Swans on Tea

“Filming in the lab” is the recent them at PhD comics, and this one grabs the essence. (Or you can start at the beginning, if you’re one of the type that needs to do that.)
I’ve been filmed in the lab and interviewed on TV once, and I’ve observed my colleagues being filmed and interviewed. [...]

Fingerprints and Grip - Wrong vs Incomplete
I saw the headline to one version of the linked story (Fingerprint grip theory rejected) a few days back. I didn’t delve too deeply into it, and this thought had not occurred to me:
What struck me, and what the article did not mention, is that glass is [...]

Literary Lesson: Authors, Poets Write the News
It was on an average Wednesday that a very serious Israeli newspaper conducted a very wild experiment. For one day, Haaretz editor-in-chief Dov Alfon sent most of his staff reporters home and sent 31 of Israel’s finest authors and poets to cover the day’s news.
[…]
Among those articles were gems [...]

why you should honor thy scientists
[I]t’s not just zealots who will equate scientific methodology with theistic dogmatism. In an attempt to appear completely objective and beyond any charge of bias, some writers will give equal importance to every opinion with seemingly no regard for whether it’s right or wrong. They think that by giving a [...]

Via gg I see that there is a new vertex on the bologohedron, The X-Change Files
The X-Change Files explores the intersections of science and entertainment, regularly taking a look at the ways in which science is portrayed in film and television. Given that science is often the basis for provocative and compelling storylines, we’ll also [...]

Obama’s green guru calls for white roofs
One of the many things about politics and political reporting that I find annoying is the eagerness with which the reporters will “interpret” what was said, and this story appears to be no exception. It’s hard to say for sure, because precious little of what Chu actually said [...]

PhD Comics: The science news cycle

World’s first battery fuelled by air
I don’t think so. No more than your car is fueled by air when you have combustion. The difference is between carrying around oxygen in the cell, and drawing some oxygen in from the air in order to complete the reaction and release energy.
If you go to the [...]

Am I on the ring road? Stunt driver defies gravity on the world’s biggest loop-the-loop
He didn’t defy gravity — I’m sure it was there the whole time.
If stuntman Steve Truglia had been too timid in his acceleration, his yellow Toyota would have reached the top of the track and dropped like a stone.
Not quite. [...]

The Daily Show as Legitimate Journalism
Jon Stewart makes no pretense that he’s all about the entertainment, but I think the article is right — he does ask the tough questions when the time comes and shows good insight into issues.
The venerable Sunday morning news shows, oftentimes featuring some of the most reputable people in journalism, largely [...]

Even if we don’t practice to deceive.
zapperz has a post up which points to an article in the WSJ on quantum entanglement: Science, Spirituality, and Some Mismatched Socks
zz marks it as a good layman’s review, but I don’t agree.
Stranger still is entanglement. When two photons get “entangled” they behave like [...]

Physics Buzz: Free Energy and the Press
Harlow mentions in passing that “Many scientists say the technology violates the basic laws of quantum physics.”
Really, such a sentence is tantamount to saying “It doesn’t work.” Unfortunately, that was lost on Harlow, who continued reporting as if the laws of physics could be changed with a simple [...]