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Water, Power, and Dollars: Allocating Limited Resources

Many of us who grew up in the U.S. took water and electricity for granted, but more and more of us are bumping up against the limits of resources. Three stories in the news this past week illustrate what the difficulties are and how different parties address them. Negotiating water use: It took more than three years of negotiation for farmers, fishers, and tribes in the Klamath River Basin (which spans parts of northern California and southern Oregon) to reach what the LA Timesâ Eric Bailey describes as âa breakthrough agreement.â Even after all that negotiating, two environmental groups…

MSHA's Stickler: Will he stay or will he go?

As the year is winding down, one question on the minds of many MSHA inspectors, managers and staff has to be: Will Stickler be here in 2008?  The MSHA chief, Richard Stickler, received his job from President G.W. Bush on a "recess appointment," which expires at the end of the current U.S. Senate session.  If the Senate adjourns (as it usually does) for the Christmas and New Year holidays, Mr. Stickler's appointment would officially end.  This would leave MSHA without a politically-appointed Assistant Secretary. Would that be a good thing for miners' health and safety? I can't…

100 Years Ago Today: Deadliest US Coal Mine Disaster

The New York Times' headline read: 350 Men Entombed in Mine Explosion. Rescue Force at Work in the Debris of Two Shattered Mines at Monongah, West Va.  Poisonous Gas Pours Out. At about 10:00 am on Dec 6, 1907, a violent explosion of methane gas and coal dust killed hundreds of workers at two adjacent underground coal mines owned by Consolidated Coal Company.  The official death toll is listed at 362, but in Davitt McAteer's new book Monongah, his research suggests the disaster claimed the lives of more than 550 men and boys. In the days following the disaster, the New York Times…

Mike Adams couldn't go 6 hours without promoting an insane conspiracy theory about this school shooting

As anyone who reads my blog or Orac's knows, Mike Adams, the "health ranger", is a deranged individual who denies HIV causes AIDS, promotes some of the most absurd quackery in the world, and also is such an all around crank you can rely on him to wax conspiratorial about almost any dramatic news story. He's done it again, already alleging a conspiracy and coverup in this most recent school shooting, and citing his bizarre conspiracy theories about Aurora as further evidence of these shootings being "staged" by the US government. I wouldn't suggest clicking the link unless you want to lose…

Hark! A New Trade Group is Born

BNA reports on the formation of the Internet Association, a new trade group that will represent Google, Facebook, eBay, and Amazon. The group introduces itself as, "the unified voice of the Internet economy, representing the interests of America's leading Internet companies and their global community of users. The Internet Association is dedicated to advancing public policy solutions to strengthen and protect an open, innovative and free Internet. " I do not know what the Internet Association will do nor do I discuss its merits here (as it has no track record yet). I wish to use this as an…

CSPI overblows the cancer risk of caramel coloring in soda

The safety of soda has been in the news a lot lately. The news even seems bad for diet coke, which hits close to home for me given my diet coke addiction. The worst seems to be this correlative study proposing a link between diet sodas and stroke risk: The study, which followed more than 2,500 New Yorkers for nine or more years, found that people who drank diet soda every day had a 61 percent higher risk of vascular events, including stroke and heart attack, than those who completely eschewed the diet drinks, according to researchers who presented their results today at the American Stroke…

The Supreme Court Overturns the Handgun Ban

I must admit I'm a bit surprised to see the Supreme Court overturning the handgun ban (full ruling - PDF). I thought the court would have to take the position that gun ownership may be a right but one in which the state had enough of a compelling interest to regulate that bans like DC's could stand. Any other decision would seem to suggest that the state couldn't regulate weapons at all, thus overturning the 1934 automatic weapons ban and other restrictions on ownership of highly dangerous equipment for the hunting of today's super deer. However, as Ed Brayton discusses, they overturned…

Chris Mooney on ignoring the cranks

Now that PZ, Brian, and ERV have all weighed in on whether Chris Mooney's piece on crank enablers is right or not, let me lay out my operational strategy as an anti-denialist writer. It is true that repetition of denialist arguments is a strategic error, and that the repeition itself can reinforce their arguments. One has to consider this when dealing with nonsense and debunking it not to fall in the trap of just fisking it, which can defeat the purpose of your writing - to decrease the amount of BS in the world. However, a knowledge of the history of denialism is of utility in this…

