39% of Americans feel 'green guilt' for wasting food, a much higher number than letting the sink run while they brush their teeth or not buying those stupid low-flow toilets.

The 2012 Eco Pulse results are in.  So look for the latest marketing campaigns from environmental activism corporations soon.

Why does anyone do surveys on what people feel guilty about rather than what people care about?  They do it to sell it to environmental groups and no environmental group raises money on a 'things are great' platform, they raise money by telling you how much you are a parasite for Gaia. The Eco Pulse survey tells marketers at Greenpeace, Sierra Club, etc. what your weak points are.  

Distrust and paranoia did not start with claims about genetically modified foods or vaccines. Concern about the motivations of government, secret societies and corporations has a long history. The belief in a conspiracy of elites fuels suspicion about all authorities and the claims they make. 

What is more of a puzzle is that the attraction of conspiracy theories is so strong that it leads people to endorse entirely contradictory beliefs, like how the government should make special regulations for genetically modified foods, though the government is supposedly dependent on lobbyist money and can't be trusted.

PZ Myers is not exactly known for the timidity of his statements (or for the mildness of his tone when he disagrees with someone, even a fellow atheist). On August 1st he posted a brief statement on his blog, presumably as a commentary on the recent Republican-led charade concerning a proposed ban on all abortions after 20 weeks in Washington, DC . (The ban was voted favorably by a majority in the House, but since Republicans themselves invoked a ⅔ majority rule, it didn’t pass.

Anything is either true,
Or not true,
Or both true and not true,
Or neither true nor not true;
This is the Buddha's teaching.

--Nagarjuna (second century Buddhist monk and philosopher), the Mulamadhyamakakarika, Chapter XVIII, verse 8 (Note: there are other translations of this verse, for example, using "real" instead of "true.")

Having just read an article about forest fires [How the Smokey Bear Effect Led To Raging Wildfires], I was struck by the obvious question of why this should be a problem.

In effect, it illustrates one of the primary difficulties we face, as humans, in a modern society, equipped with all manner of scientific knowledge and yet seemingly unable to solve the simplest problems.

The British may think they 'colonized' Kenya to teach them about civilization and the modern world, but it would be the other way around today.  While over 80 percent of Europeans admit they are against any GMO regardless of whether or not they can be 'proved' safe - an impossibility anyway - and some Americans on the kooky anti-science left insist they are allergic to any product that has anything to do with GM sugar beets, Kenyans are downright enlightened about food science.

Humans inherit more than three times as many mutations from their fathers as from their mothers, and mutation rates increase with the father's age but not the mother's, researchers have found in the largest study of human genetic mutations to date.

A study based on the DNA of around 85,000 Icelanders, the largest study of human genetic mutations to date, has found that humans inherit more than three times as many mutations from their fathers as from their mothers and mutation rates increase with the father's age but not the mother's.

Reading media accounts, it seems the past decade has witnessed what seems to be a cluster of large earthquakes, with massive events in Sumatra, Chile, Haiti and Japan since 2004.

Some hypothesize that this cluster has occurred because the earthquakes may be "communicating" across large distances, possibly triggering each other. 

King Richard III, the last of the Plantagenets, ruled England from 1483 until he was defeated at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485, the next-to-last major battle in what would later be called The Wars of the Roses. If you're watching "Game of Thrones" on HBO, the Wars of the Roses were Lancasters instead of Lannisters and Yorks rather than Starks - the show has more dragons and less sex than the real thing. Richard III was a York and if you think that show has a lot of characters and craziness, try to follow the actual Wars of the Roses.

The anti-vaccination culture is making headway. CDC has reported 17 outbreaks and 222 measles cases from 211, mostly in unvaccinated people - the highest since 1996.

To identify areas of under-vaccination for measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases, state and local health departments monitor compliance with school immunization requirements using annual school vaccination assessment reports, supported as a CDC immunization funding objective for the 64 grantees, including the 50 states, the District of Columbia (DC), five cities, and eight other reporting areas. CDC also monitors progress toward meeting Healthy People 2020 objectives  for the vaccination of children entering kindergarten.