La Bella Principessa is a painting worth somewhere between $19,000 and $150 million dollars. In 1998, Christie’s listed the chalk-and-ink drawing on vellum dated as early 19th century and Germanic in provenance. (Oops!) It was sold to Kate Ganz for $21,850. The portrait was sold a few years later to Peter Silverman for a similar amount. […]
Michael Pollan recently wrote a piece in The New York Times discussing why nothing is truly natural anymore. I don’t always agree with Pollan’s views, but this piece resonated, as this idea has been tossed around quite frequently. Pollan spoke about the word ‘natural’ in context of the food industry, but the argument has much […]
One hundred and fifty years have passed since Lincoln’s assassination and the end of the Civil War. May 4, 2015 marks the 150th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s funeral, an event which will be commemorated by thousands of Civil War re-enactors, visitors and dignitaries participating in the 2015 Lincoln Funeral Re-enactment. The Battle of Gettysburg, the […]
We’ve all been there: holding the fridge door open as we cast a skeptical eye over that 4-day old package of meat, wondering if it’s still good or if maybe we’re better off throwing it out and ordering a pizza for dinner. I personally try and do the majority of my grocery shopping on the […]
Scientists have been studying the calls of a whale dubbed “the loneliest whale in the world” for more than 20 years. Its calls are unusually high pitched—52 hertz, versus the typical 15-20 hertz range of blue whales. No one has ever seen the 52-hertz whale, but scientists believe he has been swimming alone for decades, […]
Lexical gap: “A perceived gap in the lexicon or vocabulary of a language”; ideas or “relationships that are ‘lexicalised’ or represented in the vocabulary of one language may not be in another.” —A Dictionary of Sociolinguistics The Roman orator Quintilian said that when communicating “one should aim not at being possible to understand, but […]
As a researcher and dilettante science blogger, I come across a lot of things on the Internet I find irritating: poorly written papers, inaccurate methods, unsubstantiated scientific claims, ‘nutrition bloggers,’ and so on. Hilarious science writer Adam Ruben posted a piece a few months back titled ‘How to P*ss Off a Scientist,’ where he listed […]
What is the difference between power and energy? The simple answer is that energy is the ability to do work and power is the rate at which energy is created or consumed. Both terms appear quite frequently whenever talk about electricity or environmental sustainability crops up, but are often incorrectly used interchangeably. When I pay […]
It’s no secret the general public is not always in agreement with scientists, but a recent study from the Pew Research Center shows just how divisive certain issues can be. [Editor’s note: See also Matthew Lawder’s post on this same topic, “Science vs. The People.”] In August 2014 approximately 2,000 adults across the country were […]
Washington University in St. Louis’ Dean of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Barbara Schaal, was recently announced as the President-Elect of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), beginning her term Feb. 17. The AAAS’ mission is to “advance science, engineering, and innovation throughout the world for the benefit of all people.” As AAAS’s president, […]
