Output Stream of Consciousness

Not published yet, but came across this interesting paper which did a sort of Michelson-Morley experiment but for the expansion of space. The hypothesis being tested was that if local space was expanding, effects of this would show up if you let lasers… more »

Okay, so the Nature article is a little thick. How about the Register, then? I've said for a while that embryonic stem cells were likely to be only a temporary stopping point, until we figured out what their "tricks" were, and could apply them to older… more »

What got me going again was someone asking about the source of a very cool dodecahedral WMAP cutout on Vincent Icke's web page. Well, I thought I'd put my Googling skills to the test again. I didn't find the source, unfortunately, but I was appalled at… more »

In following the "Intelligent Design" debate, when I'm not getting a bit sick to my stomach, I must admit to being thankful for the occasional humourous distraction. The No Free Hunch list (a take off on Dembski's paper "No Free Lunch", which I've… more »

I didn't really think the Simpsons would take on a stronger evolution versus creationism episode... but they did, and while the ending was a little bit 'diluted' from my own views, all in all, I'm pretty impressed at the way it was handled. The… more »

Berkeley has a great, simple, straightforward site for teachers on evolution. In the wake of the recent expansion of fundamentalist (at its core) attacks on evolution despite a century and a half of solid science behind it, it's especially heartening to… more »

Of all places that should be relatively immune to Intelligent Design Conjecture, but there's work afoot trying to get a bill through again that would make Intelligent Design part of the curriculum. That these bills come up so often and get so far is… more »

A while back, when we were chatting to someone who works for the Calgary Zoo, we heard tales of the extremely tame porcupine that alarmingly wanted up on peoples' laps. That led me to thinking, in addition to Dena telling me that there's now a… more »

The Planetary Society sponsors an odd variety of space activities, like the Earth Dials and the Huygens microphone that let us hear the sounds of Titan. Their solar sail program suffered a major setback last year when the Volna launch vehicle failed… more »

Another pre-print from our very own Morley Bell of the Herzberg Institute with another interesting case for intrinsic redshifts in a paper bestowed with the enormous name, "Evidence that Quasars and Related Active Galaxies are Good Radio Standard… more »

File under Uncommon Common Sense... Was talking to a coworker of mine whose father apparently used to put together his own televisions and radios in his home country, and learned a small, very salient piece of common-sense advice. If you want to touch… more »

One of these days, I want to get a projector. It seemed like such a lost cause to go looking for one, though, not just because of the space around here, but because I thought something else would be coming over the horizon soon. I thought LEDs would be… more »

It's a bit nerdy, but here is a page that contains an excellent video of a presentation Ken Miller did regarding Intelligent Design and 'irreducible complexity'. It's a really well-done presentation. I wish science classes had been nearly that much fun… more »

Judge Jones put a lot of thought and effort into this. The judgment, found here, is a staggering (to me) 139 pages long, yet it is easy to read, thorough, and utterly definitive: the Dover School Board was religiously motivated, and violated the… more »

I was reading an interesting news article summarizing the life and times of Mirecki, the professor at the center of a firestorm in Kansas where he was to teach a class talking about mythologies including Intelligent Design, had to drop the course and… more »