The more centralized the power, the easier corruption becomes. Hu Zhicheng, a Chinese-born American scientist who returned to China to bring some entrepreneurship to the Communist world superpower, discovered the dark side of that.Chinese companies cultivate influence with local officials and use law enforcement and a malleable legal system as competitive weapons and, because a business civil claim in the US is a criminal one in China, competitors can make sure you never get back home if you try to compete there.There are other cases like Hu's, the US embassy said, without specifying how many. Obviously quiet lobbying has not worked so maybe some international attention will.
Early in 2007, I wrote a few articles lamenting that framing, by journalists and bloggers, was going to end badly, along with assertions about science being settled, which is a fundamentally anti-science position when presented to (or by) people outside science (much like 'theory is colloquially used wrong) who don't get the context and therefore shouldn't have the term manipulated.
Since the bulk of academic research has been taxpayer-funded, it's become increasingly silly to allow private companies to take ownership of the results. Congress passed a law declaring NIH-funded studies must be put in a public repository and it withstood the onslaught of the Democratic House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers Jr. in 2008 but strong leadership by Elias Zerhouni at the NIH prevented them from overturning it.
No, seriously. Christopher Jonassen took pictures of worn-out frying pans but, if you are a Science 2.0 reader, you probably thought they were planets in a remote galaxy.See all of them.
When I want a popsicle, I want a popsicle, I don't need the popsicle framed through social justice issues or a world view, but if you need a certain kind of popsicle to assuage your liberal guilt that you can buy a popsicle and a woman in Arabia cannot (or is it just driving, voting, and wearing clothes of their choosing they cannot do?) , San Francisco - Frisco as local people love to call it - is the place to go.All joking aside, this is cool stuff, literally and figuratively; need a single-malt Scotch popsicle? They have it. Vegan popsicles? Right there in the Bomb Truck. Like buying your popsicles from strangers on tricycles instead? Want one that tastes like corn? You're in luck.
In the preface to the third edition of "Frankenstein", Mary Shelley described a villa party in which Lord Byron challenged each of them to begin a ghost story. In attendance also was Percy Shelley, and Byron's physician, John Polidori. She described her inability to come up with an idea until one sleepless night in her room, behind closed shutters "with the moonlight struggling to get through."I saw with shut eyes, but acute mental vision – I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life …"
In Morocco, the native Tamri goats love the berries of Argan trees they literally climb into the branches to get them. Multi-purpose circle of life bonus; the feces of the Tamri contain Argan seed kernels which local farmers then grind into an oil used in cooking and cosmetics.
Opponents of nationalized health care have been concerned about a slippery slope of preexisting conditions that would create a ghetto for people that are culturally unfashionable.Employers burdened with mandated health insurance by the federal government will think about yet another cost when it comes hiring time; a history of illness? No job. Obese? No job. And the only solution to that would be even more government employees investigating companies for hiring discrimination. The Baylor Health Care System is already doing it. If there is any evidence you use any tobacco product of any kind, you are not getting hired.
It is more shocking to read about San Francisco residents wanting less government busybody interference than about gay nudists, but that's Frisco for you.The Castro district, home of the gay rights movement starting in the 1960s, which included desiring more government involvement in securing their rights, has a contingent who don't always think they should be told to wear pants. Maybe that is why gay marriage got voted down in California but not New York - no one in New York is going to insist they can attend church in the nude, it's too darn cold nine months out of the year.
Defenders of the modern, hyper-aggressive EPA claim everything they do is designed to keep toxic sludge out of the water but their latest effort is likely doing more harm than good.Their big concern about Americans harming the ozone layer now? Asthma inhalers.
