tikiera

Next year I will celebrate PI day.  I think with apple.  Mmmm…. Apple pie.

Transcendental numbers are awesome.  I had a list once, and I really need to find it again.  I am not as much a science geek as I used to be. 

Pi and I got me through math class when I was willing to give them up due the sexist idjit who was the teacher assigned to the college track.  I went from being in a math club, to wanting to drop all my math classes.    I sometimes wonder if my inability to handle math is like my clumsiness – partially true and partially learned behavior. 

But Pi and I are numbers that are wonderous, in the way that causes wonder. 

4/25/08 Pine Forests Destroyed by Beetle Takeover

So, pine beetles destroying trees equals carbon sink being turned into carbon released.  Essentially, trees absorb more carbon then they make.  When trees die, they aren’t there to take in carbon, and release the carbon they had stored.    Global warming and prevention of fires equals beetle surge.  Beetle population surging means their territory grows expediately, and we can’t stop them. 

And this while the climate is going to get seriously messed up before we can fix it.  We don’t know all the chains and the interlinks.   

It’s a web, ecology is.  A web for which we can’t see all the strands.   

4/11/08 Massive Particle Collider Raises Hopes, Concerns

Did you ever read Seize the Night by Dean Kootnz?  Sadly, this is what people fear.  (Merging of multiple dimensions).  Or black hole in the planet. 

But all those things are likely in the slightest.   I mean, a chance so small it’s ridiculous (would you like to win the lottery and get struck by lighting on the same day while a space station toilet falls on you kinda likely).

There are days when I believe only a small proportion of people have any real need to KNOW.  The rest are scared of science, because they don’t want answer, they only want beliefs.  This collider is going to give us information on the most basic particles that make up our universe.  It’s not going to give answers per se, but will give us more questions, and ways to look at things.  I am giggly and excited just thinking about it, and I can’t understand the fear of it that has made headlines lately.

*** I am beginning to annoyed that there is little science and more controversy on NPR.  Soon, soon I will go back to the Naked Scientist, because English radio assumes that you can understand the science, not just the controversy***