The editorial column of the February 2008 issue of Scientific American includes a call for the presidential candidates to have a debate over issues of science and technology. Consider this partial list of issues that the next president of the U.S. will need to address: reducing greenhouse gas emissions; ensuring freshwater supplies; encouraging reliance on …
Category: Scientific American
The World Without Us
A new book is out: The World Without Us. This isn't some left-wing or Islamo-fascist book about how much better the world would be without the United States. This is speculative science, and I don't use the word "speculative" in a negative sense. The book asks the question: "What would happen to the Earth if …
Eat well
From Scientific American Blog: The best dietary advice is fundamentally, "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Not too complicated. Not very expensive. Not tied to the latest diet fad. Good for your heart, and your wallet. However, I'll still eat a good steak every once in a while. Grace and Peace
A wild world of a different sort
Back in October, I wrote a post about the idea of introducing large mammals (elephants, camels, lions, and so on) into the high plains of the United States (see Pleistocene mega-fauna -- coming to a drive-thru safari park near you). The idea is to somewhat restore the pre-human ecosystem by bringing in mammals that went …
Global Bubbling
Scientific American magazine offers some of its articles online for free. Free material from the October issue includes Impact From the Deep, which gives evidence that some mass-extinctions in Earth history were not caused by asteroid impacts but by massive upwellings of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) gas from the oceans. Here's the scenario: High levels of …
Secrets of the Expert Mind (part 3)
Do the concepts of expertise and excellence lead to a narrow focus on one thing, to the exclusion of all else? Does the kind of focus that it takes to become a top computer programmer necessarily mean that person will be the stereotypical "computer nerd?" I think not. Take the late Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay …
Secrets of the Expert Mind (part 2)
Yesterday's entry was a bit long; here's the Reader's Digest version: According to the August 2006 Scientific American article "The Expert Mind," motivation and effortful study are more important than natural ability for becoming and expert in one's field. It takes ten years of intense work to truly become an expert in an area, but …
Secrets of the Expert Mind
Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men. —Colossians 3:23 (ESV) I don't ordinarily read books or articles on psychology—a "soft" science—but for some reason the cover article in the August issue of Scientific American caught my eye. The article, by Philip E. Ross, is entitled "The Expert Mind," and …
Are You a Global Warming Skeptic? Part III
Back in March, I had a post about Scientific American's blog entries on "Are You a Global Warming Skeptic, parts I and II". Scientific American has updated this with Are You a Global Warming Skeptic? Part III. They posted this on April 24th, but it is still relevant. Rather than bashing opponents of global warming, …
Global Warming Posts at Scientific American’s Blog
For those of us who follow the global warming debates, there have been some interesting blogs on the Scientific American web page. The first post was called "Are You a Global Warming Skeptic?" and it has 170 comments that reflect the range of arguments against human-caused global warming. The follow-up post is called "Are You …
Continue reading Global Warming Posts at Scientific American’s Blog
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