Help Wanted: DIY Dinosaurs

By: | September 28, 2011

Have you ever looked at a chicken? I mean really looked, and not the kind that comes safely shrink-wrapped in a Styrofoam tray? There’s something in the eyes, something still-wild, almost menacing—no, really menacing. Given a little room to move around and enough conspecifics to elicit social behaviors, the animals are aggressive, territorial, and relentlessly voracious. If you spend much time around the birds, you start to feel grateful for our size advantage. These are, after all, the living descendents of dinosaurs.

And yet … there’s something a little underwhelming about the whole birds-are-dinosaurs thing. Living birds, chickens included, share thousands of traits with their extinct forebears. But there’s a certain chill-inducing it-factor that even the most dangerous modern birds just don’t have. One imagines it must be a little like hanging out with Muhammed Ali nowadays, or George Foreman. It would be great—fascinating, inspiring even. But nowhere near as awesome as being around them back in their prime, when they were huge, lethal and unpredictable. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Not So Fast

By: | September 27, 2011

The news of a detection of faster-than-light speed neutrinos by the OPERA experiment stunned the physics and astronomy community last week.  I read the paper, and I listened to the talk from Geneva over the Web. This is seriously weird stuff! Faster-than-light speed neutrinos!? The talk was filled with wonderfully arcane geodetic methods for measuring the line-of-sight difference between a proton beam in Geneva and a cave in Italy 730 kilometers away. We experimentalists eat this stuff up. It is so cool to say you can measure the underground distance to an accuracy of 20 centimeters over such a distance, just like it is cool to say that we can measure the changing distance to the Moon to a millimeter or so.

Immediately all scientists began to play with this concept. It is one of the most fun things in science—to be liberated from whatever fussy Standard Model we have, and be allowed to explore a possible new direction for our ideas and experiments.

Continue reading →

Guest Post: Should We Clone Endangered Species?

By: | September 26, 2011

In 2000, the last Pyrenean ibex died. These were mountain goat-like mammals with fierce black horns that scampered around the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. Some cells had been taken from that last animal, and in 2009 the world learned that scientists had been able to clone the creature: a Pyrenean ibex kid was born to a surrogate mother, a hybrid between Spanish ibex and a domestic goat. (see the paper here.) The kid was delivered by cesarean section. It opened its eyes, stuck out its tongue, moved its legs about, and promptly died of lung abnormalities. Continue reading →

Consensual Hallucination

By: | September 22, 2011

When William Gibson coined the term cyberspace in 1984 in the book Neuromancer, he described it as “a consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators in every nation.”

Decades later, Gibson declared that cyberspace was everting. Which is to say, entering the next phase of its evolution by creeping out of the virtual boundaries that once defined it and into what we consider “real life.” Sure enough, about 5 minutes later, the world proved him right, again, and the Internet of Things began to erode the distinction between the virtual and the real.

Most descriptions of the possibilities of the Internet of Things have centered on things like RFID-tagged Starbucks cups that let the company trace your steps through its corporate universe, both real and virtual. Usually the first groups of people to find anything useful to do with new technology are marketers and the military.

But earlier this week, a study out of Nottingham Trent University and Stockholm University hinted at what I think is the real potential of the internet of things: imbuing plain vanilla reality with an extra, shared dimension. Moving our consensual hallucination into reality. Continue reading →

Guest Post: Transformed by the Flames

By: | September 20, 2011

As journalists, we are trained to be neutral, to never betray any hint of bias or emotion. There are exceptions, of course — the 9/11 tragedy was so universally devastating, and so deeply unfathomable, that journalists were permitted to show a sense of loss — in fact, it would have been unthinkable not to.

But for most of the events and issues we write about, we typically take a one-night-stand approach to our stories: Research the topic, talk to as many knowledgeable people as possible, maybe visit the epicenter of the debate/discovery/crisis, write the story, and then move on to the next one.

But this past summer, after the massive Las Conchas fire swept through my beloved Jemez Mountains, about an hour-and-a-half north of Santa Fe — and visible from some parts of town — something changed. Continue reading →

Avoiding “Contagion”

By: | September 19, 2011

The box office smash hit “Contagion” features heroic (women!) scientists battling a deadly threat. Its advisers included esteemed researchers who helped keep the film true to science. And public health agencies, such as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are using the film to help build public awareness about the real threat posed by real-life pathogens.

In short, this movie should be catnip for a science junkie like me.

But instead, I’m avoiding “Contagion” like the plague. It’s not that I’m squeamish, that I think the movie is going to cause needless panic, or even that I prefer “The Lion King in 3D.” It’s just that I know too much about how vulnerable we really are to a severe outbreak of infectious disease to enjoy a Hollywood version of this scenario – even one with a happy(-ish) ending.

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Hilda and Thomas

By: | September 16, 2011

Bear with me, I want to talk about my grandparents.

Hilda was my mother’s mother.  Thomas was my father’s father.  The difference between my mother’s and my father’s families was enormous.

My mother’s family was large and blue-collar — farmers, mechanics, truckers – and not much money or education; not much use for the fine arts; they all had a lot of kids.

My father’s family was small and white-collar; more money than my mother’s family; and  everywhere were pictures I still think are beautiful and books about music, literature, religion, and philosophy.

Thomas’s house was full of culture.  Hilda didn’t even have a house.  I liked them both and felt the difference but never thought about why.

Continue reading →