What might have caused my cousin's nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Student guest post by Anh To. When I found out my only non-smoking cousin had nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), I was puzzled. With all the hype about cigarette smoking associated with various kinds of cancers in the media, I did not understand why none of my smoking cousins had NPC but the one who didn't smoke did. At first, I thought it must be due to the second hand smoke. Now, I understand that the picture is very complex. Before I go into what I have learned over the past several months, I need to make a disclaimer. I am not an expert in NPC. I am an average college student. This…

A Deeper Look into Adenovirus-36 and Obesity

This is the fifth of 6 guest posts on infection and chronic disease. By Whitney Baker My previous blog post examined the idea of an infectious etiology for obesity by a group of possible infectious agents. While these pathogens have been associated with obesity in humans or animals, their causative role in human obesity has not yet been established. So for this round, I thought I'd focus in on the bug showing the most evidence for human obesity: Adenovirus-36. (More after the jump...) First, a little background on Adenovirus [1]... it most commonly elicits respiratory illness;…

Sanctimonious monsters

Yesterday, two great pious leaders of the world met in Washington DC. President Bush has immense temporal power, leading one of the richest countries on the planet with the most potent military force. Pope Benedict is a spiritual leader to a billion people, with immense influence and the responsibility of a long religious legacy. What could they have talked about? Mostly, they seem to have patted each other on the back and congratulated each other on their commitment to superstition. In remarks greeting the pope at the White House, Bush called the United States "a nation of prayer." Bush was…

The failure of alternative medicine

I previously blogged an editorial by NBC medical correspondent Robert Bazell, where he told scientists to "quit whining" about intelligent design and instead work on teaching "values." While I agreed with him there on the science (he made it clear he gave no respect to "intelligent design" and other types of creationism), his suggestion that teachers and scientists spend more time worrying (and teaching) about more "practical" things such as biotechnology and medical ethics was just, in my opinion, wrong. Luckily, his new editorial on alternative medicine contains no such red herrings.…

Viruses vs. Superbugs

On a recent episode of the drama House, the medical team finds that a patient improves from his illness when he's infected with a particular species of bacteria, Legionella pneumophila. Though mysterious at the time because the cause of the patient's illness was unknown, it was later determined that the patient was infected with naegleria, an amoeba. Legionella is an intracellular bacterium that just happens to naturally live in amoeba. Therefore, when the patient was co-infected with the amoeba and Legionella, the Legionella killed off the amoeba--using one microbe to attack another.…

Orac finds some super-cranks

I thought the denial of the link between smoking and cancer had gone out of style. The link between smoking and cancer is so thoroughly established that I thought no one could continue to defend cigarettes with a straight face. Well, all Orac has to do is write a piece about the evidence for a health risk from second-hand smoke and soon enough the denialists come crawling out of the woodwork. The reason is pretty simple, smoking bans are unpopular with a certain group of people, and what do you do when science suggests something that people don't want to believe? Well, you whip out the…

I am lazy and must change in 2009

Over the course of my research career I have, like so many scientists, accrued a ridiculous list of 'semi-complete', 'near-complete' and 'essentially complete' research projects, all of which are sitting there, awaiting that extra investment of time and effort required to get them to the submission stage. A colleague recently accused me of being a lazy bastard because I have still not published a paper on a specimen that I've had in my care for over five years now: it's a new small theropod from the Santana Formation, definitely distinct from the other named Santana Formation theropods (…

Birdbooker Report 127

tags: Birdbooker Report, bird books, animal books, natural history books, ecology books Books to the ceiling, Books to the sky, My pile of books is a mile high. How I love them! How I need them! I'll have a long beard by the time I read them. ~ Arnold Lobel [1933-1987] author of many popular children's books. The Birdbooker Report is a special weekly report of a wide variety of science, nature, environment and behavior books and field guides that currently are, or soon will be available for purchase. This report is written by one of my Seattle birding pals and book collector, Ian "…

Even More Stack Pathology

I thought that it would be fun to stick with the "stack-based" theme of last week's pathological post, but this time, to pick an utterly pointlessly twisted stack based language, but one that would be appreciated by the mascot of one of my fellow ScienceBlogs. Orac, this one's for you! :-) Our target these week is the language "Enema". Enema is a remarkably simple stack based language. In fact, it mostly looks like a thoroughly trivial language - something like False, only simpler. It has a small family of simple commands: 0-9 Push the value of the digit onto the stack. + Pop the top…

