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Halloween Horror Science: Are Chickens That Learn A Bigger Threat To Us Than AI?

The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) vegetarian advocacy group ...

Ignore Critics, Gen Z, We Weren't Smarter In 1984

It's commonplace for older generations to criticize the young. In my early career, an older fellow...

Taking The Book Of The Dead To Heart

In ancient Egypt, the heart was the key to a happy afterlife. It lived on after death, they believed...

American CO2 Is Below War War II Levels But We Keep Emissions High In Poor Countries

In politics, one way to make your belief in alternative energy seem feasible is to make its competitors...

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Hank CampbellRSS Feed of this column.

I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

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Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny.

1. Drought is a serious problem in many parts of the world, going well beyond our California 'limit the days you water your lawn' irritation and well into 'We are going to die without rain' territory.

It's boom or bust in parts of India, where they actually look forward to monsoons - and sometimes they can't happen soon enough.  But what if the water gods are fickle?  Some crafty leaders in male-dominated Bihar think the solution is to have young girls walk around naked.
If there are two things biology guru Josh Witten likes, it's getting pummelled by very large men sans padding or helmets (it's not a sex thing, pervs) ... and remote bookstores.

It's his remote bookstore fetish which led him to Dulles airport; not exactly a hotbed of pre-flight intelligentsia (that would be Reagan International instead) but where he spied this handsome display and therefore deserving of a mention.  Via Blackberry and Verizon I received this picture:

Garth Sundem between hell and a fart
CNN is trying to look like they are impartial by simultaneously only having talking heads who stress how vital government health care is while then proclaiming it Obama's "Waterloo."

If you aren't familiar with military history, or only know the colloquial term, here is a brief summary:  Napoleon was a brilliant General during the disastrous French Revolution who made himself Emperor after a coup d'etat.  He battered around the continental powers, reinstituted slavery, implemented French modern civil law and tried to invent a new week.  Oh, and sold us Louisiana.
Tangential Science: it's not necessarily science, but it's still funny.

1. Pity poor Conde Nast.  Not only are they going to lose $200 million in 2009, meaning Graydon Carter of Vanity Fair may have to limit himself to one personal driver while he jets off to expensive dinners on his expense account, but now a blogger on the Internet has gone after Wired because, surprise, their coverage of science is not all that great.
If you're inclined to follow print media, and live in the Sacramento area, and came down on the side of Sacramento Magazine in the great SacMag/SacTown (1) War, you might be interested to know they did a profile of us in their July issue.

There's no online version, which would seem to be a strategic error.    Local company+1 million readers = bonus traffic.   
I assume all of you know this but, if not, here is the blurb I keep getting from the kind marketing folks at Science.

The upside: $25,000

The catch: The topic is limited to molecular biology.   

The criteria: This is for 'early career life scientists' so you may be excited, since the average age is now 42 years old before getting an R01 grant but, no, they mean only those who were awarded their Ph.D. in 2008.  So the only ones eligible are what you researchers call 'slave labor'.