Cosmic Voyage
Cosmic Voyage is a 1996 short documentary film that explores the scale of the universe from the quantum level to the cosmos.
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The Scrotum Is Nuts
Soccer fans call it brave goalkeeping, the act of springing into a star shape in front of an attacker who is about to kick the ball as hard as possible toward the goal. As I shuffled from the field, bent forward, eyes watering, waiting for the excruciating whack of pain in my crotch to metamorphose…
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How Wonder Works
When I was growing up in New York City, a high point of my calendar was the annual arrival of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus — ‘the greatest show on earth’. My parents endured the green-haired clowns, sequinned acrobats and festooned elephants as a kind of garish pageantry. For me, though, it…
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Portrait of the Artist as a Caveman
In a letter to the botanist Asa Gray written in 1860, a year after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin wrote, “a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me sick!” His new theory of evolution by natural selection — or “the survival of the fittest,” as…
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Infections, Institutions, & Life History: Searching For The Origins Of Individualism & Collectivism
The life of Ferdinand Tonnies, German sociologist and political activist, is a testament to the dramatic social changes which swept across Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. Born in 1855 to a wealthy farmer at the northern fringe of the German empire, Tonnies spent his childhood working on the family estate, sharing close quarters…
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Cosmic Awe
As many of you know, I’m fortunate enough to live in a city that values science and scientific knowledge so highly that the our local news station, KGW, routinely brings on scientists to talk about the lastest developments in our endeavors to understand the Universe around us. Just last week, I was invited to share…
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Why Study Humanities? What I Tell Engineering Freshmen
What’s the point of the humanities? Of studying philosophy, history, literature and “soft” sciences like psychology and poly sci? The Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences, consisting of academic, corporate, political and entertainment big shots, tries to answer this question in a big new report to Congress. The report is intended to counter plunging…
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Computers That You Eat (or That Eat You?)
Ray Kurzweil’s dream of internal nanobots floating around our bloodstream making us immortal by eradicating diseases and slowing down the aging process may actually be a reality sooner than any of us ever thought. Nick Bilton of the New York Times recently reported on two different companies – Proteus Digital Health and HQ – that…
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Lopsided Map of the Cosmos Offers New Clues to the Universe’s Origins
If our universe slammed into a neighboring one during a growth spurt in its first second, the collision would have left a mark. And Matthew Kleban thinks he sees it in the most detailed snapshot yet taken of the dawn of the universe. The satellite image, released by astronomers in March, confirmed what an earlier…
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Atlantic Ocean to Disappear in 200 Million Years?
A new map of the seafloor off the coast of Iberia—the region of Europe that includes Portugal and Spain—has revealed what could be the birth of a new subduction zone. Subduction zones happen when tectonic plates—the large rock slabs that make up the Earth’s crust—crash into one another. The edge of the heavier plate slides,…