Here's a good way to standardize education across the states without enraging powerful education unions and the US Department of Education: get rid of real standards.In a bit of pedagogical brilliance, California has decided to forgo algebra I, even for 8th graders, if they are not 'ready'. And it will work, because with President Obama's killing of No Child Left Behind, despite its proven...
read moreWhat happens when thousands of scientists do decades of research and taxpayers spend spend $15 billion on a scientifically validated site for nuclear waste storage but those science conclusions conflict with the anti-science beliefs of a president and his key ally in the Senate? read...
read moreThis is a video from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences 200th anniversary celebration. You'll need to start at minute 17 unless you are strong in northern European languages and want a musical interlude (which is actually quite civilized). read...
read moreMedical research is both derided and essential. The public complains that a new experimental drug is not available due to the FDA being too conservative while also complaining that drugs have too many side effects and companies should be sued over the lack of proper testing before release. In popular television, every show that has a character who enrolls in a medical research trial...
read moreProfessor Steven Chu, who was appointed Energy Secretary under as much optimism as can be imagined in late 2008, has officially resigned, a move everyone knew was coming.Except for his irrational CO2 fanaticism - an energy Nobel laureate who takes a job in the cabinet has to know we can't just cut off CO2, the way an academic working at a national lab can talk about it - Chu was a much safer...
read moreThe alternate medicine industry is about to be dealt a massive blow. Progressive Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) has decided not to run for re-election in 2014.What does that mean? His political stonewalling of NIH studies that debunk pseudoscience woo can now come to an end. And hopefully someone at the NIH who cares more about science than politics can scuttle the National Center for Complementary...
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