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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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Medieval clerics did not like the prospect of giving up sex - heck, every man getting getting married dreads the part about giving up sex  - so even when they had to do so by Papal decree there was resistance to it. You think changing from a Latin to local language Mass was controversial? Genitalia are a lot more personal. 

Priests, of course, used to be married but that changed hundreds of years later after the foundation of Christianity. The justifications were that a priest should imitate Christ, who was celibate (unmarried), and still later there was an argument and decree that priests who were handling the sacraments had to also be unpolluted by sexual activity - chaste.
PETA, People for The Ethical Treatment of Animals, doesn't always make sense.  They protest objectifying dead fish, for example, by objectifying live women.  Actually, they show more naked women than Playboy, their marketing campaigns are littered with exploited females.(1)

Now they are critical of the US Army, but not for hurting fellow humans. Rather, for hurting goats.
If you love the appearance of getting hammered and are too classy to hold 'near' beer - or, oddly, you enjoy the taste of whisky but don't like getting hammered - there is good news;  the world's first alcohol-free, whisky-flavored drink.

ArKay has the appearance, smell and taste of traditional whisky they say, but no alcohol, no calories and no sugar - they claim you will enjoy it straight or on the rocks or in a cocktail.

Now, they did not send this whisky to the Science 2.0 office for proper scientific testing, but they should if they want that 'they claim' disclaimer removed. It's a good idea to be skeptical of a 'no alcohol, no calories, tastes great' marketing blurb. 
Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft, remains in good health and is just one day and 12 hours from touchdown on Mars. All systems are go and it is doing so well the planned Trajectory Correction Maneuver 5 (TCM-5) and its update to parameters for the autonomous entry, descent and landing will not be necessary.  If it ain't broke, don't fix it, as they say.

As of noon yesterday the Mars Science Laboratory spacecraft was about 470,000 miles from Mars, a little less than twice the distance from Earth to the moon. It is traveling at about 8,000 mph and will gradually increase in speed to about 13,200 mph by the time it reaches the top of the Martian atmosphere.
Like people who approach geopolitics with the attitude of "If people would just talk to each other, we would all along", there are a lot of naïve assumptions about just dumping gasoline.

We know it causes emissions, and emissions are bad, we know a lot of the money paid for oil goes to fund Middle Eastern terrorism, and that is bad - those things should cause both the left and the right in America to want gasoline gone. And yet it is not gone.  The reason is simple: gasoline is a lot more efficient than alternative energy proponents want to believe.
For as long as I can remember, academic scientists have said that applied research is great - for someone else.  But for themselves, they want to do basic research and be creative and not have to worry about any applied / societal benefit.(1)

But another election season is here and, despite $140 billion of taxpayer money being spent on research, no one in either party really gives a hoot about science topics and scientists are concerned neither candidate cares.(2)