If you haven’t done so already, you really owe it to yourself to watch Jon Stewart’s extended and uncensored interview with Neil deGrasse Tyson from last night’s Daily Show.
(via astronomerinprogress)
“Kiera Wilmot made an honest mistake, but the police were trying to throw away her life with a felony. After the community stood up for the girl, the charges were dropped, and she was allowed to move on with her life. Well, her greatness is really starting to shine, as she was recently granted several extraordinary opportunities through scholarship offers she has received.
Dr. Christopher Emdin, a professor of education at Columbia University, says that the schools are now very similar to prisons in terms of how they are structured, and how the inhabitants are treated. Kiera overcame her situation, but there are thousands of kids across the country who aren’t so lucky. Maybe it’s time to attack the system that is attacking us.
Check this out from Gawker:
“Kiera Wilmot, the 16-year-old honor student expelled from her high school after she allegedly ignited a chemical explosion on school property, received a full scholarship to the U.S. Space Academy, courtesy of a NASA veteran who, as a teenager, was accused of starting a forest fire during a science experiment.”
The lessons here are simple: Black kids have potential, and we can’t allow this system to destroy them. Also, hard work always pays off, especially when it comes to education. Dr. Boyce Watkins and Minister Louis Farrakhan recently held a forum called “Wealth, Education, Family and Community: A New Paradigm for Black America.” In the forum, Dr. Watkins and Min. Farrakhan both agree that African Americans are going to have to think differently when it comes to deciding what it means for your kids to be educated.”
Everyone probably knew this was coming.
#i legit CRY at this commercial #it actually makes me CRY #boom-dee-ada-boom-dee-ada #i just love the fucking world okay? #sobbing now
I JUST HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT THIS COMMERCIAL
I was just thinking about these commercials and how I wanted one on my tumblr, and now here it is!
Awkward confession time: whenever I feel like the world is shit and I can’t keep dealing with it, I watch this and/or read about cool science things to remind me that it’s not all bad.
For all of you having bad days
“I love the whole world, it’s such a brilliant place.” [:
(Source: skythrown, via space-tart)
Mystery cause of Irish potato famine finally solved
After 168 years, the pathogen that created the blight has been identified. And it may never be seen again.
On April 24, 1925, substitute science teacher and Rhea County High School football coach John T. Scopes was charged with violating Tennessee’s Butler Act which prohibited the teaching of evolution. Nicknamed the ‘Monkey Trial’, the case was actually formed after the American Civil Liberties Union sought a defendant and citizens of the small town of Dayton, Tennessee convinced Scopes to stand trial to gain publicity for the town. Both sides had superstar legal teams, led by Clarence Darrow for the defense and perennial presidential candidate William Jennings Bryant for the prosecution. The case ended in July of 1925 with a guilty verdict-Scopes was fined $100. The case went to the Tennessee Supreme Court but was overturned on a technicality and remained on the books until 1967 when it was finally repealed.
The word evolution arrived in English in 1620 and comes from the Latin word evolutionem (nomnative form evolutio) meaning the unrolling of a book or revealing that which was rolled up. The word evolve arrived a bit later in the 1640s from the Latin wordevolvere meaning to unroll and could also pertain to other ‘hidden’ things (see also for example the etymology of vulva), but mostly meant books, when a ‘volume’ was a rolled up manuscript made from vellum. The modern meaning that scientists such ad Darwin meant for it began around 1832 and reached its first full expression in Darwin’s work. The word evolve had been used in a scientific sense specifically in biology for over a hundred years before Darwin wrote Origin of Species-which is one reason why he avoided it. By the mid 1850s, the word had connotations of perfectibility-something Darwin wanted to avoid. It was the last sentence of his book:
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
And while I am at it, let me add this: Go Rhea County Golden Eagles! I was briefly a student at that school and have some fond memories. -kidsneedscience
MDs warn teens: Don’t take the cinnamon challenge
(Photo via YouTube)
Don’t take the cinnamon challenge. That’s the advice from doctors in a new report about a dangerous prank depicted in popular YouTube videos that has led to hospitalizations and a surge in calls to U.S. poison centers.
The word epilepsy first entered the English language in the 1570s courtesy William Shakespeare, in his play Julius Caesar, who was known to be epileptic. It came via the French word epilepsie from the Late Latin transliteration epilepsia of the Ancient Greek word epilepsia meaning a seizure. The Greeks combined the prefix epi- meaning upon with lepsis (root leps- from the future stem of lambanein, to fall) meaning falling-epilepsy was the falling sickness.
Happy Birthday, William Shakespeare, born April 23, 1564.
Image of the bust of Julius Caesar courtesy Andreas Wahra, used with permission under a Creative Commons 3.0 license.
See on Scoop.it - Knowmads, Infocology of the futureWhen asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” many kids say, “Astronaut!” More than a few adults would say the same.
And why not? We are captivated by the idea of exploring new worlds, having adventures in space, or just floating weightless in zero gravity. After all, zero-g makes mundane things like wringing a wet towel out into mind-blowing experiences.
The end of the Space Shuttle program, which was the most likely route to space, seemed to put this dream even further out of reach for most of us. But many new ways to potentially get to orbit are appearing on the horizon, and your chances of strapping into a capsule atop a rocket and feeling Earth’s grip loosen may be better than ever.
More and more private companies are getting into the space business, and some of them are looking for people to launch into space. One of the most ambitious new ventures, Mars One, hopes to put humans on the Red Planet by 2023. And today, the company is officially starting a worldwide search for 24 individuals to join their mission and become newly-minted astronauts.
Here are the many new ways that you can try to join the astronaut club, and a very rough, back-of-the-envelope estimate* of your odds with each of them.
