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Posts I would like to write, given time

I have great post titles and topics in my head, but much less time to blog! (quick review: I work 40-50 hours/week, sometimes work 4 hours on Sunday afternoons, am a doctoral student preparing for comprehensive exams in mid-July, am married with a house, a old cat (in kidney failure - which creates clean up issues), and a dog.... well, you get the idea) So, I'm going to post blog post titles from time to time, and allow the reader to fill in the responses for themselves :) Here's #1: When is it a valid test of the scholarly communication system to perpetrate a hoax, and when is it a party…

The graph Lott presented to the NAS Panel

This is one of the graphs that Lott presented to the National Academy of Sciences Panel in 2002. David Mustard's originally included it in his contribution to Evaluating Gun Policy, but it was removed after Donohue showed him that it was the product of coding errors made by Lott. Later graphs produced by Lott look quite different---as we saw yesterday, this seems to be all the acknowledgment you get from Lott when he makes an error. Notice how the graph shows crime rates falling sharply and immediately after carry laws were adopted. These results were much…

Indian Government Websites: A Study in Uselessness

Statistics page at Gov. of India Directory website. I should not have dared to check the treasures that the NIC (Government's IT arm) has hidden away at the government websites. I dared and my brain just exploded. If you are fearless, I offer you this: check the footer at the website with the NIC disclaimer. I have been visiting many state run websites lately and have rarely found one that is well designed and well maintained. It's worrying when you consider the claim (usually from NASSCOM), that India is a Software Giant. It is certainly not. It is said that India's progress is not because…

Like to read/hear my first Tamil essay?

Of course you do! You are such a good soul! Head over to TheScian.com. It's a two-part translation of the English essay 'Leaping into the void'. I had a long post in mind on how this is an attempt to start a discussion on science with my extended family back home in Namakkal, how language shapes culture and provides a vessel to hold those momentous thoughts, etc. But, there was a bit of trouble at scienceblogs.com today. Software glitches. We weren't able to post anything all day. All those exuberant words of self-praise have evaporated from my brain into thin air. I don't know how many…

Poverty is part of India's story

Poverty is part of India's story writes Peter Foster (Telegraph) in his blog that expands on his earlier article. I am in agreement with Foster on the apathy among well-to-do Indians although I think he makes some generalizations about middle class that are not necessarily true. His statements reflect his anger and passion and I certainly identify with it. He is absolutely right when he says The first is that India's poor are an unalterable fact of life. I'm reminded of the government health official who once told me that "these people don't need toilets". This is a nasty manifestation of…

Sanity in Business

How Costco Became the Anti-Wal-Mart, NY Times At Costco, one of Mr. Sinegal's[CEO of Costco] cardinal rules is that no branded item can be marked up by more than 14 percent, and no private-label item by more than 15 percent. In contrast, supermarkets generally mark up merchandise by 25 percent, and department stores by 50 percent or more. "They could probably get more money for a lot of items they sell," said Ed Weller, a retailing analyst at ThinkEquity. But Mr. Sinegal warned that if Costco increased markups to 16 or 18 percent, the company might slip down a dangerous slope and lose…

Bill O'Reilly Interviews Richard Dawkins

Bill O' Reilly supposedly interviewed Richard Dawkins. Bill had the mike, the studio and the buttons and so Bill jumped on the pulpit and delivered his sermon without having the decency to treat the guest properly (he didn't allow Dawkins to say much). O'Reilly referred to the tides and the (apparent) movement of sun as the physiology of things. He probably meant to say, physicology of things, which is the word he must've recalled during the interview that should've seemed somewhat related to the physics of things. The mangled word, of course, comes from the science class he attended many…

Early Note: This Year's Scifi Contest

This year's scifi contest at TheScian.com will open for submissions in June and end in September as it did last year. There will be a few important changes to the contest from last year. This year the story contest will have a theme. The theme is this: "Living on Earth and Elsewhere". I imagine the theme would cover a story about a bacteria that fights for freedom inside an acidic gut, a story of a silicon creature in future making a pilgrimage to earth, and a lot others I can't imagine. In any case, I would expect the story to entertain - and inform if it must, but not necessarily - in…

