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Happy Twelfth Night - Or Divorce Day, Depending On How Your 2026 Is Going

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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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"Sharknado" Is Pure Liberal Propaganda. But Is It Also Scientifically Possible?" went the title of a Mother Jones article before a sensible editor considered the possibility that there might be 5 people in the world who aren't aware that Mother Jones loves liberal propaganda and changed it to the more sensible "Can a "Sharknado" Really Happen?"
The International Astronomical Union, which declared itself the arbiter of names for the entire universe, is in hot water with "Star Trek" fans. A social media campaign, including endorsements by William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy, put Vulcan at the top of the list of polls aimed at naming two moons (P4 and P5) orbiting Pluto but the IAU vetoed it anyway, according to the SETI press release.

Well, they also once vetoed Pluto itself - that 2% of astronomers got rid of a whole planet is the only reason anyone has ever heard of the IAU. Their own arbitrary rules instead say Kerberos and Styx, which placed second and third, win out. What rules? 
The American FDA allows ingredients that are banned in other countries.
One of the sillier arguments regarding gender inequality (and most of them regarding the developed world are pretty silly in 2013) is that Wikipedia, with anonymous editors of suspect credibility, is somehow sexist because fewer people self-identified as female on an internal survey.
Methane has been in water since man has been able to drink water from the ground - but when environmental activists sink their teeth into a fundraising issue, it suddenly becomes a cancer epidemic (nuclear power, along with everything else) and, in the case of hydraulic fracturing - fracking - the Earth deflating and even setting water on fire.

Now, water on fire is hilarious. Pittsburgh, like every other place, has lots of chemicals in its water and most prevalent is the one that makes people ridicule Cleveland. Yet if you ask most people about when the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland was on fire, or why, they won't know. It's just...Cleveland.
Dr. Daniel P.