The reality is that since our Great Recession is only a year old, it may be silly to interpret every upward blip as a sign that it's almost finished. The Great Depression lasted ten years, and probably ended only as a result of the economic pump-priming that occurred as we...

America's Thanksgiving holiday goes back at least 388 years to the year following the arrival of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts in 1620. The Pilgrims were among a number of sects called Puritans, and like many Puritan sects, the Pilgrims came to America essentially because they thought 17th Century England much...

One hundred and fifty-three years ago, in a quarry in the Neander Valley in Germany, quarry-workers stumbled on a strange skeleton. Local experts called it the skeleton of some diseased person, or maybe the bones of some foreign soldier (a Cossack?) who died on the spot in the Napoleonic War...

We Americans are no strangers to hypocrisy, but we're currently in a fix that's beginning to smell bad. It's true that the open society of the Western world is in jeopardy from people who want a closed society and are willing to have their children commit suicide to get it....

What do we remember? Veteran's Day--November 11th--was once called Armistice Day, the day the mangled soldiers started coming home in 1918.

The problem with war is that the men who declare and manage a war usually don't go to war. Had the politicians of various countries been obligated to live...

Nature is that lovely lady who gave us the polio virus...and the influenza virus...and the rabies virus...and the HIV virus...and so on. She's a lovely lady with death and cruelty in her eyes, and it seems she's totally committed to making all of us miserable.

In 1892, a twenty-eight year...

Predicting American voting behavior is a game played by pollsters, politicians, and professional gamblers, and between now and the Congressional elections in 2010 you can bet your bippy that our biannual circus will be in full swing again.

But prediction is one thing and analysis is something else. Analysts are...

America is one of the few places in the world with an ongoing public debate about the interface (conflict?) between science and religion. One of the problems with this debate is that debaters too often cook up questions and issues that serve their views without contributing to any enlightenment.

For...

One of the most insidious pollutants in our environment is the heavy metal element Cadmium. An important new study is the first research report on the effects of Cadmium on human fetal sex organ tissues. The authors of the abstract below make the following introductory points in their paper:

1. Exposure...

It's unfortunate that as the centuries pass, the people who struggle to apply science to human affliction fade out of public memory. Sometimes a name remains attached to a disorder, but usually the name means nothing to anyone except a specialist. As a species we have only one past (described...

At the outset, let me put my cards on the table. Creationism and Intelligent Design are junk science bunk and will not be mentioned again in this essay.

My concern here is the use and abuse of evolution in biology and a recent review by science journalist Nicholas Wade...

This is a fascinating study of a particular environmental effect on fetal development. The complete abstract appears below.

Ann Neurol. 2009 Mar 18;66(3):284-289. Register data suggest lower intelligence in men born the year after flu pandemic.. Eriksen W, Sundet JM, Tambs K. (Division of Mental Health, Norwegian Institute of Public...

First a quotation from the late economist Milton Friedman, his words in 1973:

When an executive decides to take action for reasons of social responsibility, he is taking money from someone else -- from the stockholders in the form of lower earnings or from the consumer in the form of...

Many people who call themselves "conservatives" and who should know better use the word "liberal" as a pejorative noun, as if it's disgusting to have an interest in political, social, and economic justice. Conservatives say that the old way is usually the best way, and that if there's any change...

The tendency of any generation is to imagine its uniqueness, engage in a pretense that nothing existed before it and nothing will exist after it. Of course it's a fallacy, and a fallacy that's often dangerous. No generation is alone, and many of the problems that plague us were discovered...

Thanks to the New York Times, it seems we're beginning a national concern about toxic water, a fearsome chapter in our national Book of Devils -- toxic air, toxic food, toxic life styles, and now toxic drinking water.

Of course the people who hawk for various industries will tell us...

In 1932, the physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955) wrote some words about science in honor of his senior colleague, the physicist Max Planck (1858-1947). The world was on the edge of an abyss of madness and war, and in 1933, when Einstein's words about Planck were published, Einstein fled Germany and...

Some people argue that humans are merely crazy apes, but the counter-argument, that humans and apes are dramatically different, is not easily dismissed. Truly, it's a question of focus--and the focus often depends on hidden philosophical attitudes. Western religions, for example, abhor the idea that humans are not unique creations...

We live in a world of dangers seen and unseen, dangers to ourselves, our family, our children, and our children not yet born. On one side of the coin is the fact that if you spend all your time worrying about dangers, sooner or later you will be immobilized. On...

It seems that conservatives operate in politics by broadcasting lies. They lied about Social Security in the 1930s. They lied about Medicaid and Medicare in the 1960s. They lie every day now in 2009 about reforming our health care system.

They lie because they know it works. Every politician knows...