Conservative commentator S. E. Cupp got stuck in a dilemma of her own making Thursday when the topic of atheism and politics came up on her new MSNBC news show. The debacle that followed was painful to watch, video below. [Read more…]
You walk down an ordinary drab aisle in a supermarket, but you see grocery items stand up and dance a jig, below them are prices, special offers, and nutrition profiles. In the corner of your eye a counter keeps track of the total bill for items already chosen, taxes included, and flashes red when it reaches a predetermined value. A neighbor speaks to you in Mandarin, but text scrolls past your field of vision, maybe a tiny speaker whispers the english translation in your ear. Oh, and if the power goes out, no matter. You can see in the dark.
This may sound like the future, but if Google’s new project succeeds, the future starts now. [Read more…]
To drive the point home in the Fukushima post below, all power sources have their tragic flaws. Are the record high temperatures afflicting much of the nation a result of global warming driven by fossil fuels? Best answer, maybe: [Read more…]
There’s a reason we have regulations in place for various industries: accidents can kill huge numbers of people. But as a new report on the Fukushima nuclear crisis underscores, those regs only work when they are well written and well enforced: [Read more…]
The Romney campaign flailed around a bit over the last few days trying desperately to come up with a way to criticize Obama for “raising taxes” on the middle class for healthcare, while claiming the blue-print plan Romney used in Massachusetts didn’t count as a tax. [Read more…]
While most of the nation was celebrating this week, NOAA released an official statement: there is no evidence for living aquatic humanoids: [Read more…]
You’re going to hear it a lot now: The God Particle has been found. That’s deliciously close to saying God has been found and you better believe some people are going to run with that. I suppose, technically, they’re all God particles, if you believe in a prime mover anyway. But why this one? Why is it the God particle? [Read more…]
On the heels of the healthcare ruling, and perhaps wary of the fury and screams of betrayal that followed, Chief Justice John Roberts will be spending some time abroadin an island fortress: [Read more…]
10:40 am Sean Carroll: Personal editorializing by me: we’ve found the Higgs, or at least a Higgs. Still can’t be sure that it’s just the vanilla Standard Model Higgs. The discrepancies aren’t quite strong enough to be sure that they really represent beyond-Standard-Model physics… but it’s a strong possibility. … Peter Higgs is visibly moved.
Up before sunrise watching physics fireworks streaming across the net. What a fun and crazy world. Right now the Higgs announcement makes the SCOTUS decision look like a one word verdict. It’s complicated. But so far the gists is … they seem to have found something and it looks like a Higgses! But it’s not exactly what many physcists expected in subtle ways and first impressions are it could be measuring and analytical idiosyncracies … or it could signal the dawn of a new physics after all. Cosmic Variance is streaming superb coverage: [Read more…]
Andy Griffith has made his last curtain call. Playing the perfect, quiet country straight man to his brilliant side kick deputy, Andy and Barney kept me entertained on many otherwise boring days and nights, from college to middle-age. The duo provided fodder for backwater cable TV, the Comedy Channel, and even racy adult-esque music videos (WARNING) like the one below that will live on forever. He was 86 years old. [Read more…]