Science & Society

An article in The Federalist: The Darwinism That Fuels Atheism Actually Favors Religiosity   contains a section based on a 2016 report Innate Immunity and Asthma Risk in Amish and Hutterite Farm Children — New England Journal of Medicine the gist of which the Federalist article summarizes in the following three paragraphs: While the Amish get down and dirty with old-school barn-raisings and horse-drawn plows, the Hutterites live and work and produce an astounding number of babies in tech-savvy communes. They employ computer databases and industrial farming techniques. As a result, the…

The prospect of a peaceful right wing revolution from the heart is no more but an April fools’ day joke to those high on hate such as Andrew Anglin. I would not be surprised if, as the hole at the other end of Ezra Levant’s dildo also suspected, such is supported by (((groups))) interested in focusing the alt-right into an obviously anti-Semitic stance in order to condemn as well as ensure that the associated aggressive negativity traps the enemy in internal conflicts and frustration. [UPDATE: Yep - confirmed - another Jewish undercover operation - I love it - well done - any movement that…

Where by "It" I really mean the Future of mankind. The human race is facing huge new challenges in the XXI century, and we are only starting to get equipped to face them.  The biggest drama of the past century was arguably caused by the two world conflicts and the subsequent transition to nuclear warfare: humanity had to learn to coexist with the impending threat of global annihilation by thermonuclear war. But today, in addition to that dreadful scenario there are now others we have to cope with. We observe an accelerating pace in many troubling phenomena; to a large extent we are…

YDr. Norm Borlaug, Nobel Laureate and "Father of the Green Revolution" was obviously a big believer in advancing an evidence-based, pro-science approach to food, He saw the need for debunking the myths that a generation of environmental groups began creating in the 1960s: Those groups believed that science was doing more harm than good, and we simply had to resign ourselves to famine and starvation and Draconian measures might need to be taken to control the population. In the latter part of the 1970s, Drs. Paul Ehrlich and John Holdren, along with Anne Ehrlich, predictably on the boards of…

A while back I wrote about the program I was involved with in the conversion of uranium in Russian warheads into fuel for use in the U.S. That nuclear fuel is still being used in many U.S. reactors but the program finished in 2014 after a successful 20 year period of collaboration. I’ve had a chance to reflect on my travels there and have formed this fascination with the two countries as being imperfect (broken) mirror images of each other in geography and history. Sometimes countries grow under influence of similar large forces into one with almost opposite direction but similar form as a…

For most of human history, technology changed very little during a person’s lifetime. Certainty, their life was not constant with the hard agricultural life being interrupted by war, disease, and famine. However, very few new technologies would come into their life. In contrast, tremendous change occurred throughout the 20th century as planes, cars, electricity, radio, and computers enter during their lives. In my life, I have also experienced rapid change, but it seems a bit different, more quantitative than the qualitative change seen by my grandparents’. Can we make sense of this rapid…

Never compare between only Blacks (B) and others for example, or only Caucasian Whites (CW) and B. One should consider at least three together instead of only two. For example, consider also the North East Asians (NEA). Why? Without considering NEA, B and CW are merely two different regions in whatever parameter space, say crime rates, and all interpretations are still on the table. But relative to B, NEA are almost invariably on the other side of the CW data points, at even higher intelligence, even less crime, even less sexual dimorphism/rape, even higher GDP, graduation rates, and so on.…

Why do people skip queues, cause traffic jams, and create delays for everyone? Who are these misbehaving creatures lacking basic cooperation skills? Are they really all that different from you? Are you perhaps one of them? Various situations involving social interaction drag you into a negative sum game, and make you part of a misbehaving gang. Welcome to Braess' paradox. Each morning at rush hour a total of 600 commuters drive their cars from point A to point B. All drivers are rational individuals eager to minimize their own travel time. The road sections AD, CB and CD are so…

The post originally appeared on the Putting Pesticides in Perspective (PPIP) Blog on 2/7/17 on which there are also 6 related sub-posts Whether a farmer is growing in an organic or conventional system, his or her crop needs to be protected from damage from plant pests (insects, fungi, bacteria, viruses, nematodes, weeds…). To fail to minimize pest damage leads to inefficient use of scarce resources like prime farm land, water, or inputs. The quality and safety of the final products can also be compromised. While materials we think of as “pesticides” play an important…

Fictional metaphors matter, and in the battle to safeguard our civil liberties few metaphors matter more than George Orwell’s 1984. Although first published almost 70 years ago, the lasting salience of this most archetypal dystopia is undeniable. In the week after Edward Snowden’s revelations of US government mass surveillance were first revealed, sales of the novel rocketed by 6,000%. A year later, in Thailand, 1984 became a symbol of resistance to government repression, and was promptly banned. And following Trump’s inauguration and the conspicuously Orwellian admission by one of his chief…