Science & Society

If I could do it all over again, I would forget genomics and specialize in the chemistry of Scotch. You may scoff, dear reader, but there are employment opportunities out there (not to mention alcoholic fringe benefits), such as the Scotch Whisky Research Institute (SWRI). Few pleasures (note that it's few, not no pleasures - you know what I mean) are greater than the delicate, intricate taste and aroma of a good single malt Scotch, and the SWRI's mission is to scientifically understand the production and enjoyment of Scotch. Here is the kind of excitement that you can find in a career in…

In case you haven't heard, there's a debate about health care reform going on - today we find out that a campaign promise, no fines if you choose not to use government health care, is off the table if you are middle class.   That's only going to aggravate the situation.  What is needed is some clear thinking and some science-based evidence, but you won't find it in Washington.  Heck, you won't even find it in medicine. The downside to insurance over the last few decades is that people have misunderstood what the word 'insurance' means.   There have been lawsuits (at least…

One of the biggest concerns about president Obama's government health insurance plan is that both quality and waiting lists will suffer in return for broader access.    It turns out patients in the UK, where they already have government-run health care, are willing to sacrifice the former if it will reduce the latter. 75% of surgical patients would consider allowing an unsupervised trainee junior doctor perform their entire operation if it meant they could have it done more quickly, according to a survey published in the September issue of BJUI. 80% of those facing minor surgery…

There is little doubt that, in modern times, scientific knowledge is at a peak from any other period in human history.   However, there are also other factors that need to be considered.  50.3% of Americans believe in angels while 49.7 % believe in aliens.    In another review, 55% claim angelic protection, 16% claim they've received a miraculous healing, 8% say they pray in tongues, and one-fifth claim God speaks with them. "The survey, which has a margin of error of four percentage points, also revealed that theological liberals are more apt to believe in the…

I ran into an interesting linguistic stumbling block.  I'll call it the "It's science, so it must be hard" frame of mind.  I wrote to some friends and family about this project, saying: I'm launching a satellite for fun, to make music from space.  It's called Project Calliope, and I'm writing about it up at: http://scientificblogging.com/satellite_diaries/feed It's pretty much just me, with some friends helping with different parts of it, and a couple of sponsors helping cover costs (hopefully). I'll be the first to admit it's unusual, but I've always wanted to be part of…

The 2009 movie District 9 is a metaphor for what might be an evolved version of the world federalist government we have today.  Some time before the 1990s, conflicts were mainly fought between nationalized groups.  However the private province of war has taken over.  Now our wars are a contract of service, and history shows that the interests of private military firms have no contractual boundaries. To some, what may go unnoticed is that there are more contractors than there are public soldiers in our conflicts today. This is an unusual yet expected trend in the evolution of…

A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in citizen science was certainly not on the minds of 6-year-old Alyson Yates and her mom, Kate, when they stepped out into their back yard one day to scout for ladybugs. But, their effort that day lead to a critical discovery that the Lost Ladybug Project from Cornell University had been long awaiting. What the Yates found was the elusive nine-spotted ladybug, likely to have been overtaken in the United States by the Asian seven-spotted bugs imported in the 1970s and 80s to assist with crop pest control. Now these little red fairytale…

Apparently, for a week in 2006 the UK newspaper The Guardian gave away wallcharts (=posters) as a promotional gambit to drum up readership. It seems the charts were all nature-themed, with a strong marine component and significant cephalopod representation! I found out about this phenomenon from a Guardian reader: I have never quite managed to understand who at the Guardian thought those posters about nature would be a good idea – the ones with drawings of trees and birds and the like. I seem to remember one particularly baffling one that detailed species of squid and cuttlefish. Which…

One of the favorite themes in transhumanist discussions is considering the melding of human intellect with "machine intelligence" to arrive at superhuman abilities.   Right from the beginning we have a few problems.  We don't really know what human intelligence is and we aren't capable of building intelligent machines.  However, lest that obstacle prevent us from moving forward, let's consider what such a thing really means. If we take the normal distributions of IQ, then it would suggest that about 0.13% of the population has an IQ aboe 145 and 0.003% has an IQ over 160.…

Some people believe in fate, others don’t. I do and I don’t. I may seem at times as if invisible fingers move us about like puppets on strings. But for sure, we are not born to be dragged along. We can grab the strings ourselves and adjust our course at every crossroad, or take off at any little trail into the unknown. – Thor Heyerdahl, Kon Tiki The future is the goal. Hegemony, a word popularized by Antonio Gramsci, was later described by Jennifer Daryl Slack in "The Theory and Method of Articulation in Cultural Studies." She called it “a process, by which a hegemonic class articulates (or…