Search Content

Displaying results 51901 - 51950 of 87947

Outer Planets’ Stormy Weather: All on the Surface

Have you complained about the weather recently? On the gas giants at the edges of our solar system, Uranus and Neptune, hurricane-like storm systems as big around as Earth blow 1000 km/h winds for years on end. Voyager II image of Neptune, showing storm features. Image: NASA But wait…What exactly constitutes weather on a giant gas planet? Here on planet Earth, there is a clearly delineated gas layer enveloping the solid/liquid layer we call home. Our weather arises from our planet’s rotation and the solar heating of its surfaces. On a rapidly-rotating gas planet (a day on Neptune is 16…

Best Science Books 2012: Skeptically Speaking

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting about all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2012 lists are here. This post includes the following: Skeptically Speaking #193 Science Books for Your Gift List. Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes by Maria Konnikova Gravity’s Engines: How Bubble-Blowing Black Holes Rule Galaxies, Stars, and Life in the Cosmos by Caleb A.…

Best Science Books 2012: The Scholarly Kitchen, Wit and Wisdom of an Engineer, Dwight Garner and Michiko Kakutani

Another bunch of lists for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting about all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2012 lists are here. This post includes the following: The Scholarly Kitchen: Chefs’ Selections: The Best Books Read During 2012 The Signal and the Noise: Why Most Predictions Fail but Some Don'tby Nate Silver Measuring the Networked Nonprofit: Using data to Change the Worldby…

Best Science Books 2012: Library Journal

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting about all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2012 lists are here. This post includes the following: Library Journal Consumer Health, Memoir, Science & Technology. No Time To Lose: A Life in Pursuit of Deadly Viruses by Piot, Peter Hallucinations by Sacks, Oliver The Undead: Organ Harvesting, The Ice-Water Test, Beating-Heart…

Best Science Books 2012: The Atlantic, CNNMoney, This is Actually Happening and more

Another bunch of lists for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I’ve been linking to and posting about all the “year’s best sciencey books” lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2012 lists are here. This post includes the following: The Atlantic Books of the Year 2012: The Top 5 and the Runners Up Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins by Ian Tattersall   CNNMoney Abundance: The future is better than you thinkby Peter Diamandis Inside…

Best Science Books 2011: L.A. Weekly, San Antonio Express-News, Canada AM

Dear FSM, by all that is unholy, I think this is the last one. A final bunch of lists for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2011 lists are here. Top Books We Read in 2011, by L.A. Weekly Writers. The Poisoner's Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York by Deborah Blum San Antonio Express-News: Best books of…

Best Science Books 2011: Discovery News

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2011 lists are here. This post includes the following: Discovery News: A Little Light Reading: 2011 in Physics Books. The Infinity Puzzle: Quantum Field Theory and the Hunt for an Orderly Universe by Frank Close The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the…

Best Science Books 2011: SteveReads, Richmond Times-Dispatch, Todd Sattersten, The Bygone Bureau

Another bunch of lists for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2011 lists are here. This post includes the following: Stevereads 2011 Best Books of the Year: Nonfiction! The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick Worm: The First Digital World War by Mark Bowden Richmond Times-Dispatch: Jay Strafford's 10 favorite books…

Best Science Books 2011: New Scientist

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2011 lists are here. This post includes the following: New Scientist (via Culture Lab blog). The Folly of Fools: The Logic of Deceit and Self-Deception in Human Life by Robert Trivers The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True by Richard Dawkins The Better Angels of Our Nature:…

Best Science Books 2011: Joshua Kim / Technology and Learning

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2011 lists are here. This post includes the following: The Technology and Learning blog by Joshua Kim. The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World by Daniel Yergin Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next by John D. Kasarda and Greg Lindsay Triumph of the City: How Our…

Best Science Books 2011: Kirkus Reviews

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2011 lists are here. This post includes the following: Kirkus Reviews. The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World by David Deutsch Deep Future: The Next 100,000 Years of Life on Earth by Curt Stager First Contact: Scientific Breakthroughs in the Hunt for Life Beyond…

