One of the big topics in the science world is always how to make Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) more exciting.It may not always seem like it because, let's face it, we love STEM and it's baffling that people would want to do anything else, but not everyone graduates from high school wanting to pursue it, even though they might have when they were younger. read...
read moreIt's Academy Awards time, which means the science community is aflame with debates about whether Hollywood elites are racist, sexist, bigoted or not liberal enough...okay, no one in science actually debates any of that the way Hollywood does, but we do get to think about how science did in film in 2014.Science is big in culture these days - everyone loves it. You can't watch a blurb about a...
read moreIn American scientization of politics culture, evolution acceptance is a big deal, as is climate change. Yet other science acceptance issues get much less attention.Why? Evolution and climate change are not the most pressing short-term science issues we face, food, energy and medicine are. I am in awe of evolution but no one dies if some crank school district wants to put religion side-by-side...
read moreLiterature scholars love to debate Shakespeare. Like 'the greatest baseball player of all time' everyone can have an opinion and they are all just as valid, if even a modicum of thought went into it.(1) He was real, he was not real, he was a fraud, he was the greatest writer of all time, he was a woman, you name it and someone in the humanities has argued for it. He was Catholic? Catholics...
read moreIf you want a career in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, you have probably been cautioned that academia, awash in Federal money promoting STEM careers, can maybe employ 15 percent of the PhDs in science they graduate.The private sector still accounts for most of the basic research, almost all of the applied research, and certainly all of the technology, and they want you. read...
read moreA solid 12 years after most of its audience stopped watching "The West Wing", I decided to start - all 154 episodes. In the interest of transparency, I disclose I skipped two - one was a retrospective and one was nothing but a debate between two characters that no one could care much about who were running for president to succeed the sitting president played by Martin Sheen. Real debates...
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