I have always disliked chemistry. My high school chemistry class was horrible. The teacher, mean and incompetent, did nothing to inspire his students, and I ended up with a strong contempt for elements and compounds.  Much to my chagrin, I had to take a year of general chemistry and a year of organic chemistry (I […]

I recently finished reading Consilience by biologist Edward O. Wilson. This book took me to places I had never been to or thought of much before – from tropical rainforests to the taiga to 18th Century France. It explored the arts, economics, psychology and biology, among many other topics. Wilson used this array of places […]

Desperate times lead people to desperate measures. For patients suffering from terminal illnesses, they often turn to unconventional treatments or ways to skirt the system. Sometimes those treatments work. Sometimes they don’t. My reading this week introduced me to patients who just wanted hope, companies that wanted to take advantage of that, and a broken […]

This week I read two articles on subjects I don’t like: math and censorship. One left me feeling somewhat cold the other made me red hot. Numbers Laura Sanders’ article “Safety in Numbers” started off with an interesting though somewhat hokey start. I was willing to forgive the fact that she compared mathematicians to men […]

This week I watched some good videos and read some very bad science. The short videos were from Linda Feferman, a Sundance award-winning director who has produced science related programming for Wired and PBS. The bad science came from none other than the Los Angeles Times. Let me start in a little more detail with […]

For the last three weeks, I have waded through Brian Greene’s The Elegant Universe, a book that explains string theory and its role in physics. Now that I have finished the book, I wanted explore its contents with you in the hopes that you and I will have a better understanding of the universe. As […]

Poker is such a fun game. You intently stare across the table at your opponents. Does anyone have a better hand than you? Does anyone know you have those pocket Kings? You take a quick glance at you two cards just to make sure you do have Kings. The intensity in the room is palpable. […]

As usual, my readings for this week bounced around from topic to topic. I learned about an icon, entered the mind of a fascinating couple, and explored the future. I have been inspired on so many levels. Here’s why. An Invisible Man Before I read the “Return of the Invisible Man” by Tim Folger, I […]