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Updated: 31 min 26 sec ago

The Notion Of Nations: Does A Nationalist Pol Know What A Nation Is?

8 hours 16 min ago

Our outrage over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is due to our preference for democracy over autocracy, and to the danger of Russia pushing further westward into Europe. Perhaps most of all, we abhor the idea of one country violating the borders of another one.

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We Stopped RFK Jr When Obama Wanted Him, We Stopped Him With Trump, Let's Do It Again

Nov 06 2024 - 12:11
In 2008, fresh off a decisive victory over Democratic establishment candidate Senator Hillary Clinton in the primary and one over highly-regarded Senator John McCain in the general election, President-elect Obama began to engage in worrisome behavior.

His transition team, those who set the tone for his Cabinet and first 100 days, was over-represented with UFO believers. His inner circle included a guy who thoughts girls can't do math. I was only two years into science media by then so I believed that science academics were a cross-section of America - diverse - and that President George W. Bush hated science and everything else. Yet none of the choices President-elect Obama made seemed to concern those who insisted that science was paramount.(1)  

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Flying Drones With Particle Detectors

Nov 06 2024 - 09:11
Nowadays we study the Universe using a number of probes and techniques. Over the course of the past 100 years we moved from barely using optical telescopes, that give us access to the flux of visible photons from galaxies, supernovae, and other objects of interest, to exploiting photons of any energy - gamma rays, x rays, ultraviolet and infrared radiation, microwaves; and then also using charged cosmic radiation (including protons and light nuclei, electrons and positrons), neutrinos, and lastly, gravitational waves. 

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Even After Getting Cancer, Quitting Cigarettes Leads To Greater Longevity

Nov 05 2024 - 12:11
Cigarettes are the top lifestyle risk factor for getting cancer, though alcohol and obesity have begun to close the gap as awareness of the risks of cigarettes, coupled with more nicotine smoking cessation and harm reduction tools, have caused cigarette use to decline.

Even if you get cancer, quitting smoking improves outcomes. 

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Non-Europeans Opt Out Of Genomic Databases, Leading To Lack Of Diversity

Nov 05 2024 - 12:11
When Senator Elizabeth Warren had her claims of native ancestry debunked by DNA testing, it was a warning shot to everyone who identifies that way - don't take a test. Most native Americans had long said that anyway, they knew how biology worked better Washington DC staffers. After five generations there is a chance there will be no evidence of an ancestor so natives have long told their communities not to participate. If there are only a few hundred in a database, the database is meaningless and natives tribes can continue their 'we agree you are and you agree you are native' policy rather than having evidence.

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Testicular Cancer Treatment: What Is The Gold Standard?

Nov 05 2024 - 11:11
Testicular cancer is the most common solid tumor in young men, with approximately 10,000 diagnoses in the U.S. each year.

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The Nobel Prize And The Role Of AI In Scientific Advancement

Nov 03 2024 - 13:11

The 2024 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton, who many have called “the godfather of AI”. The award seems apt for the time we are in.

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Thanksgiving Science: Did COVID-19 Revive Family Dinners?

Nov 01 2024 - 13:11
If cultural pundits can invent an Anthropocene Epoch then a Digital Epoch makes even more sense. In 2000, only in Japan did you see people on trains four inches from other humans chatting other humans on other trains, most of whom they'd never meet. Now that is everyone in the developed world.

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Halloween Horror Science: Are Chickens That Learn A Bigger Threat To Us Than AI?

Oct 30 2024 - 14:10
The American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) vegetarian advocacy group has a paper out arguing that common broiler chickens not only learn more than the obvious, like which bowl has food, they get happier learning. 

Their marketing of the paper suggests they know who their key demographic is; middle-aged wealthy white women. And if you want them, you invoke "The Gilmore Girls", a show about a genius single mother with an equally intelligent daughter and they are best friends and talk really fast and use a lot of Proust references.


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Some Notes On The Utility Function Of Fundamental Science Experiments

Oct 26 2024 - 11:10
Earlier this year I mentioned here that I would be writing an article on how the utility function of experiments in fundamental science could be specified, as an enabling step toward the formalization of a co-design optimization problem. Now, as the deadline for submission approaches and the clock keeps ticking, I am returning to this topic and am mulling over the matter, so I thought it would be appropriate to dump here a few thoughts on the matter.

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If The Science Disagrees With Your Agenda...Suppress It?

