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.
Americans are being beat by Asians again. Asians do better on international standardized tests, their economies are better; heck, they are even robbing us of that last stronghold of American dominance - obesity. The Chinese have gotten a level of fat in one generation that it took Americans 200 years to accomplish. Typical overachievers.
What does it take for Fritz Vahrenholt, a professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Hamburg, a former German environment minister and one of the fathers of the German environmental movement (and, unlike everyone at Desmogblog.com, who simply write character assassinations the moment people deviate from their worldview, has actually devoted a lot of time and money to replacing fossil fuels) to lose faith in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)?It took working with the IPCC.
I make fun of numerology but I kind of like it. I can like it and still make fun of it because I don't take it too seriously.Want to claim there is a mathematical secret, far beyond human intelligence, buried in religious texts? Sure, I will listen, if it's on TV and well produced. It's fun to speculate that prayers and rituals have a pattern that contains some sacred rhythm and people 3,000 years ago were super smart about it and we are not. It can get a little funky if you take it too seriously, though. Words no longer have meaning if they are instead numerical combinations. Change a word, or add one, and you would apparently allow sleeping with your neighbor's wife or whatever in the Ten Commandments.
'Grey' literature, which led to the "Glaciergate" scandal of 2010 when it was revealed that the rate at which Himalayan glaciers are losing ice (gone by 2035!) was stated as fact even though it was not based on evidence, will no longer be a problem for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).Because they have declared that grey literature will no longer be grey - any information they choose to use will be considered peer reviewed just by being posted on the Internet by the IPCC.
Henry I. Miller, M.D., physician and molecular biologist, is the Robert Wesson Fellow in Scientific Philosophy and Public Policy at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and was at the NIH and FDA from 1977 to 1994.He is, basically, a longtime knowledgeable insider into How Things Work. And he isn't a fan of how things work at the National Science Foundation.
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.
