Search Content

Displaying results 8901 - 8950 of 87950

PROMED Needs Your Help

It's my birthday today, but instead of buying me presents, how about helping ProMED, a non-profit organization that provides important disease and health information to over 155 countries? Here's some more information about what ProMED does: ProMED-mail - the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases - is an Internet-based reporting system dedicated to rapid global dissemination of information on outbreaks of infectious diseases and acute exposures to toxins that affect human health, including those in animals and in plants grown for food or animal feed. Electronic communications enable…

The Other Group That Did Well on That Pew Religion Test

By now, you've probably heard about the Pew report on Americans and religious knowledge. A lot of atheists have been chortling about how well they done, compared to believers, and have offered explanations like Amanda's: This, of course, was absolutely no surprise to the loose online atheist community. I took abbreviated version of the test, and wasn't particularly surprised that I got 15 out of 15 questions right. Many, maybe most, atheists that I know came to atheism because they learned so much about religion, enough that the logical inconsistencies and overt wish fulfillment aspects of…

Help Save Our Boreal Birds: Sign The Petition

tags: Save Our Boreal Birds, online petition, birds, conservation, environment Palm Warbler, Dendroica palmarum. Image: Jeff Nadler [larger view]. Save the summer homes of Palm Warblers and other North American bird species that breed in Canada's Boreal forests! The Boreal Songbird Initiative, along with other environmental groups like Bird Studies Canada, Nature Canada, the David Suzuki Foundation, and others created a petition called "Save our Boreal Birds" a little over a year ago. This petition will be sent to the Prime Minister of Canada and many provincial leaders throughout Canada,…

Around the Web: Scholarship in the Public Eye: The Case for Social Media

I'm doing a short presentation later today on using social media as a researcher. It's part of the York University Faculty of Graduate Studies' Scholarly Communications Series. This one is titled Scholarship in the Public Eye: The Faculties of Graduate Studies and Liberal Arts and Professional Studies, along with the York University Libraries, are collaboratively facilitating a series of information sessions focused on scholarly communications intended for all graduate students and faculty members. The series will address issues related to research skills and research dissemination,…

Friday Fun: The 123 Worst Musicians of All Time

Music critics. Got to love them. Just the right mixture of disdain, hipster arrogance and snobbery to set the teeth on edge. Ooooh, love that band no one has ever heard of. Hate that band that "sold out" and became famous. They were so much more authentic when they were poor and no one heard and enjoyed their music. Ask U2. Vice's music critics have a new list out, The 123 Worst Musicians of All Time, which hits the hipster music critic disdain nail right on the head. Amongst them they come up with a list of the 123 worst musicians of all time, which amongst them leaves them with basically…

"Clap Your Hands" if you are Ready to Rock Out to Science with TMBG!

They Might Be Giants will take the stage on Saturday, April 16th at the USA Science & Engineering Festival for two incredible rockin' shows! This amazing alternative and tech-inspired group -- widely known for its theme song for TV's Malcolm in the Middle and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and other works -- will have the attendees at the DC Convention Center rocking out to science all weekend long! And like all performances at the Expo, this stage show is FREE! https://youtu.be/Rm9abSP-YuI A crowd favorite at the 2014 Festival Expo, TMBG wowed audiences with its electrifying pop…

Let the countdown begin! â¨Only 30 days until the 4-H National Youth Science Day on October 6!

On Wednesday, October 6, 2010, the third annual 4-H National Youth Science Day will bring together hundreds of thousands of youth around the nation to complete a single science experiment. This year, the National Science Experiment, 4-H2O, focuses on water quality and climate change - two critical issues facing our global community today. 4-H2O Experiment Kit: Order by Sept. 20 to Receive in Time for NYSD! Visit the 4-H Mall to purchase your 4-H2O experiment kits today! To receive your kits in time for 4-H National Youth Science Day on Wednesday, October 6, 2010, make sure to place your…

Butterfiles, birds, and worms

One of most wonderful things about the Internet has been the emergence of research projects that involve the general public. Universities like Cornell, Kansas University, and the University of Minnesota, to name a few, have established web sites and on-line databases that encourage both students and amateur biologists to participate in biological field studies. Not only do these projects extend the potential for good science by collecting more data, they give visibility to the research process and allow the public to take ownership and contribute to the store of scientific knowledge. Monarch…