Best Science Books 2011: Physics World

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2011 lists are here. This post includes the following: Physics World Top 10 books of 2011. Engineering Animals: How Life Works by Mark Denny, Alan McFadzean Measure of the Earth: the Enlightenment Expedition that Reshaped the World by Larrie Ferreiro The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes…

Best Science Books 2011: New York Times Notable Books

Another list for your reading, gift-giving and collection development pleasure. Every year for the last bunch of years I've been linking to and posting about all the "year's best sciencey books" lists that appear in various media outlets and shining a bit of light on the best of the year. All the previous 2011 lists are here. This post includes the following: New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2011. The Better Angels of our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by Steven Pinker The Boy in the Moon: A Father's Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son by Ian Brown Destiny of the Republic: A…

An Interview with Afarensis of Afarensis

This time around, we're talking to Afarensis of Afarensis: Anthropology, Evolution and Science. What's your name? Afarensis What do you do when you're not blogging? I read a lot. I also have an interest in old science fiction and horror movies. I also sail - weather permitting. What is your blog called? Afarensis: Anthropology, Evolution and Science What's up with that name? I picked the name to reflect the subjects I write about. How long have you been blogging, anyway? I will have been blogging for two years at the beginning of October. Where are you from and where do you live now? I was…

What's wrong with this? Teach the controversy!

This is a very silly story. Spring Hill resident Anita Koper thought she'd heard it all - until last week, when her 12-year-old daughter came home from school at Explorer K-8 and started asking her about "revolution." "She said her science teacher told the class that in some religions, if you are bad, you come back in another life as a dog, cow or pig," Koper said. She said she soon realized her daughter was asking about evolution, not revolution, and that her sixth-grade science teacher had mentioned the theory of reincarnation. "He also told the class that if you are any religion, you can…

Sciencegate is Dead...

...long live Stochastic. Hello, and welcome to Stochastic, the new in-house blog from Seed Media Group, the makers of Seed Magazine and Scienceblogs.com. Come on in and make yourself at home. Stochastic is our contribution to Scienceblogs--because we couldn't let the other bloggers have all the fun. As you may know, and as I just found out, the word 'stochastic' is a mathematical term connoting randomness. Stochastic is the opposite of deterministic; that which is stochastic is subject to chance, to wild and unpredictable variation. In other words: What comes after is not determined by…

Ice recap Summer 2011

The good folks at the National Snow and Ice Data Center summarize the season in the Arctic Ocean. Turns out that the weather conditions that helped make 2007 a record for low sea-ice extent didn't recur. And yet, 2011 came within a relative hair's breadth of setting a new record. That means longer-term climate trends are to blame, not seasonal weather variation. The low-down: Why did ice extent fall to a near record low without the sort of extreme weather conditions seen in 2007? One explanation is that the ice cover is thinner than it used to be; the melt season starts with more first-year…

Oy, it's War on Christmas time again

Fresh off the British Humanist Associations's successful bus campaign, the American Humanist Association has fired up its own set of big signs on buses in the Washington DC area. Their message is "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake". Of course, CNN considers this another salvo in the War on Christmas. Silly news organization. Didn't you get the word? The war on Christmas is over. We won. It's a secular holiday, atheists can celebrate it any way they want, Christians can continue to pretend it's baby Jesus' birthday, and everyone has the freedom to interpret the meaning of…

Girls that Code are Cool

By Jeri Moses, Lockheed Martin Engineer When I tell people I work at Lockheed Martin, they often assume I work in finance or human resources. This is a strange assumption considering more than 50 percent of Lockheed Martin employees are technologists and engineers. But, females are underrepresented in engineering, particularly in computer science. I may be biased, but I think girls that code are cool. According to Girls Who Code, 74 percent of middle school girls express interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), and yet this is not translating into higher education…

