This sounds like something straight out of science fiction. Heather Dewey-Hagborg is an artist who makes 3-D portraits of people using their DNA without their knowledge. She finds the DNA on trash they’ve left behind — cigarette butts, chewed gum, strands of hair — then extracts the genetic information and uses a 3-D printer to […]
A few weeks ago, a Florida high school student named Kiera Wilmot got in trouble for conducting a science experiment involving aluminum foil and toilet bowl cleaner in a water bottle on school grounds. Her experiment was hardly a bomb, but officials applied the usual ludicrous zero tolerance policy — not only was she expelled […]
With reports of a new measles outbreak tied to parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, Art Caplan argues that if my kid gets sick because you didn’t take care of yours, I should be able to sue you: If you know the dangers of measles or for that matter whooping cough or mumps, and […]
My friend Phil Plait is an astronomer, author of “Death From The Skies,” columnist for Slate.com, and frequent guest on my radio show. Today on America Weekend, Phil asked why our government is attacking science — from a climate-change-denying Republican chairman of the House science committee, to a state legislature (Louisiana) that thinks creationism should […]
When NASA recently announced that it wants to spend $100 million to kick-start a program to tow an asteroid into orbit around the moon, I wanted to know how and why. So I called upon Emily Lakdawalla, planetary geologist and senior editor at Planetary.org, to come on my America Weekend show to explain the theories […]
Why wasn’t Yvonne Brill more famous? Why wasn’t she held up as a role model for girls across America? Why didn’t most of us know of her accomplished career? I hadn’t heard of her until coming across her obituary in the NY Times this weekend. It said Brill (who died last week at age 88), […]