[Ultrasound of a spleen by Nevit Dilmen via Wikimedia Commons & CC 2.0] Blood moves fast. It only takes about 20 seconds for a red blood cell to make a full circuit through your entire body, and your blood makes that journey thousands of times each day. The speed of the blood stream is a …
[Above: Rendering of DNA–aka “what most people think about when they hear ‘molecular identity’”–via ynse on Flickr & Creative Commons. Below: What scientists actually look at when they’re trying to sort out molecular identities. By Micah Baldwin via Flickr & Creative Commons] Two posts and two weeks later, I’ve only covered a fraction of the …
[Trigger Warning: rape, anti-theism, and appropriation of scientific authority by bigots.] Richard Dawkins confounds me. On the one hand, he’s brilliant. On the other hand, he tweets bulls*** like this series of tweets where he tries to argue that “logically” “stranger rape” is worse than “date rape”, but saying that “stranger rape” is worse is …
Part I: Why I’m Writing This Post Last week’s post about ASAN’s statement against the Combating Autism Act shattered the record for page views on this site. I was kind of overwhelmed by how many people who had never met me, many of whom were autistic themselves, reblogged my post and thanked me for writing …
I’m not the first science blogger to point this out, but it bears repeating: The billions we spend on funding federal scientific may sound extreme on paper, but once you realize we spend $17 billion a year on Valentine’s Day, suddenly a 5 billion dollar NASA budget doesn’t sound so crazy. Case in point: Estimates …