writing
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A critique of a recent research paper wherein the authors argue that AI generated content is more environmentally friendly than human writing or art When I began teaching organic chemistry, I watched whatever open course lectures I could find for guidance and inspiration. The lecture series that had the most profound effect on my approach
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I recently bought a chessboard so that I can play against my young daughter and we can learn the game together. In a previous essay on chirality (right/left asymmetry) I used the example of boxing to describe the possible combinations of two chiral objects. Looking at my new wooden chessboard, it occurred to me that
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In the physical sciences, experiments are designed to potentially falsify some hypothesis, which is an educated guess about some state of affairs in the physical world. Philosophy, in contrast, proceeds by way of thought experiments. A thought experiment is some imagined situation or puzzle that is designed to test the boundaries of a definition, a
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I don’t like generative artificial intelligence as it currently exists. Part of this is just a personal reaction. As an amateur artist, I felt my stomach drop when I saw a midjourney generated image win an art contest and the person behind it responded to the backlash by saying something like get over it, art
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At 45 years of age, I’m looking back and reflecting on the fact that I’ve spent most of my adult life in academia. I’m not sure whether I should find this surprising. I feel like I’m suited to it, but things could have turned out very differently. I always did exceedingly well on standardized tests,
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Using the insights from organic chemistry to understand asymmetries everywhere. Asymmetries make the world interesting. They also arise spontaneously in the evolution of complex systems such as living beings. Asymmeties abound in organic biological molecules such as proteins, carbohydrates and the building blocks of DNA because carbon-based molecules share a property we are familiar with
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At the time of this writing, in 2025, it has been a little over a decade since legislative programs started popping up in various states to promote STEAM education. “STEAM’, the incorporation of arts into ‘STEM’ (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics), was as much an admission as a new concept. It was an admission that something
The Model Kit 