Archive for the ‘Science & Tech’ Category
To think, unplug your machines
Advice from IBM on how to foster innovative thinking. Employees are given time on Friday to just think, away from the office cubicle.
Reason versus emotion? It’s a false dichotomy
With its elevation of intuition over reason and the unconscious mind over rational thought, David Brooks’ new book is an explicit attack on Enlightenment values. It’s time we defended rationalism and passion.
Read my review of The Social Animal, in the spiked review of books, here.
No panic over nuclear power in the US
The Pew Research Center finds that 52 percent of Americans are now opposed to the increased use of nuclear power, up from the 44 percent opposed before the radiation leakages at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear power plant.
These numbers can be read as a sign that the Japanese crisis has changed many minds. But it is important to [...]
Greens are against nuclear – and all other forms of energy
In the wake of the Japan disaster, environmentalists are rolling out their anti-nuclear arguments again. But as Alex Berezow, editor of Real Clear Science, points out, greens are “trying to eliminate all the other alternatives as well”.
Oil drilling is risky and destructive . Coal is hazardous to extract, and burning it contributes to global warming. [...]
Narcissistic Americans scare-monger about nuclear power at home
We all watch as the disaster in Japan continues to unfold. The loss of life and destruction caused by the earthquake and tsunami are terrible, while the stories of the Japanese people coping are both heartbreaking and impressive. Now there is the threat of a substantial release of radiation, with each day bringing news of [...]
Naomi Klein, reactionary
This Naomi Klein talk is so crass, wrong and bad, it’s hard to know where to start.
In about 19 minutes, Klein manages to:
make a glib a analogy between the BP oil spill and financial crisis
criticize risk-taking as “reckless”
advocate the precautionary principle
elevate Mother Nature over humanity (and present Mother Nature as truly feminine)
blame men, and perpetuate archaic stereotypes of women as [...]
Brendan O’Neill debating over-population in the New York Times
In his “Dot Earth” blog for the New York Times, journalist Andrew Revkin yesterday wrote about his recent correspondence with spiked editor Brendan O’Neill on the issue of over-population. It’s brief, but a great read nonetheless. The post is called ”Deconstructing a bestiary of Malthusian ‘miserabilists’”, and Revkin quotes O’Neill as saying:
An NGO that arrives in poor Africa with [...]
NASA’s amazing discovery of alien life – in California
When NASA announced last week that it had a new discovery “which would impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life,” the media clamored for details. But when the space agency finally unveiled the news that it had found alien life in the form of a microbe with previously-unknown DNA that that feeds – oddly enough – off [...]
Too much vitamin D, or not enough? Yes
Today’s New York Times front page has a story with the headline “Extra vitamin D and calcium aren’t necessary, report says”. It refers to a report from an expert committee, which the Times says finds:
The very high levels of vitamin D that are often recommended by doctors and testing laboratories – and can be achieved only by [...]
Fate of the World game: “Malthus on a computer chip”
Norm Benson at Timberati has a great post about a new video game, Fate of the World. He writes:
The scenario for Fate of the World (FotW) starts in the year 2020 when climate change induced disasters strike. Then the “World Environment Organization,” (a turbo-charged United Nations), makes you the climate czar to “decide how the [...]