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CISPA Rolls Along
Tweet Share on Facebook May 6, 2013 CommentAnonymous has had an extraordinary run of success lately. It somehow managed to hack into North Korea's closed Internet network – twice – which must have agitated its military leadership to no end. It also used social media tools to bring to light the hideous acts at the center of teen suicides in several communities in North America.
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It's Time to Worry About the New Chinese Bird Flu
Tweet Share on Facebook April 26, 2013 CommentIt's time for the world's public health officials to pay very close attention to the new bird flu outbreak in China first detected in March. To put it bluntly, there are now some seriously dangerous developments occurring around the new disease outbreak in China that infectious disease specialists and international public health specialists need to track closely.
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Happy 4/20 Day
Tweet Share on Facebook April 19, 2013 CommentIt's 4/20 time again this week. For those who aren't part of the millennial generation, 4/20 is unofficial "Weed Day" in America – a counter-culture phenomenon that has drawn up to 10,000 marijuana legalization activists at college campuses in the U.S. in recent years.
In years past, Weed Day counter-culture "holiday" celebrations have taken place on April 20 at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, in several Canadian cities, at the University of Colorado at Bolder and elsewhere. Weed Day has also migrated to other parts of the world.
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Americans and Their Conspiracy Theories
Tweet Share on Facebook April 10, 2013 CommentThere’s just no polite way to put it.
There are big, entire parts of American society that believe in things that just aren’t true – and a recent national survey by Public Policy Polling only confirms it.
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China's Continuing Monopoly Over Rare Earth Minerals
Tweet Share on Facebook April 2, 2013 CommentWhat if there were rare minerals so valuable to many of the United States' most advanced weapons systems that their disappearance from the marketplace could threaten America's national security interests—and those rare minerals were, in fact, almost solely in the hands of the country's fiercest global economic competitor who held a monopoly over them?
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Drone Wars in America
Tweet Share on Facebook March 25, 2013 CommentThe drone wars are coming to America.
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A Very Cold War
Tweet Share on Facebook March 14, 2013 CommentFirst there was the Cold War between the former Soviet Union and the United States. Now, we have the Very Cold War—a race between Russian and American scientists to find new life forms in the frozen, sub-glacial lakes of Antarctica that may (or may not) harbor new forms of microbes never seen above ground in the last 25 million years.
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Google, Facebook and the Death of Journalism
Tweet Share on Facebook March 8, 2013 CommentGoogle quietly announced the death of journalism on February 21, 2013. Facebook, Silicon Valley's other science and technology juggernaut, wrote its epitaph on March 7.
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Dr. Koop and the True Meaning of Public Service
Tweet Share on Facebook February 28, 2013 CommentOne of America's enduring national treasures, C. Everett Koop, M.D., passed away earlier this week. If you can bear with me for a few moments, I'd like to remember the profoundly meaningful life of a man who once taught me an immensely valuable lesson—the secret to his own, successful life.
I became Dr. Koop's friend later in his life—long after he'd challenged senior White House officials working for President Ronald Reagan over the irrefutable science at the very center of the smoking and AIDS epidemics, while serving as Surgeon General in the U.S. Public Health Service.
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Three Strikes and You're Out
Tweet Share on Facebook February 13, 2013 CommentThree of the GOP's rising stars—House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida—have all recently tried to guide their party in new directions. But each ignored the biggest problem looming over nearly every major issue the GOP is trying to come to grips with: the fact that they've become the anti-science party.