Lift

tags: book review, Lift, animal training, peregrine falcon, falconry, hawking, memoir, creative nonfiction, Rebecca K. O'Connor It's rare indeed when I read a bird book by a previously-published author whom I've never heard of before, but a few months ago, I was contacted by a published writer who was unknown to me, asking if I wanted to read her story about what it's like to be a woman falconer. Of course! eagerly replied this wannabe falconer. After a few postal mix-ups and delays, the book finally arrived at my door in Germany. This slim paperback, Lift (Los Angeles: Red Hen Press; 2009),…

Dissecting an emu

Back in 2006 my good friend Matt Wedel - who you may know better as one of the three SV-POWsketeers or as plain old Dr Vector - produced a short article on an emu dissection he participated in at the University of California at Santa Cruz [adjacent image: an Emu Dromaius novaehollandiae... though note that this one is very much alive and not involved in any way in the photos you are about to see]. Because I like talking about ratite anatomy, I've been meaning for ages to steal borrow showcase Matt's photos here at Tet Zoo. Finally, I'm doing it now (with his permission), better late than…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 22 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: Ants Sow the Seeds of Global Diversification in Flowering Plants: The extraordinary diversification of angiosperm plants in the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods has produced an estimated 250,000-300,000 living…

Ken Miller's talk

Sad news: I was not able to make it to Miller's talk at St. Catherine's last night. We're down to one car right now, and the choice was between me indulging myself with a long drive and a Ken Miller talk at the end of it, or my wife could have the vehicle so she could do the responsible thing and go to work. She won. However, I have received some email about it (maybe I'll get permission to post some of it), and there is one account on the web. It sounds like it was about what I expected: almost entirely good stuff, with a few wacky bits around the edges about his weird cult's beliefs. He did…

Guiyu oneiros

A fish is a fish, right? They're just a blur of aquatic beasties that most people distinguish by flavor, rather than morphology or descent. But fish are incredibly diverse, far more diverse than terrestrial vertebrates, and there are significant divisions within the group. Most people know of one big distinction, between the Chondrichthyes (fish with cartilaginous skeletons, like sharks and rays) and the Osteichthyes (fish with bony skeletons), but there's another particularly interesting split within the Osteichthyes: the distinction between Sarcopterygians (the word means "fleshy fins",…

Run for the hills! It's the Framingstein monster again!

The criticisms must have stung, because Matt Nisbet has put up short replies on Russell Blackford's and Jerry Coyne's blogs. Unfortunately, in response to the substantial criticisms of the idea of compatibility between faith and science, Nisbet only offers a feeble and wrong correction to a minor point. A correction is in order on Blackford's post. Contrary to his framing, market research was not used to decide the position of the NAS, nor the 20 professional scientific organizations in the editorial at FASEB that endorsed the themes in the booklet. These organizations have had a long…

Clock Genetics - A Short History

A short post from April 17, 2005 that is a good starting reference for more detailed posts covering recent research in clock genetics (click on spider-clock icon to see the original). As I have mentioned before, there was quite an angst in the field of chronobiology around 1960s about the lack of undestanding of circadian and other rhythms at cellular and subcellular levels. Experiment involved manipulation of the environment (e.g,. light cycles) and observing outputs (e.g., wheel-running rhythms), while treating the clock, even if its anatomical location was known, as a "black box".…

An Island In the Mountains: Interview with James Hrynyshyn

James Hrynyshyn is one of my SciBlings and part of the Scienceblogs.com large North Carolina contingent. He lives in a small town of Saluda in the Western part of the state and blogs mainly about climate science and related policy on Island of Doubt. He is also one of those "repeat offenders" - he came not to one but to BOTH Science Blogging Conferences! Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your background? What is your Real Life job? I am a freelance science journalist whose current real job is father to a 14-month-old. My 20-year-…

New and Exciting in PLoS ONE

There are 17 new articles in PLoS ONE today. As always, you should rate the articles, post notes and comments and send trackbacks when you blog about the papers. You can now also easily place articles on various social services (CiteULike, Mendeley, Connotea, Stumbleupon, Facebook and Digg) with just one click. Here are my own picks for the week - you go and look for your own favourites: The Extent of the Preserved Feathers on the Four-Winged Dinosaur Microraptor gui under Ultraviolet Light: The holotype of the theropod non-avian dinosaur Microraptor gui from the Early Cretaceous of China…

