Category: Slate
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The white scientist versus the African teenager
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] A Rationalist’s Irrationality Why is Richard Dawkins such a jerk? For Slate: Richard Dawkins is not your garden-variety Internet troll. He’s a retired professor at Oxford University and the…
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The dinosaur-killing dark matter of DOOM!
[ This blog is dedicated to tracking my most recent publications. Subscribe to the feed to keep up with all the science stories I write! ] A few weeks ago, several news outlets ran stories based on a press release, in which a researcher claimed that dense clumps of dark matter could be responsible for…
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My dysfunctional relationship with dark energy
“Dark energy” is one of the more unfortunate names in science. You’d think it has something to do with dark matter (itself a misnomer), but it has the opposite effect: while dark matter drives the clumping-up of material that makes galaxies, dark energy pushes the expansion of the Universe to greater and greater rates. Though…
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Stephen Hawking, black holes, and scientific celebrity
For the upcoming ScienceOnline 2014 meeting, I’m leading a session titled “Reporting Incremental Science in a World that wants Big Results“. It’s an important topic. We who communicate science to the general public have to evaluate stories to see if they’re worth covering, then translate them in such a way that conveys their significance without…
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The week in review (September 22-28)
I spent much of the week sick, but that doesn’t stop me. I care about you, people. All black holes, great and small (Galileo’s Pendulum): As my regular readers have probably figured out, I love black holes. I could probably find an excuse to write about them most days. So, why not take an online…
Bowler Hat Science 