Role Models in Science & Engineering Achievement: Rebecca Lee Crumpler

Rebecca Lee Crumpler -- Physician Challenged the prevailing attitudes of her day when in 1864 she became the first African American woman to earn a medical degree. Even at an early age, Rebecca Lee  Crumpler displayed a penchant and sensitivity toward caring for the poor and ill. Born in Delaware in 1831, she was raised by an aunt who was dedicated to looking after sick neighbors and friends.  At the age of 21, young Rebecca moved to Charleston, Mass., to work as a nurse for the next eight years.  Since the first formal nursing school wouldn’t open for another 20  years, Rebecca was able to…

Everything you need to know about ID

It's a wonder that these people know how to tie their own shoes. I was sent a link to Perry Marshall's Intelligent Evolution Quick Guide, and it is certainly a fine example of the kind of reasoning that allows creationism to thrive. It's a short guide, but it goes on for over a page, when the essential syllogism that defines ID is actually presented in three all-encompassing lines. DNA is not just a molecule - it is a coding system with a language & alphabet, and contains a message All languages, codes and messages come from a mind Therefore DNA was designed by a Mind As I'm sure…

What's New on ScienceBlogs.de, May 8-14

Germany had bank holidays this week, but the bloggers at our European partner site, ScienceBlogs.de, still had time to write about these stories: Germany: How Green? Germany is often seen as an environmental pioneer. Tell a German about the American trend of going shopping with a re-usable bag instead of getting plastic at the store, for example, and they might sneer: Germany launched a huge "Jute statt Plastik" ("jute instead of plastic") campaign 30 years ago. So the bloggers at ScienceBlogs.de are puzzling over an an international comparison of environmental awareness that places Germany…

What's New on ScienceBlogs.de

Affirmative action for women professors, inaccurate science at the movies, education and privilege, and a YouTube vid not for the weak of stomach: it's this week's postcard from Europe. Women-Only Science The German Federal Ministry for Education and Research is opting for more female scientists. Two hundred women-only professorships are to be created, says Minister Annette Schavan, having observed that the current 11 percent of female professors is decidedly too low. Tobias Maier at WeiterGen puts forward his view on why this very German form of affirmative action is beside the point: "This…

What's New on ScienceBlogs.de

A climate change-denying conference in New York, a new government council to review stem cell regulations in Germany, and a couple of spectacular, science-y visuals: These are the stories driving conversation this week at our partner site, ScienceBlogs.de: Climate Change Denial Last week's "International Conference on Climate Change," held in New York by the free-market think tank The Heartland Institute, was the peg on which several authors at ScienceBlogs.de hung a discussion of climate change—and its denial. At his blog WeiterGen, Tobias Maier compares the opposing stances of denialism and…

Achieving in Engineering: 'Work on Things That Are Interesting, Exciting and Important to You'

As a young student growing up in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Charles (Chuck) Vest remembers taking endless aptitude tests in school - all of them indicating that he should become a journalist, a psychologist or a historian. Engineer was way down on the list, test results always revealed, strongly suggesting he had little or no aptitude for this field. Oh, how wrong they proved to be. Chuck not only proved to have a keen aptitude for engineering, his illustrious career in the field has seen him assume challenging leadership roles in some of engineering's highest echelons - including…

Fighting spam, one iPhone at a time

The auditorium could have been empty as I focused on the slide overhead. Questions formed out the mist, and my heart pounded as I took a deep breath and began to my raise my hand. "Da da da dah!  Da da da dah, da da da da da da da dah!!"  Oh, NO!  The theme song from Indiana Jones!  Coming from my backpack!  Thousands of eyes turned disapprovingly to stare at my red face.  Scrambling frantically over people to reach the aisle, I ran out the back of the room and answered the phone. "Hi, my name is Tim, and I'm looking for a financial advisor in your area...." What!!  Who is this! The…

No, I don't worry about AIDS anymore

But that hasn't always been true. When I was in college, I had part-time jobs drawing blood from patients in the university hospital and as a phlebotomist at local plasma center. Plus, I was a volunteer EMT on an ambulance crew. Needless to say, I saw plenty of blood. And those were the days when no one wore gloves. We used to be tested every few months for hepatitis, since it was pretty common for the hospital lab techs to get that, so I did worry about hepatitis. When I went to graduate school, and realized that the hospital where I had worked, had been treating some of the first…

Will the real rock star scientist please stand up?

