People Are Ignorant. Big Deal, Right? Well, Yeah.

We've been on the theme of political ignorance for nearly a month now, and so far we've concluded that people are generally pretty ignorant, but we don't yet understand whether this is such a bad thing. Recall from last time there were three arguments about whether political ignorance matters.

Science, Reporters, Teaching, and More Coffee: Part II

Every year, or most every year at least, I head off to Eastern Washington University to teach and counsel at Satori, a summer camp for kids who like to learn stuff—and learn them we instructors do. But in between learnings, there’s a lot of time for conversation and a lot of time for a lot of coffee. Seeing as I’m a reporter now, I have an excuse to talk to anyone about anything, so I asked Thomas Hammer barista-manager Abby* whether she’d talk with me about science. She cheerfully obliged, though she also had to work. When she was off doing that, Satori director and Spokane school teacher Mike Cantlon filled in, making for an interesting back-and-forth that ranged from—well, this to that and a number of places in between.

Science, Reporters, Teaching, And More Coffee: Part I

Every year, or most every year at least, I head off to Eastern Washington University to teach and counsel at Satori, a summer camp for kids who like to learn stuff—and learn them we instructors do. But in between learnings, there’s a lot of time for conversation and a lot of time for a lot of coffee. Seeing as I’m a reporter now, I have an excuse to talk to anyone about anything, so I asked Thomas Hammer barista-manager Abby* whether she’d talk with me about science. She cheerfully obliged, though she also had to work. When she was off doing that, Satori director and Spokane school teacher Mike Cantlon filled in, making for an interesting back-and-forth of sorts that ranged from—well, this to that and a number of places in between.

In case you missed it...

A few, short, cool stories I did for ScienceNOW. Check them out. Comment and ask me questions in the comments!

When Predators Attack!
Watch out!

Toward Shatterproof Glass
Possibly helpful when dealing with predators.

How to cloak a Fisher space pen...or a satellite

There's an apocryphal story that, faced with the fact that ballpoint pens don't work in zero gravity, NASA paid a lot of money to develop the Fisher space pen. Meanwhile, the Russians used pencils.

"A Snapshot of the Inside of an Atom" at ScienceNOW

My first story for ScienceNOW in quite a long time, and it's a fun one. Scientists at FOM Institute AMOLF took a picture of the quantum wave function of electrons as they emerged from hydrogen atoms.

Wave function? AMOLF? Google the latter. As for the former, the wave function is the fundamental piece of quantum weirdness, something that physicists have tried to wrap their heads around for eighty or ninety years — and failed. For more, read the story.

Seeing the Forest for the Splotchy Green Blob

Lesson for today: statistics is hard. Specifically, it's hard to sort out real patterns from random noise, especially when you don't have a lot of data. Nonetheless, people sure do their darndest.

Coffee Science with Four Barrel's Alex Powar

We're talking chemistry. Sort of. "Chlorogenic acid, for instance, esterizes into quinic and caffeic acid. Quinic acid...so that produces a lot of bitterness. That's why you never want to reheat coffee. It catalyzes that reaction."