Category Archives: Science
15 Minute Time Lapse From Space: Around the World Twice
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 1st December 2018The video below has nothing to do with the usual subjects of this site, but it’s so impressive that I thought it deserves as wide an audience as possible. The European Space Agency released this nearly 15 minute time lapse shot by astronaut Alexander Gerst. It’s the longest continuous time lapse from space yet available.
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Science and Knowledge: The More We Learn the Less We Know
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 22nd July 2018The Universe is not only stranger than you think; it’s stranger than you can imagine. Richard Feynman The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. WB Yeats I take a walk everyday that passes me by the side entrance to a large building. The door is set at the back…
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A Troublesome Inheritance – Book Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 11th April 2018Subtitled Genes, Race and Human History, Nicholas Wade’s book has managed to get itself denounced by 144 geneticists in a letter to the New York Times Book Review. How has Wade managed this feat? He has a long and distinguished career as a science writer which includes a stint as Science Editor for the same…
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The Gene – Book Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th November 2017That children share traits with their parents, grandparents, and siblings has been recognized since antiquity. How these traits were transmitted remained a mystery for more than two millennia. Unmasking this process has been the greatest scientific discovery since man discovered fire. Siddhartha Mukherjee has written a history of this entire process – The Gene: An…
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The Paris Climate Accord and Reasoned Debate
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 3rd June 2017The center cannot hold… …
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The Genetically Modified Organism in Your House
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 12th April 2016Vermont in a spasm of enlightenment has mandated that all genetically modified foods sold in the Green Mountain State be so labeled. According to numerous polls 90% of the population of the USA thinks this a good idea. This is the same concerned and informed group that by an 80% margin supports labeling food that…
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Cosmosapiens – Book Review
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 27th March 2016Cosmosapiens by John Hands Subtitled Human Evolution from the Origin of the Universe, John Hands’ book attempts to explain the origin of the universe and our place in it; and he does so in less than 600 pages (about a quarter of a million words) including many tables and figures. Amazingly, except for a stumble towards…
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Continental Drift and Popular Science
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 2nd March 2016We redefined marriage, gender, and lunch. Then we repealed evolution by making it illegal for a species to go extinct. The same people who deride fundamentalist extremists as being anti-science when they deny the validity of the theory of evolution equally deny it when they assume they are bigger than nature. Now we are well about to repeal…
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John Peter Zenger Rots in Hell
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 1st November 2015The great great great great,etc, grand nephew of Vincenzo Maculani, Vincenzo Maculani XVI, Girolamo Savonarola professor of climate science at George Wallace University appeared before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology yesterday. He explained to the committee why the RICO statutes should be used to prosecute those who argue against the settled science of climate…
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Mammography Screening in Switzerland
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 20th May 2014The May 22, 2014 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine has a perspective piece that is even more instructive than its authors and the journal’s editors realized: ‘Abolishing Mammography Screening Programs? A View from the Swiss Medical Board’. It describes the process that the Swiss used to evaluate the scientific foundation for the…
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