Science & Society
When I saw this this morning, my first impression was one of a cake produced in a television chefs competition.
But what is it? Guesses welcome. I hope to give you the answer by Monday.
A saying goes, "as long as there are tests, there will be prayer in public schools", but they meant that students would look for help wherever they could get it. But a subset of people felt it also reflected a fairly uniform view about school prayer: though federal law does not endorse a national religion, schools are funded and controlled by school districts and religious Americans generally approved of it.
Not so much any more; over the last two generations sharp differences in school-prayer support between different generations and their religious denominations are evident, according…
I. PrefaceI recently posted an article (Part I) in which I proposed a hypothetical scenario, in which an individual who is offered marijuana takes time out to research the drug exclusively through recent articles on PubMed to see if its a good idea or bad idea. It was meant more as an intellectual exercise, not a commentary or piece of advocacy for either side of the legalization debate (although the commentary after quickly delved into that debate). I wrote the article for the following reasons:1. It seemed like a cool idea at the time. 2. I don't know very much about the science of…
Disclaimer: I have never smoked pot. Not interested. But, I have been very interested in the decades-old debate about it. On one side you have people who claim it as a benign, useful substance that should be legal. On the other side, you have people who claim it is a dangerous and destructive and should be banned. I was surprised to realize to myself recently that I couldn't articulate a good argument for either side. I didn't know enough. So I wanted to do an experiment. But not that kind of experiment.
I wanted to play out the following hypothetical scenario that would never, ever…
Back in October, author Michael Pollan wrote an opinion
piece for the New York Times in which he said the upcoming vote on California Proposition 37 would
show whether or not the “Food Movement” had developed into “a movement worthy
of the name.” Proposition 37
failed for good reasons, but Pollan has raised a good question:
What would a food movement worthy
of the name look like?
Food is a tremendously important topic –necessary for
survival, but critical in many other ways too. Our diets influence our health in profound ways. Food is also an integral…
The relationship between the work of science and works of fiction has gone on for a long time. It's time to put a ring on that finger.
It's no secret that fiction writers have been pilfering ideas from science for generations. Verne did it. Wells, Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury, Matheson, and of course Crichton, had a lot of success by finding out what was hot in science, taking an imaginary leap to the next step (or next hundred steps), and then turning it into a story, and a profit.
This trend has continued with movies, which routinely feature scientific factoids that have been Googled, copied…
Hank |
I like Jennifer Aniston and not simply for the reason you might expect - I am a healthy, heterosexual man - but because she is good at what she does and after actress Marlo Thomas was on the "Friends" TV show while back, Aniston started doing advocacy work for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital (started by Danny Thomas, father of Marlo), one of my favorite groups - and still does it. Plus, Brad Pitt left her for Angelina Jolie, so she must be normal.
There's another good reason now; she seems to accept science and in a year when rubbing coffee on skin became a celebrity trend.…
Garen Wintemute, an emergency medicine physician at U.C. Davis, says more restricting of gun purchases will prevent mentally ill people from engaging in future firearm violence, including mass shooting catastrophes such as those that occurred at Newtown, Connecticut, Virginia Tech in Virginia and Aurora and Columbine in Colorado - though those incidents had little in common except mental illness by the murderers.
In a time when American culture is criticized for having too many people in jail for misdemeanors, Wintemute wants to put anyone with a misdemeanor in jail if they own a gun.
He…
Health Robotics has informed customers it will raise prices so as to be able to fully comply with The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), including health insurance benefits for its USA-based employees. The price increases will apply to both commercial and non-profit customers.
Gaspar DeViedma, Health Robotics' Executive Vice President and Board Member, stated, "Although USA-based operating companies may opt out of certain ACA mandates such as health insurance coverage by hiring part-time employees or by other well documented methods, Health Robotics recently made a…
vongehr |
Write a critical article about how science careers, including your own, are destroyed and science is corrupted today; put it on a “science” site; get 2400 readers in three months and basically no reaction except for a so called “Institute of ETHICS and Emergent Technologies” still not wanting anything to do with you anymore since your last criticism of pseudo-science, when they and the rest of the “science” blogging community removed you from their sight.
Suggest doable science outreach that could cut traffic accidents; dare criticize darlings of the pretend secular “science” scene for…