Scientist Rock Star, Part II

Talking about the need to have popular scientists out there, I think the term "rock-star" was an unfortunate choice. Some people in joking, some people in all seriousness, started looking for people with PhD's who can play musical instruments. That is, of course, irrelevant. We are not looking for scientists who are also rockstars, but for scientists who are as well known, as universally respected and as seriously taken as the rock stars were back in the 1960s. The idea is to have a scientist or two or three being so well known that anyone and everyone in the country and the world is at…

Busy Blogging Day Yesterday

Hwoosh! What a day! Hit-and-run blogging instead of a nice long post about amylase I was getting ready to write.... I went to Raleigh for lunch and to start planning for the next years' edition of the Science Blogging Anthology - stay tuned, there will be more news soon. Of course, I was following the whole Edwards/Marcotte/McEwen saga every time I had a minute to get on the computer (which was not that much today) Then, in the evening, we had our first Blogger MeetUp of the month. Apparently there was a game (UNC vs. Duke) going on, so not many people showed up, but we had a great time…

Purppura Päivänkakkaraa

tags: flowers, Purppura Päivänkakkaraa, travel, Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, image of the day, photography Vaaleanpunainen Päivänkakkara. Photographed in the Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. Image: GrrlScientist, 18 May 2010 [larger view] Canon SX100 IS. Here's a silly thing that you might enjoy. When naming this image, I used Google translate to check my Finnish because, well, we all know why. Anyway, I found something weird (you can check this for yourself if you are so ambitious): English Finnish…

The Best of August

I have posted 131 times last month (definitely a decrease in numbers as most of the one-off quick-links are now going straight to Twitter/FriendFeed/Facebook instead of cluttering the blog). Interestingly, many of last month's posts were some amazing videos - check them out. Here are some of the highlights: Not-so-self-correcting science: the hard way, the easy way, and the easiest way was, in my opinion, the best post of the month, with The Perils of Predictions: Future of Physical Media coming in second place. ScienceOnline2010 is off to a good start. But unfortunately, I had to miss its…

ScienceOnline09 - tapping into the hive-mind

Continuing with the series of posts highlighting sessions in the Program at the upcoming ScienceOnline09, here are some sessions that deal with collaboration and networking between scientists and between their data. Community intelligence applied to gene annotation: This session is moderated by Andrew Su and John Hogenesch: Despite identification of the ~25,000 genes which comprise the "parts list" of the human genome, researchers continue to largely study previously-studied genes, leaving half of the genes in the human genome virtually unannotated. Moreover, there is growing recognition…

Rethinking FOXP2

Earlier studies have indicated that a gene called FOXP2, possibly involved in brain development, is extremely conserved in vertebrates, except for two notable mutations in humans. This finding suggested that this gene may in some way be involved in the evolution of language, and was thus dubbed by the popular press "the language gene". See, for instance, this and this for some recent research on the geographic variation of this gene (and related genes) and its relation to types of languages humans use (e.g., tonal vs. non-tonal). Furthermore, a mutation in this gene in humans results in…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (Open Classroom)

There are 73 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 119 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Careful long-time readers of my blog may have noticed that I sometimes mention and link to my friend David Warlick. I first met…

Agnes, the Priest and the Parrots

Yesterday, I was very upset because I learned that my state and local taxes, which I prepared many weeks ago using an "IRS approved" online tax preparation service, were not e-filed as I thought they would be, but because I was a dork and missed reading the little announcement at the very beginning of this interaction, I wouldn't have known that unless I paid $6.95 to this so-called service to learn this. (Because of a mysterious state holiday, the deadline for NYstate taxes was yesterday). Worse, all that data I entered into their site was not printed on the state tax forms, so I have to dig…

Number 4

I hate to publish online quizzes on a more or less daily basis for you all, dear readers, instead of writing material with more substance, but right now, this is the best I can do. By posting these quizzes, I am trying to let you know that I have not abandoned you, that even though I am quiet right now, I am here, that your comments mean more to me than you probably know, and I try to respond to your comments in email. However, that said, I daily debate with myself about whether I should provide more detail to you regarding why I cannot post here at my typically frequent level. There are…

