What is pseudoscience?
In the course of reviewing a manuscript I’d submitted to a journal, a referee inquired about what I’d meant when I invoked the term “pseudoscience.”
Category: SLIDER
Rain Did Not Follow the Plow
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in settlement-era U.S. as well as in parts of the Canadian and Australian territories, homesteaders were encouraged
Rattlesnakes in the Sonoran Desert: Close Encounters With The Venomous Kind
Spring weather is here in the Sonoran Desert and, although I haven’t seen any, I hear that the rattlesnakes are out.
A Scientific American
My father didn’t go to college, but he was a scientist. After he died, I inherited his old copies of Scientific American—dating from the 1960s to the early 2000s.
The Moth Hunters
Bathed in violet light, two men search the white expanse of cloth, oblivious to their surroundings. Disoriented insects of various shapes and sizes swoop around the men’s heads. Many of the insects eventually land on the sheet. With a deft motion, one of the men captures a specimen and examines the vial in which a pale-colored moth flutters.
Rock Tasting at Biosphere 2
With a mischievous grin and gleaming dark eyes, Dr. Dragos Zaharescu raises a small spatula to his lips and tastes. At his feet are four containers, each filled with a different type of ground rock—granite, basalt, rhyolite or schist. Zaharescu will blend this rock with bacteria or fungus, creating a sandy medium for seedlings he grows here under the glass dome of Biosphere 2.
An Important Update on the Heart Association and Cardiologists’ Cholesterol Guidelines
New guidelines could increase the number of people prescribed statin drugs, medications used to lower cholesterol levels.
Is Our Best Friend Just a Scavenger?
“Those beasts are not our best friends, but are vermin…, ” says Dr. Clive D.L. Wynne, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University.
Mind Your Dust!
Here in Arizona, we have personal experience with dust storms, called “haboobs,” that carry large quantities of dust for miles on atmospheric gravity currents. Similar storms are observed in the Sahara desert, across the Arabian Peninsula, in Kuwait, and regions of North America. Dust storms from Africa dumped 50 million metric tons of dust on the state of Florida in the summer of 2013.
Yes, Baby Boomers Are Interested in Science, and We’re Tech Savvy!
I met Rosie Klingman in the Las Vegas International Airport on Nov. 1, 2013 where she was charging her cell phone while waiting for a plane. Rosie remembers Mr. Wizard, and like many Baby Boomers, she’s interested in science.