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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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Not getting the message that emissions are bad?  A new paper claims that air pollution and emissions from coal-fired electricity plants are associated with higher suicide rates right along with psychiatric conditions.
Responsible energy production would seem to have an obvious positive roadmap; have energy companies include environmental groups in guiding pollution standards and participating in studies about natural gas extraction.

But for entrenched constituencies, that is unacceptable.
Legendary Confederate fighter Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson died 150 years ago but the actual cause of his death has been a subject of debate. And it was again at the 20th annual Historical Clinicopathological Conference in Maryland.

Jackson got the nickname "Stonewall" from Confederate General Barnard E. Bee, when he moved an artillery battery up to support Bee's troops as they retreated at the First Battle of Bull Run (called First Manassas by Confederate troops)(1). Bee said of the mostly unheralded Colonel, "There is Jackson standing like a stone wall. Let us determine to die here, and we will conquer. Rally behind the Virginians."
In a world of missing links and UFOs, bimonthly instances of the apocalypse and scientific scare journalism about chemicals and biology, Atlantis still reigns supreme as the thing most often discovered time and again. Since 360 B.C. everyone has wanted it to be real.

Really, when you had Plato creating your press releases that is to be expected. Who doesn't want to find a city of gold and Poseidon hanging around? The man knew how to turn a phrase.  
In December, when a Republican berated the CDC for not finding links between vaccines and autism, science media was outraged.  Yet for years prior to that, Democrats had made the same claim with no mention of their political affiliation at all.  In that same hearing Democrats did it and corporate science media never discussed it.  

Only the Republican got attention, just like only Michele Bachmann got attention for using an anecdote as evidence about a vaccine during the last presidential campaign, though Senator Barack Obama said he was unconvinced that vaccines didn't cause autism during his campaign in 2008 and it got almost zero coverage elsewhere.
Everyone should have a home where they feel comfortable. If you want to carry a six-shooter on the street, move to Kennesaw, Georgia, outside Atlanta - Gun Town, USA (bonus: only 4 gun murders in 30 years, so you will be safe)(1) and if you like to ban everything and hang out with anti-science crackpots, there's always San Francisco.