A number of conservatives hold strange anti-science positions and the same number of progressives do.  The non-social-authoritarians of the political spectrum, mostly those with that liber root word, mostly only deny science when it really bugs them.

No wonder that liberal science academics seem to like libertarian Ron Paul.  Paul — and libertarian philosophy in general — tackles government policy the same way a researcher tackles an experiment.

From Science Codex we get word of a new instruction manual for the coming apocalypse. They write:

Yes, the world is coming to an end! At least that's what we should believe based on what we hear from the History Channel during sweeps week. But it's worse than that! Now it is the History Channel, The Learning Channel, and you'll not be surprised, every channel because it's popular. 

We are suffering from an overflow of doom and gloom from everywhere we go

Harold Camping has apologized to his followers for being wrong on the Rapture - twice - and essentially costing them a lot of money. "Come now, let us reason together," said the Lord in Isaiah 1:18 and so we cannot be too harsh on him for doing the flawed, worldview-focused math I dissected in So The Rapture Is Saturday - Luckily The Grey's Anatomy Season Finale Was Last Night.  Paul Krugman does the same thing every week in the New York Times and still hasn't repented and he bilks Americans out of a lot more money than Camping did.

Some old people don't understand why you would pay $10 to 'license' a book rather than $10 to own one. E-Book readers are certainly convenient, you can have a lot of books in your carry-on bag instead of one, and people are happy to pay for convenience. In my case, it is practical. I have a lot of old books so if I want to read them, I risk damaging them or I have to buy 'reader' copies and then take up twice as much space for the same book. And books in the public domain are often free.

Kindles, iPads, Nooks, they are all successful for their corporate sales departments so clearly people like the convenience, even if the price for a book with no media seems rather high. The U.S. Justice Department thinks there is something more sinister; collusion.

Did you know there is a war on women?  If so, it isn't just a few on the right, it seems. Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Bill Maher and others have been waging it for years with their misogynist outbursts, argues Kirsten Powers in the Daily Beast. There have even been boycotts by people on the left who are outraged that these guys still have jobs. Oh, wait, that last part never happened.

Mobile euthanasia units in Holland will travel around the country to help people end their lives when their own doctors subscribe to that old-fashioned Hippocratic Oath and refuse to accept 21st century postmodern values.

Levenseinde, "Life End", is the biggest Dutch advancement in helping kill people since turning Anne Frank over to the Nazis. They legalized euthanasia in 2002 as one of their post-World War II liberal values but some doctors violate the law and refuse to kill people, instead persisting in the archaic notion that doctors should try and save lives.

What about the euthanizers?  Their psychological health is important, too. They will only be allowed to kill one person per week.  We don't want anyone getting weird.

The anti-Occupy Wall Street movement, styling themselves Occupy Occupy D.C., held a rally today at Freedom Plaza to call for a “Cease Fire in Obama's War on Nature.” They came out today to protest “the Obama Administration's new policy to kill the barred owl in deference to the spotted owl in the Pacific Northwest.”

If that makes no sense, welcome to politics.  If you've never witnessed taxpayer money being spent on lawyers to get around the federal Wilderness Act law in order to comply with the federal Endangered Species Act, you have not been around for long.

The Obama administration delayed, and then canceled, the Keystone XL Project expansion that would have generated up to 120,000 jobs and lowered the cost of fuel for Americans.  Now, with oil at $108 a barrel, the opposition party has him scrambling to rationalize how that is a good thing.

Science 2.0 favorite Garth Sundem has a new book coming out Brain Trust, where he gets lab-tested advice from 93 Nobel laureates, MacArthur geniuses, and National Science Medal winners on topics ranging from surfing to Scrabble.  In this Men's Journal interview, he culls together his favorite tips, including how to lose weight on a diet of Cherry Garcia ice cream and potato chips, and reveals why he does his interviews in his car.

Can you live the scientifically perfect life?  Garth thinks so.