Pinker on Violence

From A History of Violence by Pinker at Edge.org In sixteenth-century Paris, a popular form of entertainment was cat-burning, in which a cat was hoisted in a sling on a stage and slowly lowered into a fire. According to historian Norman Davies, "[T]he spectators, including kings and queens, shrieked with laughter as the animals, howling with pain, were singed, roasted, and finally carbonized." Today, such sadism would be unthinkable in most of the world. This change in sensibilities is just one example of perhaps the most important and most underappreciated trend in the human saga: Violence…

Ethno-tourism

Voyeurismo by Roger Sandall. A long and highly readable essay that discusses Ethno-tourism and gives a close inspection of The Naked Tourist (a book, fortunately). [via Arts & Letters Daily] You've spent 10,000 years getting there. It's not pretty but it's yours--the swamp, the forest, the tree house where you live. Bigger and stronger tribes drove you down from the better land higher up the slopes, so you retreated to a godforsaken place thick with reptiles, insects, and malarial encephalitis. Southern Papua's rain forests are hell; but at least you feel safe and alone. Then Zurück in…

Living in the Future

Bruce Sterling gives a rundown from Serbia. "Serbia may be the world's single-greatest locale for a professional futurist. Awful things happen there faster than awful things happen anywhere else. The Balkans is a tragic region that denied stark reality, broke its economy, started multiple unnecessary wars, and basically finger-pointed and squabbled its way into a comprehensive train wreck. It suffered all kinds of pig-headed mayhem, all unnecessary. That's just how the world behaved with the climate crisis, too. The time for action isn't now. The time for action was 40 years ago. Today we…

Suicides

A girl in India watches the hanging of Saddam. She obsesses over it. Two days later her brother chides her for not studying. She locks herself up in her room and hangs herself. The Saddam connection is alleged as having been the influence. Perhaps. Perhaps not. Whatever it is, it is unfortunate. Someone commits suicide every five minutes in India (source). One suicide every forty seconds in the world (source: WHO). Someone near to you. Someone you never met. I've heard and known first-hand many cases of suicide. They all speak of a small misunderstanding taken too seriously. The most…

Sons, sons and more sons!

What has the world come to! "...when a bride was chosen for a prince ready to sow his oats, the search would begin for a princess from a family that had a long line of sons. That was of critical importance, and people had observed that sons of families with many sons tended to have more sons." sez Sunil where he discusses a recent research that delves into people's thumbrule for ensuring reproductive success. This and more are featured in the newest edition of Tangled Bank at Salto sobrius which "will not cease until lush rainforest grows up to the very foundations of St Nicholas's icy…

The nature of meaning

Smilack belongs to the group of one to four percent of people worldwide with synesthesia, the neurological mixing of the senses. No two synesthetes have exactly the same perceptual experiences. Many perceive each number, letter of the alphabet, or day of the week as a different color. For others, sounds from the environment are always accompanied by moving geometric patterns in their "mind's eye." -Seed Magazine This blog entry by Smilack expresses what strange bedfellows sensory perception and meaning are. I am utterly fascinated. I wonder if some of the technological advances and…

Crash, burn and be happy

How would you feel after crashing a beautiful spacecraft on the moon? Excited and very happy, if it is in the name of science. "We're very happy and very excited, the team is rejoicing," said SMART-1 project scientist Bernard Foing, speaking from the mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany. SMART-1 had been orbiting and studying the Moon since late 2005 and would have crashed onto the Moon anyway. So near the end of the mission controllers tweaked its orbit so it would crash on the nearside of the Moon where the impact would be visible to ground-based telescopes. Early indications are…

My Book Choices

The book tagging meme is back! I love it. Arunn of Nonoscience has a nice list up and has passed on the book love to yours truly. So here goes. One book that changed your life? "The Real Man" by Boris Polevoi. I read the tamil translation from Mir Publishers. One book you have read more than once? "Surely you're joking, Mr.Feynman" One book you would want on a desert island? The Feynman Lectures on Physics One book that made you laugh The Last Hero by Terry Pratchet. All the Hitchhiker books. One book that made you cry None. But, some books brought a lump to my throat. India: A Million…

Fallows on the Fort Hood shootings: "Don't mean nothing."

