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March 23, 2007
By David Michaels
It seems to happen almost by instinct. When a worker dies in a workplace accident, the employer responds by expressing sadness but making it clear it was the worker's own damn fault (and the employer is faultless, of course). The management of BP initially blamed worker mistakes…
March 22, 2007
Today is World Water Day, and this yearâs theme is âCoping with Water Scarcity.â In its WWD report (PDF), UN-Water (the official United Nations mechanism for follow-up of the Millennium Development Goals), warns that water scarcity will increase in the coming decades, driven by four main factors…
March 21, 2007
I love the way Cory Doctorow expresses it in this BoingBoing post:
Now, whenever I write about trademarks, I get a bunch of emails asserting the voodoo theory of trademark: every conceivable use of a trademark has to be policed aggressively or you'll lose your trademarks forever. It's just not…
March 21, 2007
The death toll from the tragic mine disaster in Siberia has reached 107, the Associated Press reports today. About 200 mineworkers were underground when a methane gas explosion occurred nearly 900 feet below the surface. Russian President Vladimir Putin has declared today a national day of mourning…
March 20, 2007
There is a loud and painful screech of microphone feedback. As it fades out, there is a series of loud, reverberating thumping noises, followed by:
ANNOUNCER: ....um, hello? Is this on?
The announcer, a small, hunched, elderly old man, continues to speak timidly into the microphone.
ANNOUNCER: Um…
March 20, 2007
By David Michaels
The Chemical Safety Board isnât pulling its punches. Its report on the March 2005 BP refinery explosion which killed 15 workers is scathing in its criticism of BP, concluding that âorganizational and safety deficiencies at all levels of the BP Corporationâ caused the explosion.…
March 20, 2007
By David Michaels
The US Chemical Safety Board (CSB) is holding a public meeting tonight in Texas City, Texas, to release the final report of its investigation into the explosion at the BP refinery that killed 15 workers and injured 170 more in March, 2005. Thursday, the House Education and Labor…
March 20, 2007
I don't do this any more, but in the past I did what many astronomy professors do when teaching introductory astronomy: tell the tale of Tycho, Kepler, and Newton, as a way of introducing and describing planetary orbits. It's such a great story, as it shows the concrete struggle we as a race went…
March 19, 2007
More than 14,000 workplaces received unwelcome letters in the mail last week from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). The agency used data from a survey of 80,000 workplaces to identify those sites with injury rates that were more than twice the national average, and…
March 19, 2007
In continuation of the tradition begun at Jordan Barabâs Confined Space blog, Tammy has posted another edition of the Weekly Toll: Death in the American Workplace at her Weekly Toll blog. It gives short writeups on 73 workplace deaths, including the following:
Alejandro Gonzalez, 25, who was…
March 18, 2007
We've got four contests this time, with competition fierce and passions running high. Speak for which science concepts deserve to go to the next round! Get your votes in by 10PM Eastern Time on Tuesday, March 20. Results will be posted shortly after that.
The contests:
Newton's Second Law vs…
March 16, 2007
By David Michaels
OMB Watch has just released its newest report on the recent changes President Bush has made to the federal regulatory process. The report A Failure to Govern: Bush's Attack on the Regulatory Process explains in clear, compelling language how two arcane but pernicious documents,…
March 16, 2007
Hotel workers in Boston voted 1,013 to 27 to authorize a boycott and strike at the Sheraton Boston, Boston Park Plaza, Westin Waterfront Hotel, and Westin Copley Place.  The housekeepers, bellmen and other hotel workers are members of UNITE HERE Local 26 and they've been in talks with …
March 16, 2007
William Broadâs NYT piece on Al Goreâs global warming science has been causing a stir in the blogosphere this week (original article here). Michael Mann and Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate write, âIt is rather ironic then that William Broad's latest piece on Al Gore plays just as loose with [the…
March 16, 2007
This is an image of NGC 6744, taken with the South African Large Telescope.
