In 1989, the communist dictatorship oddly named Union of Soviet Socialist Republics reached the extent of a third giant hole in the Arctic Circle, Kola Superdeep Borehole SG-3, where they'd been drilling for 19 years. It clocked in at nearly 8 miles deep.
It used to be that religion impacted politics but now politics is instead changing religion. And the catalyst for how religious people are modifying their other beliefs to achieve a common political goal is abortion.
The cozy political lines of the last generation, where Republicans are generally against abortion and Democrats are for it, may get more blurry. The reason is evangelicals; a whole lot of them are Democrats and a whole lot of them are increasingly concerned about abortion.
I think a lot about science outreach. As a non-scientist, I am simultaneously the exact person science outreach advocates say should be excited about science while a few believe my interest (along with 80% of you) in science should consist solely of paying taxes that can then go to government grants, to pay for science they can insist they are doing for us.
If you're not convinced that Planet Nibiru is not hiding in an multiverse pocket of dark matter or you just want to know the best way to get to constellation Boötes so you can ask the residents of Gliese 526 if they got that email you sent from Lone Signal, a new 'GPS' tool can help.
But baby steps first.
What happens if you adhere to every process restriction that a corporation that sells its food using the 'organic' label adheres to, but you don't pay the fees to get a government 'certification' and still try to claim you are 'organic' at a local Farmer's Market?About $20,000 in government fines, it seems.
If I tell you that adult science literacy has tripled since I was in college, that would seem to be a good thing. And if I tell you NIH funding has gone up 50% since 2001, that would also be a good thing.
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.