The Return of the Rimatara Lory

tags: parrot, Lories, Lorikeet, Loriinae, Loriidae, Rimatara Lorikeet, Kuhl's Lory, Vini kuhlii, conservation, ornithology, South Pacific Islands Endangered Rimatara lorikeet or Kuhl's lory, Vini kuhlii, feeding on nectar. Image: G McCormack, Cook Islands Natural Heritage Trust (CINHT). [larger image] My life's passion is the birds of the South Pacific, particularly the Loriinae, which are parrots commonly known as the lories and lorikeets. I study them professionally and I have lived with them and bred them for most of my life. So it was exciting to me when I learned that one of my…

How do we perceive risk?: Paul Slovic’s landmark analysis

By Sara Gorman In the 1960s, a rapid rise in nuclear technologies aroused unexpected panic in the public. Despite repeated affirmations from the scientific community that these technologies were indeed safe, the public feared both long-term dangers to the environment as well as immediate radioactive disasters. The disjunction between the scientific evidence about and public perception of these risks prompted scientists and social scientists to begin research on a crucial question: how do people formulate and respond to notions of risk? Early research on risk perception assumed that people…

Medicaid should stay off the "fiscal cliff" bargaining table

Several of my favorite health policy bloggers have explained why raising the Medicare eligibility age is a terrible idea -- in short, it would save the federal government money, but increase spending overall (with states, employers, and existing Medicare beneficiaries all facing higher costs) and create the most hardship for lower-income and minority individuals between age 65 and the higher eligibility age. Seniors have a lot of political clout, though, so I'm sure our elected officials will hear plenty about why raising the Medicare eligibility age is a bad idea. What I'm more worried about…

More jobs than coal, oil and gas: Investing in the environment promotes economic growth

By Elizabeth Grossman We’ve heard repeatedly throughout this political season and throughout this Congress that environmental regulations stifle economic growth and destroy jobs. Yet a new economic analysis shows that in recent years, environmental restoration projects have created significantly more jobs per million dollars of investment than other industries, including coal, gas, and nuclear energy. The study, conducted by Peter Edwards, a natural resource economist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and colleagues, examined job creation resulting from American…

"We were in shock. We only wanted to bury our son."

Patty and Gary Quarles lost their only child on April 5, 2010.   Gary Wayne Quarles, 33, was part of the crew operating the longwall mining machine at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch coal mine.  He died that day in a massive coal dust explosion along with 28 other men.  Patty's and Gary's life will never be the same.  The lives of all the families and close friends of those 29 coal miners changed forever that day.  They've suffered losses that few of us will ever understand.  A recent story in the Washington Post entitled "After Massey mine disaster killed their son, settlement of millions…

Obama Labor Department taking steps to improve whistleblower protections, but progress is slow

Individuals who "blow the whistle" have the courage to tell authorities about corruption, fraud or safety hazards in their organization, even when doing so may result in being demoted or reassigned, fired or passed over for promotion, or discriminated against in another way. Whistleblowers are truck drivers who refuse to drive unsafe vehicles, railroad workers who report work-related injuries, or a bank manager who alleged financial securities fraud. There are dozens of federal laws designed to protect whistleblowers from adverse action by their employers, including provisions in the Clean…

Labor Dept reveals plan for worker health and safety regulations

By the end of 2011, the Labor Department's worker safety agencies expect to issue six new rules to better protect workers from on-the-job hazards. In the Department's regulatory plan issued yesterday, OSHA projects it will finalize four rules while MSHA expects to complete two new standards. As I've written before, these plans quickly become stale because target dates are missed, new issues emerge and political winds shift, but they still give us a snapshot inside the agencies and the Administration's regulatory strategies at a moment in time. Of the four rules OSHA expects to finish in…

