World Science Festival
Lefty May 29th, 2008
Go check out the World Science Festival, in NYC this week (5/28-6/1).
http://www.worldsciencefestival.com
Archive for the 'science' Category
Enemies of Reason
Lefty September 16th, 2007
Continuing on the science theme, I just discovered this recently broadcast (August 2007) documentary entitled “Enemies of Reason”. It stars Richard Dawkins and takes on the various forms of superstition that are popular today. From the makers:
Is it rational that the dead can communicate with the living and give sound advice on how they should live their lives? What about sticking pins into your body to free the flow of Chi energy and cure your illness? Or the bending of spoons using your mind alone? Is that rational? Richard Dawkins doesn’t think so, and feels it is his duty to expose those areas of belief that exist without scientific proof, yet manage to hold the nation under their spell. He will take on the world’s leading proponents in their field of expertise, meet the victims who have used them and expose the history of the movements – from the charlatans who have milked these practices to the experiments and testing that have failed to produce conclusive results.
I can’t find an embeddable version, but the two parts are available on Google Video:
Science!
Lefty September 5th, 2007
I’m back from our honeymoon upstate, and slowly re-acclimating to life at home and going to work and school every day. While on my break, I’ve been getting reacquainted with the glories of science, particularly by reading a book called The Canon by NY Times science writer Natalie Angier. The book is subtitled “A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science” and its intention is to explain to the non-scientist layperson all the things he really should know in order to achieve a minimum level of scientific literacy. There are sections on the scientific method, probabilities, physics, chemistry, biology, geology, and astronomy. As someone who has had fairly minimal exposure to science since getting a C in a college physics course, it’s been a wonderful reintroduction to a topic I’ve neglected too long.
In the same vein, I highly recommend this video from the great MC Hawking, entitled “What We Need More of is Science.” And, yes, the album is called “A Brief History of Rhyme.”