I wrote about thankfulness a while back, but I hadn’t seen this piece from the New York Times about the health benefits associated with gratitude: Compared with a control group, the people keeping the gratitude journal were more optimistic and felt happier. They reported fewer physical problems and spent more time working out. Further benefits … Continue reading »
Tagged with science …
Breathtaking
This is beautiful: It’s the galaxy cluster Abell 2744, and it appears to be the collision of four separate clusters of galaxies. Clusters are the largest gravitationally-bound structures in the universe. That means that galaxies are bound by gravity into groups, and groups into clusters, but clusters aren’t bound do anything bigger than themselves. Our … Continue reading »
People Really Are Different
This is pretty neat. Police dogs can distinguish identical twins In twelve trials per dog, none of them ever identified the wrong twin as a match, … even though the children lived in the same home, ate the same food, and had identical DNA. No word yet on whether these dogs will be getting their … Continue reading »
Do You Have Free Will? I Hope So!
John Tierney blogs about free will in the Science section of Monday’s New York Times. He’s coming from a non-religious scientific point of view, but here’s the takeaway: … [people] pragmatically intuit that regardless of whether free will exists, our society depends on everyone’s believing it does. The benefits of this belief have been demonstrated … Continue reading »
More Stars, Types of Life, Than Previously Thought
Today’s New York Times had not one but two interesting science articles. The first is the discovery of a new type of bacteria in Mono Lake not far from here in California. What makes it unique (compared to every other type of life on earth) is that it has DNA, but the “ladder” structure of … Continue reading »
Starry Nights in Yucca Valley
Today is the Starry Nights festival in Yucca Valley, and it has been a beautiful night for stargazing. After going to one of the talks this afternoon, we went to the digital-astronomy presentation tonight at the community center. That was so much fun we came home and did some more stargazing from our front yard. … Continue reading »
From Dream to Waking
I read this today: I am certain that in passing from the scientific points of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I … Continue reading »