Fake Banner
Rutgers Study - Forcing DEI Programs On People Increases Hostility

If you have done nothing wrong, do you want to be treated like a criminal? That was always the...

Minnesota Trial Lawyers Want To Ban Neonics - Here Is Why That Is A Mistake

Minnesota is having a challenging year, so challenging they are approaching California as the wackiest...

The Toxic Masculinity Of Disney Movies

Once upon a time, stories were just stories. They were fantasies that took people to a new world...

AI And The Poetry Problem

Artificial Intelligence is artificial, but it is not intelligence. That could change some day but...

User picture.
picture for Tommaso Dorigopicture for Hontas Farmerpicture for Ilias Tyrovolaspicture for Fred Phillipspicture for Robert H Olleypicture for
Hank CampbellRSS Feed of this column.

I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

Blogroll
In the immortal Richard Donner classic "Scrooged", the following exchange takes place between Frank, the president of the network, and his boss, Preston:

Preston: Do you know how many cats there are in this country?
Frank: No, ummmm...I don't have...no.
Preston: Twenty-seven million. Do you know how many dogs?
Frank: ...in America?
Preston:  Forty-eight million. We spend four billion on pet food alone.
Frank: Four...?!
It's rare that you will find me arguing for gender quotas.   Obviously I am not for discrimination but, at least in science, mandating representation - which is discrimination against the qualified in the interests of sex organs - does not lead to better science, it leads to equality at the expense of excellence.

Economics, however, is not science and some mandated equality might help.  Science says so.
Conservatives, who generally agree on the value of individual freedom, want the government to limit marijuana.   Progressives, who generally agree on the value of big government, don't want the government to limit marijuana.

Conservatives, who generally agree on the merits of capitalism, like genetically modified organisms, as long as they aren't researched using human embryonic stem cells and curing people of serious illnesses.   Progressives, who generally dislike capitalism unless it is the magical sort that works in a world where regulation of fossil fuels and mandates and subsidies for lousy alternative solutions from 1600 A.D. will still allow capitalism to flourish, dislike genetically modified organisms because they hate science.
Quantum entanglement was strange when it was conceptualized.   It violated Einstein's famous speed limit in his Theory of Relativity and he called it spukhafte Fernwirkung - “spooky action at a distance” and sought to note the flaws in Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the Copenhagen interpretation.   The result was the Einstein–Podolsky–Rosen paradox.
Addiction is a beast, I am told.  Perhaps I am addicted to coffee - I have given it up on occasion for a few months, like I have meat, pastas and breads, but never quit like people quit smoking or heroin.  If it's my only vice, and it would seem to be, that is likely not so bad.

Pathology is something else.   Some people say addiction is a disease, as in people who pathologically lie.   What about pathological coffee drinking?