ALLOMETRY, THOMPSON, AND THE BRAIN
ISN’T IT fascinating how one thing leads to another? An article on whales in The New York Times jogs my memory about D’Arcy Thompson, a scientist whose work got me … Continue reading
A MOTOR TOUR OF THE MULTIVERSE
THERE ARE three basic states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. Even in today’s more deeply revealed world of quantum physics, these distinctions still apply. In fact, Science, the weekly … Continue reading
WHAT’S A TELEX, GRANDPA?
QUITE APART from many young people seemingly not knowing how to do long division in any sensible way, they’ve also been known to ask things like “How does a dial … Continue reading
EVOLUTION EVOLVES TOO
IF EVOLUTION’S clock were wound back and restarted, would I be here to compose these lines or you to read them? This provocative question is addressed in Jonathan Losos’ book … Continue reading
THE TREE(S) OF LIFE
HOW COME tree-of-life diagrams always have humans at the top? A heady thought, this. There are subtleties galore in today’s evolutionary theory. Indeed, profound changes are taking place in how … Continue reading
WHACHAMACALLIT?
SCIENCE TYPICALLY avoids the word “whachamacallit,” which, with cool dictionary humor, Merriam-Webster defines as a “thingamajig.” What’s more, humor possibly thought rare for science is discussed in Gregory R. Goldsmith’s … Continue reading
SCULPTURE OF THE STONE AGE
IT’S SAID THAT Michelangelo “liberated bodies that were trapped in blocks of marble.” And, hundreds of millennia before this, stone age hominins chipped away at stone to reveal tools and, … Continue reading
SCIENCE TIDBITS PART 2
THE AMERICAN Association for the Advancement of Science publishes a weekly magazine, Science. Yesterday’s SimanaitisSays offered Part 1 of its recent tidbits. Here’s Part 2. Could artificial intelligences get the … Continue reading
SCIENCE TIDBITS PART 1
I AM a science dilettante in the original sense of this word. “Dilettante,” which today may carry a sense of superficiality, comes from the Latin, dilectare, “to delight.” That is, … Continue reading
WHENCE U.S. OIL THESE DAYS?
WHAT WITH the world at sixes and sevens (now there’s a phrase to investigate!), it’s worth identifying the sources of petroleum and its products imported into the U.S. Recent data … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 