A union’s persistence results in new OSHA rule for workers exposed to beryllium

Chronic beryllium disease is a horrible illness, as is lung cancer. Both diseases are the rationale for a new health standard issued by OSHA on January 9. The rule is designed to protect the health of an estimated 60,000 workers in the U.S. who are exposed to the light-weight, super-strong metal: beryllium. This includes about 10,000 workers involved in electric-power generation; 9,000 workers in dental laboratories and dental offices; 8,400 in specialty construction trades; 5,600 in motor vehicle parts manufacturing; and 3,000 in the maritime industry who are welders and abrasive blasters.…

Honduran women’s and labor rights organization wins APHA Occupational Health and Safety Section’s International Award

By Garrett Brown and Bob Jeffcott A group of brave women’s rights and labor activists in San Pedro Sula, Honduras were the recipients of the 2016 International Award of the Occupational Health and Safety Section of the American Public Health Association (APHA). The distinction was formally announced at the association's annual meeting. Lynda Yanz, Executive Director of the Maquila Solidarity Network, based in Toronto, Canada, traveled to Denver, Colorado to accept the award on behalf of the Honduras Independent Monitoring Team (EMIH) at the November 1st awards luncheon. EMIH team (L to R):…

Study: Despite ACA’s success, consistent insurance coverage still a problem for many Americans

If you look at the numbers, there’s no doubt that the Affordable Care Act is making a positive difference. In fact, just last month, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the nation’s uninsured rate had hit a record low. At the same time, the health reform law wasn’t intended as a silver bullet and a number of problems remain. One of those problems is known as “churning.” “Churning” describes changes in a person’s insurance coverage over time and it’s an issue that can have a significant impact on a patient’s continuity of care and health status. Of course, changes in insurance coverage are…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At The New York Times, writers Kim Barker and Russ Buettner report on the labor investigations being conducted at nail salons throughout New York in the wake of a 2015 New York Times article that exposed widespread wage and labor abuses. They report that all but a dozen of the 230 salons whose investigations were closed last year were found violating at least one labor law. More than 40 percent of the salons were violating wage laws. Barker and Buettner write: But the details of the state inspections are perhaps most revealing about just how challenging it is to regulate a largely immigrant-…

New study illustrates risk that climate change poses to safe drinking water, human health

For years, scientists have described climate change as a slowly emerging public health crisis. But for many, it’s difficult to imagine how a complex planetary phenomenon can impact personal well-being beyond the obvious effects of natural disasters, which climatologists say will happen more frequently and intensely as the world warms. That disconnect is what piqued my interest in a new study on old infrastructure, heavy rainfalls and spikes in human illness. Drinking water quality is among the many adverse effects that climate change is expected to have on human health. But what exactly does…

Forrest Mims: A wanna-be bully

Eric Pianka is eccentric, opinionated, and outspoken; many people might disagree with specific bits and pieces of his position. But I don't think that he is a eugenicist, a hate-filled fan of the Third Reich, an advocate of planned genocide, anti-human, or a crazed scientist planning the death of humanity. Nick Matzke has compiled a list of the slander that's been aimed at Pianka. It ain't pretty. Transcripts of his talks are beginning to emerge; he has given this same talk, "The Vanishing Book of Life", seven times now, and the only time it has received this level of vituperation is when a…

Talkin' Tosh with the IEA

The IEA are the Institute for Economic Affairs. The quote on their mainpage shows what they think of themselves The price of economic freedom is eternal vigilance, and as long as the IEA is around, we may be sure that the forces of regulation and state control will have a formidable obstacle in their path. Long may it flourish. Almost inevitably, this kind of attitude translates into skepticism on global warming. The illogical argument is, roughly, "we're for economic freedom and low taxes and against government interference. GW, if real, will probably require state intervention to fix it.…

Another junk DNA denialist on a tirade

When I decide to take a break from the mad scramble of organizing my classes, I really shouldn't follow a whim and take a peek at Uncommon Descent. The lead article has this astonishing opening paragraph. Remember the dark days of vestigal organs? You know, back when there was a list of 180 vestigal organs? Or remember the days of junk DNA - when repetitive DNA, large regions of non-protein-coding DNA, and all sorts of mobile DNA were assumed to be non-functional simply because the investigators had assumed Darwinism rather than design? I'm half a century old. I remember a lot of things, but…

