The complex life of Giordano Bruno

GiordanoBrunoStatueCampoDeFiori-225x300Giordano Bruno was a 16th century philosopher, theologian, and monk who was an early supporter of Copernicus’s heliocentric model of the universe. He was also burned at the stake by the Catholic church in 1600 at the age of 42 after being found guilty of heresy by the Roman Inquisition. That combination of circumstances has sometimes led to him being portrayed as the first martyr for modern science at the hands of religion. The somewhat ominous-looking image of the bronze statue of the brooding Bruno that is sited at the location of his execution in Campo de’ Fiori in Rome has become iconic.

The opening episode of Cosmos hosted by Neil DeGrasse Tyson (that I did not see) apparently had an extended tribute to Bruno. Corey S. Powell summarizes what Tyson supposedly said about him.
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Detection of early inflation

A team of scientists has announced that they have detected direct evidence for one of the key elements of the inflationary model of the universe, that there was a rapid rate of expansion soon after ‘the beginning’, i.e., at times shortly after t=0. They did this by using a radiotelescope located at the South Pole called BICEP2, looking for signs of the imprint in the cosmic microwave background caused by gravitational waves triggered by the event.
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A mystery solved?

It happens to me quite often. When I encounter people, especially in a location other than where I usually meet them, I often do not recognize them and cannot place them or recall their names. The problem is that those people seem to recognize me at once and smile and wave and even come up and talk to me. My strategy in such situations is to also smile and wave and to engage in small talk, desperately hoping that my memory will kick into gear and rescue me or that the conversation will elicit some clues as to their identity.
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What’s happening with the Westboro Baptist Church?

News reports have emerged that Fred Phelps, the founder and patriarch of the virulently anti-gay church based in Topeka, Kansas that his large extended family dominates, is near death and in a hospice facility. This is not a surprise since he is 84 years old and videos from a few years ago already showed him somewhat feeble, as if he were in poor health.
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Anita Hill

Those above a certain age will remember Anita Hill and the explosive confirmation hearings over Clarence Thomas’s nomination to the Supreme Court in 1991. I recall following those events and right from the beginning I believed her story and felt that Thomas was a sleazy character personally with extreme views and should never have been confirmed to the court.
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Neighborhood social media

There has been much discussion about the benefits and costs of social media. On the one hand, it enables people to form communities and relationships with like-minded people without proximity being a factor. This has been a boon for people in low-density population areas or who have interests shared by just a small fraction of the population. But one downside is that immediate physical communities may suffer as people withdraw into their virtual worlds.
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The danger posed by anti-vaxxers

There has been a disturbing rise in the number of people who refuse to give their children the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine because of the bogus fears, stoked by some celebrities, that the vaccines can cause autism. Those claims, revealed to be not only without any basis but based on initial fraudulent studies that resulted in its chief proponent Andrew Wakefield losing his medical license, have taken on a life of their own and efforts to counter them seem to have no effect.
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