I've been fortunate, living in Seattle, to hear talks from many people that my colleagues and co-bloggers might consider to be rock stars - people like Mary-Claire King, Nancy Wexler, Francis Collins, Leroy Hood, Eugenie Scott, David Haussler, Harold Varmus, and Elaine Ostrander. But, if I think about who the public might see as a rock star, the list gets much shorter. To the kids, I know, there are two people who qualify as rock star scientists. One, of course is Jane Goodall. I am seriously disappointed in Afrensis for not mentioning her. I nominate Jane for the Aretha Franklin of…

Impromptu Volcano Week on ScienceBlogs!

Though airplanes are starting to take off from various parts of continental Europe, UK airspace will remain locked down for at least another day. Eyjafjallajökull's ill temper has been an unexpected object lesson in the complexity and interconnectedness of our environment, technology, and social networks. Who knew that you needed to factor glaciology and geophysics into of whether hotel rooms would be booked for a day or a week? Or whether President Obama could attend his Polish counterpart's state funeral? The same phenomenon has deprived Dr. Isis' hospital of the technetium it needs in its…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Low Levels Of Neurotransmitter Serotonin May Perpetuate Child Abuse Across Generations : Infant abuse may be perpetuated between generations by changes in the brain induced by early experience, research shows. A research team found that when baby rhesus monkeys endured high rates of maternal rejection and mild abuse in their first month of life, their brains often produced less serotonin, a chemical that transmits impulses in the brain. Low levels of serotonin are associated with anxiety and depression and impulsive aggression in both humans and monkeys. Scientists Discover Molecular Basis…

GloFish® really glow!

Reposted in honor of the "glow in the dark" kitty clones. Last year, I wrote about photographs of jellyfish that were altered by newspapers, scientific publishers, science education companies, and me (for the purpose of the article) to make it look like the jellyfish glowed. Those jellyfish do NOT glow. Those images lie or at least misrepresent the truth. But that doesn't mean that glowing animals don't exist. These pictures were taken under natural light and came from GloFish®. Normally zebrafish are white with black stripes, but these zebrafish were genetically engineered to…

Abstinence-only makes the taxpayer's wallet grow thinner

It is clearly true that those who abstain in sexual intercourse are not at risk of becoming pregnant (with apologies to the Virgin Mary). There is less of a protection against sexually transmitted diseases because there are other ways to have sex besides having intercourse with a partner of the opposite sex while in the Missionary Position (maybe you hadn't heard that. Yes, it's true. I heard it on good authority from a junior high school student). But even for pregnancy, abstinence-only education programs don't work. At all. This has been shown repeatedly. But it doesn't affect Bush…

Pass the nuts. Please.

When I was a young-un no one ever heard about food allergies. Of course there were food allergies. We just never heard much about them. But now we not only hear about them, we hear about people, often children, who die from food allergy. Often peanut allergy. What's really weird about this is that in my day kids lived on peanut butter. Now some of them die with the slightest whiff of peanut antigen. And there seems to be peanut antigen in a lot of things, either by design or by cross contamination of equipment. Peanut antigen, you might think, is one of the most potent food allergy proteins…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: rain of the Almighty

The only triple pun I know is in a stanza from a Pete Seeger song, Passing Through: I saw Adam leave the garden With an apple in his hand, I said, "Now you're out What are you gonna do? Plant some crops and pray for rain, Maybe raise a little Cain, I'm an orphan and I'm only passing through." (words and music by Dick Blakeslee) Raise a little Cain/cane. Heh, heh. It's fine for Adam to pray for rain and make a clever joke. Adam didn't exist. The Governor of Alabama does. Yesterday marked the end of the Governor's call for a Week of Prayer for Rain in Alabama. Yes. That's right. A state-…

