Citizen Science

  This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper. 

A while back I wrote a little about the Nobel Prize. Where some of the big discoveries, that change our understanding of the universe, are recognized. Though it does have some blind spots. Only three sciences are included (Physics, Chemistry and Medicine. I'm still refusing to include economics as a science.) So there are many fields that don't have any hope of getting a Nobel Prize. 

But science isn't always about the big ideas. There are lots of smaller problems. So many that scientists ask for help from the rest of us.

Sand and Fire

 This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper. 

The past couple years I've been “kidnapped” and take off on adventures for my birthday. It never gets to be on my birthday, since I always seems to be involved in something else on the actual day. But shortly after that, I am dragged kicking and screaming to my car and forced to drive to mysterious locations. Last year to the Integratron out by Landers. This year to Harmony.

Noble Prize

 This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper.  

 

We all live with the myths we grew up with. In mathematics there are myths too. Some based in facts, but others not so much. These are tales of far distant times used to help us explain the world we find ourselves in. And one of the important myths of mathematics explains “Why there is no Nobel Prize in Mathematics.”

Adaptation

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Things have been busy lately. We finished up “Little Shop of Horrors”, which was a lot of fun by the way. Even though all I really got to see of the show was knees. Yes, I was hiding under the counter working a puppet. So I got to see knees. 

Invasive Species

 This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper. 

Today I met Zippy, who is a juvenile Yellow-bellied Racer. (That's a snake for those needing a translation.) Zippy was named due to his or her speed. The term “racer” in the name is a good indication of that. Zippy may have been living in my front flower bed for some time. The snail population seems to have dropped in that area.

Botany 101

This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper.  

 

Humans have always been affected by the plants in our environment. As our ancestors moved out of the trees and down onto the ground, the plants we ate changed. Anthropologists can look at the teeth of the ancestors and determine what those people were eating by the wear patterns. And when our ancestors settled down with agriculture the plants we used changed again.

Golden Fleece

This post will also be found in Tehachapi's The Loop Newspaper. 

 

Back in the 70s and 80s Senator William Proxmire (Democrat from Wisconsin) gave out Golden Fleece awards to organizations that he felt were wasting taxpayer money. That is, they were fleecing the taxpayers. Often the awards would go to groups doing research he couldn't see the point in. And there are politicians and pundits (and their followers) today that still try to denigrate science research that sounds like a waste of time and money. Like calling volcano monitoring “wasteful spending”. At least Proxmire was capable of backing down. At least when confronted by a scientist with much more popularity than he had. (That was Carl Sagan.)