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Category: Science Snippets

  • Who’s Afraid of ID?

    George Rebane It is a puzzle to me why the secular humanists, who will accept nothing but evolution in its classical or neo-Darwinian sense, are so afraid of the Intelligent Design (ID) theory of the cosmos and especially life on earth.  In the latest issue of New Scientist (here) their fear manifests itself in the…

  • Skylon – there but not here

    George Rebane   Reaction Engines of Great Britain is developing Skylon – a new spaceplane to introduce the next generation of ships that will take humans outward from earth.  The machine will be able to take off like an airplane and again land like one.   The engineer.co.uk reports – In the quiet suburbs of Oxfordshire,…

  • Scattershots – 20sep2010

    George Rebane • Sweden’s drift to right• Global Warming, more curiouser than ever• ‘Counterfactuals’ among Cars for Clunkers Sweden has long been the American progressive’s poster child for successful socialism.  Conservative libertarians like me have had limited success in pointing out the obvious to the leftwingers and ho-hummers that none of that form of governance is sustainable.  Now…

  • Lessons from Longitude

    George Rebane We recently watched the somewhat flawed A&E production of ‘Longitude’, the story of John Harrison’s invention of the marine chronometer in 18th century England.  In the early 1700s global trade and commerce were exploding along with European conquests of newly discovered lands.  The big problem at the time was that it was not…

  • Duck!

    George Rebane Our sun is going through a gastric upset and belching some pretty big stuff in our direction.  The belches are actually Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) of high densities of charged particles that are many times stronger than the normal solar wind which the sun constantly blows outward.  Most of the solar wind is…

  • Even Babies Profile

    George Rebane [This piece appears in the 10jul10 Union as my regular column for this month (here).  It was unfortunately retitled as 'Even babies practice profile'(sic).  This is the submitted version.] Profiling has been an American bugaboo for over a generation now.  Most people don’t really know what it is exactly, but they do know it…

  • The Khan Academy

    George Rebane The significance of EVERY social problem/issue is due ONLY to the numbers that describe it – i.e. its dimensions and magnitude, rates of change, incidences, likelihoods of occurrence, relation to & impact on other things, and the alternatives, costs, and social utility of solutions. In response to the deplorable government statistics on the…

  • A Better Way to ‘Bomb the Oil Leak’

    George Rebane With all due respect, I strongly disagree with the Big Bomb approach to plug BP’s oil gusher as suggested by Franz Gayl, civilian scientist for the Marine Corps (here).  Gayl recommends “dropping” a version of the Air Force's giant 21,600 lbs bomb on the wellhead.  Wrong solution – exploding it at the wellhead would…

  • DARPA’s Little Dog (4jun2010 update)

    George Rebane The ability of autonomous quadruped robots to cross very difficult terrain has taken another leap forward.  The Defense Advanced Projects Agency sponsored work at Boston Dynamics in developing Little Dog is reported on in the video below.  RR readers were introduced to Big Dog in 2008 (here).  Think of the possibilities that this technology will enable in…

  • Nanofoods Are Coming

    George Rebane … and not a minute too soon to suit this pudgy commentator who always licks his platter clean.  Many food research outfits have been working on modifying our favorite foods and condiments so as to increase their nutrition, taste, and satisfaction while reducing their harmful effects – starting with how much we want…

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