Armed and pedantic

Since I'm a professor I notice stories about professor's rights. I'm all for having my rights. But there are some rights I don't think professors need to have or should have: The Nevada System of Higher Education's Board of Regents has endorsed a plan that would encourage faculty and staff members to go about their business armed with guns that could be used to thwart an attack like the one that took 32 lives at Virginia Tech in April. According to the Web site of KLAS, a local television station in Las Vegas, the regents approved a plan under which the system would pay a $3,000 fee for each…

When headlines make bird flu

You can't look at the bird flu news without seeing a new outbreak somewhere, whether it's in Bangladesh, Ghana, Togo, the Czech Republic, or Germany, or of course the old standbys, Vietnam, Indonesia and Eqypt. Lots of it around and I didn't give anywhere near the whole list. So it's curious to find this headline, "UN finds progress in tackling bird flu" in an AP story in the Houston Chronicle by Marta Falconi (same story and headline in Washington Post): Scientists and officials gathering in Rome for a three-day technical meeting on bird flu said that in most cases the virus is rapidly…

USDA bird's eye view not so sweeping

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) may be the most incompetent and dysfunctional in the federal government (Katrina is one example; but only one). DHS also has a very expansive view of its role. Almost everything is a matter of homeland security. That includes epidemic disease, where there remains uncertainty as to who will do what to whom in the event of a pandemic. According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), they also want to give the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) the bird: In an effort to prepare for H5N1, the USDA rolled out a series of measures including…

A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision

Simon Ings has written a wonderful survey of the eye, called A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), and it's another of those books you ought to be sticking on your Christmas lists right now. The title give you an idea of its content. It's a "natural history", so don't expect some dry exposition on deep details, but instead look forward to a light and readable exploration of the many facets of vision. There is a discussion of the evolution of eyes, of course, but the topics are wide-ranging — Ings covers optics, chemistry, physiology, optical…

Brief H5N1 status summary

It is easy to lose track of the various outbreaks of bird flu in poultry since the first of the year, but WHO has a nice map to remind you: Since it's a bit small in this format, I'll read it off for you: UK, Russia (various places), Hungary, Turkey, Pakistan, South Korea, Japan, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Egypt, Nigeria, Indonesia. A large format version can be seen here. We need to add Afghanistan, China/Hong Kong (not shown on the map). Here is a bar chart listing the countries that have had poultry or wild bird cases and the number of outbreaks in each: Source: World Organization for…

It can't happen in North America

The Hungarians are miffed because the UK is trying to pin the blame on them for the recent bird flu outbreak. They think blaming Hungary for the virus is the easy way out. It isn't. What it implicates is that the vaunted biosecurity firewall for developed country poultry producers is porous. Whether it finally turns out that the virus came from Hungary or not, the possibility is there. We checked to see what the US industry had to say on their website, http://www.avianinfluenzainfo.com/: Asian bird flu is H5N1 highly pathogenic avian influenza (AI) - a disease of birds that has occurred…

Uninvention

Our Seed Overlords have asked a question (our answering is entirely voluntary, if you were wondering, and we're only answering because it is an interesting question): "if you could cause one invention from the last hundred years never to have been made at all, which would it be, and why?" Several of my colleagues here have coughed up answers—Adventures in Ethics and Science (with a particularly appropriate entry), Afarensis, Evolgen, Living the Scientific Life, and Stranger Fruit—but I'm going to be a little bit contrary and question the question. My answer is "none." I don't see most of…

Food-Entrainable Circadian Clock

It has been known for decades that scheduled meals can entrain the circadian clock. In some species (e.g., in some birds), regular timing of feeding entrains the main circadian system of the body in the suprachiasmatic (SCN) area of the hypothalamus, the retina and the pineal. In other species (e.g., rodents), it appears that the food-entrainable oscillator is anatomically and functionally distinct from the main pacemaker in the SCN. Researchers working on different species discovered different properties and different anatomical locations for the food-entrainable clock. Now, a study…

