Science & Society

Systematic structural racism is not just a White-Black thing.  A Black man is less likely to be hired for a job with a community college degree than a white man who has just gotten out of prison. Those are not just words said to inflame some sort of anti-white sentiment.  They are statistics, which while prone to the usual vagaries, establish a pattern.  A pattern which matches with my own observations about my life and those around me. Yesterday in Minneapolis Minnesota a black man who was a licensed legal concealed carrier of a pistol was shot while attempting to comply…

This government petition to call for a second EU referendum in the UK has suddenly become very popular. The number of signatures has now reached over 12% of the total votes cast in the referendum, over 25% of the Remain votes, and over 23% of the Leave votes cast. However the situation seems clear that having called this referendum, the government are committed to the result, and there is no provision for a second referendum. Should there be for future referendums however? And why are so many people signing this petition? Let's take a look. Details: 4.133237 million signatures as…

Should your ethnicity determine whether or not you are accepted into college? Of course not, but once upon a time it was. Half a century ago, it certainly made a difference in which schools and universities you could attend. After what was morally obvious was rightfully struck down on legal grounds, discussion then turned to how to fix the problem that remained. The "shackled man" theory holds that if two people are running a race, and one has shackles on their feet, taking the shackles off their feet 100 yards into the race does not suddenly make it fair. They deserve to make up for that…

Whenever there’s a task to be done or governance to be exercised, we tend to organize for it in threes. A single power center is unworkable, as it can easily lead to dictatorship. Two is not so good either, as a disagreement can lead to indefinite and unrefereed deadlock. Three gives us “checks and balances,” as all of us were taught in school.   It’s not just the legislative, executive, and judiciary branches of the US government. Companies developing new products seek balance among the engineering, manufacturing, and marketing departments. Economic development rests on the “triple…

Buddy Dyer, a government worker in Orlando, stated, at approximately 12:30 PM on Sunday, June 12, 2016, soon after the mass shootings in Orlando, that the most important thing right now is to waive the HIPAA laws so the physicians taking care of 53 injured patients can communicate with their distraught family members. HIPAA, which stands for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, is only one of dozens of shackles, obstacles, and barriers, that Federal government workers have imposed on patients and their physicians. Contrary to popular perception, HIPAA does nothing to…

Death touches everyone at some stage during their lives, and usually more than once. It also triggers certain laws around what happens to the body after death – and some glaring omissions. 1. Corpse disposal – the basics Respect for the dead and protecting public health make burial or cremation an urgent task when someone dies. Certain aspects are heavily regulated – such as the minimum depth of graves, the siting and management of burial grounds and crematoria – but there are comparatively few laws governing actual bodily disposal. For example, there are no set time limits for disposing of…

While American news media speculates about how much of Omar Mateen's motivation for his attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando was due to Muslim beliefs and how much was due to anti-gay sentiment, the ease with which someone can enter soft targets has renewed concern about the Euro 2016 soccer tournament in France, especially after the lack of domestic intelligence made it relatively easy for November’s terrorist attacks on the Stade de France and the January 2015 shootings at Charlie Hebdo. Though the Orlando, Paris and Hebdo attacks were made using small arms, a popular strategy for terrorist…

For what seems like decades, it has been open season on scientists and corporations by environmental non-profit corporations and the PR groups they fund to be their hatchet men, like SourceWatch and Mother Jones. Libel? No problem, Lisa Graves at SourceWatch will do it. Spinning stolen funding proposals provided by a fired employee as actual conspiracy events? Mother Jones will oblige. When they can't do it directly they will get willing toadies they control to do it for them. Corporate communications groups are handicapped by their own shame at being in business at all, so they have created…

While watching the Stanley Cup match on Saturday, the first period ended and legendary sportscaster Bob Costas appeared on the screen with the Lexus Intermission Report.It made me chuckle seeing an overt corporate placement because the day before, a blogger at the political website Mother Jones named Tom Philpott had asked me on Twitter what I thought of a new EPA paper on the herbicide atrazine. Be interested to hear thoughts on EPA atrazine report from @HankCampbell and @JonEntine https://t.co/5XGVg0iR7V — Tom Philpott (@tomphilpott) June 3, 2016 Since it's Twitter and only…

Consumers are aware of genetically modified crops but their knowledge level is limited and often at odds with the facts, according to a new paper in the FASEB journal. Last year, Brandon McFadden, an assistant professor of food and resource economics at the UF Institute of Food and Agricultural ‌Sciences, published a study that showed scientific facts scarcely change consumers’ impressions of genetically modified food and other organisms. Consumer polls are often cited in policy debates about genetically modified food labeling. This is especially true when discussing whether food that is…