James Fallows gets the shootings right, as he does so much else: In the saturation coverage right after the events, the "expert" talking heads are compelled to offer theories about the causes and consequences. In the following days and weeks, newspapers and magazine will have their theories too. Looking back, we can see that all such efforts are futile. The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre "mean"? A decade later, do we "know" anything about Columbine? There is chaos and evil in life. Some people go crazy. In America, they do so with…

53-inch penises, other self-destruction, & viruses bad & good

I regret I can't treat at more, um, length, the following weighty matters: Size Matters; So Do Lies   Nate Silver finds that Matt Kibbe, the president of FreedomWorks, speaking of the 9/12 tea party rally in DC, " did the equivalent of telling people that his penis is 53 inches long." Dr. Nobody Again Questions JAMA Disclosure Policies in which Philip Dawdy and Jonathan Leo, a dangerous combination, butt heads with JAMA Self-Destruct Button, Activiated! Baucus and Conrad decide maybe Joe Wilson had a point after all. Swine Flu Mystery in Healthy Young Puts Focus on Genetics, Deep Inhaling (…

An optimistic take on health-care reform

Ezra Klein thinks the stars -- and the forces -- are so far lining up much more promisingly than in 1994: The opponents of health reform are, at this juncture, entirely isolated. Industry is adopting an attitude of relentless positivity. Republicans are grudgingly attempting to appear cooperative. The only straight opposition is coming, as Maddow and Howard Dean say, from Rick Scott, a disgraced former hospital executive whose company was convicted of defrauding the federal government in the largest ever case of its kind. You can say, of course, that the traditional opponents of reform will…

Climate change and Western wildfires: gonna get hotter

Science Progress looks at the discouraging feedback loop between climate change and Western wildfires: New research investigating the impact of climate change on western wildfires presents a bleak picture. CAP Senior Fellow Tom Kenworthy covers the latest science in an American Progress column this week, explaining the problematic feedback cycle: higher temperatures from global warming increase the risks of wildfires, and increased fires release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere: A new paper in the April 24 issue of the journal Science, for example, concludes that scientists have…

Get hypnotherapy with a cat

Seriously, a cat named George is a registered hypnotherapist with three professional organizations in Britain. The article not only presents these organizations as full of shit, it highlights the absolute stupidity of almost all applications of hypnosis. Here's the details: Chris Jackson, presenter of Inside Out in the North East and Cumbria, registered pet George with three industry bodies. Each one accepted a certificate from the non-existent Society of Certified Advanced Mind Therapists as proof of George's credentials. It follows a similar investigation by an American clinical…

Zombies are stealing the brains of the citizens of Detroit!

Zombies are attacking Detroit! This is why all of the brains are disappearing out of the city! Check out the picture here's the undeniable evidence: Not only are the Zombies eating Detroit's brains it sounds like the young folk are escaping and leaving no brains left for the Zombies to eat! Check out this snippet from CNN.com: Broad numbers are difficult to come by, but nearly a quarter of respondents in a survey for Fusion, the area's young professional association, said they plan on leaving Detroit within the next two years. Among the larger population of 4.6 million people, 63,000…

Ground breaking study shows that you look at attractive people

A ground breaking new study from Florida State University has determined that we look at attractive people! Who woulda thought! But really: In a series of three experiments, Maner and his colleagues found that the study participants, all heterosexual men and women, fixated on highly attractive people within the first half of a second of seeing them. Single folks ogled the opposite sex, of course, but those in committed relationships also checked people out, with one major difference: They were more interested in beautiful people of the same sex. Ok.. for reals.. It is a pretty interesting…

What's wrong with this guys face?! The Answer...

Remember this guy from a few posts ago?! Nothing is actually wrong with his face. Check out the answer (and another picture) after the break... Here he is again with a little more telling setup. According to the website of Lawrence D. Rosenblum and Mike Gordon at UC Riverside: The point-light technique involves applying small fluorescent yellow cardboard dots to a speaker's face. The dots are affixed to the lips and face with a medical adhesive, and to the teeth and tongue tip with a denture paste. The speaker is videotaped under high-quality fluorescent lighting (seen on left). The…

Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation At Home.

Ok... not really at home (Are they really suggesting in the picture that you can do it yourself?). There are now some relatively simple consumer devices on the market that will let your Psychiatrist wave his magic wand over your head, helping to alleviate your depressive symptoms in his office without checking you into a hospital and knocking you out. I'm curious whether they need an MRI before doing this procedure? It doesn't look like it's too precise. In any case... here's the device: And a description from Engadget: The devices employ a technique known as transcranial magnetic…

Ok seriously - make up your mind about migraines!

