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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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Almost no one outside New York City government and health advocates engaged in social experimentation thought a ban on some drink sizes for New York City made any sense or would actually do any good. 

Soda companies were obviously against it. They would prefer not to be demonized in Mayor Michael Bloomberg's latest culture war. Small businesses were against it, since a ton of products sold by large companies like Starbucks and McDonald's were somehow exempted. Movie theaters were against it, since overpriced giant sizes of popcorn and drinks are part of the experience (and a lot of the profit).

Do you like nuclear weapons?

If you respond yes to that, I think you have lost your mind. While I understand the value of an overwhelming force to end a bloody world war, it's also something that can't be unmade.  We had opened "Pandora's Box", the belief went.
If you want to make sure your extra-terrestrial efforts can survive a nuclear attack, working inside the Jamesburg Earth Station on, fittingly, ComSat Road, just outside Carmel, California, is a fine choice. A short drive to Pebble Beach and Spyglass golf courses means it is not a bad way to spend your weekends either.

If you enjoyed seeing Neil Armstrong walking on the Moon, Jamesburg is one of the dishes you can thank. But the 10-story high antenna went out of service in 2002. The land was sold to a gentleman who wanted a vacation home - the coolest Cold War vacation home ever, if you ask me, with blueprints and cinder block walls and a room the size of a football field.
A few years ago, I wrote a piece for Communicating Astronomy with the Public outlining how to more effectively reach the public.(1)

I have some credibility. Science 2.0 has become a well-known movement despite not having media conglomerate backing, a marketing department, a sales force or any government funding, Not many can do that - or they probably would.
University of New Mexico professor Geoffrey Miller is a social/evolutionary psychologist so it's no surprise he is clueless about people - like what it takes to have the willpower to get a Ph.D, beyond his own subjective opinion. And it's even less of a surprise he made an unscientific conjecture. He may have been surprised anyone noticed. If social and evolutionary psychologists aren't finding racism in office clutter or in eating meat or telling us we evolved to like a car grill they don't get much attention. Unless it matches a confirmation bias, no one believes that surveys of psychology undergraduates are meaningful, much less scientific, after all.