jonathan butz

Galactic Center of Milky Way Rises over Texas Star Party from William Castleman on Vimeo.

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

A phylum of protozoa known as Tardigrades (“water bears”) have eight legs with claws and can survive a tremendous variety of habitats and abuse.

It is not enough to merely expose them to harsh terrestrial conditions for study, so scientists shot a group into SPACE. The study of survivors is complete, and the results are here.

The most important scientific revolutions all include, as their only common feature, the dethronement of human arrogance from one pedestal after another of previous convictions about our centrality in the cosmos.
-Stephen Jay Gould

In breeding domesticated animals to obtain desirable qualities (meat, strength, obedience, hunting skills, coats, etc.), sometimes odd consequences emerge. Behold the fainting goat, who is easily startled and collapses momentarily, not a great way to evade predators.

Horse + Donkey = Mule

You know this. Well, you should.

Apparently there are many animals that…appreciate variety.

Whale + Dolphin = Wholphin
Leopard + Lion = Leopon
Cow + Buffalo = Beefalo

The Kansas Board of Education is at times in the hands of a conservative (read: religious) majority. During such times, evolution comes up for debate.

Having recently ambled through the Natural History Museums in New York and Washington, D.C. (and since then Vienna as well), I find this hard to believe. In museums, evolution is a an undisputed process, responsible for the ever changing cabaret of life through the ages. Only art museums contain alternatives to evolution, being archives of fantasy as well as fact and history.

But perhaps they’ve no museums in Kansas.

For most of human history we have searched for our place in the cosmos. Who are we? What are we? We find that we inhabit an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgoten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxys than people. We make our world significant by the courage of our questions, and by the depth of our answers.

There are many hypotheses in science which are wrong. That’s perfectly all right; they’re the aperture to finding out what’s right. Science is a self-correcting process. To be accepted, new ideas must survive the most rigorous standards of evidence and scrutiny.

It is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

In science it often happens that scientists say, “You know that’s a really good argument; my position is mistaken,” and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it.

The well-meaning contention that all ideas have equal merit seems to me little different from the disastrous contention that no ideas have any merit.