A number of countries in the world have decided to set a minimum age of 18 or higher for both men and women, including China, Denmark, Egypt, Kenya, the Philippines, South Korea, Sweden, Switzerland, and Vietnam, among various others. (In … Continue reading
Every year Bill and Melinda Gates write a letter on behalf of their foundation reporting on world trends. This year they address it to Warren Buffet, the famously wealthy investor who in 2006 donated the bulk of his assets to … Continue reading
This article on game designers from the July 5 issue of IndyWeek (a weekly newspaper in the Raleigh / Durham / Chapel Hill area of North Carolina) is definitely worth a quick read. Just as there are scads of novelists, … Continue reading
The latest issue of Sky & Telescope has a short article by astronomy professor Andrew Franknoi on a project to address the high cost of college textbooks. OpenStax, a non-profit based at Rice University, has commissioned a series of new … Continue reading
As you’re probably aware, there will be a solar eclipse 2017 August 21. Below is an animation created by NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio showing the path of the Moon’s shadow across the United States. The total eclipse … Continue reading
The A Capella Science YouTube channel offers a remarkably good adaptation of the song “A Whole New World” from Disney’s Aladdin. In this version, it’s about the hunt for exoplanets orbiting other stars, concluding with a brief reference to the … Continue reading
This is a curious result that apparently (unlike some other things in psychology) is repeatable: People given a task requiring creativity (such as coming up with as many ways as possible to use paper cups) tend to do better if … Continue reading
Two years ago today Beau Biden, son of Vice President Joe Biden, died of brain cancer. A little over a year later I lost my youngest brother, also to brain cancer. Last year President Obama named Joe Biden to head … Continue reading
I’m not sure how I missed this, but if I did, someone else might have done so as well. On 2015 October 21 I was on a flight and saw another passenger with a copy of USA Today with the … Continue reading
Odds are you’ve already seen this, but I’m putting it here anyway in case you might not have. It’s from the May 1 broadcast of his late night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live in which he described what happened to … Continue reading