Is deeply reported journalism going the way of the fax machine?  Is the Web Apple says is our future, on tiny screens and mobile devices, all wrong for long-form, edited, fact-and-spell-checked work?

President Obama is often portrayed as an "anti-war" candidate, now and during the 2008 election.  He is clearly no such thing, as his willingness to take unilateral action against the leader of a country which is no threat to anyone outside its own borders (just like Iraq) demonstrates.Yes, he was critical of the Iraq War but only because he preferred imperialism “not just through military force, but through the force of our ideas; through economic power, intelligence and diplomacy.”

What's the environmental equivalent of those emails that ask you to stick it to oil companies by not buying gas on a Tuesday?   Earth Hour.  Started in 2007 as sort of a well-meaning placebo (think carbon credits, without having to spend any money) it has technically spread to 130 countries but the participation - people who shut off their lights from 8:30-9:30 p.m. last night - has dropped significantly, even though they claim a billion people participated (like Million Man March and Iraq war protests, knock 80% off claims).

Quanta lost by electrons could be detected by proteins within the nose, say a group of physicists, and odor molecules could absorb these quanta and thereby be detected.   If their hypothesis is right, an "electronic nose" superior to any current chemical sensor could be created.Luca Turin of MIT, speaking at the American Physical Society meeting, discussed how "vibrational modes" of odors could be their signatures.   Fies can distinguish between molecules that are chemically similar but in which a heavier version of hydrogen had been substituted, according to a recent study.

The news media are flush with stories this week claiming global warming is crushing global crop production. According to the media, global warming is putting the hurt on two of our favorite indulgences – coffee and beer.   A look at facts...shows global warming is strongly benefiting nearly all global crops, including coffee, beer barley, and African corn.

Writing more than 150 years ago, Charles Darwin identified the central problem with humanity’s ability to understand nature’s complex interactions. We believe we are intelligent enough to sort out obscure natural processes, so we invent stories that seem to explain what we are seeing. Darwin recognized, however, that we presume too much, failing to see the real causes of events.

The great thing about being a dictator is you can make any ridiculous claim and no one in your country can dispute you -so if Kim Jong Il wants to claim he is Batman, well, okay.Venezuela's socialist President Hugo Chavez has declared himself a science expert recently, further asserting capitalism is so awful it killed life on Mars.  Yes, he is scientifically asserting that Mars once had water and "it would not be strange that there had been civilization on Mars, but maybe capitalism arrived there, imperialism arrived and finished off the planet."Happy World Water Day!

While lauded by activists as leadership, the Air Resources Board in California and its mandate of a controversial cap-and-trade scheme was always scientifically and economically suspect (see California grossly overstates emissions to get mandates passed) and it has turned out to be ethically questionable also.

With the world gripped by fear that the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plants may turn into “another Chernobyl,” perhaps it’s worth examining just how bad Chernobyl actually was.Putting Chernobyl in Perspective By Josh Gilder

Researchers writing in Nature have stated that quartz deposits may be a prediction tool for earthquakes.   Along with earthquakes, underground quartz deposits worldwide may also be behind mountain building and other continental tectonics, they say.The researchers examined temperature and gravity across the Western United States using seismic instruments to describe the geological properties of the earth's crust and found that quartz crystal deposits are found wherever mountains or fault lines occur in states like California, Idaho, Nevada and Utah.They say quartz indicates a weakness in the earth's crust likely to spawn a geologic event such as an earthquake or a volcano.