science

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

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 […]

Artificial Intelligence

By 2030, Today’s World will be Made Over

Richard Penaskovic

This article reviews Mauro F. Guillén’s recent book, 2030: How Today’s Biggest Trends Will Collide And Reshape The Future of Everything, (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2020). $28.99. Guillén is the Zandman Professor in International Management at the Wharton School of Penn and an expert on global market trends. This book has eight chapters, a […]

Evolution

White supremacists believe in genetic ‘purity’. Science shows no such thing exists

The Conversation

By Dennis McNevin | – Far-right white supremacist ideology is on the rise in Europe, North America and Australia. It appeals to a racist notion whereby many white supremacists see themselves as members of a “pure” race that is at risk of dilution and contamination. Science does not support the idea of pure races with […]

Africa

Chadwick Boseman’s Wakanda: Afro-Futurism is in the Present

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Chadwick Boseman’s tragic death at the all too young age of 43 from colorectal cancer has been weighing on me the past couple of days. I am a fan. But I also am battling cancer, and I think I understand his incredible productivity in his last years, as he knew […]