Virginia Postrel reiterates a point that I’ve made many times–that even if we accept a scientific consensus on climate change doesn’t mean that we should blindly follow their advice on what to do about it:

…even assuming that scientists agree on the facts, science can only tell us something about the state of the world. It cannot tell us what policy is the best to adopt. Scientists’ preferences are not “science.” You cannot go from an “is” (science) to an “ought” (policy).

…truths about human nature. I agree that a lot of what drives suicide bombing among young Muslim men is the polygynous culture, but that doesn’t explain the married doctors in the UK.

An interesting overview over at New York Magazine.

It’s long been obvious to me that homosexuals (and heterosexuals, as I am) are born, not made. What I did find interesting was the notion that women may not have an inherent sexual orientation, or at least one not as clearly delineated as that of men. It certainly jibes well with my own observations. But I’m skeptical that there’s no such thing as a male bi-sexual.

Will it be a gentle hurricane season? Well, I obviously hope so. We’re almost a month into it, with just two minor storms, and it does look like things are going to stay calm for another month. But the peak of the season is still a couple months off, so I don’t think it’s safe to draw any conclusions yet.

Of course, I fearlessly predict that regardless of how many hurricanes there are–more, fewer, or the normal amount–some will attribute it to SUVs, and claim that it’s evidence for climate change.

Here’s a very interesting article that says that RNA is much more important than we used to think, with profound implications for medicine, biotech and even evolutionary theory.

Eight inches of snow in the Bighorn Mountains. In June.

Must be global warming.

…from Freeman Dyson.

…on climate change? Apparently not.

…for pandemics.

I decided to pull this up into a separate post, because I think it illustrates exactly the problem that Frank Tipler was identifying. Two comments:

“I’ll add that General Relativity is sort of a “dead end” in physics in the sense that practically nothing depends on it. You can’t really use it for anything.

and

Rand, I think you just cited the exception that proves the rule when you referenced GPS. Where else do you use general relativity on a regular basis? It’s an interesting topic, but doesn’t seem to be core to a physics degree.

Well, I provided at least one more example–tracking NEOs that might hit us in the next few decades.

But the point is that if you don’t understand general relativity, you won’t even know whether or not you need to consider it. I’m simply staggered by the notion that it’s an esoteric field that has no use.

Any time you do an orbital calculation, you have to know whether or not you can get by with Newton, or whether or not you need to incorporate Einstein. It may be that in many cases you don’t need to, but to not even consider it would be professional malpractice, just as someone doing a suborbital rocket would need to decide whether a flat-earth (i.e, Galileo) model was good enough, or if they had to do it Newtonian, and consider the differences in the model. And how could you possibly make such an assessment if you don’t understand General Relativity?

To me, this simply reinforces Tipler’s point.