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Hey, I’m having a dilemma and I need some advise.
Astrophysics fascinate me, and I really want to major in it, I took all the classes that relate in my HS (AP physics, advanced math…etc) I’m still a junior but I’m pretty determined. Except this semester I found out that my music teacher is actually an astrophysicist, he told me that there are practically no jobs for astrophysicists, and the closest thing he could find was working in a weapon factory. I really wanna follow my dream, but I feel like this country doesn’t value science, and I’ll end up in debt and out of work when I graduate college. Do you have any advise?
— billkaulitzisunfFirst off, let me tell you that your music teacher, although an astrophysicist, is a bit of a douche. Follow your dream. Look toward any & all space advocacy-related sources for openings, what the positions require in terms of educational background, email & communicate with ACTUAL, WORKING, astrophysicists & do not limit yourself just to the astrophysics field. There are a multitude of fields continually being expanded around the world in all areas of science. You’ll figure it out as you press on, especially since you still have a little way to go before even getting through the most basic preliminary courses for astronomy/astrophysics in general.
Second, watch/listen to this. While you do, take notes and jot down these fields and memorize them. Subscribe to this podcast as well. I intend on doing this exact thing myself, along with publishing a post on here about the list of fields unbeknownst to the science-loving community at large.Third, keep asking questions. Hang out with others who share your passion. Join your local astronomy club & stay curious. Much love & respect to you, friend. Hope to hear more back from you in the upcoming years to see where this journey has taken you, as science and technology will not be forever ignored or disregarded, as they are the keys to our survival & evolution. Ad astra.
- sagansense
Twitter Happiness Levels Soar As People Travel Further From Home
Happiness levels caputred by Tweets rise logarithmically with distance from our average location, say computer scientists studying Twitter sentiment
Full Story: MIT
Intriguing Science Art From the University of Wisconsin
“The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.”
—Jules Henri Poincare, a French mathematician (1854-1912)
The University of Wisconsin-Madison revealed the winners of the 2012 Cool Science image contest at the beginning of the month. From clusters of cells, zebrafish neural networks to ZnO Fall Flowers as seen above, this year’s contest showed nothing but impressive content for us to enjoy. Check out the rest of the contestants here!
A Woman of Art and Science
April 2nd marks the birth of a very important female scientist that was ahead of her time. The artistic and scientific explorations of German artist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717) helped pioneer the way for other women in science. Enterprising and adventurous, Merian raised the artistic standards of natural history illustration and helped transform the field of entomology, the study of insects.
In 1670, she and her husband moved to Nuremberg, where Merian published her first set of illustrated books. In preparation for a catalogue of European moths, butterflies, and other insects, Merian collected, raised, and observed living insects, rather than working from preserved specimens.
At the age of 52 and divorced, Merian and her younger daughter embarked on a dangerous trip to the Dutch colony of Suriname, in South America, without a male companion. Merian spent the next two years studying and drawing the indigenous flora and fauna within their natural habitats. Forced home by malaria, Merian published Insects of Surinam, her most significant book, in 1705. The lavishly illustrated book forever established her international reputation as an accomplished woman of science.
Time for a science-tastic, carboniferous Episode Extra™ to accompany my latest YouTube vid!
In the most recent episode of It’s Okay To Be Smart on YouTube, about how we all share the same air, the #1 question from People Who Are Watching was about a number I mentioned in the beginning: We hoomanz are emitting 33-34 billion tons of CO2 a year. If the atmosphere is so dang big, is that amount of CO2 a lot?
A few people were subsequently all “Wait a sec, is Joe referencing climate change here?! Rabble rabble rabble!!!” Congrats. You caught me. Guilty as charged. But there’s science on my side, and you know what they say about science:
Where the carbon comes from: the primary people-caused CO2 sources are fossil fuels, deforestation, and cement production. Since 1850, over one thousand billion (AKA “a trillion”) tons of CO2 have been added to the atmosphere. We put about 34 billion tons of CO2 into atmosphere in 2011, the latest year I could find data. These are not debatable facts, minus a few decimals of statistical error. We can measure them, we have the technology.
Where does it go? Only 55% of this is removed by the oceans (dissolved CO2 and photosynthetic organisms) and the plants in our jungles and forests. Fifty years ago, as much as 60% of that CO2 would have been removed by oceans and plants. That means that not only are we increasing the amount of CO2 we emit every year, but plants and oceans (the carbon “sinks”) can’t keep up with the rate that we are adding it to the atmosphere.
Sure, as more carbon is put into atmosphere, plants and plankton can reproduce and take more of it up. But if we pump it out faster than they proliferate, it’s still a net loss. Oceans might actually be less able to absorb CO2 as the world warms (it’s simple chemistry, think about warm carbonated soda).
Then we get to the warming part. CO2 makes up less than one tenth of one percent of Earth’s atmosphere. So it can’t be that big of a deal to increase that by like 0.01% right? Wrong. Sure, for every million molecules of air, only ~391 of them will be CO2, but carbon dioxide is an amazingly powerful molecular mirror for solar energy, reflecting it back down to Earth and heating our planet. The math is complex, but tenths of tenths of percent changes in CO2 concentrations can lead to full degree changes in global temperatures. This doesn’t even include the effects of methane, which is almost 1,000 times less abundant as CO2, but contributes a whopping 1/5th of greenhouse gas effects.
For more: A paper in PNAS about carbon emissions and carbon sinks. A summary of emissions, warming and greenhouse gases from NOAA. Finally, you might need this: How to talk to a climate skeptic.
We do share the same small atmosphere, just like the video says. So keep it clean, because it’s mine too, dammit! (PS - If you read this far, you should totally subscribe)
