Science & Society

From the Trump administration’s Muslim travel ban to its family separation policy, many Americans object to the White House’s hardline immigration policies as a historical aberration out of sync with U.S. values. Having explored the evolution of these policies and their consequences as both a practitioner of immigration law and scholar of U.S.-Latin American relations, I disagree. A group of women and children at the Angel Island Immigration Station in the 1920s. AP Photo Rather than marking a stark departure, I see President Donald Trump’s approach as ramping up and expanding the U.S.…

Though Europe and Asia still smoke far more cigarettes than intelligent people should, and therefore cancer rates due to that will stay high for another 20 years or more, the clear trend in lifestyle diseases is obesity-related ones. That is actually a win, and far better than the bleak Population Bomb promoted by people like John Holdren and Paul Ehrlich just a few decades ago. Though there is still famine in parts of the world, they are parts of the world where groups opposed to science can manipulate people who don't trust outsiders or understand the technology, no differently than than…

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #2 An i for an i ? Not nymphs: women! There are strings of what look like letters i and c in the Voynich Manuscript. If they are in reality i and c then they do not make sense. If we take it as a given that the writer of the VM intended his manuscript to make sense, then these glyphs must represent something else. But first, a few words about contextual dependency. Contextual dependency. A symbol in a given text may not represent one, and only one thing all of the time, whether it represents a single letter or more than one letter. It is certain that…

Another post to help people scared of the Iran - US situation. For most people the personal risk is zero. Short summary: Trump seems to have ordered a strike on selected Iranian facilities - and then backed down at the last minute after attempting a diplomatic phone call with Iran and talking to a couple of Iranian officials. He says he did it becaue he was told at the last minute that it would kill about 150 people in Iran which is not proportionate for shooting down an unarmed drone. He may also have been influenced by reports that powerful national leaders in Iran were angry at the drone…

New statistics released by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons reveals that 50,000 more Americans age 55 and older got cosmetic procedures in 2018 than the previous year. Aging gracefully is not in the cards for senior citizens with the means to change it, they now have choices, and those choices are likely spurred by the greater availability of later romances. Most common in her Ohio practice, says plastic surgeon Anne Taylor, MD; cosmetic fixes of the neck or double chin. Those are most prominent when looking down into a camera. But surgeries went up in many areas. Liposuction up 4…

Understanding the Voynich Manuscript #1 Tom, Dick and Harry explain a statistical method. The mysterious Voynich Manuscript. A simple analysis of a sufficiently large text can reveal much about the topic of that text, if the language is known. If the text, as in the case of the Voynich Manuscript, is written in an unknown script, then the same simple analytical method can point the way to the underlying language, or language group. The method is truly simple: an ASCII text document is read by a computer program which extracts all strings of purely alphabetical characters. These strings,…

Women will more often rush to the defense of mothers who give their kids formula, stick to the vaccine schedule, or who let their pre-schoolers play in the yard without a wall to protect them from predators they read about one time on the Internet. Women defend mothers against mommy shaming more often because a whole lot more women are also willing to shame mothers who don't buy food from the right store, clothe them in the right stuff, or act in a way social media zealots tell them not to do. In my neighborhood, we call any guy who berates other fathers because they don't shop at Whole Foods…

No one is for child labor but people are unfailingly for lower prices rather than higher. That is why the organic industry is a tiny fraction of the overall food market. With no benefit other than paeans to health halos or holistic beliefs about urban people about farming, most remain unconvinced. What if it eliminated child labor? Nearly everyone would agree to that - unless they believe paying more would just lead to more profits by exploiters in developing nations. That is the problem with a model created by academics. They can conclude a price increase would eliminate a problem, but it is…

In a new survey, 80 percent of gun owners support the concept of personalized guns, referred to as "smart" guns because they include safety features like fingerprint locks to help prevent use by unauthorized individuals. But only 18 percent are willing to buy them. The authors framed it as though gun owners support them but won't buy them solely because of cost, but gun owners tell a story phone owners know all too well. No one wants to pay more for something that does not work, and smart guns work even less often than using a thumb print on a cell phone does. However, using a fingerprint on…

The movie version of scientists is a lone scientist having a "Eureka!" moment in a laboratory - thanks, Archimedes. In modern times, for example, ecoterrorists attack because humanity is a plague, science creates a cure, we are saved, or a scientist is a myopic tinkerer who creates a virus and government wants to weaponize it, etc.(1)  In reality, academic inventions are rare, the private sector in the US instead funds almost all applied science and half of basic research. And before they happen there are often large teams with long cycles of testing, validation and regulatory approvals…