Now on ScienceBlogs: Will Quantum Fusion Save the Day?
Are bills regulating fireworks there to protect stupid people from themselves? Yes. But don't assume you know a stupid person when you see one. Our governor just vetoed a bill passed by our Pointy Headed Republican Legislature which would have significantly reduced regulation on dangerous fireworks in the state, allowing everyone access to explosives that are...
Senator Susan Collins (R) plays political games with pandemic preparedness... and your life Collins is all for pandemic preparedness for political reasons, except when she is against it for political reasons.
Maybe My Next Book Should Be About Atheist Gatherings As you have probably guessed from the blog drought around here, it's the end of the semester. That means tons of grading, office hours, meetings with students, deadlines to meet, and all around not much time for blogging. Final exams...
The Canadian War on Science: Environmental rules should be better, not easier David Suzuki is a icon for the Canadian environmental movement. He's like our Al Gore and Rachel Carson all rolled up into one. I read and reviewed his memoirs a while back and they are terrific. When he talks, sensible...
Americans United for Separation of Church & State OKC: Spring Dialogue Event If you are in/around the OKC area, you arent going to want to miss the FREE event the OK chapter of Americans United is throwing this Saturday!Oklahoma City Chapter Americans United for Separation of Church & State Spring Dialogue Saturday,...
Baffling Demographic Math: Women in Computing Somebody on Twitter linked this article about "brogrammers", which is pretty much exactly as horrible as that godawful neologism suggests. In between descriptions of some fairly appalling behavior, though, they throw some stats at you, and that's where it gets...
Study points to role for both organic and conventional agriculture in sustainable food production The study points to the need to drop the ideologically charged "organic vs. conventional" debate and instead focus on what matters: the need to reduce the use of the most toxic insecticides, produce food more efficiently using less land and water and to enhance food security in the poorest regions of the world.
Dan Burton's last antivaccine hurrah? A couple of months ago, I couldn't help but rejoice when I learned that Indiana Representative Dan Burton had finally, after twenty years in the U.S. House of Representatives, decided to retire after the end of this term. I thought...
President Obama Slow Jams the News For realz....
No, Virginia, cancer care in Europe doesn't suck, contrary to what a recent paper implies The U.S. is widely known to have the highest health care expenditures per capita in the world, and not just by a little, but by a lot. I'm not going to go into the reasons for this so much, other...
Another Week of GW News, April 22, 2012 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup...
Evolution and religion, yet again [Attention Conservation Notice: About 3,500 words on the factual, scientific, and philosophical problems of a paper which was surely not intended to be taken seriously as science or philosophy. Nick Matzke comes at it from a different angle at The Panda's Thumb, and more briefly.] Evolutionary geneticist Jerry Coyne has an article coming out in the journal Evolution, in which he demonstrates yet again why excellence in one field does not guarantee competence in any other field. The paper aims to do several things: to advance an argument about why evolution is so controversial in US political culture, to settle...
Jefferson Fietek for the House! I am supporting Jefferson Fietek for the Minnesota House of Representatives in district 36A. The details are complicated, and I would like to explain....
Update on California bill AB 2109: It moves on despite the antivaccine movement It just occurred to me that, even though there was news about it, I never mentioned what's happened recently with respect to California bill AB2109. As you might recall, I wrote about this bill about four weeks ago. In brief,...
Congratulations Shawn Otto! Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America by Shawn Otto has won the prestigious Minnesota Book Award. The award is very well deserved. Here's my writeup off the book, and here's a radio interview with the author that we did a couple...
Another Week of GW News, April 15, 2012 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup...
John Templeton: Religion is compatible with science... BUT NOT TEH HOMO GAY! HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS??? John Templetons HUGE donations to National Organization for Marriage
We lost, but we won Yesterday at Minnesota's 3rd District DFL Convention, Sharon Sund did not gain the endorsement of our party; the endorsement went to the Gentleman from Edina, Brian Barnes.
The Wellstone Doctrine: This is a good starting point: "Successful organizing is based on the recognition that people get organized because they, too, have a vision." -Paul Wellstone...
EBooks and Agencies The big publishing news this week is the US Department of Justice bringing an anti-trust suit against the major book publishers and Apple for allegedly colluding to force the "agency model" of ebook pricing on Amazon and other retailers, resulting...
Is it Politically Unwise to Associate Evolution With Nonbelief? Here's the latest from Michael Ruse, over at the blog for the Chronicle of Higher Education. He is discussing the anti-evolution“academic freedom” bill that just passed in Tennessee: On the left, the New Atheist movement frightens me immensely. Its supporters...
Americans on Energy: New UT Study Another poll shows increasing and strong interest among Americans in developing Green Technology and related technologies, as well as reduced interest in anti-environmental extremism and petrolatum-related efforts. Previously, we discussed the new poll by the Science Debate people, and now we have new information from...
Another Week of GW News, April 8, 2012 Logging the Onset of The Bottleneck Years This weekly posting is brought to you courtesy of H. E. Taylor. Happy reading, I hope you enjoy this week's Global Warming news roundup...
President 2012: Santorum Out, Obama vs. Romney Inevitable? An interesting turn of events! Now on live video feed, it appears that Obama vs. Romney may well be inevitable with the announcement of Rick Santorum leaving the Presidential race....
Who should moderate a Science Debate? Science Debate Dot Org asks the question: In a nationally televised presidential science debate, who would be the best moderator? I find the suggestions that have been made so far to be interesting. A lot of people seem to be suggesting people who are obviously...
“Twenty-odd years ago I was in an elevator with Jesse Helms and asked him about his reputation as a master of the Senate's arcane rules. He smiled and said, "I didn't make the rules, I just use what I've got." His other idea was that Senators in a filibuster or other delaying action should be forced to wear ridiculous hats while speaking.” kehrsam on How to Fix the Filibuster Problem
Orac 04.13.2012
PZ Myers 06.17.2009
Orac 04.30.2012
Tim Lambert 09.12.2011
ERV 11.26.2011
Latest science stories | More at nytimes.com
Some engineers use cranes and steel to make their designs reality, but synthetic biologists engineer using tools on a different scale: DNA and the other molecular components of living cells. Synthetic biology uses cellular systems and structures to produce artificial models based on natural order. Read these posts from the ScienceBlogs archives for more:
Pharyngula May 30, 2007
The Loom January 31, 2008
Discovering Biology in a Digital World July 2, 2006