It’s science. Of course, I always thought he was a duplicitous douche. The Democrats should be ashamed that he even came close to being vice president.
Category Archives: Science And Society
The End Of The Aztecs’ Fourth Sun
Was it caused by an impact event in the mid-Atlantic?
A Ten-Year Anniversary
…of science blogging, from Derek Lowe. Congratulations.
Average Women
…are quite attractive. I have to say, though, that my faves are Israeli, Peruvian and Russian.
[Evening update]
Comments would indicate the age-old aphorism that there’s no accounting for taste.
Don’t Know Much About Science
Some thoughts about the “moderate” Jon Huntsman:
Nearly everything “liberal” about Huntsman is symbolic. His campaign’s iconic moment was an unprovoked Twitter comment in which he wrote: “To be clear. I believe in evolution and trust scientists on global warming. Call me crazy.”
While politically loaded, this statement is nearly substanceless. A president’s “Belie[f] in evolution” has not had any bearing on public policy in a good while. And scientifically, the statement doesn’t mean much — “believing in” something is more the business of faith than science.
And “trust[ing] scientists on global warming,” taken literally isn’t actually agreement with Al Gore’s fevered warnings of 20-foot sea-level rises or endorsement of Democrats’ big-government energy proposals.
Science involves detail, nuance, and acknowledgment of uncertainty. Bluster about “believing in science” is just a self-congratulatory liberal trope meant to denigrate conservative rubes from the red states clinging bitterly to their guns and religion.
It’s identity politics, and Huntsman is identifying as a liberal or a moderate. That MSNBC hosts and liberal writers fall for this trick is telling, but just as telling is how much conservatives also buy into it.
It comes back to the mistaken concept of many that “science” is knowledge, rather than a process by which we achieve it. It is my own belief in science that creates my skepticism about AGW, because the process is intrinsically flawed, and the leading practitioners of “climate science” have betrayed it.
[Update a few minutes later]
I often joke about firing up the SUVs to stave off the next glacial advance, but now there’s a paper that says greenhouse gases will do exactly that. Of course, they still think that global warming is worse than a mile-thick sheet of ice. Have to stick with the narrative.
250 Notable Emails
…from Climaquiddick. It’s hard to read these and still believe that “the science is settled.”
The Green Movement
…is dead in the water. But it continues to do a lot of economic damage.
Mitochondrial Aging
…is particularly important in stem cells:
Stem cells are needed to create replacements for damaged cells that die off or cease to do their jobs. Damaged stem cells are unable to perform their function. So less repair gets done as our stem cells accumulate damage and become dysfunctional with age. Biotechnology that would enable us to replace our old stem cells with younger ones would go far to slow and partially reverse aging.
Faster, please.
Hey, Warm Mongers!
The war is over, and you lost. As he notes, though, they’ve done untold damage to places like California.
Your Appendix
…could save your life.
I think that in the future medical professional will be amazed at the ignorance of their predecessors, not just on dietary issues, but on their willingness to remove perhaps vital organs at the first sign of trouble. When I was a kid, many of my cohorts had their tonsils and adenoids removed (as did my step brother) almost routinely. I feel fortunate that I’m still whole. I think that the medical community has figured out that these are more useful items than they used to believe, but if this theory is correct, they will have to rethink approaches to appendicitis as well, perhaps even coming up with an artificial one (or regrowing with stem cells?).
[Via Geek Press]