All of the news stories that we hear about this medical study and that medical study, all of which seem to eventually be at odds with each other or that tell us “eating rutabagas appears to lessen your chance of getting eyebrow cancer by 0.4%” First of all, I’m not going to rag on the people who do the studies. They work hard and are generally intelligent people (maybe not the whiny, cry baby pre-meds who used to take my non-calculus physics classes, but most of them). They do good work and uncover interesting things.

The problem lies in the P.R. people and the media people who grab hold of their results and plaster them (National Enquirer style) all over the papers, magazines and TV, misrepresenting the actual research findings.

While the Secessionist was taken to task by the legacy media for his rube-ish views on science, he’s paying no penalty at all within the Republican Party.

In June the Dawn probe from NASA decelerated into orbit around the mini-planet. Since then we have been getting more and more images. The picture above is one such. It is three large craters that overlap just enough make them look like a snowman.

A lot of people are talking the Secessionist’s response to a question about evolution.

Let’s put aside the fact that evolution isn’t just a “theory that’s out there,” that there aren’t “gaps” in it — and that Texas doesn’t teach creationism. All of that is just factually wrong and crazy, to boot.

In 2005, the most important court decision on evolution since the 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Edwards v. Aguillard, came about: the Pennsylvania case, Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. Edwards had nailed the door shut on teaching “creationism” as science in schools. Kitzmiller nailed it shut on trying to the same with “intelligent design.” Both were definitive. Perry should know that, as should the entire field of GOP 2012 hopefuls.

To me, this is an important subject, and has been for some time. Science education is vital to our future as a nation, as a planet. Whenever I read, watch or listen to a media person bringing up creationism, intelligent design or evolution as if there might be a scientific component to more than one of those three ideas, I just shake my head.

It actually takes political skill to be a really good panderer, and as the Secessionist has demonstrated this week time and time again, he just doesn’t have it.

Tonight is the peak night of the Perseid Meteor shower! It is one of my favorite things of the whole summer, the night when you either stay up really late or get up really early, go to some darkened field and watch little flecks of fire streak across the sky.

Now, not everyone can get out of their Mega-City to watch this yearly occurrence; but not to worry, the guys at NASA will hook you up! That is what we have at the top of this post a live composite of the meteors that have streaked across the sky.

Say what you like about the things the the US is no longer great at, we still are the Big Dogs when it comes to building and running long term space missions. Today the Opportunity Mars Rover finished a two year trip to the Endeavour Crater. There it will look for signs that water persisted on the surface of Mars for long periods of time. Not bad for a probe with a 3 month estimated mission life, eh?

After running across some resources again recently, I thought it would be a good idea to put some posts together that showed the background of many of the common facts I discuss. In this first post, I wanted to show the relationship between greenhouse gases, radiative forcing and temperatures. In doing, I will use graphics from the IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report Technical Summary.

What is the best long term investment a government can make? Universal pre-school