APHA adopts policies on minimum wage, fluorinated chemicals at annual meeting

The American Public Health Association (APHA) adopted 11 new policy statements which will guide its work in the coming years. They include: Raising the minimum wage: The policy calls on states to increase their minimum wage, index the minimum wage to inflation, and prohibit state-government preemption of municipal minimum wage policies. Among other things, the new APHA policy also recommends research on the effects of living wages on public assistance budgets. Reducing exposure to highly fluorinated chemicals: The policy calls on Congress to fund research on alternatives to perfluoroalkyl and…

Creationist email: the asymmetry misconception

I throw away a lot of creationist email; most of it is ranty and weird, or pious and dull, so it isn't worth dealing with. Every once in a while (but sadly, not that often) one is polite and asks a simple question, and then I feel compelled to reply. If it's short and sweet, I'll just fire off a one-liner—for instance, when I was asked why I reject Intelligent Design creationism, I could simply say that I haven't seen any evidence for it. Some are a little more persistent, requiring a little more effort to answer, so they get posted here. I'll answer this one to some degree online, tell the…

I'm a Wikipedia Inclusionist

Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia and most of its contents are naked text that hardly takes up any disk space. Thus there is no reason to limit the subjects its contributors can write about. Fans have written hundreds of detailed articles about Pokémon characters. This is fine with me though I have no interest in the subject: the articles are not in my way and they are apparently of interest to a lot of other people. When I started adding my first bits of stuff to the Swedish version of the encyclopedia, I was surprised to find that higher-up users would delete my short contributions…

The return of KK!

KK tweets My latest @ISSUESinST feature just went online. It covers some sensitive issues in ecology & climate spheres. It's kinda standard fodder, headlined "The Science Police" in order to wind you up, like The Fail, bylined On highly charged issues, such as climate change and endangered species, peer review literature and public discourse are aggressively patrolled by self-appointed sheriffs in the scientific community. Provocative or wot? I'll skip the ecology, because I have no expertise there, and come on to the climate. Which is... RP Jr. And if you don't know who he is, KK…

Stop Anti-Gambling Legislation

As everyone who reads this blog knows by now, I am both strongly libertarian on matters of individual freedom and strongly pro-gambling (though I only consider poker to be partially a gamble). Well here's an opportunity to support both of those views. Before the Congress right now there is a bill called the Unlawful Internet Gambling Funding Prohibition Act (H. 21 in the house and S. 627 in the Senate). It's a bill that is so ill-conceived that even without any consideration for individual rights at all, it would still be monumentally stupid. This bill, which would require every U.S.…

Evil Squirrels from Extra Dimensions

It's been a very long day, so I'm lying on the couch watching "Pardon the Interruption" on ESPN. They're having a boring conversation about baseball, and I'm just drifting off into a pleasant doze when: "Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake! Fear! Fire! Foes! Awake!" I jolt awake. "What are you barking at?!?" I yell at the dog, who is standing in the middle of the living room, baying at nothing. She stops. "Scary things!" The room is empty. "There's nothing here," I say, and then hear a car door slam. I look outside, and see the mathematician next door heading into his house. "Were you barking at Bill? He…

Altered brain activity in schizophrenia may cause exaggerated focus on self

I thought we already knew this, but here goes: Schizophrenia may blur the boundary between internal and external realities by over-activating a brain system that is involved in self-reflection, and thus causing an exaggerated focus on self, a new MIT and Harvard brain imaging study has found. The traditional view of schizophrenia is that the disturbed thoughts, perceptions and emotions that characterize the disease are caused by disconnections among the brain regions that control these different functions. But this study, appearing Jan. 19 in the advance online issue of the Proceedings of the…

links for 2009-07-08

LIGO: the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory A comprehensive review article on LIGO, free online for a limited time. (tags: articles science gravity astronomy physics relativity precision-measurement) Never build a relationship on books | Books | guardian.co.uk "I don't know if Borders will actually be making recommendations for dates in the same way as they recommend books, but it would be priceless if members got regular email updates: "Did you enjoy, Mark, 34, of Swindon? Then you should try Gareth, 36, of Slough." Or: "After dating Sally of Birmingham, 86 per cent of…

Check out Chad Orzel's talk on "Weblogs and Science Outreach"

