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.
Quick, have you heard of Professor Curie? How about Marie Curie?If you're reading this article, you may have known who I meant with the first one, but how many of you instinctively thought of Pierre Curie, co-discoverer of Polonium and Radium, when I used the term 'professor'? You all knew the name Marie Curie but to the bulk of the world, one of the most iconic scientists of the 20th century is known instead as "Madame Curie".
For millenia, science and technology have been mobilized toward a Utopian dream; making food so plentiful and cheap poor people could afford to be fat.Well, they can, and because we have freedom (sort of - some states ban trans fats for your own good) a lot of people are fat; so fat some advocates even insist we should go back to making food too expensive for poor people to eat. Others contend people should just eat less and keep government out of it.For people who seek a third alternative, there is the awesome power of science. Maybe taking a pill would do the trick.
False equivalence was the big deal two weeks ago, with political advocates Googling for evidence that there might be a Republican with a science Ph.D. (and then ostracizing any found, in the name of tolerance and diversity) and generally out to debunk the notion that the left might have its own kooks.
In a few short hours, the World Series will begin between the Texas Rangers and the St. Louis Cardinals. In the midst of all the talk of how offense is winning games this year (team Earned Run Average by starters in the post-season is over 5) and the strategic match-ups, there will be little attention paid to the belief engines in the skulls of individual players; their brains.
Quick, which British cell phone do you use? No? Okay, which French microprocessor is in your PC? No again?America leads the world in innovation, the legacy of historical laissez-faire approaches to fixing big problems using the private sector. Obviously that is different now, even in science, where Pres. Obama made good on his promise to add more science to his cabinet but erroneously thought all of science was composed of progressive academics who think more taxpayer spending is the only way science gets done, leading to the Solyndra boondoggle and more to follow.
Abortion is not a contentious issue in America these days - campaign platforms primarily center on differences in taxation and the scope of government but, for the most part, abortion for the left and the 2nd Amendment for the right are really only invoked to whip the fringes into a frenzy.
The U.S. military has its own judicial system. If you commit an infraction, you are charged under the Uniform Court of Military Justice. This keeps the military from becoming a political football. The four other professions also have their own internal monitoring system. For example, even if you do not commit a criminal act as an attorney, you can still be disbarred for conduct outside their rules.
Just supposing, what if you landed on a planet a lot like Earth and, bereft of modern technology, had to try and rebuild something that looks like home? You could survive, sure, a little trial and error would get you food and shelter. Creating fire can be a little more challenging but it is just a learning curve. There are logistical aspects to rebuilding all of civilization, of course. One person can't build a skyscraper (and why would you, since there would be no one else to live in it?) but what about something small, like a toaster?
In academia, the many, many advancements of women are not enough and so they are increasingly forced to massage statistics to make it look like they are oppressed, underpaid, blocked out of the hard sciences, etc.In reality, women have it pretty good. Maybe even great. Men, as a special interest group, basically stink at being a special interest group because they were historically always the interest group, no 'special' needed.
This weekend is the first episode in a three-part "Brain Games" series on the National Geographic channel. Since National Geographic does not have a show on the 'science' of ghost hunting, and since statistics show 97% of Internet readers never finish an article, if you are not a regular Science 2.0 reader I am okay endorsing this and telling you in the first paragraph you will enjoy it, so you can set your DVR and move on to reading about the trial of Michael Jackson's doctor.
I'll lay out something a lot of people won't like to hear; science is about understanding the world according to natural laws and that means sometimes breaking the laws of nature. How far that goes is a policy matter and it's for civilian leadership to decide.Researchers won't like being compared to the military but it's a lot like that; there is a job to do, a mission to accomplish, and the scope and limitations of that mission are determined by the public through their politicians but once that framework is established, it is up to the soldiers on the ground to decide how to get there.
The world's most complex ground-based astronomy observatory, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) on on the Chajnantor plateau in northern Chile, has officially opened for astronomers.A lack of light pollution and anti-science hippies filing lawsuits has made Chile a new favorite spot for space science and the first image we got after ALMA opened its eyes is darn spectacular. What we can't see with visible-light or infrared telescopes, ALMA can see just fine. And the image below is with only 12 of its final 66 radio antennas. It's fitting that the first image was of the Antenna Galaxies.