NGC 6744 is a classic spiral galaxy, and appears similar to how the Milky Way would look if we were able to get outside of the Milky Way and look back at it. Notice that there is a bar at the center of the galaxy (…
March 15, 2007
Congressman George Miller, chair of the House Education and Labor Committee, will hold on hearing on March 22 on the explosion at the BP refinery in Texas City, TX which killed 15 workers and injured 180 others.Â
"The BP-Texas City Disaster and Worker Safety"Â hearing will feature testimony from…
March 15, 2007
Diacetyl is a commonly used food additive made to give a buttery flavor to breads, cookies, candy and other goods. For decades, the chemical has been classified as "GRAS" (generally recognized as safe) by the US Food and Drug Administration. But for workers exposed to the chemical in food…
March 15, 2007
By David Michaels
In the wake of the debacles involving Vioxx, Ketek, and other dangerous drugs that should never have been approved in the first place, Congress is about to take up reauthorization of the user fee system that funds the Food and Drug Administrationâs drug review process. The system…
March 15, 2007
Warning:: There is no science whatsoever in this post. If that's going to annoy you, give this one a pass.
In a previous post, I said what role I thought religion and spirituality still could play in the modern, scientific world. All of that applied to any sort of religion or spirituality, and…
March 14, 2007
The United Mineworkers of America (UMWA) will be issuing tomorrow (March 15) a report on the January 2006 Sago Mine disaster. West Virginia Senators Byrd and Rockefeller are expected to join UMWA President Cecil Roberts in the Senate Dirksen Building at 11:00 am (EST) for a news conference…
March 14, 2007
Kristin Collins of The News & Observer (Raleigh, NC) reports that some produce growers in North Carolina aren no longer content with the Mexican farmworkers who come to the the U.S. on temporary visas. Some of these workers have unionized and begun demanding better wages and work schedules. So…
March 13, 2007
By David Michaels
Dr. David Healy is the probably the single person most responsible for identifying the link between anti-depression drugs like Zoloft and suicide risk. His work led to the FDA to require the addition of a âblack boxâ to the label of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs…
March 13, 2007
"Redshift" is a term that astronomers use a lot. This is particularly true if they are extragalactic astronomers or (especially) cosmologists, but even galactic astronomers use it, and it is absolutely central to the method use to discover most of the extrasolar planets known today.
This post is…
March 13, 2007
It's all over the news. The FBI has violated the PATRIOT act numerous times by using "national security letters" where it wasn't legitimate to do so. Naughty FBI. Clean your house.
The problem is, we need our House to clean up by repealing the PATRIOT act altogether. That act was shoved through…
March 12, 2007
I suppose you could, with some justification, accuse me of being a troll, given that my post "So I'm a Christian. Shoot me." generated an entirely predictable set of flames tearing me down for unscientific thinking, and for trying to claim that there is any kind of bias against the religious…
March 12, 2007
Several months ago, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao published the Departmentâs regulatory agenda. This document lists all of the regulations the Department âexpects to have under active consideration for promulgation, proposal, or review during the coming 1-year period.â The notice published in…
March 12, 2007
Chris at Mixing Memory has a post about correlating one's favorite music with one's personality.
Learn just what a fuddy-duddy I am by reading this list:
Saint-Saens, Symphony #3 (the "Organ Symphony")
Beethoven, Symphony #7 (esp. the 2nd movement)
Dvorak, the "New World" Symphony (#9)
Schubert,…
March 11, 2007
It's very irritating to come to my blog and see the advertisement at top for a book proclaiming loudly " GOD: The Failed Hypothesis. How science shows that God does not exist." I haven't clicked on the link, and won't, because its very title indicates to me that it's hogwash.
This bugs me on two…
March 11, 2007
Honestly, I'm not sure where this list originated, but somebody came up with this list of "the most significant Science Fiction and Fantasy books of the last 50 years". I was having breakfast with some friends a couple of months ago, and we were musing about what should be in the "SF Canon". This…
March 10, 2007
It's called "The Milky Way" because if you don't know what you're looking at, it looks like a hazy, nebulous path across the sky.
But try this : go down to Chile, or somewhere else in the Southern Hemisphere. Go outside at a nice, dark site, and stay out there so your eyes adapt. If the galaxy is…