Last week Migraines were good for fending off memory loss in middle age people. Now this week migraines are causing brain damage that potentially can lead to strokes. Pretty fair trade off eh?! Better memory for a horribly disabling stroke that might destroy your memory anyway (well... or kill you)! Alright... here's the details: The research, which was done in mice, also suggests giving oxygen may help reduce the damage, said Takahiro Takano, Maiken Nedergaard and colleagues at the University of Rochester in New York, working with a team at the Danish pharmaceutical group Novo Nordisk.…

Panda porn ineffective

I'm sad to report today that watching panda pornography didn't excite the two pandas enough for them to engage in kinky panda sex. Perhaps the porn built unrealistic expectations for the male panda and the girl panda didn't match his kinky panda fantasies?! Maybe they should have given the girl panda some breast implants and included another girl panda into the mix. [edit by Sandra - or maybe the girl panda doesn't need to change her body, which is fine the way it is, to conform to some artificial panda porn ideal beauty standard.] Here's the shtick: After panda porn failed to spark amour,…

Should More Jellies Fill Your Belly?

The Economist published an article last week on jellyfish, which featured a fellow graduate student at the Fisheries Centre, Lucas Brotz. Can jellyfish really be the future of seafood? Jellyfish only provide about 4 calories per 100 g but, beyond that, there is a real danger of encouraging demand for a product that was spawned from unhealthy and poorly managed oceans... Jellyfish push out incredibly valuable, and diverse, marine ecosystems. Scientists may somehow turn jellyfish into food, tyres or flip-flops, but it is hard to imagine an industry based on a product that is at least 95%…

Sea-Flavored Tilapia

In today's New York Times Magazine, there is a great short article on Fish-Flavored Fish to confuse your logic and your tastebuds. To feed demand from the fast food industry (who needs the fishy flavor before they deep fry) one aquaculture company has come up with a way to put the fishy flavor in farmed fish. This spring, after 10 months of testing, the aquaculture company HQ Sustainable Maritime Industries created what it calls "sea-flavored" tilapia, the first farmed fish manipulated to taste like a wild fish. "It met 10 out of our 10 taste parameters," says HQ's president and C.E.O.,…

Shifting Squid: Humboldt Squid Move North And South

The New York Times ran a nice article yesterday on the northward expansion of the hefty (up to 100 lbs.) Humboldt squid. Scientists are queried why the Humboldt squid has, over the last ten years, made a home in Monterey, California (it wasn't because of low taxes). A study of squid stomachs (not quite published) shows one of this this fierce-looking cephalopod's favorite food is hake, one of lead roles in a favorite act: surimi. The squid have also been migrating south into Chile. Scientists in the article postulate overfishing and climate changes have influenced the Humboldt squid's new…

Make Galapagos the Next Bhutan

Tourism is experiencing rampant growth in the Galapagos. Tourism is also the reason for human population explosion in the islands (due to immigration from the mainland). Before Ecuador erodes the very resource on which it relies--the Galapagos National Park and Marine Reserve--it should do what few have done: look at the past and project into the future. Tourists come to Galapagos to see the wildlife, not the night life or the edifices. They currently pay $100 just to enter the park, but they would pay more. Galapagos should take a leaf out of the Bhutan book: they have had strict limits…

Caleb Crain on how higher reading numbers might not be such great news

Caleb Carr Crain on why he remains pessimistic about reading despite the recent National Endowment of the Arts report showing a reversal last year in a 25-year decline in reading. It's a good consideration of several ways i which the data might be a mismeasure or a misleading anomaly. Why aren't I celebrating the new numbers about the reading of literature? First, the numbers are good, but they're not that Second, another of the NEA's measures shows a continued, stubborn decrease. To the question "With the exception of books required for work or school, did you read any books during the…

collision detection: Chinese scientists unveil "the anti cloak" -- technique for defeating invisibility shields

From the "Where Do They Find the Time" Dept, via Clive Thompson's collision detection: Chinese scientists unveil "the anti cloak" -- technique for defeating invisibility shields Okay, the war over "invisibility cloaks" has officially begun. A team of Chinese scientists have just announced that they've figured out how to defeat invisibility technology -- and render "invisible" objects visible.You may remember the famous experiment in 2006 in which Duke University scientists created an "invisibility cloak" -- a wave-morphing shield that allowed them to render an object mostly invisible to…

They're Back!!!!

