By Meteor Blades While Donald Trump has been announcing despicable choices for his cabinet and other high posts that could easily be top contestants for Keith Olbermann’s old Countdown feature: “Worst Person in the World,” there hasn’t been much talk lately about his likely choices to fill positions that could shape U.S. policy for decades after his […]
The Clean Air Act is a federal law written to cover the regulation of air pollution in the United States — both fixed sources such as coal power plants and moving sources like automobiles. There was a Clean Air Act proposed and passed in 1963 and it referred to the control of air pollution, but another […]
By Meteor Blades Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder was alerted to Flint’s water-quality problems early on, but delayed taking action because he didn’t care about the damage to people’s health from lead poisoning. The story of malignant negligence in the Flint Michigan disaster keeps getting worse. In a review of 550 emails released by Michigan’s Republican Gov. […]
By David Brin How to fight anti-science politics… The biggest victim of the recent US government shut down may have been science, as crucial experiments were cut off – including the entire research season in Antarctica. To many of those who instigated this disaster, the harm to science was not a Flaw of their plan but […]
By David Brin First, a useful announcement: The Next National Prescription Drug Take-Back Day is scheduled for October 26, 2013. One or more of your local pharmacies will likely accept your old pharmaceuticals free, no questions. It disposes of them safely and keeps them out of landfills or sewers where they apparently are having ever-worsening effects on water […]
By David Brin Science journalist Lee Billings is releasing his long-awaited tome entitled Five Billion Years of Solitude: The Search for Life Among the Stars, (a nod to the Gabriel García Márquez masterpiece One Hundred Years of Solitude, while referring to the apparent absence of extraterrestrial life – at least, so far.) Lee’s book confronts the puzzle over […]
By David Brin Bowing to the inevitable, I have decided to do my latest dump of amazing miscelklany in handy, tweetable bits, for your convenience! That means both linking and displaying the web URLs. We’ll see if folks like this. Here’s what Elon Musk’s new project may look like: http://io9.com/heres-what-elon-musks-secret-project-might-actually-l-793683502 Chinese anti-pervert stockings. Girls wear these […]
By David Brin Bowing to the inevitable, I have decided to do my latest dump of amazing miscelklany in handy, tweetable bits, for your convenience! That means both linking and displaying the web URLs. We’ll see if folks like this. How the Tesla Model S is made — Behind the scenes: a wonderful video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_lfxPI5ObM Rivers […]
By David Brin For all its gruesomely corrupt “sausage-making” qualities, politics is the mechanism we use to keep civilization running and pay for all of that other good science stuff. So let’s turn (briefly) back to that dismal but necessary domain, with a grab bag of political perspectives. First, I’ve long predicted this. The U.S. federal deficit is […]
By David Brin Poverty and violence are decreasing worldwide, at truly amazing rates. And of course – as we have seen – this fact seems anathema to grouches of both the far left and the entire right. But it does prove that the Great Program instituted by George Marshall, Harry Truman, Dean Acheson and Dwight […]
By Jennifer Sass, Senior Scientist, NRDC The scientific evidence against the neonicotinoid pesticides (neonics) is stacking up like so many dead and dying bees. And, not just bees – turns out that our little aquaticinvertebrate buddies are also harmed, other beneficial insects are harmed, and birds that eat insects are harmed.(see MotherJones story here and American Bird Conservancy report here) […]
By David Brin A disappointingly superficial article about geo-engineering by Clive Hamilton appeared in the New York Times, glossing over many aspects and issues, and leaving out any mention of the one geo-engineering remedy to climate change that would actually replicate what the Earth is already doing — ocean fertilization to remove CO2 from the atmosphere […]
By David Brin Mars One: why did I volunteer? I believe that a one way Mars mission is a viable-enough idea for some people to consider it, even knowing, as I do, that “one-way” has several possible connotations. On the surface, the claim is that eliminating the huge cost of the return flight will allow instead […]
By David Brin Grand challenges! It’s an approach to stimulating research and technology that has been around for a while, stretching back to the British longitude prize of the 1700s. Aviation medals and awards spurred rapid advances during the 1920s and 1930s and sparked breakthroughs in human-powered flight in the 1980s and 1990s. One contest helped lead to creation […]
It’s been pretty definitively proven that particular pesticides are decimating the world’s bees – threatening farmers and our food supply as well as wildflowers and wildlife. Definitively enough that the European Union has just moved to ban them. So the question remains – when will the US act? Neonicotinoid pesticides are a new class of […]