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Hank CampbellRSS Feed of this column.

I founded Science 2.0® in 2006 and since then it has become the world's largest independent science communications site, with over 300,000,000 direct readers and reach approaching one billion. Read More »

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It bugs me a little when 'time' is randomly called a dimension in casual talk. Since just after Einstein's relativity, we've been treated to the mathematical idea that time is its own dimension - though Einstein never said that.
In the beginning, Mother Nature created the universe and in it she put Quantum Mechanics.

Mother Nature had formed out of the ground all the wild particles in the sky. She brought them to Quantum Mechanics to see what Quantum Mechanics would name them; and whatever Quantum Mechanics called each thing, that was its name.  But it was not enough.

Then Mother Nature said, “It is not good for quantum mechanics to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for her.” And so she created Relativity and a classical garden in which they could live.

Unless you are in a bar and have a bartender with a pour spout (in other words, a terrible bar), pouring a glass of wine is not an exact measurement. And at a private party or in someone's house, a 'glass of wine' can be more like three - if you master the psychology of wine glasses.

We're in a world of over-labeling. Everything has calories printed on it, warnings about cancer and claims about gluten-free meat and GMO-free rock salt being healthier.  The wine pour is the last open frontier where you can still game the system a little. No one uses a pour spout for wine. Seriously, if the bartender does that, leave.

The EPA's war on science and business is nothing new. What started four decades ago as an honest effort by the Nixon administration to protect the environment from an increasingly industrialized society has instead helped cause industry to vacate America whenever possible.

While America has drastically reduced its greenhouse gas emissions - CO2 from energy is back at early 1990s levels and emissions from coal are back at early 1980s levels - that isn't good enough for many environmentalists. Meanwhile, China is setting the stage to offset all of the greenhouse emissions cuts by the rest of the world while claiming they lead in clean energy.

It is often the case that I get yelled at for being both too liberal and too conservative in the same week. It happens because the science under discussion violates the motivated reasoning of someone's political beliefs.  No conservative ever complains that the policy implication of a science issue is a conservative one, obviously, but you can bet left-wing people will, and vice-versa.