During the Obama administration, he was concerned about vaccines causing autism and it showed when it came to guidance about swine flu vaccines. His administration banned multi-use vials because of his party's insistence that preservatives caused the disorder.
Though the left-right culture war (all Republican bad, all Democrat gooooooood) is still raging in a small segment of the overall science population (some bloggers, whatever science journalists remain), the rest of America has moved on. People recognize that in the 1990s Democrats were anti-science and in the 2000s Republicans were and now that pendulum has swung again and it will keep happening. Today, food, energy and medical science, the three most pressing short-term issues we face, are vilified by the left.But the right's subversion of science is not dead yet. Climate change is still a pesky issue for them and though the percentage of people who deny evolution is only slightly higher on the right, their efforts to subvert it are much greater.
It is America's worst kept secret - the government has top secret military installations.But the hype around Area 51 rapidly grew to be about aliens and UFOs. Instead, it was a more typical Cold War tale. President Eisenhower had signed off on a secret reconnaissance plane and the military wanted it flown from a secret location.The plane became the well-known U-2 and a CIA official, an Air Force officer and the now legendary Kelly Johnson, first team leader of the Lockheed Skunk Works and the guiding hand behind the P-38 and later the U-2 and the SR-71, flew over Nevada to find a location.
I am making the call: despite all the buzz it is currently getting due to crowdsourced funding for lots of projects, by wading into the anti-technology culture war, I am predicting the demise of Kickstarter. The people behind Kickstarter have declared that they are going to artificially pick the winners and losers of crowd funding and once that happens, the road to ruin is sure to follow.
It's not often that I can say I am stunned by a judicial decision but I have been talking about Yucca Mountain since President Obama took office and immediately honored his deal with Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada to kill the project, after every study by scientists found it the safest place for 70,000 metric tons of high-level waste and a whole lot of money had been spent.It was the most flagrant scientization of politics in recent memory - and the court has taken notice.
It's not right for cobia not to be carnivorous but researchers in Baltimore have scientifically modified these fish so that they no longer occupy their usual place in nature's circle of life: they are now unnatural vegetarians.During four years of experimentation, these "scientists" created a synthetic mixture using taurine, a chemical found in human energy drinks, plant-based (not fish) proteins and fatty acids and fed it to these unsuspecting creatures and it ruined their diets; they became addicted to this new Frankenfood and changed their feeding patterns.
People have always distrusted science, just like people have always been afraid of the supernatural (unless it promises a spiritual pot of gold at the end of your particular rainbow) but the naturalistic fallacy - that natural is somehow good and unnatural is somehow bad - is a recent invention.
We're in a hyper-regulated society. Everyone wants to regulate other people while they claim to care about freedom and choice. If you claim to care about freedom and then want to ban marriage or IVF or food or medicine, I know how you vote.As a hallmark of its presidency, the White House advocated and got passed the Affordable Care Act, which friend and foe alike call Obamacare.
When I think of cheap knock-offs I think of things like a Rolex watch or a Gucci handbag, but apparently knock-off food is a $10-15 billion industry.I don't even mean the faux organic stuff sold as such because some shell company in China claims it is organic and no one bothers to test it, actual food in real supermarkets is sometimes fake, or at least misleading, according to Shaun Kennedy, associate professor of veterinary population medicine at the University of Minnesota Director of the National Center for Food Protection and Defense.
Two weeks ago, Galveston born and raised George P. Mitchell passed away at age 94. He was well-known as a Texas oil billionaire but less well-known as a keen advocate of science.
Omics slapped at the end of words is the latest rage. It makes just about anything sound scientific. If someone says they read an astrology journal, for example, I might roll my eyes a little, but if they call their journal Astrolomics, well ... okay, I would still roll my eyes a little, but if they say they are attending a Beeronomics conference, they are making their way into my blog.
Soylent is getting ready to feed people - I will spare you a joke about the 1973 dystopian film "Soylent Green", inspired by Harry Harrison's "Make Room! Make Room!", since you already made it in your head.(1)
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), is always in conflict with itself. While it claims to care about animals, it also kills about 90% of the animals it takes in. While they advocate less meat consumption, the people they rally around that flag abuse animals with dietary quackery and forced ideology, like the recent case of a dying kitten who was non-responsive when brought to a veterinarian by its vegan owners - who told them a diet of potatoes, rice milk and pasta was killing their cat.(1) The posturing of PETA members overall is cloying, but nothing like most vegans.