Despite having to employ biophysical methods in my day job, I must admit my woeful understanding of physics as a discipline. I wasn't like my high school grease monkey friends using torque wrenches on their cars with Springsteenonian dedication and my lowest grade in undergrad came in physics. For that reason, I rarely have the opportunity to link to fellow ScienceBlogger, Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles. Prof Orzel was one of the earliest science bloggers, coming online in June, 2002. Chad posted about being on the programme of a meeting in Waterloo, Ontario, entitled, "Science in the…

Eve Marie Carson 1985-2008

Eve Carson | student body president | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill This photo was taken on Monday, 3 March. Eve was shot less than 36 hours later. The entire campus, community and alumni mourn her death. She had a ethic of public service so strongly symbolized in her response to why she does what she does. [Photo by Tony Deifell] Primary UNC-CH website 10,000 celebrate Carson's life Rose Hoban WUNC-FM report on celebration of life Chancellor's message to students following arrests of suspects (13 March) Remarks of Eve's father, Bob Carson Remembering the student's president…

Presidential Candidate's Science, Technology, and Energy Positions

There's a new initiative to get a presidential debate on issues of science and technology: Science Debate 2008 (list of supporting Important People (capital letters) and bloggers (no capital letters).) I'm all for the idea, since I know little about the candidates positions related to science and technology. Which of course, is a bad excuse, and thus led me to try to dig deep into the intertubes and see if I could find a list of the candidates positions on science and technology. Here is a collection of some of the relevant links I could find. For some candidates it was quite hard to find…

The Skeptical Environmentalist vs. Al Gore: Danish "Muslim Cartoon" Newspaper Springs Media Trap on Former VP

Something's rotten in Denmark. Conservatives once again have sprung a media trap on Al Gore, but this time overseas. At the Wall Street Journal , "skeptical environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg and Danish journalist Flemming Rose complain that Gore, while touring Denmark, backed out of a scheduled interview. According to the duo, the newspaper Jyllands-Posten set up an "investigative interview" between Gore and culture editor Rose. To maximize conflict, the paper invited Lomborg to participate. Rose and Lomborg claim that Gore agreed to the terms of the interview, but then pulled out at the…

Smart villages on the Net

If you haven't yet visited Hansdehar, a village in the Haryana state, here's where you go for a glimpse. More villages will come online says the Smartvillages.org website. The initiative by Samanvay Welfare Society (I can't find a link. The link at Smartvillages.org is broken) is a smart one. The issues facing villages are manyfold. The more eyeballs we can get to look at them, the more potential there is for smart solutions. I particularly like the local facilities page on the website. I know those people a lot. For the first 15 years of my childhood, I lived in a small town called Jolarpet…

Visualising the molecular

A dozen or so years ago, or maybe more, I was heading up the communications section of The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, when I employed a young biology graduate as a graphics guy to do medical graphics. This he did for a while, until he started playing with three-dimensional graphics software. He did some animations of cell surface signalling molecules, and of malaria parasites, and cancer cells, and took them to the director, and suggested that we set up an animation unit within the department. This we did, and within a short while, Drew Berry had managed…

What does author position say about credit?

There's been a lot of discussion online lately about the relative importance of the position of an author name. Is it more impressive to be a first author on a report? If so, how much? John Lynch made a graph of Guillermo Gonzalez's publication record as a way of illustrating his argument that Gonzalez didn't deserve tenure. But there's a twist to the graph: it not only indicates articles on which Gonzales was an author, but also articles on which he was first author. As the average number of authors in journal articles increases, does that mean that the contribution of individual authors is…

My Tavis Smiley Appearance

A few weeks ago, I appeared for the second time on PBS KCET's "Tavis Smiley Show," this time to discuss Storm World and global warming generally. I would have given an update and told folks to watch the show live, but I didn't know when my segment was going to air. But in any rate, you can now go online to read the transcript of the interview--or to listen to it. Here's a brief excerpt: Tavis: Let me ask you two questions about Republicans. One about the current occupant of the White House, President Bush, and the other about the Republicans running to take his place in the Oval Office in…

The Monty Hall problem and the nature of scientific discourse.

