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Environmental Groups Back In Court To Help Fellow Rich White People

The Usual Suspects of the anti-science movement, Center for Biological Diversity(1), Environmental...

Batteries Are Stuck In The 1990s Because Solid-State Batteries Keep Short-Circuiting

The electric car industry is held back by reliance on conventional energy. Despite spending trillions...

Dogs Have Been 'Man's Best Friend' For 14,000 Years

The bond between humans and dogs is one of the oldest stories in anthropology. It may also be a...

Is This The D'Artagnan Made Famous In 'The Three Musketeers' By Dumas?

“I have lost D’Artagnan, in whom I had every confidence,” wrote King Louis XIV to his Queen...

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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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When Bardarbunga Burps, Is Lava Far Behind?

When Bardarbunga Burps, Is Lava Far Behind?

Sep 10 2014 | comment(s)

ESA Satellites are showing clouds of sulfur dioxide exiting from Iceland’s Bardarbunga volcano.

It may be mostly hidden underneath the Vatnajokull glacier in the center of the country but Bardarbunga isn't shy about saying hello, it has had up to 400 eruptions in the last 10,000 years, one of which produced more lava than any other volcano on Earth during that time.

23 of those were geologically recent.

Bardarbunga eruptions seem to happen even more often than colony collapse disorders in bees, so Iceland knows it's best not to get too complacent when something sitting on two volcanic rift zones starts to put on a show:  It seems to erupt twice per century on average and the last one was in...1910.

Tick tock, tick tock...

Health Off The Range: An Anti-Vaccine Conspiracy Tale

Health Off The Range: An Anti-Vaccine Conspiracy Tale

Sep 10 2014 | comment(s)

Mystery virus EV-D68 exploding among vaccinated children; U.S. medical system clueless without a vaccine warns blogger Mike Adams, who calls himself a "Health Ranger" and seems to exist to undermine medicine.
U.C. Berkeley Tops Public University Rankings Again

U.C. Berkeley Tops Public University Rankings Again

Sep 10 2014 | comment(s)

If you want the best education and you are rich or are a non-Asian minority born with your heart outside of your body, go to Princeton. If you are Asian and rich, go to Caltech.

If you are none of the above, but still smart enough to get into a top school, U.C. Berkeley is the best place to be for the 17th straight year, according to US News  &  World Report rankings, which mean quite a lot to schools in the top 20 and little to anyone else. Berkeley again placed 20th overall and, since it is a public university, its tuition and fees are low compared to Caltech and Stanford, at least if you live in the state.
4 Warning Signs That Impartial Paper On Politics And Science Really Isn't

4 Warning Signs That Impartial Paper On Politics And Science Really Isn't

Sep 08 2014 | comment(s)

Talk of a 'secret sauce' in decision-making and charges that government groups like the Environmental Protection Agency are politically motivated are not new. Every president has its opposition party contending that the administration is manipulating science to suit its agenda - in the 1990s, Democrats got it for scuttling the Superconducting Super Collider and gutting the NIH and NASA while a decade later Republicans were called anti-science for limiting federal funding for human embryonic stem cells to existing lines.

No one voted or did not vote for a candidate because of the SSC or hESCs, they were simply talking points to confirm decisions.

21st Century Toasters - Why Utilities Want You To Buy That Electric Car

21st Century Toasters - Why Utilities Want You To Buy That Electric Car

Sep 02 2014 | comment(s)

Why would anyone bake bread and then turn around and toast it?

I lived in a Pennsylvania house heated by wood. The idea of using our manual labor, in the form of wood, to toast bread was silly - but we owned an electric toaster. Somehow, being removed from the direct labor equation made toasting more acceptable, though our ancestors thought it a pastime for the idle rich.
Neil Tyson On The Politics Of Science Denial

Neil Tyson On The Politics Of Science Denial

Sep 01 2014 | comment(s)

Spend any time in American science media and you may find some of them are pretty far out of the political mainstream; so far out, they may not even be friends with anyone who has not always voted the same way as them.

So it's unsurprising that much of science media once perpetuated the claim that 'science votes Democrat.'  Humans are fallible and confirmation bias is sneaky. As was apocryphally attributed to New Yorker film critic Pauline Kael after the 1972 Presidential election and a Richard M. Nixon landslide victory, "I don't know how Nixon won. No one I know voted for him." (1)