science

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Jana Winter and Hunter Walker at Yahoo News broke the story that 11 Secret Service agents have tested positive for the coronavirus. Likely some of them served in the West Wing. This week it was revealed at that a US military valet who brought Trump food came down with the […]

Donald Trump

The US is no Longer the World’s Science Leader: Trump Fiddled While South Korea, Germany, China Swung into Actions

Dilip Hiro

( Tomdispatch.com ) – Historically, in hyper-crises, local and global systems can change fundamentally. Before the coronavirus pandemic hit first China and then the rest of the globe, the question of whether the American imperial era might be faltering was already on the table, amid that country’s endless wars and with the world’s most capricious […]

Donald Trump

Why America’s anti-Science and Anti-Intellectual Attitudes doom it to Coronavirus “Pearl Harbor”

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The surgeon general, Jerome Adams, has announced that the coming week will see enormous numbers of coronavirus deaths and hospitalizations, calling it this generation’s “Pearl Harbor.” But while Pearl Harbor was a plot of far right wing Japanese generals to get the US fleet out of the way so they […]

Epidemics

Why the ‘herd immunity’ route to fighting coronavirus is unethical and potentially dangerous

The Conversation

By Arindam Basu | – As most of the world tries to suppress the coronavirus spread, some countries are going it alone – trying to manage the pandemic through so-called “herd immunity”. Herd immunity means letting a large number of people catch a disease, and hence develop immunity to it, to stop the virus spreading. […]

Australia

Climate Catastrophe: With a Billion Animals Dead and the Koala in Danger, Will Australia’s Ecology Ever be the Same?

The Conversation

By Darren Evans | – The sheer scale and intensity of the Australian bushfire crisis have led to apocalyptic scenes making the front pages of newspapers the world over. An estimated 10 million hectares (100,000 sq km) of land have burned since 1 July 2019. At least 28 people have died. And over a billion […]

Climate Crisis

What the Dinosaurs Teach us: Earth won’t Recover from Human-Caused Mass Extinction for 2 mn Years

The Conversation

By Paul Bown, Samantha Gibbs, and Sarah Alvarez | – Around 66 million years ago, a giant asteroid struck the Earth, causing the extinction of the dinosaurs, ammonites, and many other species. The asteroid was equally devastating at a microscopic level, driving ocean plankton to near-extinction. This crippled the base of the marine food chain […]

astronomy and outer space

No, Ben Shapiro, Science isn’t White

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In this clip via Twitter, Ben Shapiro, who is somehow touted as a serious thinker on the Right, alleges that the scientific method is peculiar to something he calls “the West.” He appears to think it consists of Greek empiricism mixed with what he terms a “Judeo-Christian” conviction that to […]

Mass Extinction

We are about to drive 1 million species to extinction w/out a Revolution in our relationship with Nature

The Conversation

The report reveals the loss of biodiversity and ecosystem function is much less on lands managed by Indigenous peoples and local communities

astronomy and outer space

The Coming Great Satellite Space War between Nuclear-Armed India and Pakistan

Dilip Hiro

In late March, India launched a rocket shooting down one of its satellites, proving it could preemptively “blind” the Pakistanis