Tony Piro, the artist behind the webcomic Calamities of Nature, explains the relationship between science and the supernatural better than I ever could.

Click for the rest of the exciting story. Via Evolving Thoughts.

Jorge Cham, creator of the celebrated PhD Comics, sits down to talk with Daniel Whiteson and Jonathan Feng about dark matter (and visible matter!). But rather than a dry and boring video of the encounter, he cleverly illustrates the whole conversation.

Dark Matters from PHD Comics on Vimeo.

I think it’s an exaggeration to say we have “no idea” about dark energy — physicists like to say this to impress upon people how weird DE is, but it gives the wrong impression because we actually do know something about it. But not much!

Of the thousands of these I’ve received, this is perhaps my favorite student evaluation ever. Thank you anonymous student, for your helpful feedback.

(And if this makes no sense, please watch here, or, if you must, read about it on wikipedia)

Update: darn it, Phil beat me by minutes. Always check your RSS reader before posting something from elsewhere on the internets.

Found this video yesterday morning via Swans On Tea. It was so good I had to include it in the talk I gave yesterday afternoon at the Skeptics Society.

Backstory: Bill O’Reilly is very fond of using the tides as evidence that science doesn’t understand everything. Apparently some pinheads tried to point out that we actually do understand that.

At a slightly deeper level: this is a good example of a worldview that can only imagine ultimate explanations taking the form of reference to some person — a being, a kind of conscious agent, who does things for reasons. If you try to give explanations that simply refer to the laws of physics, they will never be satisfied.

In the real world, things happen, not always for (those kind of) reasons. The laws of physics might not have any deeper explanation.

Sorry for the radio silence — Thanksgiving really took it out of me. (The food was excellent — may have eaten too much.) Just got back from a workshop at Stanford, where we had a mini Cosmic Variance gathering, since I saw both Daniel and Risa. Had JoAnne not been delayed on her flight back to California, we might have been able to get four co-bloggers in the same room for probably the first time ever.

Since today is Casual Friday, I’d like to put science aside and do a review of Jonathan Franzen’s new book, Freedom: A Novel. I am hampered in that goal by the fact that I haven’t read the book, and don’t plan to any time soon. (I think Franzen is a great writer, but I’m very behind in my reading list.)

So instead I’ll outsource this one to Washington Post book reviewer Ron Charles, who delivers his critique in video format. It gives me some ideas. (Hat tip to Ariel Kalil.)

Here’s how it starts. Click over to Abstruse Goose to see the exciting conclusion.

Message to science journalists: if this actually happened, it would be pretty awesome.

George Carlin, asked about the meaning of life, proclaims his love for astrophysics and particle physics. And the cyclic universe scenario, in particular.

The interviewer, sadly, is pretty clueless, and wears his cluelessness like a badge of honor. Carlin shows quite a bit of restraint.

Some of us write books, others express themselves through visual media. Here’s my new favorite theory of time, courtesy Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal.

(It continues; click.)

I linked to this on Twitter, where people enjoyed it. Don’t want folks who are still stuck in 2008 and only reading the blog to miss out. Abstruse Goose, click for legible original:

Tom Whyntie points out that the rabbit should really be more spherical.

Even enigmatic eclipsing binaries are thrilled to appear in Beetle Bailey. Sinatra would have killed to appear in Beetle Bailey, am I right?