If critical thinking is your cup of tea then this podcast is just for you. The Skeptics Guide to the Universe is a free weekly podcast sponsored by the New England Skeptical Society that is dedicated to the examination of paranormal, fringe science, and controversial claims with science and reason. Scientific process and peer review are the watch words of the day on this site! Even better, once in a while the famous James Randi makes a guest appearance on the show.
Category: Science
Alice: Free, Easy, Interactive 3D Graphics for Kids
I was reading my eWeek today and say this cool article talking about a way to teach programming to kids. The idea is that you have this rich visual 3D world that you program the objects in it to move and interact. I took a look at it and discovered just that, it talks about methods, objects, and other tenants of modern programming . Man, I wished I would have had this when I was a kid. It would have made learning BASIC a lot simpler.
Once the students get comfortable with the interface they will be producing animated movies in no time at all. They can draw from a library rich in 3D models like dragons, faeries, spaceships, buildings. There is also a way to import models from 3D Studio Max using a third party utility. There is also a collaboration with the popular game ‘The Sims‘ to add a much more fluid look and feel to the character animations. I hope that when this happens Alice will stay free to anyone that wants to download it. My kids are both fans of the Sims and I know that this would at least give them a clue as to what computer programming is like. Even if you don’t have kids but would like to know more of how all this software stuff works you should download it and give it a try. It’s written in Java so it will work on both PC and Mac.
NASA Finds Sun-Climate Connection in Old Nile Records
This kind of thing is just flat out cool.
The researchers found some clear links between the sun’s activity and climate variations. The Nile water levels and aurora records had two somewhat regularly occurring variations in common – one with a period of about 88 years and the second with a period of about 200 years.
In a nutshell:
When solar activity is high, conditions are drier, and when it is low, conditions are wetter.
Mr. Hell’s Science
This is one show that I had somehow missed. The "Aaagh! It’s the Mr. Hell Show"(wiki) was shown on BBC2 back in 2001. I took a look for it on Amazon but turned up nothing, I did however see that you can buy it on Anime-On-Line. In this exciting episode Mr. Hell talks all about the virtues of science and how it’s made burning the neighboring village down all that much easier. Go science!
(Thanks to brother Steve for sharing this with all of us)
Solar Hot Air Balloons, Not Just For Kids Anymore
Everyone knows about hot air balloons. A great big sack filled with hot air that floats as if by magic in the sky. Ok, not by magic, they float because the hot air takes up less space than cold air so it weighs less and thus floats. I’m sure most people think that the air needs to be heated by great honking propane torches to obtain positive buoyancy but that just isn’t the case. With a thin enough envelope (ballooning lingo for the thing that holds the hot air) you can use the mighty power of the sun to do this job on the cheap and clean. This site is loaded with useful info (some may be in French however) and data for your own personal exploration of the atmosphere. Did I say personal? Yep, you bet. Some people have actualy build solar balloons large enough to lift a person. There are even instructions on how you can build and use a 1.9 meter diameter mini solar balloon. I’m surprised that this hasn’t graced the pages of MAKE magazine yet.
Things Creationists Hate
This is a handy list of topics that you may or may not want to bring up the next time you meet someone that is a firm believer in the ‘good book (no, not ‘Godel, Escher, Bach‘ although that is a fine read, I’m talking about The Holy Bible)
The following is not meant to be an all-inclusive list, nor is it meant to characterize the views of all creationists. But there are certainly some, if not most, who can be so characterized. The main objects of my satire, for so it is intended, are the young-Earth, biblical-literalist types, although other generations of creationists may detect some of their views skewered here also.
I particularly enjoyed this bit:
Ribs…human ribs, that is, present a real problem. I’ve been told, on good authority (by creationists, whose scientific authority is the Bible, and what could be more authoritative?), that men have one less rib than women, because one of Adam’s ribs was removed to mold into Eve. My creationist informant has generally become confused upon being asked if that means one less pair of ribs, or just one rib missing from one side. Then my instructor in human origins becomes red in the face and defensive, if not to say hostile, when asked if he has ever actually counted ribs on male and female human skeletons, living or deceased. None that I’ve met have ever actually tried this simplest of scientific experiments, which could go a long way toward proving a testable prediction of creationism. (For members of the Republic of Texas Militia: men have exactly the same number of ribs as women.)