There's a neat article [1] in the September-October 2008 issue of American Scientist (although sadly, this particular article seems not to be online) in which Brian Hayes discusses the Monty Hall problem and people's strong resistance to the official solution to it. Now, folks like Jason have discussed the actual puzzle about probabilities in great detail (on numerous occasions). It's a cool problem, I believe the official solution, and I'm not personally inclined to raise skeptical doubts about it. What I really like about Hayes's article is how he connects it to the larger ongoing…

Memo to the FSU Athletics Department: 'learning' and 'cheating' are not synonyms.

Somehow, the Florida State University Office of Athletic Academic Support Services had in its employ a "Learning Specialist" who seemed to think it was part of his or her job to help a bunch of student athletes cheat. As reported by the Orlando Sentinel: A months long Florida State University investigation into the FSU Office of Athletic Academic Support Services has determined that two faculty members during the 2006-07 school year "perpetrated academic dishonesty" among 23 FSU athletes, 21 of whom are still enrolled at the university. University president T.K. Wetherell today shared with…

ScienceDebate at a glance, Part I

If you're like me, your eyes might have glazed over just a bit at the fields of red and blue text generated by ScienceDebate 2008. Obviously these issues are important, but a quick cut-and-paste job into my word processor reveals that the two candidates have written over 12,000 words in response to the 14 questions! Let's distill that information into slightly more digestible chunks. 1. Innovation Obama: More money for schools, more NSF Fellowships, extend R&D tax credit for business. McCain: White House Science and Tech adviser, Fund research (no specifics on how). The Skinny: Obama has…

Funding Inequity

In the August issue of The Scientist, there is an article entitle "The Inequity of Science" (Not online yet). It describes how the top academic institutions are getting more and more of the total NIH funding. Between 1994 and 2004, in the rankings of universities and colleges according tototal R&D expenditures in biological sciences, the difference between the number one school and the 100th school more than doubled. Echoing Bob Weinberg's commentary, In 2005, the principal investigator on the biggest grant, Eric Lander at MIT, received more than $50 million, nearly seven times the…

Darwin Pamphlets at Philadelphia's Philagrafika 2010: Out of Print

Philagrafika 2010 is happening now, all over Philadelphia. Involving more than 300 artists at more than 80 venues throughout the city, Philagrafika 2010 will be one of the largest art events in the United States and the world's most important print-related exposition. Prominent museums and cultural institutions across Philadelphia are participating in Philagrafika 2010, offering regional, national and international audiences the opportunity to see contemporary art that references printmaking in dynamic, unexpected ways and to experience the rich cultural life of the city in the process. If…

The Cognitive Benefits of Nature

Thoreau would have liked this study: interacting with nature (at least when compared to a hectic urban landscape) dramatically improves improve cognitive function. In particular, being in natural settings restores our ability to exercise directed attention and working memory, which are crucial mental talents. The basic idea is that nature, unlike a city, is filled with inherently interesting stimuli (like a sunset, or an unusual bird) that trigger our involuntary attention, but in a modest fashion. Because you can't help but stop and notice the reddish orange twilight sky - paying attention…

An interesting experiment in online social forums

Blizzard, which makes a couple of extremely popular computer games like Starcraft, Warcraft, and Diablo, also maintains a gigantic set of forums with an overwhelming volume of posts appearing non-stop. I've never dug into them — way too much stuff, and it's scary how ferocious the debates can get over a change in a magic spell in a game — but they've announced a major, radical change: The first and most significant change is that in the near future, anyone posting or replying to a post on official Blizzard forums will be doing so using their Real ID -- that is, their real-life first and last…

And they say I'm in it for the money?

One of the most common criticisms launched at defenders of science-based medicine by believers in pseudoscience and quackery is that we are “pharma shills.” The assumption, or so it would seem, is that no one would defend science, reason, and medicine unless he were paid off by pharmaceutical, chemical, and/or agricultural companies. The further assumption is that, in contrast to our greedy grasping selves, they are not motivated by such base concerns as money. That is their self-image, that of pure-hearted warriors against evil, the evil being big pharma, big agriculture, big chemical,…

Euro-update 7: How to manage your Important Historical Site

Let's suppose you're the proprietor of a European tourist attraction. We're not talking about a Louvre or Uffizi here, or even a Leaning Tower of Pisa. No, you're in charge of a hidden gem: the scenic Church of the Saint No One Has Ever Heard Of, or the lovely little Museum of the Famous Artist Which Possesses None of His Famous Works. Your job is to show why this Saint really is someone important, or why the lesser-known works of the Famous Artist should get broader recognition. You also need to preserve your attraction for future generations, and (most importantly) give yourself a nice…

"Newsworthy-ness"

It appears that the clash of generations in regards to journalism is also happening in journalism schools: Screw AP style! Why I don't want to be a journalist anymore. 5 of my friends began their college careers as eager journalists. 5 of my friends are now either in a different field or no longer eager about being a journalist but eager to graduate. My choice is to go back and get another degree in Graphic Design - something that results in product that highlights as opposed to false light. And this comes from one of the most promising students in that class! My question: is it the industry…

Some thoughts on #Amazonfail.

