Fred Bortz's blog
Hallmark has announced a recall of its jumbo snowman snow globes due to the possibility of fire.
If only the designer had read the same newspaper article as a young lady who was working on a report for the laser teaching center at SUNY Stony Brook.
Einstein introduced the Cosmological Constant into his formulation of General Relativity to eliminate the uniform expansion or contraction of the universe that seemed to be inevitable without it. After Hubble's work revealed an expanding universe, Einstein called the constant his "greatest mistake."
But in recent years, the discovery of an accelerated expansion of the universe led scientists to postulate the existence of "dark energy." One candidate for that dark energy is--you guessed it--the Cosmological Constant.
(I discuss this as an open question in my book Physics: Decade by Decade.)
New research now supports that notion, though the evidence is far from conclusive.
It's been a long year with a presidential election campaign that never seemed to end and a stock market that exploded with volatility, mostly on the down side.
So why are the powers that be adding more than the usual one day to this leap year, and why should you care?
I'm coming up for air during my hiatus with a request to Science Blog readers.
I want to use the quote below from Jacques Yves Cousteau as a featured quotation in a chapter on undersea exploration in a children's book I'm writing. It's all over the Internet, but no one cites the place it first appeared.
The sea, once it casts its spell, holds one in its net of wonder forever.
Can anyone here help? If so, you can post it here or find an e-mail link at my website.
Thanks all,
Fred Bortz
I'm still on hiatus, but I had to take time to add this to my blog, especially since my old posting on peak oil continues to get enough hits to stay on the most popular list--though it is not as popular as "Old men chasing young women: A good thing."
Today, a daily science news update that I enjoy reading pointed to an upsurge of interest in old-new form of renewable energy: OTEC, or ocean thermal energy conversion.
I'm about to ramp down my blogging for a while, though I will continue to post new book reviews, including one to come shortly.
If you wonder why, read on.
This is the full 800-word version of a comparative book review that appeared in shorter form on the Sunday Pittsburgh Post-Gazette books page. The two books, Anticancer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber, M.D., Ph.D. and Trick or Treatment: The Undeniable Facts About Alternative Medicine by Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst, M.D., may literally save lives.
With the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) coming on line tomorrow, 10 September 2008, many physicists are expecting the long-anticipated detection of the Higgs boson to follow soon after.
But what if they don't find it?
With the "Mommy Wars" once again erupting around Sarah Palin's nomination for V.P., a piece of valuable insight arises in the scientific realm. Planetary astronomer Heidi Hammel has managed to do world-class science requiring frequent travel while sharing the parenting of three children, ages 7, 9, and 11, with her equally busy husband. For insight into Heidi's work and how she balances her life, read "A Conversation with Heidi B. Hammel" in the Sept. 2, 2008, issue of the New York Times.
Then take the next step and read...
I'm Dr. Fred, and I'm here to tell ya
'Bout a Large Hadron Rap and some books to sell ya.
You can buy 'em online, but if you want 'em free
You can read 'em all you want at your librar-ee!
I just got my e-mail about the September Cafe Scientifique get-together in Pittsburgh.
It seems I know the speaker!
In his innovative 2006 bestseller, This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, Daniel J. Levitin, a path-breaking McGill University neuroscientist and former world-class music producer, led readers on a trip inside their musical brain.
Music, he argued, was more than a fortunate evolutionary by-product of language development. The book made a persuasive case that our minds and our bodies would have evolved very differently without it. And it did so in an entertaining style with excursions into autobiography, popular culture, and every imaginable musical genre.
Now in The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature, Levitin extends that argument beyond individual brains to human civilization and culture. For fans of Brain on Music, this is a must-read. For other readers, this is a literary, poetic, scientific, and musical treat waiting to be discovered.
This is a well-deserved boost to my high school classmate and retired eye-surgeon David Fleishman, who has created the premier website for the collection of images and study of antique spectacles.
Read on for details of his latest exhibit: Rivet Spectacles dating back to the end of the 13th century.
The cover story in the August 16-22, 2008, issue of New Scientist magazine examines climate change over the next ten years. It points out that climate scientists are improving their ability to predict intermediate changes in the climate because of an increased understanding of the role of the oceans. It appears that there are fluctuations with periods of a decade or so, and that we may be in for about ten years of respite from the recent upward trend of global average temperature.
This can be good news or bad news, depending on how people and governments respond to it.
If you care about experiential science education, you should discover very innovative RiverQuest program in Pittsburgh, formerly Pittsburgh Voyager. They are now bringing a brand new "green" boat into service. Read on for the news release. Welcome, Explorer!
(Disclaimer: For several years, I was proud to be a board member of Pittsburgh Voyager.)
