Electronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Raymo , Chet (2004 - 2011), Science Musings Blog, Retrieved on 2011-11-24Source Material [blog.sciencemusings.com]
Folksonomies: science spirituality Memes
No Memes Found
Child Reference
Non-overlapping?Electronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Raymo , Chet (DECEMBER 26, 2011), Non-overlapping?, Science Musings Blog, Retrieved on 2012-01-06Source Material [blog.sciencemusings.com]
Folksonomies: science religion 06 JAN 2012
Science Runs Forward, Religion Runs Backwards
Let me posit a difference between religion and science.
Religion: Future>Present>Past
Science: Past>Present>Future.
Let me explain.
Religion, as it has traditionally been understood in its institutional guise, begins with the dream of a comforting future. An escape from the apparently inescapable reality of death.
Which impacts our daily lives in the present. Determines, for example, codes of morality, inspires great deeds of goodness or mayhem. Mandates rites and rituals.
... 1 
notes
notesOne works from the past into the present, the other from the present into the past for support.
Child Reference
Click!Electronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Raymo , Chet (NOVEMBER 22, 2011), Click!, Science Musings Blog, Retrieved on 2012-01-06Source Material [blog.sciencemusings.com]
Folksonomies: wonder electricity 06 JAN 2012
Electricity is Like Magic, but is Also Law
Surely there is no technology that has changed our lives more than the electricity that comes into our homes on a wire. Lighting, cooling, heating, ironing, cooking, and entertainment at the flick of a switch. Cheap, silent, invisible energy at our beck and call, flowing though a wire.
Magic. Wonderful.
One of my scientific heroes is Michael Faraday -- gentle, brilliant, infused with wonder. No one did more to wrest electricity from the gods and make it do our bidding than he. For most peop... 1 notes
notesWe cannot forget when we appreciate the wonder of our Universe that it is governed by laws, not magic.
Child Reference
Going deepElectronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Raymo , Chet (OCTOBER 28, 2011), Going deep, Science Musings Blog, Retrieved on 2012-01-06Source Material [blog.sciencemusings.com]
Folksonomies: universe scale 06 JAN 2012
Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) photograph
Here we go again, one of the epic documents of our time, the Hubble Ultra Deep Field (UDF) photograph, the deepest look into space ever. A random part of the sky, so small it could be covered by a pinhead held at arm's length. A part of the sky -- as NASA says -- that you'd see looking through an eight-foot-long soda straw. A photo exposed over 400 orbits of the Hubble, a total exposure of 11.3 days. The telescope pointing precisely to the same point in space even as it whizzes around the Ear...
1 It would take 12.7 million such photos to cover our night sky, and there are 10,000 galaxies in this image.
Child Reference
Post-post-Electronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Raymo , Chet (OCTOBER 20, 2011), Post-post-, Science Musings Blog, Retrieved on 2012-01-06Source Material [blog.sciencemusings.com]
Folksonomies: post-modernism 06 JAN 2012
Post-Modernism VS Science
In last week's NYT Book Review's back page Essay, writer Steven Johnson tells of his mid-1980s undergraduate years in Brown University's semiotics program. This is from a student paper he wrote at the time:
The predicament of any tropological analysis of narrative always lies in its own effaced and circuitous recourse to a metaphoric mode of apprehending its object; the rigidity and insistence of its taxonomies and the facility with which it relegates each vagabond utterance to a strict reg...Folksonomies: science post-modernism
Folksonomies: science post-modernism
1 notes
notesPM spent all its energies on criticizing science, but science just kept producing results.
Child Reference
Right down Santa Claus laneElectronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Raymo , Chet (December 2006), Right down Santa Claus lane, Science Musings Blog, Retrieved on 2012-01-05Source Material [blog.sciencemusings.com]
Folksonomies: superstition 05 JAN 2012
Santa Claus Can't Live at the North Pole
Here's a riddle for the kids. A man leaves his house for a walk. He walks a mile due south, a mile due east, and a mile due north, and finds he is back where he started. What is the man's name?
Yes, Virginia, his name is Santa Claus. And his house is at the North Pole.
But don't go looking for him there, Virginia. Here's the cold fact: Santa Claus doesn't live at the North Pole.
I knew from a young age that there was something fishy about Santa's address. At the age of five or six I discov...Folksonomies: superstition
Folksonomies: superstition
The ice is drifting an so is the pole.
Child Reference
Sic et nonElectronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Raymo , Chet (2008), Sic et non, Science Musings Blog, Retrieved on 2012-01-05Source Material [blog.sciencemusings.com]
Folksonomies: atheism creationism 05 JAN 2012
Creationsim VS "I Don't Know"
Where did the primal seed of the big bang come from? How did life begin? How did monarch butterflies evolve the ability to navigate to their winter home? God did it, says the believer. I don't know, says the agnostic. The two statements have exactly the same explanatory value. Zero.
Why then opt for one rather than the other? The first provides an illusion of understanding, and reinforces the ancient belief in a personal divinity who attends to our individual lives. The second is a goad to c...
