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.
People like to live in important times. This is why you will see fairly silly statements like, 'politicial discourse is more acrimonious than ever' even though no one is caning anyone on the floor of Congress, like they did in the 19th century.60 years ago it was culturally taboo for even different types of Protestants to marry each other but Democrats marry Republicans all of the time and have forever. If anything, politics is far less acrimonious that in the past, we just have a rapid communications medium that amplifies when things get weird. And then we have people who make money creating problems to solve
I drank raw milk as a kid. If you were poor and living in the country decades ago, when dairy farmers still had some measure of autonomy from government rules, you probably did too. It didn't hurt me. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to drink it; now, instead of poor people in the country who didn't want to pay a lot for milk in a store because it was price controlled by the government, raw milk is a fad for the wealthy anti-vaccine crowd.
There was a time when people on the right trusted science far more than moderates and liberals. Distrust of scientists, including levels that verged on raging paranoia, was limited to the left side of the political spectrum.
Could the big split among anti-science hippies occur over a cute little cat?PETA loves animals. Greenpeace hates genetic modification and science in general because changes are only 'natural' if high-energy cosmic rays mutate things at random. What about when scientists use unnatural science to help save an endangered species?An African Black-footed Cat was born February 6, 2012, at the Audubon Nature Institute in New Orleans. The cool science aspect, or the creepy FrankenKitten aspect if you are a progressive, is that it was born to an ordinary domestic cat - the first of its kind to be born from inter-species embryo transfer.
Wait, a study claims drinking alcohol makes you less likely to throw cultural caution to the wind and spend stupidly? Does. Not. Compute.Unless it's social psychology, but even then no one is believing it unless they are one of the people writing about how screwed up Republicans are, i.e., need some new framework for the confirmation bias of their audience.
Here is a precautionary principle two-for-one special.
You've heard of Egypt; they were in the news last year for riots and for making Twitter relevant. But dictatorships, oppression of women, sexual discrimination and religious intolerance are apparently not the most important cultural fight they face, in the eyes of ultra-conscious New Yorkers - getting people to smoke less is.
LONDON, March 22, 2012 - Two new surveys conducted among 2,500 adults and 400 teachers show what is really on the minds of those concerned about education; the need to teach about pets in schools.
89% of adults, 78% of primary teachers and 70% of secondary teachers believed it is important to teach responsibility using pets and most adults thought it was more important to teach younger children how to care for pets than it was to teach them about sex education or money management. Isn't that going to cause a fight with the 'teach kids to have sex at younger ages' lobby, though? It's Big Pet versus Big Condom for the mindshare of 8-year-olds.
Climate change is a polarizing science policy debate the likes of which humankind has never witnessed before. Even President Obama's science advisor John Holdren never dreamed up this kind of doomsday scenario when he was writing books with the king of doomsday predictions, Paul Ehrlich. Women in the workforce, CFCs, acid rain, islands of garbage - nothing from past cultural debates compares to the scariness of rolling drought and melting glaciers. What to do? On one side we have people who insist a world where elites have energy and others do not must be implemented right now.
Time is relative, of course, but we still hate to be late for appointments. So there has always been research on making our keeping of time a little more accurate.A new clock tied to the orbiting of a neutron around an atomic nucleus could have such unprecedented accuracy that it neither gains nor loses 1/20th of a second in 14 billion years - basically, you wouldn't have needed to reset your watch yet even if you had been around at the beginning of the Universe.
A study by Indiana University researchers on "coregasm" says it has confirmed anecdotal evidence that exercise can lead to female orgasms.Good news for health clubs everywhere? Maybe. But it's been darn hard to pin down reliable data on it. It makes the media rounds - and of course, this site - every few years.
Food stamps are not food stamps now, they are the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits - and record numbers of Americans are receiving them.
