I'm in the lab on a rainy Sunday. This week I was too busy to really blog.
Fortunately other people had interesting stories ...
Ed Brayton discusses an interesting (but flawed) OpEd in the Wall Street Journal on the misplaced support of Inteligent Design by NeoCons.
Speaking of ID, here's an OpEd in Friday's NY Times on evolution and ID in the classroom.
Although some think that nuclear energy was a bad idea, I think that it's the undeniable future of our powersupply. And it's green. The NY Times editorial staff seems to agree. WIRED as well:
Solar. Wind. Hydro. As replacements for fossil fuels, they're not enough. So countries are increasingly turning to nuclear energy for the clean power that the global economy demands, and now, 20 years after Chernobyl, there's a resurgence of nuclear plants. More than 400 reactors in 31 countries (104 in the US alone) provide 16 percent of the world's electricity. China expects to add 32 more facilities by 2020. Nuclear is cheaper than other energies, it doesn't need to be imported, and it doesn't come with emission taxes. Nonetheless, it remains controversial for all the obvious reasons: disposal of spent fuel rods, vulnerability to meltdown or arms proliferation - but even the US, which hasn't seen a new nuclear plant in a decade, is getting ready to build reactors in Mississippi and Alabama.
John Wilkins who may be joining ScienceBlogs, responds to Tom Wolff's ideotic proclamation in a piece in the NY Sun -
Evolution came to an end when the human beast developed speech!
Yes and the second law of thermodynamics ended when your mother made your bed. Good grief.
Coturnix celebrates Richard Feinman's birthday.
Your project in one paragraph for a layman? Missprism tries.
Malcolm Gladwell, who is writing more and more on health care policy, looks at recent comparisons between the health of UK and US residents and adds a spin:
It's an interesting question for a number of reasons, but principally because the United States spends $5274 per person, per year, on health care and the United Kingdom spends $2164, or substantially less than half as much. The question is--what do we get, in terms of health, that for extra $3100 a year?
And finally from William Gibson's blog a short clip from 1946 that
measures how a society ranks on a spectrum stretching from democracy to despotism. Explains how societies and nations can be measured by the degree that power is concentrated and respect for the individual is restricted. Where does your community, state and nation stand on these scales?
(Is this why the Colbert speech wasn't reported in the media?)
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