science

By Scott Klinger | – ( Inequality.org ) – Shortly after emerging from his 10-minute space flight last week, Jeff Bezos thanked Amazon customers and employees for their primary role in paying for his Blue Origin joyride to the edge of space. The Amazon founder’s comments quickly elicited scorn from many employees who toil in […]

Epidemics

Why was there such Resistance to the (correct) theory of Aerosol Transmission of Covid-19?

John Buell

Southwest Harbor, Maine (Special to Informed Comment) – Droplets or aerosols? This was the issue that gripped pandemic politics for months. The scope of the disease and the appalling number of lives at stake constituted one reason for the intensity of the conflict. Equally important was the fact that this was and remains at least […]

astronomy and outer space

Palestinian NASA Scientist Elbasyouni: Easier to Fly a Helicopter on Mars than to Visit Home in Gaza

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Long time readers may know that I am a science buff and a science fiction fan. I have therefore been geeking out since February about the Perseverance rover on Mars. This week there was even more to marvel at, as the Ingenuity helicopter that accompanied the rover managed a couple […]

Epidemics

Typical Republican: The Racism and Anti-Science behind Texas Gov. Greg Abbot’s Lifting of Covid Restrictions

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Texas Gov. Greg Abbott this week lifted the Texas mask mandate and allowed businesses freely to open. Roughly half the deaths and severe illness owing to Covid-19 are among minorities, including African-Americans and Latinos, even though those two groups make up less than a third of Americans. State Sen. Borris […]

astronomy and outer space

First Arab Muslim Satellite enters Mars Orbit: UAE’s Arabo-Futurism and its Princess Leias

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Americans who are used to imagining Arab Muslim civilization as backward or barbaric might be surprised to hear that the United Arab Emirates, a country made up of seven Gulf Arab Principalities, has become only the fifth country to place a satellite in orbit around Mars. The science team behind […]

astronomy and outer space

The U.S. Needs COVID Relief and Renewable Energy, Not a Space Force

Conn M. Hallinan

( Foreign Policy in Focus) – When President-elect Joe Biden takes office on January 21, he will be faced with some very expensive problems, from bailing out the COVID-19 economy to getting a handle on climate change. Vaccinating over 300 million people will not be cheap, and wrestling the U.S.’s hydrocarbon-based economy in the direction […]

Denialism

Pence, who backed Muslim visa Ban, gets Vaccine invented by Muslim Immigrants

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Defeated vice president Mike Pence got the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on Friday. Here is why he is a hypocrite. Pence served for four years in the Trump administration, which initiated a visa ban against Muslims. Although he had in 2015 called any such ban “unconstitutional,” he folded when Trump insisted on […]

Christians

How did Washington State get sensible Sex Education Passed? The Religious Right is Collapsing

James A. Haught

Here’s a dramatic example of the growing power of Americans who say their religion is “none”: Last spring, progressives in the Washington state legislature, backed by Planned Parenthood, mandated that all public schools must teach sensible, practical sex education. The goal: to prevent teen pregnancy, reduce sexual disease, save girls from “date rape,” caution grade-schoolers […]

astronomy and outer space

How Climate Change made Venus Uninhabitable

The Conversation

By Richard Ernst | – We can learn a lot about climate change from Venus, our sister planet. Venus currently has a surface temperature of 450℃ (the temperature of an oven’s self-cleaning cycle) and an atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide (96 per cent) with a density 90 times that of Earth’s. Venus is a very […]