STACLU on Judging from the Legislature

Our pals at STACLU are quoting a blog post by a lawyer named Ray Kraft, encouraging Congress to pass legislation defining the terms of the Constitution so that the courts can't. Here's Kraft's suggestion: "But there is a Third Way here - and that is for Congress to debate and define, by legislation, the controversial and undefined terms in the Constitution, such as "an establishment of religion." I cannot find or think of any reason why it would not be within the power of Congress to do so, and it would not require an amendment of the Constitution, so long as the legislated definition was…

ADF's Double Talk on Judicial Activism

The Alliance Defense Fund now has a blog called Constitutionally Correct. A couple of recent posts on that blog serve to demonstrate how completely meaningless the phrase "judicial activism" is when it's used by social conservatives. In this post, they take the New York Times to task over this op-ed, which cites a study by Lori Ringhand concerning judicial activism. In her study, Ringhand used the only objective definition of judicial activism - how often a judge votes to overturn legislative actions or its own precedents - and concludes that Scalia and Thomas are actually more activist than…

Fisking Dobson on Gay Marriage

James Dobson has written a commentary for CNN's webpage on gay marriage that is amusing both in its lack of logic and its misuse of statistics. The statistics come first, as he is claiming that the media provided "cover" for the Senate voting down the Marriage Protection Amendment by claiming that the public didn't want the amendment: Again this year, the amendment failed to pass by a wide margin, falling 18 votes shy of a required two-thirds majority. The final tally was 49 in favor, 48 opposed. Rarely has there been a greater disconnect between members of the Senate and the American people…

Answering an Anti-Gay Marriage Argument

In my post yesterday about gay marriage, I said that no one had yet made a coherent and compelling argument for why gay marriage will harm traditional marriages at all. A commenter named jazzhouse thinks he's come up with such an argument and I thought I'd move it up here to answer it so it doesn't get lost in the comments. Suffice to say that it is nowhere near compelling; some of it, in fact, is quite ridiculous. jazzhouse wrote: As you know all modern nation-states thrive for five elemental characteristics/responsibilities -- clearly defined and defendable borders, a common language,…

Science Blogging or Blogging Science?

Bora/ coturnix over at Science and Politics has generated a lot of conversation via his taxonomy of science blog posts, mostly relating to the call for people to start publishing data and hypotheses on blogs. Much of the discussion that I've seen centers on the question of "scooping" (see, for example, here and here), but there's a wide range of reaction linked from the end of the original post. Bora seems to regard it as a Bad Thing that people don't post data (though I should note that I did post some data during the Week in the Lab-- calibration data only, granted, but it's data...). I don…

Britain and Europe

(this post is mostly for my own future reference: so I can see what I thought now, without the distorting lens of memory. but you might care too) So, we've vetoed the grand European dream, and they will go off without us. The papers, of course, personalise it, because they are rubbish and believe that none of their readers will pay any attention to stories about things rather than personalities. But while the Grauniad may try to frame it as David Cameron blocks EU treaty with veto (let alone "casting Britain adrift in Europe") really this is our government, reflecting the will of parliament…

Semi-Competent Astrophotography and Sidereal Days

I'm teaching my "Brief History of Timekeeping" class again this term, and as always, I'm tweaking things a bit. This is one of our "Sophomore Research Seminar" courses, intended to introduce students to academic research, so it's not specifically a physics class, but I'm choosing to take the statements about research outside the student's field at face value, and thus will be requiring them to do final projects involving some empirical measurement of the natural world, that being the essence of scientific research. (Last time, I included that as an option, but nobody took it, so I ended up…

The Problem of Science Stories

Last week Kate pointed me to this post about heroic stories of science saying "This seems relevant to your interests." And, in fact, a good deal of the post talks about Patricia Fara's Science: A Four Thousand Year History, the Union library's copy of which is sitting on my desk, where I had looked something up in it just that morning. (Specifically, the part where Fara notes that the distinction between "science" and "technology" is largely a class-based fiction, dividing high-status philosophers from grubby practical mechanics.) There are a bunch of things going on in this, and most of them…

Congressman Grijalva is doing the right thing

Raúl Grijalva Investigates Raúl Grijalva is the US representative from Arizona’s 3rd congressional district, a Democrat, and a supporter of environmental initiatives. As the ranking member of the Natural Resources Committee, he recently sent letters to seven universities requesting documents related to the background of climate change research, as a response to recent revelations in the New York Times of seemingly inappropriate failure to disclose industry funding sources by Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics researcher Willie Soon. These letters requested the following: The…