DAVE ALMANDSMITH
30 JUN 2024

Hello again science fans! Xin chào một lần nữa những người hâm mộ khoa học! (2% of Bay Area residents speak Vietnamese at home)

I keep humming to myself, “Oh Lord, stuck in orbit a-again.” (With props to John Fogerty, a former El Cerrito teen) Not only is the Starliner crew - Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore - stuck in the orbiting International Space Station, none of the crew can even take a stroll outside since the ISS 

Bob Siederer
24 June 2024

Hello again science fans!

This is the first SciSchmooze of the astronomical summer, what with the solstice having occurred this past Thursday. Different countries refer to the start of summer at different times, some May 1, Some June 1. In the US, we tend to say it starts on Memorial Day. The astronomical start is celebrated by some as Midsummer’s Day.

Last Wednesday was Juneteenth. What seems like a recent holiday has roots going back to 1865. Heather Cox Richardson explains the history, as well as efforts since then to get around the freedom Juneteenth represents.

I want to follow up on two stories I’ve writen about in the past.

You decide... SciSchmooze 6.17.24
Herb Masters

Happy Father’s Day (and Everyone Else Too!),

Well here we are, not to far from summer now. It seems like there have been a lot of distractions in the past few months. Both good and bad depending on your perspective. Let’s acknowledge that 

Herb Masters
10 June 2024

Greetings Science Appreciators, Critical Thinkers and Science and Reason based Skeptics,

The challenge of understanding the meaning, intent, and consequences of what we face these days is immense. I think we need to be able to have confidence in the validity of what you personally believe to make informed decisions that may have major consequences to each of us as well as to the community as a whole. So how do you know what to accept or believe?

Con

Hello again science fans!   科学迷们，大家好！(7 out of 100 Bay Area residents speak Chinese at home.)

ENVIRONMENT

The photo of a Bali beach covered in plastic waste (photo above) is in stark contrast to my mind’s eye image of the renowned Indonesian vacation paradise. If you watch TV with advertisements, you’ve probably seen colorless squashed plastic containers arise into pristine pastel plastic receptacles in an ad from America’s Plastic Makers. It is disingenuous hype f

Bob Siederer
27 May 2024

Hello again Science Fans! It is a 3-day holiday weekend for most of us, so enjoy the unofficial beginning of summer. The astronomical start of summer, the summer solstice, occurs on Thursday, June 20 this year. If you want to know more about the solstice, check out this article from the Farmers’ Almanac.

Archeology

Way back in 1930, the

Herb Masters
It's 5.20.24 with the SciSchmooze

Greetings Friends of Science and Reason,

I have recently been noticing a lot of articles about how our world seems to be working now that we have really been tampering with it for the last few hundred years. One of the most compelling is Human Footprint | Top Predator | Episode 2 | PBS from PBS. (If you only open one link from this week’s missive I hope you can watch the

Herb Masters
May 13 2024

Hello to the Children of Mothers, who Support and Love Science,

Let’s get this off and running as many mothers would do! I hope that even if you didn’t celebrate Mother’s Day you at least reflected a bit on how essential mothers have been throughout history to science. For instance…

Celebrating Some Mothers of Science and Engineering

Hello again science fans! Kumusta muli mga tagahanga ng agham! [Three out of every 100 people in the Bay Area speak Tagalog/Filipino at home.]

BIOLOGY / ETHOLOGY

In 1967, Roger Payne and Scott McVay discovered that sounds made by male humpback whales were complex arrangements that lasted as long as 30 minutes before being repeated. Multiple males even sang in unison. From year to year some ‘phrases’ were replaced by new ones. ¿Language? More recently we’ve learned that brain anatomy suggests whales could be capable of language. Also, t

Bob Siederer
29 April 2024

Hello again Science fans!

If you are one of those people who, like me, is interested in how things work, you may enjoy this video. It is about Olympic Curling Stones, how they are made, and why they cost so much. The process is fascinating. The granite only comes from one place on earth, Ailsa Craig off the Scotish coast. Two types of granite are used in each stone.

Curling can only be described as an odd sport. It is sort of like shuffleb