variety of strategies -- some easy and some ambitious -- to make it happen
Included…
jstemwedel | April 21, 2009
I've mentioned before that I grew up in a family that was fairly captivated by the U.S. space program, especially the Apollo program that brought humans to the Moon. But as impressive as those manned missions to the Moon were, what did the Apollo program accomplish? Where are our moon-bases?
Orphans of Apollo, a documentary film by Michael Potter, explores what one group of space exploration enthusiasts did when NASA's commitment to the space age seemed to falter. By the mid-1970s, the Apollo program that put Americans on the moon was done, with two planned Apollo missions cancelled.…
jstemwedel | April 9, 2009Frequent commenter, sibling, and bon vivant Uncle Fishy recently set up a backyard beehive, but lately he's been worried about the bees. This came up in a recent online chat:
Dr. Free-Ride: So, what's worrisome about your bees?
Uncle Fishy: i dont know if they'll make it
Dr. Free-Ride: :-(
Uncle Fishy: there were fewer coming out to sting me last night
Uncle Fishy: maybe it was just past their bedtime
Dr. Free-Ride: Maybe they had better things to do than sting you again
Uncle Fishy: well, I may be attriting more of them that I need
Uncle Fishy: I may not yet have a queen
Dr. Free-Ride: Uh…
jstemwedel | February 26, 2009At the New York Times Room for Debate Blog, a bunch of commentators were asked to weigh in with easy-to-make changes Americans might adopt to reduce their environmental impact. One of those commentators, Juliet Schor, recommends eating less meat:
Rosamond Naylor, a researcher at Stanford, estimates that U.S. meat production is especially grain intensive, requiring 10 times the grain required to produce an equivalent amount of calories than grain, Livestock production, which now covers 30 percent of the world's non-ice surface area, is also highly damaging to soil and water resources.…
jstemwedel | February 17, 2009Owing to the fact that children are vectors of disease, three out of four members of the Free-Ride household have been feverish, achy, sneezy, sleepy, and grumpy for the past few days. (It's not clear yet whether the progression of this bug will include other dwarves.)
Since I'm still kind of dopey, in lieu of a content-ful post, I'm offering some random musings from the sickbed.
Parental fever detection:
Before we go looking for the ear-thermometer, we check for fevers the old-fashioned way: kissing the forehead. If a forehead feels hot (or even warmer than usual) to our lips, then you can…
jstemwedel | January 30, 2009The 12th annual Great Backyard Bird Count, sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the National Audubon Society, will be taking place February 13-16, 2009. This is a lovely (and long-running) bit of citizen science that aims to compile a continent-wide snapshot of bird populations during a few days in February before the spring migrations have started.
Participation is easy:
Plan to spend at least 15 minutes on at least one of the days of the count (Feb. 13, Feb. 14, Feb. 15, or Feb. 16) outdoors counting birds. You can do a count on more than one of the days if you want, and you…
jstemwedel | January 28, 2009Remember the scares around December 2007 about lead in children's toys manufactured in China? Back then, people cried out for better testing to ensure that products intended for children were actually safe for children. Partly in response to this outcry, a new law, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act, was passed. The intent of the law is to protect kids from harm from lead (and other substances) in children's products. However, the effect of the law may be something else altogether.
I've been meaning to post on this for awhile, but I've finally been spurred into action by my…
jstemwedel | January 16, 2009Counter Culture Coffee generously invited us to join us for their regular Friday morning cupping at their Durham, North Carolina headquarters.
Here are the dimensions on which the coffees are evaluated in the cupping:
Fragrance:
smell of coffee when it's dry (undertones, first thing that comes to mind)
Aroma:
smell off coffee just off the boil (under 200 oF)
Break:
Crust forming on top from brewing -- from CO2, unless the beans are stale. After coffee has steeped 4 min, breaking crust of coffee and smelling it.
Brightness:
acidity that bring their own flavor (cf. acids that distinguish a…
jstemwedel | January 14, 2009Around these parts, folks sometimes get het up about issues like scientific literacy (or lack thereof) in the general public, public interest (or lack thereof) in matters scientific, and whether scientists have the chops to communicate information clearly to non-scientists.
It's worth remembering that a large group of non-scientists are kids, and that they are actively sucking information from wherever they can get it -- parents, teachers, television, internet, even books.
Ahh, books. We like books. Books can get kids interested and excited about a topic even in the absence of an adult…
jstemwedel | November 26, 2008For years, you've heard the tremendous fatigue experienced after an American Thanksgiving dinner laid at the feet of the turkey -- or more precisely, at the tryptophan in that turkey. Trytophan, apparently, is the go-to amino acid for those who want to get sleepy.
But according to an article in the Los Angeles Times, the real story may be more complicated than that:
Turkey does contain a large amino acid called tryptophan. So eating turkey puts some tryptophan into your bloodstream. But there are lots of other large amino acids riding around in there too.
For the tryptophan in turkey to do…
jstemwedel | November 21, 2008Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean Carroll gets us an imaginary audience with Les Moonves (President and CEO of CBS) to pitch a new TV show about science:
You have thirty seconds -- which, as this blog is still a text-based medium, we'll approximate as strictly 100 words or less -- to pitch your idea for a new TV show that is based on science. It can be an hour drama, a half-hour sitcom, a reality show, game show, documentary, science fiction, whatever you like ...
Most importantly: Les Moonves's goal in life is not to make science look good. It's to make money. So don't pitch that this show…
jstemwedel | October 31, 2008Earlier this week, I cooked up about a pound of the bush beans from our garden. There was a mix of yellow, green, and purple beans (although, as expected, steaming transformed the purple beans to a dark green color). I dressed the cooked beans as usual and served them with dinner.
As I was clearing the table after the meal, I saw this:
Where did that pink liquid come from?!
None of the ingredients I used to make the beans were pink (or even red or orange). Was this a supernatural phenomenon (HAUNTED BEANS!!)?
Actually, on reflection, I came to a reasonable explanation about the source of…
jstemwedel | October 23, 2008Given that today is Mole Day, it seemed only fair to follow up on our earlier experimentation with avocados. You may recall that, in discussing our efforts to dissolve avocados, we said:
One further experiment we've decided to try at some future point is to investigate whether we can make mayonnaise substituting mashed avocado for some or all of the oil.
That future point? Now a past point.
Before I report the results from our kitchen, let's talk a little about mayonnaise.
Mayonnaise is traditionally made up of oil, egg, and lemon juice (or something equivalent).
You know oil and…
jstemwedel | September 26, 2008Yesterday, we had an urge to do some experimentation and I had a red cabbage that had overstayed its welcome in the refrigerator crisper drawer.
So of course, we made cabbage-water indicator.
An indicator is a substance that produces a color change that gives you information about whether the stuff you're testing with it is acidic, basic, or neutral. Some indicators have just two states. For example, phenolphthalein, the indicator beloved by chemistry students (in part because of the fun of spelling it), is frequently used to find the equivalence point in acid-base titrations. In acidic…