There’s a lovely article about Hildegard of Bingen by Erin Risch Zountendam posted this morning on the blog “Earth and Altar.” Hildegard, one of the four female doctors of the Western Church, was a theologian, a prophet, a mystic and a naturalist. Her life and her theology is, to my mind, one of the clearest examples of my argument that most scientists are, in truth, mystics at heart – seeking to understand a deeper meaning […]
I woke up this morning puzzling about this… The Sun is green and I’ve wondered for years about why plants reflect the most intense light from the Sun rather than absorbing it. Leaves are green because plants absorb more red and blue light than they do green light. Why are they being inefficient? Turns out the answer – only recently determined – is pretty interesting. at least sometimes — evolution cares less about making biological […]
Given the failure of all Dark Matter detection experiments so far, some have suggested that maybe classical understandings of Gravity (both Newtonian and the more complete General Relativity) are incomplete. The idea is that we have to tweak the equations a bit to explain the anomalous observed behavior at larger scales in the galaxy (and the local Universe). The tweaks are generally all thought to be part of a rethinking of our understanding of gravity […]
The unexpected release of a series of Lambeth Conference Call statements on assorted subjects, and the equally unexpected news that bishops attending the Lambeth Conference next week would be voting on them, has knocked a bunch of Anglicans around the world back on their heels. Some in the Communion are delighted with this sudden turn – but most of the voices I hear are dismayed. And here in the Episcopal Church, many people in our […]
I’ve wasted some afternoons binge watching the TV series Ancient Aliens on Hulu over the past few years. It seems like a harmless “what if” exercise. And it’s fun when in a particular episode I’m introduced to some new site or artifact that I’d not heard of before. But I do notice that if I know something about what’s being presented, the information shared is not very robust and often weirdly wrong. In an article […]
The Internet and its communications technologies are allowing us to work from home in the midst of this pandemic, to stay in touch with each other and “shelter in place” in ways that simply wouldn’t have been possible even 10 years ago. But like most technological advances, it’s become a veritable Sword of Damocles. It has developed so quickly that we simply haven’t had time to adapt completely to what it makes possible. That’s particularly […]
Before we can re-open things and start the recovery phase of this pandemic, we need to know if people have had COVID-19 and recovered, or if they are still susceptible. I’ve seen speculation about issuing people who’ve recovered some sort of digital certificate of immunity. Possessing the certificate would allow the bearer to enter buildings, return to work, go to church, etc. But there’s a problem. Apparently there are a number of inadequate tests being […]
Yesterday Rhode Island reported its highest number of new positive tests for coronavirus so far. But is this a cause for worry that things are unexpectedly going sideways, or is it something else? “Dr. Drang”, an engineer and data expert, has noticed a consistent bump in the national numbers every Tuesday for almost a month now: The Tuesday jump – All this: These plots are for the daily figures, and you can see by the […]
I woke up to the news this morning that Prof. Hawking had died. It’s hard to express the deep admiration people had for his work and the way he surmounted challenges in a way that few others have managed. There will be plenty of articles written about his scientific legacy. But I found this quote at the end of an article by Robert Barr to be the most evocative: Lucy Hawking said her father had […]
The Multiverse is real, but provides the answer to absolutely nothing. – Ethan Siegel
