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.
They are not buying into global warming except they care about the environment more than anyone ever did before. They will eat healthier than previous generations, provided the products are in pouches and not cans and can be purchased in vending machines and be...microwaveable. Except it needs to be slow food and locally grown.What's up with Millennials? More importantly, what is up with marketing people and all their conflicting beliefs about Millennials?
Both literally and figuratively, our rationality is what makes us human. It is what separates us from our pets, right? Yes, but in many ways we are a lot less rational than other animals, and we even strive to make our irrational aspects rational—which is not rational at all.
A little over a year ago I wrote about the continued disturbing trend in government subsidies of 'magic rocks' while claiming they were science - in that instance, commercial solar companies that were being propped up by American taxpayers, with little or no due diligence, because the president and his Energy Secretary said we were in a 'race with China' to produce cheap solar panels, when China has no unions and no environmental policies and therefore a much lower cost basis.
The scientization of politics is taking a cultural or political world view and rationalizing it using science. Since it is election time in America, it has been open season on Republicans, with social scientists, who are around 99% Democrats, looking for ways to convince people to vote for their candidates - but they want to look impartial doing it.
Which do you love more, organic food or green energy? Because you may have to choose.Oregon is the site of a conflict between food and energy, though it is a state that claims it loves both - but the people who love each primarily do so because it makes them money. You really can't love both anyway, because environmental activists are in a never-ending war against the bulk of society and its bad habits, and also in a war with each other. They not only love Gaia more than you do, they love Gaia more than other environmentalists.
Both eugenics and social Darwinism had their moments in their sun, the optimistic goal of progressive techno-elites 100 years ago who wanted to use science to make the world a better place.Sounds terrific, right? Isn't that what vaccines and genetically modified food do also? Indeed, but vaccines and GMOs are for all people and not against some, the way eugenics was. The experience of eugenics may be why so many progressives, the group that embraced and mandated and enforced it as social policy, are so anti-science today; they don't trust science or themselves when science is under their control.
It's a modern technology world. If you were running for president in 2008, you could just forgo public financing of your campaign and stick your opponent with a hard cap of half as much advertising money as you have - then you could spend as much money yourself as both candidates combined spent in 2004.But in 2012 everyone has unlimited money so outspending the other guy with campaign ads won't work again. Instead, politicians are spending money on data mining, so they know what your hot buttons are.
Physics professor Paul Frampton of UNC Chapel Hill is sitting in an Argentine jail, busted for trying to smuggle out 2 kilos of cocaine, but that hasn’t stopped him from asking for a raise on his $107,000 annual salary - raise as in he wants it doubled.Hey, he has tenure. And a lot of citations.Frampton is in a spat with the school because he says they are improperly withholding his salary. They contend his being in an Argentine prison cell for virtually all of this year means he can't possibly be doing any work, even for a tenured professor.
Most people regard journalists as biased, though it is most evident in the bias of journalists at places politically different from the consumer - in the US, MSNBC viewers regard Fox News consumers as biased while Fox News consumers regard everyone else as biased. Science media does not have this issue because everyone votes the same way politically and it makes no difference; except on political issues that attract political demographics, like GMOs or climate change, science media can stick to science. What about sports? Can a sports journalist be biased?They can. It just may not be evident when it comes to their sports coverage.
How do you make an A-list film with a B-movie budget? You use clever writing, moody atmosphere and then some creative camera work. Result: a lot of fun.
To people who are brand new to the culture wars, California's Proposition 37 might be scary. It has demonstrated that the world is a very small place, lies and hysteria can travel around the world and be perpetuated by the blogosphere, the Tweety pages and the Faceyspaceys well before there can be any fact checking or even common sense checking.
Fusion is the super-clean energy we would be thinking about if government-controlled energy science were about the best long-term solutions and not political pet projects - alas, its share of the $72 billion spent on alternate energy the last three years is negligible. But something is better than nothing and some recent research revealed at the International Atomic Energy Association's Fusion Energy Conference in San Diego may be worth getting excited about.
