Since the 1980s, when lawsuits nearly drove drug companies out of business, a special 'Vaccine Court' has been the route parents of children have to go if they suspect a vaccine was involved in their child's situation.Is there truly due process if a plaintiff must go through a no-fault, no-jury court before being allowed to go to court? Some parts of American society are exempt from civilian courts, such as the military but does the Constitution protect drug companies the same way?"We very much wanted to make sure vaccine manufacturers are out of the line of lawsuits," said Dr. O. Marion Burton, president of the AAP. "Otherwise, we end up with nobody producing vaccines, and nobody making new vaccines."
America's fastest-growing brand of belief is non-belief, says biologist (and guest columnist here) Jerry Coyne in a USA Today editorial.The religious approach to understanding inevitably results in different faiths holding incompatible "truths" about the world...Because there's no way to decide, religions have duked it out for centuries, spawning humanity's miserable history of religious warfare and persecution.
Harrison Ford is reported to have said to "Star Wars" creator George Lucas, referring to the dialogue in "Star Wars", "George, you can type this shit, but you sure as hell can't say it."It was that bad.Carrie Fisher says that she did cocaine on the set of "The Empire Strikes Back" so it must have gotten to her also. All that snow on Hoth apparently wasn't just set design.
Arianna Huffington made a grand gesture - a fleet of buses for people to attend Jon Stewart's rally to D.C. to protest...well, apparently they are protesting the protesting by right wing people against Obama in 2010 that was a 'hallmark of democracy' when leftwing people in 2005 did it against Bush.
Deaf or blind people often report enhanced abilities in their remaining senses, but no one has explained how and why that could be. Researchers say they have discovered there is a causal link between enhanced visual abilities and reorganization of the part of the brain that usually handles auditory input in congenitally deaf cats. The findings provide insight into the plasticity that may occur in the brains of deaf people.Another question for those considering cochlear implants; if the brain has rewired itself to compensate for the loss of hearing, what happens when hearing is restored?
You may not be able to trust Exxon for objective data on emissions and our planet but you sure can't trust advocacy-based political groups in a highly-charged political state like California either.California grossly miscalculated pollution levels in a scientific analysis used to toughen the state's clean-air standards, and scientists have spent the past several months revising data and planning a significant weakening of the landmark regulation... writes the San Francisco Chronicle.
Facebook recently implemented a system where you can be added to groups without any choice in the matter. Result: technology blogger Michael Arrington, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis all found themselves added to a group called North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). Adding Zuckerberg without his permission would seem to make the point privacy groups are concerned about rather clear, but it didn't.
One of the funniest things I read as a young man was a minister in the newly Communist state of Nicaragua explaining why they shut down the newspapers; 'They said we suppressed freedom of expression. This was a lie and we could not allow them to publish it.'
If you are one of those nostalgic types, you might insist football players were better when you were young. You are wrong. Kids today are bigger and faster. When my local football team, Folsom, played Grant for the first game of the season this year, I predicted a loss of 35 points despite the fact that Folsom wins most of its games by 40 - and that would be a good showing. My reasoning? Two kids on the other team could bench press 400 lbs and weighed over 300, 5 would go to top schools on scholarships. When I went to college, it was a big deal to bench press 300 lbs. for a football player.
Like dinosaurs, being huge is not an advantage throughout history and Paris japonica stands a greater chance of extinction because of its large genome, say researchers. Paris japonica has 152.23 picograms (pg) of DNA, 50 times bigger than the human genome, which is 3.0 picograms. A picogram is one trillionth of a gram.Why does that matter? The more DNA there is in a genome, the longer it takes for a cell to copy all of its DNA and divide, thus a key reason why plants living in deserts which must grow quickly after rains have small genomes enabling them to grow rapidly.