1 Neither explains any natural phenomena, but the latter leads the door open to curiosity.
Child Reference
The thing with feathersElectronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Raymo , Chet (May 2009), The thing with feathers, Science Musings Blog, Retrieved on 2012-01-05Source Material [blog.sciencemusings.com]
Folksonomies: two cultures 05 JAN 2012
Pessimism VS Optimism in Science
By and large, literary intellectuals tend to be a gloomy lot, with little but scorn for science and technology as engines of human happiness. By contrast, science is impossible without hope; it is inherently forward-looking. As Ian McEwan says: "You can't be curious and depressed."
So the two cultures are not based so much on the academic disciplines themselves as on basic temperaments, says Ferry. One is either an optimist or a pessimist about the direction of human civilization; science an...Hope is a virtue, you have to work at it. We are split between optimists and pessimists.
Child Reference
Imagine thatElectronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Raymo , Chet (SEPTEMBER 21, 2011), Imagine that, Science Musings Blog, Retrieved on 2012-01-05Source Material [blog.sciencemusings.com]
Folksonomies: mathematics dna 05 JAN 2012
Mathematical Proof that an Arm's Length of DNA is in Ever...
We know from X-ray diffraction studies that a strand of DNA is 1.5 nanometers (1.5 x 10 to the -9 meters) in radius. Assume a cylinder 1 meter long (the arm's length) with a radius of 1.5 nanometers and work out the volume (length x pi r-squared). A typical animal cell is about 8 micrometers (8 x 10 to the -6 meters) in radius. Assume a spherical cell and calculate the volume (4/3 pi r-cubed). Do it yourself. You will see that the DNA fits easily inside the cell, with plenty of room for all o...Folksonomies: mathematics dna
Folksonomies: mathematics dna
Chet Raymo does the math to demonstrate this seemingly impossible scientific facts.
Child Reference
Kid litElectronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Raymo , Chet (June 2006), Kid lit, Science Musings Blog, Retrieved on 2012-01-05Source Material [blog.sciencemusings.com]
Folksonomies: education 05 JAN 2012
A Poem to Teach a Child
We live in an age of information. Too much information can swamp the boat of wonder, especially for a child.
From a science book we might learn that a flying bat might snap up 15 insects per minute, or that the frequency of its squeal can range as high as 50,000 cycles per second. Useful information, yes.
But consider the information in this poem from Randall Jarrell's "The Bat Poet":
A bat is born
Naked and blind and pale.
His mother makes a pocket of her tail
And catches him. He cling... 1 notes
notesWe are drowning in facts, instead, give children wonder.
Child Reference
The green fuseElectronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Raymo , Chet (JULY 26, 2011), The green fuse, Science Musings Blog, Retrieved on 2012-01-05Source Material [blog.sciencemusings.com]
Folksonomies: wonder 05 JAN 2012
Plants on a Windowsill are a Shrine
[These plants] are here to remind me that mystery is everywhere. The windowsill is an altar, a Holy of Holies. Here is the gift of transubstantiation: dirt, water, air and sun into succulence. The earth teems and roils. On the window sill that old magician -- life -- has some green silks up his sleeve.Folksonomies: spiritual naturalism wonder
Folksonomies: spiritual naturalism wonder
1 notes
notesA naturalist shrine.
Child Reference
In a bubble?Electronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Chet, Raymo (AUGUST 12, 2011), In a bubble?, Science Musings Blog, Retrieved on 2012-01-05Source Material [blog.sciencemusings.com]
Folksonomies: skepticism 05 JAN 2012
Using Google is Like Watching Fox News or MSNBC
That's something I picked up in science, I suppose -- wanting to know the other side of the story, testing one's ideas against the alternative. Of course, one is naturally predisposed to what one already believes. Early nurturing and education is not to be discounted. One might even have a genetic nudge toward liberality or conservatism. Still, it behooves one to approach alternative views with an open mind, or at least as open as one can manage.
[...]
And now I read Sue Halpern reviewing ...Folksonomies: bias
Folksonomies: bias
1 notes
notesThe search engine caters its results to your biases.
Child Reference
The Bright Boroughs, the Quivering CitadelsElectronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Raymo , Chet (AUGUST 15, 2011), The Bright Boroughs, the Quivering Citadels, http://blog.sciencemusings.com, Retrieved on 2012-01-05Source Material [blog.sciencemusings.com]
Folksonomies: wonder 05 JAN 2012
If We Could See the Night Sky With Eyes Like the Hubble T...
Imagine that we could see the night with eyes the size and sensitivity of the Hubble Space Telescope. How paltry then would seem our terrestrial gods, our shabby deities with human faces. How ridiculous our intolerances, how hollow our claims to have privileged access to the mind of God. 1 notes
notesThe grandeur of the Universe would let us know our place.
Child Reference
SoulElectronic/World Wide Web>Blog: Raymo , Chet (20110823), Soul, Retrieved on 2011-11-24Source Material [blog.sciencemusings.com]
Folksonomies: science wonder spirituality 24 NOV 2011
The Molecular Beauty of a Butterfly
When I see the butterfly, I imagine in my mind's eye the extraordinary chemical machinery of life, the winding loom of he DNA, the proteins linking like lock and key, the ceaseless hubbub of molecular commerce that goes on behind the scenes, from egg, to caterpillar, to chrysalis, to adult. Surely, no land of faerie is more magical than the transformation that occurs in the chrysalis, when a creepy-crawly caterpillar curls up in a self-made sack and rearranges its molecules to emerge as a win... 1 notes
notesChet Raymo describes what he sees when he thinks of a butterfly.