Oct 24 2024 - 16:10
Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy is a prominent physician and long-time evangelist for chemical interventions among trans youth and has been conducting those chemical interventions for nearly two decades.

It remains controversial, critics say young people can't provide informed consent for many, many things but Dr. Olson-Kennedy wanted to do a U.S. study similar to one done in Netherlands which found kids given these interventions were happier.(1)

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How Social Media Affects Young People

Oct 21 2024 - 16:10

Last year, the American Psychological Association (APA) issued a health advisory on the use of social media by adolescents. This was based on mounting scientific evidence that social media has both benefits and risks for teens, and that parents and guardians needed better advice on how to balance the two.

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Ignore Critics, Gen Z, We Weren't Smarter In 1984

Oct 18 2024 - 11:10
It's commonplace for older generations to criticize the young. In my early career, an older fellow told me he wouldn't hire anyone who didn't know how to use a slide rule. Another only a decade older than me said he only wanted to work with people who had built their own crystal radio or some equivalent.

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Taking The Book Of The Dead To Heart

Oct 16 2024 - 15:10
In ancient Egypt, the heart was the key to a happy afterlife. It lived on after death, they believed, and in the Duat, the Netherworld, it revealed a truth man's words could not hide.

The 42 gathered gods would measure the heart and if it weighed more than the Feather of Truth which adorned the head of Maat, their Goddess of Justice, Order, and Truth, it was consumed by the Goddess Ammit, Devourer of the Dead, who had the body of a crocodile, a lion, and a hippopotamus, and you were gone from existence forever.

People had a lot of ways to get heavy hearts. Theft, anger, even eavesdropping added weight

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American CO2 Is Below War War II Levels But We Keep Emissions High In Poor Countries

Oct 16 2024 - 06:10
In politics, one way to make your belief in alternative energy seem feasible is to make its competitors expensive. President Obama did that when he began to subsidize the domestic solar energy industry at unprecedented levels.(1) He brought in Dr. Stephen Chu, who had advocated $9-a-gallon gasoline, from inside his high-paying job in academia to be in charge of energy policy for Democrats. He was right in his agenda, solar could be feasible if its conventional energy competitors were forced to be 300% more expensive.

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Another Week, Another Claim About Caloric Restriction Being Science

Oct 15 2024 - 11:10
A new paper finds that caloric restriction increases lifespan. It doesn't in humans. The only documented times it increases lifespan is in mice weaned from birth on a starvation diet. 

Humans are not going to starve their babies.

Obesity certainly shortens lifespan but that doesn't make calories a scientific antimetabole. Yet despite this study being in mice, and therefore only EXPLORATORY, evangelists for longevity claims, the strange cousin of Singularity believers, are touting this as if it's meaningful.

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Lifestyle Guru Dr. Casey Means Believes Plants Are Tiny Green People

Oct 15 2024 - 10:10
Unless you think plants are little people, so you don't understand any science, it is impossible to believe a weedkiller lowers testosterone.

Environmental predatorts still sell it to the gullible. Lawsuits are how they make their money. 

If you do believe in that plants are tiny green people and share a biological pathway and therefore a weedkiller can give you cancer, you don't trust science, you simply want to believe prejudiced epidemiology when it matches your bias against science.

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Not Just Wealthy White People, Expensive Snacks Are All The Rage For Gen Z Too

Oct 14 2024 - 15:10
Once upon a time, wealthy white women virtue signaled to other wealthy white women when they spent $500 on snacks at stores they're paid to promote, like "upscale" grocery chain Erewhon, where its overpriced nonsense supposedly leads to a "radiant" lifestyle.

That time is still now. This one is especially fun, because two words after assuring us it "has literally sold out everywhere" she tells gullible viewers that you can buy it at the store she's being paid $5 to promote.

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Humans Age In Two Bursts, At 44 And 60

Oct 14 2024 - 10:10

Aging is not a smooth and gradual process.

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Mercury Emissions Are In Decline Yet Doomsday Prophets Claim They Are Up

Oct 10 2024 - 08:10
If you read environmental groups, we are closer to our doom than ever. Bees are nearly extinct, cell phones are causing cancer, and hydroelectric power is devastating the land.

None of those are true yet they all have claims found in journals and in media. So it has been with mercury emissions, where computer models so poorly designed they'd get you fired in the private sector if you tried to recommend a working prototype using them sail through peer review. 

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