Last year, 3 Quarks Daily had a science blogging contest that shelled out some nice cash to the Top Quark. Well, they're at it again! You can now stop by and nominate your favorite posts by leaving a comment here. I know there's a lot of great writing going on here at Science Blogs, so look around and nominate something! If you want to nominate something of mine (which, of course, you do), here are some of my suggestions (nominating more than once doesn't help in any way - so I'll make note of ones already nominated by others): Evolution: The Curious Case of Dogs nominated! Evolution:…

Research Blogging Awards!

If you read this blog, odds are you appreciate those who write about peer-reviewed research. You might have even noticed that little check-mark page image on the upper left hand side of some of my posts: that handy image lets you know that that blog post has been registered with ResearchBlogging.org, a FANTASTIC site which collects posts from all over the web about all kinds of scientific research. Well, now they've decided it's time to reward the best of the best in research blogging, so they're giving out cash prizes in all kinds of categories. Any blog that has included peer reviewed…

Sorry... and more!

Hey there my dedicated blog readers, Sorry there hasn't been much from me all week. I'm moving to Hawaii in less than a month, and between preparing for that 6,000 mile trek, a pick up in work (I suspect my boss trying to get the most out of my last couple weeks here), and general life, I've been really, really busy. I know, it's no excuse to ignore you, but it's the truth. So I apologize - I'll try to post more, but if I'm MIA for a little longer, at least you have a reason. In the meantime, I suggest you hit the sidebar and check out the other great blogs I have on my blogroll - they're…

Kiwi, you should thank me.

I have a brother. He's a great guy - way smarter than me. So when I saw this article headline I had to write about it: "Having a sister makes you happier and more optimistic, say psychologists" Yeah, I know: I'm awesome. But why this time? Apparently growing up with at least one girl in the family gives people a better outlook on life because they're more able to cope with problems. Daughters encourage communication and keep a family tighter. The researchers said brothers, however, seem to have the opposite effect. The study, done by scientists at De Montfort University in Leicester,…

I hate cancer....I really, really do

This is growing tiresome and painful. I have a wonderful physician-scientist research collaborator who, God bless her (or your own personal God-equivalent), takes care of little people with cancer. You'd think that a person who chooses this line of work would get a frickin' karmic break, right? I just learned that her brother died last week of brain cancer; I believe it was glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), not a good one, if there is such a thing. He is survived by his wife and 4-year-old daughter. I learned from her of his diagnosis at a cancer research meeting last November - what's that…

Does anyone else see a contradiction here?

According to Matt Nisbet, the third ethical imperative when framing science is accuracy. Accuracy is important, he argues, because those who fail to accurately convey what's known about a subject risk losing the trust of their audience. Also according to Matt Nisbet, a new Pew survey shows that Evangelicals are "little different from [the] rest of [the] public" when it comes to acceptance of manmade climate change. Evangelicals are 13% less likely to accept that humans are causing global warming as the population as a whole, no other group is less likely to accept manmade warming than they…

iPhoto Pareidolia

Pareidolia - the phenomenon where our brain is somehow tricked into recognizing vague shapes as significant features - gets mentioned now and then on ScienceBlogs. The usual trigger for this occurs when someone tries to sell the Wonderbread Virgin Mary on Ebay before the blue mold completely erases her from the slice, or when one of our more monomaniacal colleagues sees something that he can associate with the New Atheism. Interestingly, it seems that human-programed face recognition software may be as subject to these issues as our own face recognition is. The latest version of Apple's…

PhD Engineers in the Corporate World

The Chronicle has a nice piece on PhD engineers adjusting to corporate culture, and for once something they offer isn't behind a paywall, so you can actually read it! Here's the intro to whet your appetite: You might expect to see few similarities between the career path of an engineering Ph.D. and that of a humanities Ph.D. as they transition out of academe. After all, engineers have it made, don't they? They can walk right into industry jobs that are exactly like the work they did in graduate school and never miss a step, right? Not entirely. I interviewed an electrical-engineering Ph.D.…

I Don't Know What To Say

Lots of my Sciblings have blogged about 9.11.01 today. I particularly recommend Abel Pharmboy's post, and the video that Orac posted if you can stand to watch it. I don't feel that I have anything meaningful to add. I felt that way in the weeks after the tragedy, when K-State engineering organized a panel to talk to students and faculty about...I suppose our response to the aftermath. There was a lot of worry about how some of our graduate students, postdocs, and faculty might be treated. I worried about my dear friend who is from Iran. I have no memory of what I said to the gathered…

They Found Some Women This Time!

