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Leveling the Field: What I learned from For-Profit Education

Hal Harris | Fri, 09/02/2011 - 02:00

One would expect a long-time educator like me to know more about the largest university in the United States (enrollment of 530,000) and I have wondered what the University of Phoenix is really like. I see their large office buildings with prominent signs everywhere but, since they do not offer programs in science, their activities are essentially orthogonal to what I do.

The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths

Hal Harris | Mon, 08/01/2011 - 01:00

None of us is Spock, the superrational StarTrek character, but many of us in the science or science education business imagine ourselves to less susceptible to unfounded beliefs than the non-scientist community. In "The Believing Brain", Michael Shermer, publisher of The Skeptic magazine, shows how belief that is not based on data or reason is an inevitable consequence of being human.

A Red Herring Without Mustard

Hal Harris | Fri, 07/01/2011 - 01:00

Flavia de Luce is still at it. The precocious eleven-year-old chemist that we first met in "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie", my Pick for September 2009, has continued to solve the mysterious deaths that occur just about every year in her 1950's English hamlet of Bishop's Lacy.

Nuclear Energy: What Everyone Needs to Know

Hal Harris | Wed, 06/01/2011 - 01:00

Do tsunamis affect global warming? Well, the 2004 Indian Ocean catastrophe probably indirectly decreased the amount of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere by destroying the lives of 200,000 victims and the livelihoods of probably 250,000 more. Of course, it also negatively affected coral reefs, mangroves and other wetlands, forests, and plant diversity.

Theo Gray's Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do At Home - But Probably Shouldn't!

Hal Harris | Mon, 05/02/2011 - 02:00

My son gave me this book as a Christmas present in 2009, with the expectation that I would make it one of my Picks. The sentiment was amply appreciated, but I did not make it a Pick then because I didn't want to feel responsible for the maimings and deaths that could result from trying many of the "experiments" described.

Becoming a Doctor: From Student to Specialist, Doctor-Writers Share Their Experiences

Hal Harris | Fri, 04/01/2011 - 01:00

Just about all of us who teach introductory courses in chemistry have a significant fraction of our students who intend to apply to medical schools and attempt to become doctors. However, very few of my students have a good idea of what that career path looks like, beyond graduation with an undergraduate degree.

The Information: A History. A Theory. A Flood.

Hal Harris | Tue, 03/01/2011 - 00:00

If information about information is metadata, that's what we have here. As most of us are trying to drink from a firehose of information that clogs our eyes, ears, and every mailbox, James Glieck (author of "Chaos") helps us to step back to view the larger picture, with a longer perspective.

Flights of Fancy

Hal Harris | Sun, 01/02/2011 - 01:00

One cold morning last week, as I was out to pick up our newspapers, a group of perhaps 250 starlings took off from a neighbor's trees, rose as a mass, wheeled a couple of circles in the air over the trees and settled in other trees nearby. There were no predators in evidence, so iIt was not clear what made them fly or how they decided when and where to land.