Back to the Future

There is a new question in the Ask a ScienceBlogger series: If you could have practiced science in any time and any place throughout history, which would it be, and why?... Let me get the two runner-up answers out of the way first: - the romantic time of mid-19th century England around the publication of the Origin of Species. This assumes I'd be an English landed gentleman and a buddy of Charles. This also assumes that I'd be aware of how great that period was for science. - some time in the future, e.g., 2106, or 3006 AD. So much will be known then. But would I appreciate it? Will…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: the Bible, complete with "the good parts"

R. Crumb has an illustrated version of the Book of Genesis out in graphic novel format. It's gotten rave reviews from both the skeptic and non-skeptic sides of the house. Consider this, from Greta Christina at Alternet: Crumb's Genesis emphasizes biblical accuracy -- he's a non-believer, but he has a deep respect for the book's historical and cultural importance. So he created this graphic novel as a straight, word- for- word illustration job. And so, when it came to illustrating the freakier and more unsettling aspects of the narrative, he pulled no punches. The multiple marriages, the…

Tiger attacks and climate change

The interconnected web of health and the environment never ceases to amaze me. A good example is a new report from India's Sundarban islands suggesting that climate change, among other things, is contributing to an increase in tiger attacks: Wildlife experts say endangered tigers in the world's largest reserve are turning on humans because rising sea levels and coastal erosion are steadily shrinking the tigers' natural habitat. The Sundarbans, a 26,000 sq km area of low-lying swamps on India's border with Bangladesh, is dotted with hundreds of small islands criss-crossed by water channels. "…

Palin comparison, III: sexual orientation

This is another in our Daily Dose of Sarah Palin, because even if John McCain didn't think it was that important to learn a lot about the person who might be the next President should some medical event befall the 72 year old cancer survivor should he be elected, most people want more information. Previous installments here. In answering a questionnaire for gubernatorial candidates in 2006, here's how she answered a question, about civil rights for people of different sexual orientations: Do you support the Alaska Supreme Court's ruling that spousal benefits for state employees should be…

Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: preventing theonomas

Birmingham, England is not a little country burg. The Greater Birmingham area has about a million people. It also has a city council to run the place and a computer web access monitoring system to help the people who run the people who run the place "control internet access." Not so unusual. Mrs. R. works in a state health department where they seem obsessed with preventing staff from accessing sites not related to work, although a lot of sites get blocked inappropriately because the filters are "stupid." She has had her access to CDC blocked on occasion because some word triggered a block (e…

The US is one of the better off developing nations

If you make a ranked list among developed nations on how well the US is doing in health care, we are towards the top of the list. If you hold the list upside down: Americans live shorter lives than citizens of almost every other developed nation, according to a report from several US charities. The report found that the US ranked 42nd in the world for life expectancy despite spending more on health care per person than any other country. Overall, the American Human Development Report ranked the world's richest country 12th for human development. The study looked at US government data on…

A sixties-style wedding

It was a sixties-style wedding, only 20 people including the Baptist minister and the bride and groom. I was there with my friend. The guests were all family except for three close friends of the couple and the officiating Minister, chosen because his church was rent-free home for innumerable political groups -- and he had consented not to mention God in the service. He did require the couple to attend some pre-marital counseling sessions, but the only thing the bride and groom could remember about them was that at one point he mentioned the wedding ring's circle was a symbol of endless love…

Australia tries to out do the US in suppression of science

Mrs. R. and I visited Australia a number of years back. She was the one attending a scientific congress while I was the accompanying spouse. Quite nice, really. I enjoyed not having to work on a foreign visit. And Australia was terrific. We loved it. I was surprised at how good the food was (a baseless prejudice I had about Commonwealth Cuisine) and the people hospitable and friendly. Much like America, really. Unfortunately the Australian government is becoming too much like the US government when it comes to interfering in science: A paper recently published in the Australian and New…