Agricultural subsidies need some serious rethinking: first the government pays to make unhealthy food cheap, then it pays for obesity related disease through health care.
Maybe the problem with Toyota isn’t Toyota, but elderly drivers.
Science demands the fundamental belief that there is a rational explanation for everything; it also requires an imagination and courage which are not dissimilar to religious creativity. Like the prophet or the mystic, the scientist also forces himself to confront the dark and unpredictable realm of uncreated reality. … [T]he scientific vision of our own day has made much classic theism impossible for many people. To cling to the old theology is not only a failure of nerve but could involve a damaging loss of integrity. The Faylasufs attempted to wed their new [scientific] insights with mainstream Islamic faith… Yet the ultimate failure of their rational deity has something important to tell us about the nature of religious truth.
Large animal farms (actually large farms period) do incredible environmental damage with human victims. Dairies in New Mexico have led to contaminated water in a region where water scarcity is a growing issue.
We thought flowering plants had such an advantage because of their flowers. Actually, it’s their veins!
On the one side, ethics and religion are still too complex for present-day science to explain in depth. On the other, they are far more a product of autonomous evolution than hiterto conceded by most theologians. Science faces in ethics and religion its most interesting and possibly humbling challenge, while religion must somehow find the way to incorporate the discoveries of science in order to retain credibility. Religion will possess strength to the extent that it codifies and puts into enduring, poetic form the highest values of humanity consistent with empirical knowledge.
Compared with the employer-coverage group, peoplein the Medicare group report fewer problems obtaining medicalcare, less financial hardship due to medical bills, and higheroverall satisfaction with their coverage.
Conservatives freaked out about Obama’s speech encouraging kids to work hard in school, calling the action “unprecedented.” I guess they weren’t paying attention during similar speeches given by Reagan and George H. Bush. (Though perhaps if they’d paid better attention in school they would have developed some critical thinking skills and we wouldn’t have to deal with their craziness.) I think the response of the right in this situation is very telling – they disagree with Obama, so they won’t listen to anything he says. This is why Republicans have blocked health care reform at every turn, why Republicans have become the party of “no.” I’m reminded of a child being told something she doesn’t want to hear who covers her ears and yells.
Whether families are spending more than they should according to some moral notion—consuming too much of the world’s resources or buying things they could easily live without—is not the issue at hand. These data give us no clue about the right amount of spending. But they give us powerful evidence that excessive consumption is not why families are going broke. There is no evidence of any “epidemic” of overspending—certainly nothing that could explain a 255 percent increase in the foreclosure rate, a 430 percent increase in the bankruptcy rolls, and a 570 percent increase in credit-card debt. A growing number of families are in terrible financial trouble, but despite the accusations, their frivolity is not to blame.
Everyone knows that the social sciences are hypercomplex. They are inherently far more difficult than physics and chemistry, and as a result they, not physics and chemistry, should be called the hard sciences. They just seem easier, because we can talk with other human beings but not with photons, gluons, and sulfide radicals. Consequently, too many social-science textbooks are a scandal of banality.
The current status of the social sciences can be put in perspective by comparing them with the medical sciences. Both have been entrusted with big, urgent problems. … In both spheres the problems have been intractably complex, partly because the root causes are poorly understood.
The medical sciences are nevertheless progressing dramatically …
There is also progress in the social sciences, but it is much slower, and not at all animated by the same information flow and optimistic spirit. Cooperation is sluggish at best; even genuine discoveries are often obscured by bitter ideological disputes …
The crucial difference between the two domains is consilience: The medical sciences have it and the social sciences do not. Medical scientists build upon a coherent foundation of molecular and cell biology. They pursue elements of health and illness all the way down to the level of biophysical chemistry …
Social scientists, like medical scientists, have a vast store of factual information and an arsenal of sophisticated statistical techniques for its analysis. They are intellectually capable. Many of their leading thinkers will tell you, if asked, that all is well, that the disciplines are on track – sort of, more or less. Still it is obvious to even casual inspection that the efforts of social scientists are snarled by disunity and a failure of vision. And the reasons for the confusion are becoming increasingly clear. Social scientists by and large spurn the idea of the hierarchical ordering of knowledge that unites and drives the natural sciences.
The only two logically sound arguments that emerge, say the researchers, are the social harm that might result if scientists, who are the true experts, don’t advocate; and the fact that researchers are citizens first and scientists second, and therefore have an obligation to advocate.
Speaking of advocacy, climate change is almost certainly going to make most of Europe too warm for butterflies. Things you should do to help deal with climate change: have fewer or no children, use less, and encourage your lawmakers to fund research and protect the environment.
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I wish I’d said that
The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to? — Jeanette Winterson
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