Science & Society

Sweden is often lauded for its gender equality. The gender gap in unpaid (house)work is narrow. Wide access to affordable, state-subsidized daycare, together with the right for parents of young children to work part time, means that women’s participation in the labor market is relatively high. And parental leave policies are generous. At the same time, among the 38 countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the employment gap between people born in Sweden and immigrants is among the widest. This impacts a large proportion of the Swedish population. One in five…

Local news outlets across the U.S. are struggling to bring in advertising and subscription revenue, which pays for the reporting, editing and production of their articles. It’s not a new problem, but with fewer and fewer journalism jobs as a result, a growing number of local newsrooms have found a potential solution: college journalism students. The pandemic, set on a backdrop of political and economic tumult, further injured a local news industry weakened by decades of revenue decline, ownership consolidation and cuts to production and delivery. In rural and urban communities across the…

"All The President's Men" inspired young people to rush to journalism while "Mad Men" caused enrollment in advertising courses to surge and "Top Gun led to more Navy recruits. Film and television shapes young minds and marketers know it. A whole generation of people will believe a show like "The Offer" is a history of "The Godfather" film the same way some believe "Food Inc" is science; because it is on a screen. Yet trends have changed as fashions have. 'Stewardess' is out of the lexicon while 'Congressman' is still in. A new analysis finds that over time, architecture and engineering are…

In 2001, after the US World Trade Centers were destroyed in a terrorist attack, assaults on middle-eastern buildings and people in San Francisco went up. Yet the middle eastern people attacked were Jewish, not Muslim. A common sentiment among intelligentsia was that the attacks were due to Israel being created by the United Nations in 1948. Anti-Semitism has gotten worse rather than better since, despite governments creating laws against hate crimes, according to the 28th Annual Report on Antisemitism Worldwide. The new report identifies a dramatic increase in antisemitic incidents in almost…

Veritasium has come in for quite a bit of stick recently over his videos on electricity. However, recently I came across this one, entitled The Man Who Accidentally Killed The Most People In History. It contains so much history, most of which I already half knew, but now have a much clearer picture. I am sharing it here, not only because of its interest as regarding science and technology, but also because I would like to ask readers their opinion as regards whether the title is appropriate. There are also a lot of personal reminiscences I would like share concerning this subject. The first…

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences may have science in its name, but they remain since the earliest part of the last decade a group funded by taxpayers that exists to scare taxpayers about science.  Their in-house publication Environmental Health Perspectives has a new claim, and this one does not even involve questionnaires or cell studies hoping to "link" some chemical to some effect; it just picked a bunch of papers the authors liked and did a review of them to manufacture 'weight of evidence' about a term activists coined and NIEHS epidemiologists promote every…

The last time the Russians went to war in Europe, it was the Cold War.  After World War II ended, the USSR wanted Germany to remain relatively weak. The US instead believed that part of the reason behind World War II was a Germany that had been too heavily penalized by other European countries after World War I.  After defeat, Germany had been divided into four sectors, controlled by America, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union and three of those sectors 'united' so that there could be a common currency, a new German mark, and goods supplied by the US under the Marshall Plan would…

A new report says that the alternative meat industry, plant-based products designed to look and taste like meat, raised $8 billion even during the pandemic. That's a big success. They want more but oddly lament that most of their money comes from the private sector. They want the trillions of dollars in subsidies that solar and wind have gotten, claiming it will fight climate change. That's a big problem. I am a fan of the industry, which is why I don't want them chasing government subsidies. If you look at the solar industry or cable, you see the problem government meddling creates for…

Many are the sci-fi encounters with races that have transcended their physical bodies, having moved on to dwell on some energetic or spiritual plane. The tales skip the backstories, so we wonder: Did these aliens get where they are via Darwinian evolution? Did they get disgusted with the physical world and devise a technological means of transitioning? Do their planets of origin still exist, or were they destroyed? Always in sci-fi, we are given to assume that these aliens enjoy their non-material existence and don’t miss the meat world. We won’t speculate on whether Florida’s governor would…

No one will miss the COVID-19 pandemic. Except maybe greenhouses. New surveys show about one out of every three people began gardening in 2020 because they were home more due to SARS-CoV-2 restrictions and worries. Many also put in new grass lawns and did outdoor renovations, such as installing new plant beds and other landscaping. The gardening industry would be smart not to add new staff based on 2020 and 2021. A lot of factors point to warning signs for the new business. Inflation is at 1970s levels, which means no cheap home equity or refinancing to fund makeovers. That, plus politicians…