Gun Violence: A Public Health Problem
President Barack Obama has used an executive order to bypass Congress and tighten control and enforcement over firearms in the United States, in response to concerns about gun violence and gun safety.If it survives the inevitable court challenges, it will mean more background checks, expanded registration and $500 million for mental health initiatives. President Obama believes these measures will keep firearms from criminals - and they should - but he also claims that it will reduce suicides. That is not so simple to believe. As is well-known, 60 percent of deaths due to firearms are suicides and the lack of gun ownership in Japan did not prevent any of those, they simply use rope.
Science 2.0 Top 5 Articles Of 2015
In choosing the top articles of any year, there are always a few knobs to turn. A top article traffic-wise, for example, could be one from a prior year, since we have articles with millions of readers, and since we carry some press release stuff it could be one of those, and one person may have two.And since Science 2.0 is all member-driven, no employees or corporate or government overlord, the people who might pick the candidates would most likely be the most active, and therefore one of the candidates. So instead we take it out of anyone's hands and just went by number of readers (not number of pageviews, since a controversial article can generate a lot more of those). And only one per author. And only 5 since, really, no one is reading 10 articles on a list.
Vegan Just Mayo Gets Approval By Redefining “Just”
The Code of Federal Regulations, which govern ‘standards of identity’, was created in 1938 specifically to prevent companies from selling fake food using established names and duping customers into thinking they got one thing while spending money on another.Christmas Is A Secular Holiday, Not A Religious One
It's the time of the year when there are jokes about politically correct people demanding equal time for a Festivus pole on the steps of City Hall and pundits on the other side are scourging culture for the fact that we have any religious events at all.R.I.P. Amir Aczel
As the son of a cruise ship captain, Dr. Amir Aczel spent his early life traveling, and that experienced informed how he spent all of his 65 years intellectually.
Wisconsin Ponders Raw Milk – Mainstream Science Shudders
Why would you want to create a group of farmers who would not need state milk producer licenses, permits, or to obey state milk quality rules while selling something that everyone not making a buck hustling it or being duped by faux health claims into buying it knows is dangerous?Thanksgiving Science 2015
In the mood for some science on Thanksgiving?Me too, science is the one thing that has not been steamrolled by Christmas. Instead, Thanksgiving is arguably the most scientific holiday, because it involves agriculture, chemistry and physics.
If you are worried about chemicals, for example, there is good news on Thanksgiving: You can buy a 100 percent organic, shade-grown, no-GMO meal AND IT WILL BE 100 PERCENT STUFFED with cancer-causing carcinogens.
Poll Averaging Was No More Accurate In 2012 Than It Is Now
In 2012, the enthusiasm for poll averaging reached a fever pitch. Very few people were critical of it and instead talked about how science had taken over predictive politics. (1)I was critical of the accuracy and swam against the tide of those in media gushing about the new frontier opened up by New York Times statistical pundit Nate Silver and others, which posited that we could now predict outcomes with unprecedented accuracy. 'They don't do any polls,' I noted, 'So we are supposed to believe there is some miracle of weighting they do in polls done by someone else.' It's the same flaw we find in epidemiology when a scholar does an unweighted random effects meta-analysis to conclude organic strawberries taste better or whatever.
Fossil Fuel Divestment: An Intellectual Placebo For The Wealthy College Near You
“Here’s my bet: the kids are going to win and when they do, it’s going to matter,” prophesized environmentalist Bill McKibben about fossil fuel divestment in 2013.If so, they are going to be led by Quakers, who were among the first to officially say no to fossil fuel stocks. Though Quakers were considered anarchists in the Old World, in America they banned slave ownership way before government did and created Pennsylvania as a commonwealth without social elites, established churches, tithes, high taxes or compulsory military service. Are they thought leaders once again?
Fossil Fuel Divestment: An Intellectual Placebo For The Wealthy College Near You
“Here’s my bet: the kids are going to win and when they do, it’s going to matter,” prophesized environmentalist Bill McKibben about fossil fuel divestment in 2013.If so, they are going to be led by Quakers, who were among the first to officially say no to fossil fuel stocks. Though Quakers were considered anarchists in the Old World, in America they banned slave ownership way before government did and created Pennsylvania as a commonwealth without social elites, established churches, tithes, high taxes or compulsory military service. Are they thought leaders once again?