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EPA turns a blind eye to Gulf of Mexico dead zone

Thursday, July 31, 2008 10:15 PM
Every year, agricultural runoff from Midwestern states pumps extraordinary amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus into the Mississippi River. These chemicals collect at the mouth of the river, in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Louisiana. This causes
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Three things that don't surprise me

Monday, June 30, 2008 9:50 PM
Three stories showed up today, and none of them should come as a surprise: 1) Today is the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska event ; on this day in 1908, something (either a small asteroid or a small comet) exploded in the air over Siberia. Although it
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The Phoenix has landed

Monday, May 26, 2008 10:04 PM
NASA's Phoenix mission to the polar regions of Mars landed flawlessly this weekend. The mission's goal is to drill beneath the frozen surface and extract samples of ice and soil, which the lander can then subject to a battery of chemical tests. This is
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The fruits of deliberate ignorance

Tuesday, May 20, 2008 10:33 PM
Despite the fact that creationism and its dark twin intelligent design are nothing more than religious dogma tarted up to look like science, a disturbingly high number of science teachers in US schools insist on presenting that propaganda to their students
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Even scientists have a sense of humor

Monday, March 31, 2008 10:18 PM
A couple of physicists in Italy have developed an explanation for poltergeist activity, which suspiciously always seems to happen around children; it has to do with quantum mechanics and the chemical changes that occur in the brain around the time of
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Three cool stories

Thursday, March 27, 2008 9:44 PM
Three very cool stories caught my eye today. 1) Researchers have managed to decipher and play back a recording made nearly two decades before Edison's phonograph. The phonautogram was made in France in 1860 and represents the earliest known recording
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More cool stuff from TED: Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope

Sunday, March 16, 2008 11:20 PM
This TED video of Roy Gould and Curtis Wong highlights Microsoft's WorldWide Telescope , which is a mashup of the best images of the universe from all the world's telescopes, blended together in an interactive, zoomable, and feature-rich interface. It
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The journey back to Saturn

Friday, February 08, 2008 9:40 PM
At last year's TED conference, one of the presenters was Carolyn Porco, the leader of the Imaging Team on the Cassini mission to Saturn. Her presentation focused mainly on a tour of the discoveries regarding two of Saturn's most intriguing moons: Titan
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More awesomeness from TED: amazing underwater life

Sunday, January 13, 2008 11:05 PM
TED is always a site full of provocative ideas. This video clip shows how little we really understand about the undersea world; most of the clip relates to visual camouflage and bioluminescence as tools for attraction, conveying information, and defense.
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Junk science in Texas

Friday, November 30, 2007 9:55 PM
Until recently, a woman named Chris Comer had served for nine years as the state science curriculum director for the Texas Education Agency. She was fired for forwarding an email and merely adding the phrase "FYI." Unfortunately for Ms. Comer and the
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Environmental alarm bells are ringing

Friday, October 26, 2007 8:54 PM
The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has released a landmark report (called GEO-4) on the state of the global environment. Authored by 388 scientists from around the world and peer-reviewed by another 1,000, the report details the most urgent
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Latest Minneapolis bridge collapse theory: pigeon poop

Saturday, August 25, 2007 3:41 PM
Inspectors investigating the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis have a new theory: pigeon poop may be one of the culprits. Seriously : It is thought the build-up of guano over many years could have speeded up the rusting of the steel beams in the eight-lane
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The dwindling of birds and the dimming of the lights

Thursday, August 23, 2007 8:27 PM
The phenomenon described in this op-ed piece is also happening here in the South: Earlier this summer, the National Audubon Society released a definitive study of population trends of North American birds, a monumental effort based on decades of Christmas
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Did life evolve from electrically charged dust?

Friday, August 10, 2007 7:39 PM
This is fascinating : According to a new simulation, electrically charged dust can organise itself into DNA-like double helixes that behave in many ways like living organisms, reproducing and passing on information to one another. Maybe this is how life
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Latest method for investigating Mars: tire skidmarks

Tuesday, May 22, 2007 12:28 PM
I haven't blogged much about Spirit and Opportunity , the two little Mars rovers that could, although I'm completely obsessed with them. They were only planned to last three months, yet they're still chugging along after three years. Practically every
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Freakin' cool: the James Webb Space Telescope

Tuesday, May 15, 2007 8:51 PM
Partly as a replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA is currently designing the James Webb Space Telescope . If all goes well, it will launch in 2013. Although I personally think they should keep funding the Hubble as long as it can feasibly continue
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Pharyngula rocks

Monday, May 07, 2007 9:10 PM
I love this blog : Would you believe a Nebraska community college is offering a course in creationism … and awarding science credits for it? If any McCook Community College students tried to transfer to my university, I'd argue that any who took that
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