Is Fukushima now more serious than the 1979 Three Mile Island incident in the U.S.A., as US Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently claimed?     Hard to say yet.  But a mysterious rise in radiation Wednesday is certainly cause for concern.   It seems to have been big enough to force technicians to leave the plant, according to the BBC.  Over the days of the Fukushima crisis, attention has switched from reactor building 1 to 3, to 2, back to 3 - and now, to 4.

In a 24-hour news cycle, it's hard to know what is real and what is not.  In a situation like Japan, all there is left for outsiders is concern.   And some groups with an anti-science agenda want to capitalize on that concern.

Not an hour has gone by that a spokesperson for Greenpeace hasn't hinted that a magnitude 9 earthquake(!) is an indictment of nuclear power.  It's just too darn risky.   Well, what isn't risky if Mother Nature can never be involved?  Greenpeace and other anti-science activists also claim oil is bad, coal is bad, natural gas is bad - everything is bad except for solar which, given today's technology, actually is really bad.

In science, Democrats and Republicans agree on very little, or at least the things they value in science debates are different.   Republicans don't think stunting the economy today is a good fix for climate change and Democrats don't agree vaccines are a good fix for keeping healthy kids.

One thing both sides to seem to agree on today is Google: Reps. Edward Markey and Joe Barton, co-chairmen of the Bipartisan Privacy Caucus, are making Google a target after the online giant was caught acquiring social security numbers of kids in its doodling contest.  It is one thing for Barton, a Republican, to criticize them but Google is a financial and cultural darling of Democrats so Markey looks bad for them.

It sounds great - teach ambiguity by introducing complex questions that do not have easy answers.    The problem is that a lot of students aren't going to get what they need out of classes that way, notes Chad Orzel of Scienceblogs.com.   

I quickly run up against two major problems: first, that we have certain material that we need to cover for our own courses, and second that we have certain material that other people expect us to cover when their students take our classes.

Biodegradable sneakers?   Anything with 'green' slapped on it is going to sell to a certain audience but, as science always knew and the public discovered about ethanol, just because activists and a politician or two talks a lot about it doesn't make it better for the environment.

Plastics are essential in modern life and a biodegradable version that uses less petroleum would be terrific, but are they a net gain for the environment?   The iameco, billed as the world's first biodegradable computer, had a frame made from wood pulp and its panels contained seeds so that when thrown away it would eventually grow new trees.   

It's not going to be a big secret to any of you over the age of 25 that court cases are often not about right versus wrong but about convincing a jury.    And if you want to convince a jury, it helps to make sure you have the right one so choosing members is an art.

In the debate over whether or not Medicare should be available to everyone, like it is to really poor people, soldiers, old people and members of Congress, one thing gets lost in the cost discussion;  things are so expensive because lawyers love to sue.

By vilifying doctors and hospitals and insurance companies, as populist efforts to jam through healthcare reform have done, advocates are reaffirming the notion that it's okay to sue over everything because the medical community are all just greedy corporations we are being told to hate.

Self-loathing Americans occasionally get concerned about evolution acceptance in America - like with Republicans who accept climate change but not global warming, the issue is more one of nuance and some don't like any nuance at all.    Leaving the possibility open that some divine entity may have created the spark of life and man evolved from there gets people lumped in as 'creationists' with the kookier 'young earth creationism' minority by angry atheists, so people shut down when a hot button question like evolution is asked - they are looking for the linguistic catch.

I understand we are not the mass market but is there any piece of technology you're going to get educated on by walking into a brick and mortar retail store?   

If you look on the Internet to get questions answered first, like which you might prefer in a television, DLP or LED or Plasma, you probably also looked at prices.   And that is why Best Buy is in a tough position even though its top competitor, Circuit City, went out of business.  

There's no market niche they hold, no technology cutting-edge enough it requires expertise (3-D television is a non-starter and HD-DVD is long dead) which means Best Buy has terrific people (I was there on Saturday - they really are terrific, even if I don't need them) and a cost that corresponds to that.