I had relatives visiting from out of town and, because they had never been to Las Vegas, we took a two day, one night,  short plane trip over the mountains.   

Naturally, I won some money.   Is that because I am a mathematical genius?  No, everyone except the truly elite is going to lose money in a casino by knowing just enough probability to be dangerous while the truly stupid are going to be the foundation of any gambling town.

This is not about a Mayan 2012 apocalypse.  This is about the 9th century Mayan apocalypse, as documented by NASA.  It's also about modern global warming.  So there's plenty of doom to go around.

Let's first cover the '2012 apocalypse', a fabrication based on pseudoscience.  Modern Mayans are annoyed at the 2012 rumors.  The misinterpretation of their ancient culture-- that somehow an apocalypse is predicted for 2012-- has finally reached its nadir.  Hollywood is going to make a movie about it.  Imagine your own history being reduced to a single 90-minute special effects extravaganza.

The human heart, a tireless organ that beats within our chests continuously for decades, continues to amaze me, in spite of my having studied it for several years now.  My continued amazement stems not from the fact that this muscle functions for so long, and for the most part without us being aware of it (although this is indeed phenomenal), but from the rich variety of behavior that it exhibits across multiple scales. 

When Republicans were told, as part of a recent study, that diabetes results from social factors that mitigate personal responsibility, like a lack of neighborhood grocery stores or government-funded places to exercise, they were not inclined to want to enact legislation to rectify that - but Democrats reacted better to a government approach when culture was to blame rather than individuals.

Both were equally supportive when diabetes was presented in terms of genetic factors.

Was the lesson that framing is bad and science is good?  Well, no, though personally I am inclined to think that way.

I receive a lot of inquisitive emails from intelligent laymen, and today I received a nice one that asked, in so many words, “Is natural selection fast enough to explain the complex biology we find in our world?”

My knee-jerk response was to say, “Well, of course natural selection is fast enough, because here we are?” But I didn’t do that. 

I also didn’t respond by taking out my Dawkins-certified religion-bludgeoning stick. I’m not partial to that pedagogical approach, and I figure it only got Dawkins uncomfortably familiar with Ms. Garrison of South Park. 

Instead, I responded in what I think was a more helpful fashion, and my answer was not what the questioner expected. Here is what I wrote:

*****

While I can appreciate the usefulness of smoking bans, especially as it relates to non-smokers (or even smokers for that matter).  I'm not convinced that the science is establishing a sound cause and effect linkage.

There is little doubt that smoking is not a healthy activity, but similarly we should be aware of all forms of air pollution.  A recent study suggested that even a relatively brief exposure to second hand smoke could precipitate a heart attack¹.  Unfortunately, I haven't seen how such a study or determination was made, so it is impossible to assess their methodology.  

Consider the following quote:

Around three and a half years ago, I posted an item in my personal blog about public key infrastructure.^[1] In it, I mentioned two certificate authorities from which one could get free certificates for personal use: Thawte and CAcert.

The 'heliosphere', the name given to the region of the sun's influence, may not have the comet-like shape predicted by existing models, say researchers.

As the solar wind flows from the sun, it carves out a bubble in the interstellar medium. Models of the boundary region between the heliosphere and interstellar medium have been based on the assumption that the relative flow of the interstellar medium and its collision with the solar wind dominate the interaction. This would create a foreshortened "nose" in the direction of the solar system's motion, and an elongated "tail" in the opposite direction. 

It seems simple enough to answer the question whether something poses a risk or not.  The answers can only be "yes", "no", or "we don't know".  A "yes" response would then be qualified by the probability or likelihood of risk entailed, as well as the context in which it exists.  A "no" should be definitive and not have any exceptions, while a "we don't know" is ambiguous enough to suggest that there is no definite answer, as yet.

A recent article on the risks of cell phones illustrates one of the reasons why the public tends to be distrustful of many of these findings.  It is clear that games are being played and agendas being driven.