NY Times:
E.P.A. Halts Florida Test on Pesticides. “A recruiting flier for the program, called the Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study, or Cheers, offered $970, a free camcorder, a bib and a T-shirt to parents whose infants or babies were exposed to pesticides if the parents completed the two-year study. The requirements for participation were living in Duval County, Fla., having a baby under 3 months old or 9 to 12 months old, and ‘spraying pesticides inside your home routinely.’”
There’s a lot of outrage over this, as written here (and other sources). But in reading the actual documents, this is an attempt to measure effects of pesticide use on children in normal households. The government isn’t spraying pesticides in homes. They’re merely monitoring families with young children who routinely use pesticides. I see fellow online left-leaners carelessly throwing about the descriptor “Mengele” without reading the actual study information.
Realistically, with a cash and bling reward such as this, mostly low-income families will respond ... and they seem to be, from news reports, the ones marketed to ... so the selection process should be opened up to public scrutiny. But the howls in the media are so at odds with the actual study information itself, I can’t tell which way is up on this one.
Read the actual site itself, then read the news reports.
[Of late, it seems even my favorite sources of news are getting so ideological (on whichever side), I must postpone posting until hitting as close to the actual source of information as possible. I almost took this one at face value, and howled outrage myself. The media are making us work very hard to find facts these days.]
USA Today:
So much media, so little attention span. When I worked ‘industrial theatre’ in Manhattan, we used to use light comedy or video shorts to break up long speeches, basing our timings on current research into attention spans. In the ‘80’s, it was 18 minutes. I wonder what it is today.
NewMusicBox:
Equations. “Music is a unique art that can be thought of as a fair science, a discipline in which the quantifiable and known intersects with the mysterious. We can measure tones and waves, but we don’t know why they move a person to cry.”
NY Times Travel:
From the depths, a cathedral emerges. “... sometime in the next several weeks the winter snow melt will begin refilling the reservoir. The bureau expects the water level to climb as much as 45 feet by mid-July, once again submerging the Cathedral and dozens of other newly revealed features.”
SF New Mexican:
Scientists protest bill that could bar study of ancient skeleton.
CNN:
The remains of an ice age mammoth found in California.
Inside Higher Ed:
Mind the Gap. Weblogging would seem a perfect fit for ‘post-academic intellectuals.’
CSM:
Climate change could sour US maple sugaring.
New Yorker:
How two mathematicians came to the aid of the Met.
Edge.
The Assortative Mating Theory.
NY Times Letters to the Editor:
Science, Faith and Fossils. This link brought to mind a great quote I found the other day, can’t remember where I saw it: “Having an ‘expert’ is not science; accounting for all evidence is science.” That goes in my ‘quotes’ list.
CNN:
Archaeologists discover ancient Mayan saltworks.
LA Times:
Not intelligent, and surely not science. There are better ways to teach faith.
The Economist:
Proof and beauty. “Why should the non-mathematician care about things of this nature? The foremost reason is that mathematics is beautiful, even if it is, sadly, more inaccessible than other forms of art.”
NY Times Washington:
Agencies Fight Over Report on Sensitive Atomic Wastes. “After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an independent group of scientists published a paper in a Princeton scientific journal asserting that an enemy could drain a pool and set a fire that would be ‘significantly worse than Chernobyl.’”
Scientific American:
The Feynman-Tufte Principle. Anyone remember Reagan’s “simple” chart in the 1980 run?
NY Times Editorial:
Censorship in the Science Museums.
NY Times Letters to the Editor:
Schiavo, science and the rule of law. All excellent.
NY Times Health:
“A new vaccine tested in West Africa could save the lives of thousands of poor rural children who die each year from bacterial infections ...” Very positive news.
Hey!
We’re no longer in ‘extreme drought’ in New Mexico! Hallelujah! We’ve graduated to ‘severe’.
NY Times:
Tyrannosaurus Rex flesh found in Montana. Fire up the DNA replicators. Then run like hell.
Later: Pictures here. Great comment, there.
Minneapolis Star-Tribune:
Minneapolis studio celebrates the sounds of silence.
NY Times Letters to the Editor:
Is Evolution too hot for the halls of science?
NY Times:
Startling scientists, plant fixes its own gene. Nature continues to amaze.
Businessweek:
Why logic often takes a back seat. “People are on a treadmill in which only unexpected pleasures can make them happier. That explains why happiness of people in rich countries hasn’t increased despite higher living standards.”
