But why do human babies look like that in the first place? Partly it has to do with the constraints of development and childbirth. But it may also have something to do with the domestication of humans.Read more…
Science Corner: Are You There, Molière?
And so it is that the plays attributed to Molière have been analyzed and found to be more like his other writing than like the writings of his contemporaries.Read more…
Science Corner: When Holidays Are Complex
Traveling for Thanksgiving? Need something to listen to? Allow me to suggest some podcasts that may provide both topics to discuss around the table on Thursday and some tips on how to approach those conversations.Read more…
Science Corner: Talking The Matrix with Mike Beidler (Pt 2)
Welcome back to our Sci-Fi Film Festival. This week, I continue my conversation with Mike Beidler about The Matrix as we chat about vocation and Christ figures.Read more…
Science Corner: Talking The Matrix with Mike Beidler (Pt 1)
Welcome back to the Emerging Scholars Network Sci-Fi Film Festival! We took a little hiatus, but we’re back to our conversations on various classic and current science fiction movies. Feel free to watch along and join the conversation. This week’s film is another 20-year-old classic from 1999: The Matrix.Read more…
Science Corner: Family Reunion in Botswana?
We will likely continue to find more data that help us understand our past in greater detail, but the picture emerging at present involves multiple locations across Africa, of which this region of Botswana is likely one but not the only.Read more…
Science Corner: Healthcare for All
Amidst all the conversations of how to best pay for healthcare in the United States, we also need to discuss how to best treat patients for those dollars.Read more…
Science Corner: Employees, Wash Your Hands Before Returning to the Moon
As I wrangle more conversations into a shareable format for our sci-fi film festival (thanks for your patience), let’s return to a sci-fi topic encroaching on our reality: extraterrestrial life.Read more…
Science Corner: Nobel Complications
Digging into the details of how this year’s Nobel-winning discoveries changed the world.Read more…
Science Corner: A Trip to ΘeoCon
There are still a number of great folks chatting with me about sci-fi films for our film festival, but those conversations are still in midstream so we’re taking a break this week. Instead, I’d like to tell you a little bit about an event I had the privilege to participate in last month: ΘeoCon.Read more…
Sci-Fi Film Fest: Talking I Am Mother with Sam Blair
Welcome to the first Emerging Scholars Network Sci-Fi Film Festival! I’ll be having a conversation here on the blog on various classic and current science fiction movies. Feel free to watch alonggh and join the conversation. This week’s film isRead more…
Sci-Fi Film Fest: Talking The Phantom Menace with Mike Beidler (Pt 2)
I continue my conversation with Mike Beidler about Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace as we chat about continuity, canon, and capitalism.Read more…
Sci-Fi Film Fest: Talking The Phantom Menace with Mike Beidler (Pt 1)
Welcome to the first Emerging Scholars Network Sci-Fi Film Festival! I’ll be having a conversation here on the blog on various classic and current science fiction movies. Feel free to watch along and join the conversation. This week’s film is 1999’s Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace.Read more…
Science Corner: Math Goes Sci-Fi & A Blog Film Festival
In the ten-day window when the dates are all palindromes (9 10 19, 9 11 19, etc.), let’s have some math news.Read more…
Science Corner: The Skinny on Genes
Biology is not fully reducible to genetics, and behavior is not fully reducible to biology. I’ve found myself using that adage more often in conversation, so I thought perhaps it would be helpful to mention and unpack here. As farRead more…
Science Book Review: Vessel
The setup is that astronaut Catherine Wells has returned to Earth after a nine year absence, the sole survivor of a interstellar mission written off as a complete loss years earlier. She has no recollection of the critical portions of her journey, and thus cannot explain where her crewmates are, why she was gone for so long, and how she got back.Read more…
Science Corner: In Case You Missed It (ASA 2019)
An invitation to explore the archive of talks from the recent ASA annual meeting.Read more…
Science Corner: The Patience of Science
I have a lot of respect for the Japanese team that spent 12 years culturing bacteria from a group called Lokiarchaea.Read more…
Science Corner: Trust the Scientist, Not the Science?
[A]ccording to the latest Pew survey results, public trust in scientists to act in our best interests is up in the United States.Read more…
Science Book Review: Slime – How Algae Created Us, Plague Us, and Just Might Save Us
Since I’m at the beach this week, it seems like a good time to leave you with a review of Ruth Kassinger’s Slime, a broad survey of all the ways scientists and entrepreneurs are solving problems with algae.Read more…
Science Corner: Seeing is Believing
Twenty nineteen has been a banner year for glimpses at the elusive and previously unseen.Read more…
Science Corner: All That You Can’t Leave Behind
While I am convinced astronauts really did make the quarter-million mile journey [to the moon], I’ve found myself thinking about the sense in which they did not fully depart the Earth.Read more…
Science Corner: Predicting Periodically
The periodic table turned 150 earlier this year, or at least March 1 was the 150th anniversary of the publication of Dmitri Mendeleev’s version.Read more…
Science Corner: Methods Maketh Metaphor
If we cannot avoid metaphors, we can at least be transparent about how we use them and think critically to identify when they have reached the limits of usefulness.Read more…