Those of you on Twitter yesterday probably noticed the explosion of tweets with the hashtag #amazonfail. For those who were otherwise occupied carving up chocolate bunnies or whatnot, the news spread to the blogs, Facebook, and the traditional media outlets. The short version is that on Easter Sunday, a critical mass of people noticed that many, many books that Amazon sells had their Amazon sales rank stripped, and that these books stopped coming up in searches on Amazon that were not searches on the book titles (or, presumably, authors). What fanned the flames of the frenzy were certain…

$1000 Genomes for $2000

Getting an accurate genome sequence requires that you collect the data at least twice argue Robasky, Lewis, and Church in their recent opinion piece in Nat. Rev. Genetics [1]. The DNA sequencing world kicked off 2014 with an audacious start. Andrew Pollack ran an article in the New York Times implying that 100,000 genomes will be the new norm in human genome sequencing projects [2]. The article focused on a collaboration between Regeneron and Geisinger Health in which they plan to sequence the exomes (the ~2% of the genome that encodes proteins and some non-coding RNA) of 100,000 individuals…

Flu in the kitchen store

A trip with Mrs. R. to buy something for the kitchen doesn't seem to have much to do with influenza virology, but let me try to make the connection. We're at Williams Sonoma. I'm wandering around, idly looking at various pieces of kitchen equipment and thinking random food thoughts. I'm not looking for anything particular, myself. But as I'm cruising by a set of shelves I see it has books on it. Quite a few of them. All about food and cooking and associated subjects, but books. I stop. I start to browse. Fifteen minutes later Mrs. R. retrieves me. She is going to shop for something else. I…

Purely Medicinal

We've all been down with colds this weekend, nothing really serious, just uncomfortable. Or rather, nothing really serious in my estimation. My husband, on the other hand, is always pretty sure he might be dying whenever any minor virus hits him. So far, though, he's still alive and seems to be more or less ok. What Eric does inevitably get when he gets sick is the lingering cough. This is no fun, of course - but it does have its compensations. One of them is the homemade cough syrup. Most studies show that over-the-counter cough medicines are fairly ineffective - one found that a…

Try and beat this one, alties!

I'm not going to lie to you. This post contains some actual science. WAIT! Don't click away! I'll make it palatable, I promise! It's just that this is such an interesting story, and I can't help sharing it. It is a shining example of one of the great successes of modern medical science, and stands in such stark contrast to the unfulfilled promises of the cult medicine crowd, with their colon cleanses and magic pills. This is the story of a real magic pill. It starts back in 1960. A couple of researches at the University of Pennsylvania were looking at chromosomes in the blood cells of…

Do "rethinkers" ever have a point?

In the comments to this post on creationists'/HIV deniers' (mis)use of statistics, several people have been trying to argue that because overlapping membership in the two groups is limited, my comparison of the two is false. I explained: It's the *tactics* that are the same in both groups: misleading use of statistics as evidenced in this post, cherry-picking the lit, appeals to authority, grand conspiracies imagined, painting scientists as greedy and hopelessly biased, quote-mining, hell, they even each have their own prizes based on an impossible standard of evidence. Michael replied: Oh…

Why We Need the Individual Mandate

Yesterday a federal judge struck down the new healthcare law's individual mandate, which requires everyone to have health insurance. (Actually, the mandate doesn't apply to everyone: those who'd have to spend more than 8% of their income on coverage are exempt, as are undocumented immigrants - and if you don't have coverage, you pay a fine.) US District Judge Henry E. Hudson ruled that the individual mandate is unconstitutional, but he did not strike down other portions of the law or issue an injunction against its implementation. Two other district court judges have found the mandate…