Well, the White House finally got around to naming the winners of the 2006 National Medals of Science. Of the 11 winners named, two - count 'em, two! - are actually women! Rita Colwell and Nina Federoff made the cut. Here's how the Chronicle of Higher Education summarized their accomplishments: Rita R. Colwell, a professor of microbiology and biotechnology at the University of Maryland at College Park. Ms. Colwell, who was director of the National Science Foundation from 1998 to 2004, will receive the prize for creating a better understanding of marine microbes -- the agent that causes…

Democracy can be a beautiful thing. But strange.

One of the first pieces of legislation on the United States Senate's agenda for today will be the revision of the FISA wiretapping bill. The Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, is planning to move forward a bill that would retroactively grant immunity to the telecommunications companies who allegedly assisted the government by illegally handing over the phone records of millions of Americans. The "get out of jail free" provision in question is favored by the White House and Republicans, but opposed by many Democrats. In bringing the bill to the floor, Reid is disregarding longstanding…

The new John Benneth policy

That loopy homeopath, John Benneth, is bragging now that he is the most widely read homeopath in the world, and that his blog has broken all previous viewership records. He's quite proud of this "accomplishment". One of the last John Benneth Journal entries for 2010, IN ONE YEAR, has broken all previous viewership records and sparked more commentary and outrage amongst the pharmaceutical company stooges than any previous Journal entry, enlisting the usual fury and nasty responses. He seems to be aware of how it happened: I linked to that one article. What he doesn't seem to appreciate,…

I swear, you can't make this stuff up.

Jon Stewart's right. The Bush Administration is really making him obsolete. There's no need to wait for him to spin something the President says to make him look stupid and give you a good laugh. All you need to do is read the raw material. Today's comedy routine - which I'm going to bet will be featured on the Daily Show tonight - was delivered at a CENTCOM conference at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida earlier today. The President, while trying yet again to make the case for his "surge" strategy, said: The other option was to pull back from the capital, before the Iraqis could…

I think I understand why religion is so successful

It's because it is the absolute bottom floor of any descent into crepitude. That's all I can conclude from looking at the fate of various cable television channels: they all seem to start out well with commendable goals, and pretty soon they're all selling out to the cheapest, sleaziest advertisers and producing the worst shows they can imagine, all to pander to the lowest common denominator. Look at The Learning Channel (you won't learn anything watching it anymore), the History Channel (yeah, if your idea of history always has Nazis in it), and the SciFi channel, which now isn't even trying…

Germaine Greer: a waste of amino acids

There are those who contribute to the world in a positive way. No matter what you think of Steve Irwin's antics on camera, the man did a lot of good for conservation consciousness raising and teaching zoology to young and old alike. Then there are those who do little but attack the former class, to assuage their own ego and get attention. Such a person is Germaine Greer, who never misses an opportunity to sneer at the broader culture and in particular the country of her own birth, Australia. So Greer attacked Irwin as a "torturer" of animals, and claims that his death was somehow the "revenge…

Interlude of peace and love

Have you ever noticed that there are occasionally periods in which things just work, particularly with computers? I find that there is a confluence of coherence about every four years. I'm not sure if it's just because the vendors - the Evil Apple Empire, or Micro$oft, whoever - recognises that if they don't actually dangle a carrot of functionality from time to time we'll all give up and start knitting or making model planes or killing software vendors or something, or if it's an outcome of cycles of dysfunctionality that cancel each other out like standing waves, but I'm in one now.…

Gore, peace and the "errors"

The International Herald Tribune worries that Gore's receiving the Peace Prize is going to denigrate the award because it "strays from traditional Nobel definitions of peace work". Huh. As Tom Lehrer said, when Henry Kissinger can win the Peace Prize, the time for political satire is long past. If anything, this improves the standing of the prize. What could be more concerning to the peace of the world than dealing with climate change? Gore's raising awareness and bringing climate change out of the Rethuglican spin cycle will do more to promote peace than any number of activists on…