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.
In the giant 'Europeans are far more anti-science than Americans' file, we can now add another section on racism.Science can use genetic testing to understand risk factors - some groups have a greater risk than others - but that means interested groups can also do other things with the results. Europe is terrifically racist, you will never hear a racial slur, much less a stadium-wide chant, at an American sporting event but you are guaranteed to have them at the EURO CUP 2012 tournament. Western Europe is at least trying to drive it out and all those 'end racism' banners are a puzzle to western football viewers but at least they care.Yet now racists have a new weapon; genetics.
So a young earth creationist museum put some dinosaurs in its advertising. Ho-hum.While the atheist panic machine lumbers into action once again - after all, kids like dinosaurs, what if they go and learn not to steal and stuff while they are there? - there really isn't much to worry about if you are not in the panic business.
Do you want to ban cigarettes and legalize marijuana? Did you cheer when a judge in one state broke the law regarding the Ten Commandments and hissed when a judge in another state broke the law regarding gay marriage?Freedom is a moving target, as is social authoritarianism, and how people seem to come down on one issue often shows how they think on a whole raft of other ones.
"Chagas Disease: “The New HIV/AIDS of the Americas”" screams the headline of an editorial in the open access journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, written primarily by two principal investigators of a vaccine against Chagas disease - and it has resounded with a thud among the actual people they think they are helping.
Space is an extremely hostile environment. You knew that, though no one wants to think about exploding instantly as their blood boils without an atmosphere (or it does not - like how airplanes fly, this seems to still be a debate). Most planets aren't all that much better.
The fair trade movement is in its seventh decade but has an internal problem. Fair trade, as a concept, sought originally to make sure small people got a fair deal - a Mennonite visiting Puerto Rico saw the poverty levels of people there and decided to help them make more money, rather than advocating to give them government handouts (I know, I know, zany religious types).
June 5, 2012 you get to share a communal experience with scientists from hundreds of years ago. No, I don't mean Calculus, I mean one of the rarest and more interesting recurring events science has been able to witness since the invention of the telescope - a transit of Venus.You may not have heard of it but you know of it if you ever wondered how astronomers were able to calculate how far away the Sun is from Earth - the basis of the Astronomical Unit (AU) that is eponymous today.
The Square Kilometre Array telescope will be the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope, but it had a bit of a problem most big science projects do not have; multiple countries wanted to host it.
Is it cheaper to privatize deliveries? Sure is, that is why UPS and FedEx are doing well and the US Post Office is now advertising that companies should send more junk mail and waste natural resources.(1)
More high school students are taking math and science classes - a good thing, we all want more science literacy - but the U.S. Education Department, in its quest to stop people from wondering how it still exists after 33 years of education not being a federal prerogative, cautions that scores have stagnated.To people not trying to rationalize their jobs, and not in the scare journalism business, that simply means we had nearly 50% fewer people in 1970 but we have a lot more now and the same percentage are good at math and science. Math and science remain hard.That's why smarter people do it.
We tend to associate with people we like and that like us because they are like us - so it's no surprise I hang out with wickedly smart, outrageously attractive people. Long-term relationships, even non-sexual ones with women as ridiculously awesome as me, are part of what separates us from food...I mean, other animals. Well, sort of. Maybe birds do that too.
Sometimes you set out to test for antibiotics but get a bonus; in this case, diphenhydramine, arsenic, and fluoxetine.Yikes.
