Some folks in Britain want to spend 10 years and millions of dollars to build a computer that goes really, really slow - and I think it's a great idea.I partly think it's a great idea because it is not Americans spending millions of dollars, the same way I thought the LHC was a terrific idea...for Europe. People who say you should spend a lot of taxpayer money for 'leadership' in science...
read moreIf you're worried about getting the flu, chances are that you got an influenza vaccine; these are created on an annual basis and use a method from the 1950s; it is egg-based technology, literally produced in chicken eggs. Some vaccines, like polio, are now created using laboratory-grown cell lines that are capable of hosting a growing virus. The first is inefficient, the second...
read moreDarwin took decades to publish while Newton practically wrote his Principia so as not to have to bother answering questions from other physicists. Throughout science history the attitudes and methods of scientists have varied as dramatically as the personalities.With the rise of government-controlled science over the last five decades, the need to publish in order to get grants has spiked...
read moreOnly government could come up with this ingenious plan: President Obama’s Agriculture Department has announced that it will impose a new 15-cent charge on all fresh Christmas trees to support a new Federal program to improve the image and marketing of... Christmas trees.Yes, that's right, if you buy a Christmas tree you are apparently still unconvinced how awesome they are so the...
read moreAs some of you know, I am writing a book which will hit shelves next autumn. My co-author is named Alex Berezow, he is a Ph.D. in microbiology and edits the science arm of Real Clear Politics called Real Clear Science. You can imagine that working together on a book means you have to have a lot in common; yet we are more complementary than similar. I am socially libertarian and fiscally...
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