Last week a proposal to lift the moratorium on shale oil extraction was narrowly defeated in a Senate committee. The vote was along strictly party lines, Republicans for lifting the ban and Democrats against. What a surprise. All of this … Continue reading →
A Canadian study reports that brain changes involving ribosomal DNA have been detected on autopsy in victims of childhood abuse who ended up committing suicide. This finding somewhat complements animal studies showing that early neglect changes the dendrites of rats. … Continue reading →
While researching my recent series on questioning authority, I got the idea to write a post about the seminal Milgram experiments on obedience to authority. When I was a psych major back in college, part of our learning experience involved—as … Continue reading →
[Part I.] Science is certainly far from infallible. That’s especially true of studies related to human beings, on whom any sort of research is notoriously difficult to perform and evaluate. The variables are myriad and uncontrollable, and ethics ordinarily prevents … Continue reading →
[This is the first part of two.] So this is what it’s come to. Our largely successful struggle to eradicate the once-common infectious diseases of childhood through the mechanism of vaccines has been so successful that many parents voluntarily eschew … Continue reading →
First we had paper grocery bags. I liked them, not the least because they were versatile. Good for wrapping packages for mailing and, long ago, excellent as textbook covers. But then the news came that they were environmentally wasteful. Too … Continue reading →
In the aftermath of the Jeremiah Wright controversy, I keep reading that his assertion that the US government “lied about inventing the AIDS virus as a means of genocide against people of color” is understandable because, after all, the government … Continue reading →
It seems that a well-intentioned attempt to protect a certain kind of African acacia tree from the large beasts who would munch on it has had the opposite effect. In a complex interaction of insect, plant, and animal, the trees … Continue reading →
It used to be that virtually every society on earth had its own moral and social code and believed it was the best on earth—and not just the best for that particular society but the best, period. The only question … Continue reading →
The famous 2006 Lancet study indicating there had been more than ten times the previous estimates of Iraqi deaths in the war and postwar period engendered a storm of controversy right from the outset. How could such a huge number … Continue reading →
I have a question for all you techies out there: how (and why) do the cords of earbuds for cellphones spontaneously tie themselves into knots in a single instant? And I don’t mean modest knots, either. I mean large tangled … Continue reading →
I was in Chicago last weekend, staying in the Hyde Park area, along Lake Shore Drive. Lake Michigan is extraordinary, looking for all the world like the ocean, complete with whitecaps on a windy day and what appear to be … Continue reading →