Science & Society

The number one pitfall of reporting on science is to take a single work, or single report and treat it as if it is proven as fact already.  In truth, real science knowledge is that which has stood the test of time.  That is not really exciting for reporting.  If a reporter wishes to discuss the latest developments, they must qualify it with the fact that it is a new study.  Even if it is peer reviewed, that is not even enough yet.   Until something is shown through consensus built by years if not decades of results to be either a “law” of nature or a “theory” of…

Despite flying being the single fastest way to grow our individual carbon footprint, people still want to fly. Passenger numbers even grew by 3.3% globally last year alone. The hype around “Flygskam” – a global movement championed by climate activist Greta Thunberg that encourages people to stop traveling by plane – seems to have attracted more media attention than actual followers. A 2019 survey found that although people in the UK were increasingly concerned about aviation emissions – they were also more reluctant to fly less. This might reflect how flying has become normalized in society…

Energy is the great equalizer in human existence.  Don't have enough water? Energy can fix that. Want to make a culture that prizes libraries, art, and education? Give people affordable energy. We can even do what ancient alchemists could not, turn lead into gold, with enough energy. It goes almost without saying that energy made the difference when it comes to farming. In the early days of agriculture, one person might work harder than another, and they might even be prized for that, but nothing boosted productivity like when oxen came into use. No person could do the work of eight…

Would any school with a medical program be happy about a paid talk by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. so he could rail against vaccines, claiming that a world of preventable diseases made humanity stronger by culling the weak? Would doctors be happy if a school organization devoted to fighting climate change helped fund it? That is why the science community at Stanford, one of the best science schools in the country, should be outraged that the Students for a Sustainable Stanford group, and the Woods Institute climate change think tank, has paid around $40,000 for an anti-science philosopher, Vandana…

A new survey found that 86 percent of parents believe teens spend too much time gaming. The C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health. also finds differences in gender. Twice as many parents say their teen boy plays video games every day compared to parents of teen girls. Teen boys are also more likely to spend three or more hours gaming. Surveyed parents believe gaming often gets in the way of other aspects of their teen's life, such as family activities and interactions (46 percent), sleep (44 percent), homework (34 percent), friendship with non-gaming peers (33…

Transgender women of color who have an advanced degree, MS or PhD, in Physics, and who have made, or make some part of their living by doing physics are rare.  So far as I know I am the only one. It is said there are only six Black American women with PhD’s in theoretical high energy physics.  A rough guess would be that there are less than sixty Black women with any advanced degree in any area of physics.   There is no social justice point made here, no theory as to the cause for why beyond this.  There are few transwomen of color in the world.  Only ten to…

Short summary: Soleimani is an Iranian leader, who is highly respected in Iran, and played a key role in the fight against ISIS. However, he was classified by the US as terrorist because of his position as leader of the Quds, a numerically small black ops type operations supplying weapons to shia militants and the mastermind of operations targeting US soldiers and civilians. Here is my short tweet about it #WWIII #WW3 ##Iran #Solemani - the memes are hilarious but by nincompoops who don't check their facts. Experts say no risk of WWIII. See my: https://t.co/JdKuxMZDIp pic.twitter.com/…

Look forward to a decade where the quantum computer becomes practical, we travel around the Moon, and inch closer to understanding of quantum gravity. Predicting the future in any detail is impossible but we can look at what people are working on now and make some reasonable inferences on what is likely to happen with those projects.  In the case of certain astronomical events, such as the total solar eclipse of April 2024, we can predict them with certainty.  Last year I did ok with my own predictions so now I hazard some informed guesses for the 2020’s.   My predictions in…

In December of last year I made some predictions for 2019. So how did I do? Those predictions spanned science and technology and followed from things which were in the works in 2018.  When it comes to space flight we were all perhaps a bit too optimistic in 2018 going into 2019.  When it comes to technology we haven't seen a fundamental change to how most of us compute in a very long time.  Human space flight from American soil thanks to Space X but not on the time table they say. I was wrong about Space X launching astronauts to the space station this year. Thanks to the…

The anti-vaccine movement tries to portray itself as scrappy grassroots outsiders standing up to Big Pharma and Big Government, but it's nothing of the kind, finds a recent Washington Post exposé. The National Vaccine Information Center, which claims to be the largest "awareness" non-profit opposing vaccines, actually gets almost half of its funding from corporations. And their largest corporate benefactor is the osteopath Joe Mercola, head of a $100 million empire that sells alternatives to medicine for nearly everything.  And who funds lots of groups opposed to science, from medicine…