Our book club meeting this month is again at the usual place and time, 3 PM Saturday August 13 on the lawn just north of Harvard Yard, between Memorial Hall (the big ugly pseudo gothic building) and the Science Center (the big ugly modern building that looks like a flight of giant stairs to nowhere.) It’s supposed to be warm and sunny, but if it rains, we’ll move indoors to the cafeteria of the Northwest building up Oxford Street just past the museum.

The book is about the birth of forensic science (CSI: Lyon, as in Lyon, France, circa 1894.) I’m about 1/2 way through, the prime suspect is about to go to trial, and is attempting an insanity defense. It’s a pretty compelling story, all the more so because it’s true. The author alternates chapters between the story of the criminal, Joesph Vacher, and the history of forensics, mostly focusing on Professor Lacassagne of the Lyon Medical School, who was the leading forensic scientist of the time.

Jonathan says:

NASA’s Space Shuttle is being retired this month after three decades of ups and downs both literal and metaphorical.

I’ll take a trip down memory lane and review what the Shuttles did and didn’t do, and discuss other spaceplanes past and present. Finally, I’ll speculate about what’s next for the US human spaceflight program.

Hello, Earthlings!

Jonathan is a long-time member of the Boston Skeptics, an astronomer, and expert on space travel. He writes a monthly column for Sky and Telescope and maintains the Jonathan’s Space Report web site. He previously spoke to us about the history of the Moon Race, in a very interesting, informative and popular talk, especially about the little-known Soviet moon program. Be sure to arrive early so you can get a seat in front!

RSVP on Facebook

When: Monday, July 25 at 7pm

Where: Upstairs at Tommy Doyle’s Irish Pub,
Harvard Square

See you all there!

As mentioned, last night I (and frequent Skepchick commenter Expatria) attended Nature Network’s pub event, which featured two guest scientists delivering 10-minute talks about what they’d do with limitless research funding. The first was Antoine van Oijen, who talked about the possibilities of studying a single molecule. His apt metaphor: if aliens visited Earth and collectively reported on the characteristics of humans, they’d conclude that each has one testicle and one ovary. He dreams of having the resources to color-tag a single molecule as it moves across a strand of DNA, watching as it encounters another molecule. To a layperson like myself, it sounded pretty neat, and van Oijen was very charismatic and accessible. Hearing the technical questions that came from the audience of scientists, though, I suspect I’m missing quite a lot. Homework!

The other scientist to speak was Andreas Mershin from the Center for Biomedical Engineering at MIT. I found him to be even more accessible, mostly because of the fact that his research has such clear practical applications in the real world. He’s working on developing bioelectronic photovoltaic applications, which I believe is a fancy way of saying that he’s trying to find a way to harness solar energy using plants. This is, in a word, rad. In multiple words, it is rad as all hell. Allow me to explain further.