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Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

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Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

Now SpaceX had a rocket fail.

If the Chinese call us up and say they have a booster that works and offer it to NASA, I'm smelling a rat.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

joecct said:
Now SpaceX had a rocket fail.

If the Chinese call us up and say they have a booster that works and offer it to NASA, I'm smelling a rat.
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Wouldn't that be a cat?

I'll show myself out.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

New meaning to the expression "they don't want to know."

In the aftermath of the latest mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, House Republicans rebuffed a Democratic effort to effectively allow health researchers to study gun violence and make recommendations — suggesting they’re still a long way from considering any new gun-control restrictions.

The House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday rejected, 19-32, an amendment from top Democratic appropriator Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.) that would allow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study the underlying causes of gun violence.

The CDC hasn’t done any such research since 1996, when the National Rifle Association accused it of trying to use science to promote gun control. Congress threatened to totally defund the agency if the work continued, and appropriators ever since have included a prohibition on funding that kind of research with spending bills.

A House GOP staffer said the existing provision technically doesn’t bar gun-violence research. Rather, it blocks any gun-control advocacy by the CDC. However, Republicans would consider any CDC findings that recommend limitations on guns to be gun-control advocacy.
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Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

They already know. They just want to keep getting elected, and that requires the support of the crowd that thinks "gun control means using both hands" is a witty joke.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

fwiw

Anti Intellectualism is Killing America
What Americans rarely acknowledge is that many of their social problems are rooted in the rejection of critical thinking or, conversely, the glorification of the emotional and irrational. What else could explain the hyper-patriotism (link is external) that has many accepting an outlandish notion that America is far superior to the rest of the world? Love of one’s country is fine, but many Americans seem to honestly believe that their country both invented and perfected the idea of freedom, that the quality of life here far surpasses everywhere else in the world.

But it doesn’t. International quality of life rankings place America far from the top, at sixteenth. America’s rates of murder and other violent crime dwarf most of the rest of the developed world, as does its incarceration rate, while its rates of education and scientific literacy are embarrassingly low. American schools, claiming to uphold “traditional values,” avoid fact-based sex education, and thus we have the highest rates of teen pregnancy in the industrialized world. And those rates are notably highest where so-called “biblical values” are prominent. Go outside the Bible belt, and the rates generally trend downward.

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Indeed, these corporate interests encourage anti-intellectualism, conditioning Americans into conformity and passive acceptance of institutional dominance. They are the ones who stand to gain from the excessive fear and nationalism that result in militaristic foreign policy and absurdly high levels of military spending. They are the ones who stand to gain from consumers who spend money they don’t have on goods and services they don’t need. They are the ones who want a public that is largely uninformed and distracted, thus allowing government policy to be crafted by corporate lawyers and lobbyists. They are the ones who stand to gain from unregulated securities markets. And they are the ones who stand to gain from a prison-industrial complex that generates the highest rates of incarceration in the developed world.

Americans can and should denounce the racist and gun-crazed culture that shamefully resulted in nine corpses in Charleston this week, but they also need to dig deeper. At the core of all of this dysfunction is an abandonment of reason.
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Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

Kepler said:
New meaning to the expression "they don't want to know."
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But to be fair, she was recommending we hire the "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention" to "study gun violence." I mean... seriously, politicians, at least pretend to have some common sense if you want to gain any traction for your agenda. The stupidity is aggravating.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

geezer said:
But to be fair, she was recommending we hire the "Centers for Disease Control and Prevention" to "study gun violence." I mean... seriously, politicians, at least pretend to have some common sense if you want to gain any traction for your agenda. The stupidity is aggravating.
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I'm sure CDC does studies on asbestos and other health hazards. They may even do studies on car accidents. This is just using an organization with great statisticians to quantify a public health hazard, so we know what we're talking about when we debate public policy. It's not stupid at all.

If you want, we can create a brand new government agency to study "guns, running with scissors, and sharp sticks," but I thought the idea was to avoid big government?
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

Kepler said:
I'new government agency to study "guns, running with scissors, and sharp sticks," but I thought the idea was to avoid big government?
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That's so dam close to G.R.O.S.S. C&H fans know what I'm talking about. :D
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

Kepler said:
I'm sure CDC does studies on asbestos and other health hazards. They may even do studies on car accidents. This is just using an organization with great statisticians to quantify a public health hazard, so we know what we're talking about when we debate public policy. It's not stupid at all.

If you want, we can create a brand new government agency to study "guns, running with scissors, and sharp sticks," but I thought the idea was to avoid big government?
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It pre-supposes the primary purpose of a gun (which, to most of us, is a tool for harvesting delicious wildlife) as a public health hazard. It's like hiring the "Department of Combustible Energy Sources" to study the best uses for textbooks. It's so obviously agenda-driven that their conclusions are known before they even begin the mock "study."
Now I could see studying the causes of "assault with deadly weapons" or something as a "psychological research" project, and you could still probably get them to play ball if you know the right people in the organization's leadership. But to call it "gun violence" puts the agenda right in the title of the proposal.
 
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Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

geezer said:
It pre-supposes the primary purpose of a gun (which, to most of us, is a tool for harvesting delicious wildlife) as a public health hazard.
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No it doesn't. The primary purpose of asbestos was not to give people cancer. The primary purpose of drinking is not to kill people in car accidents.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

Kepler said:
No it doesn't. The primary purpose of asbestos was not to give people cancer. The primary purpose of drinking is not to kill people in car accidents.
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Maybe I'm too suspicious...
 
geezer said:
Maybe I'm too suspicious...
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In this case, I think so. Surely even the most partisan gun supporter acknowledges that guns are used to commit violent a ts? By all rights, the gun lobby should hope that the CDC learns something that leads to a reduction in gun violence - that would certainly take some wind out of gun control advocates' sails.

Now, if Congress asked them to study "the health benefits of reducing gun ownership," I would certainly agree with you.
 
Re: Dr. Clayton Forrester's Science Roundup

Kepler said:
I'm sure CDC does studies on asbestos and other health hazards. They may even do studies on car accidents. This is just using an organization with great statisticians to quantify a public health hazard, so we know what we're talking about when we debate public policy. It's not stupid at all.

If you want, we can create a brand new government agency to study "guns, running with scissors, and sharp sticks," but I thought the idea was to avoid big government?
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They do. A family member did a two-year pull there for public health training, and I recall hearing him talk about public health and safety matters they analyze that are not limited to what we consider "disease."
 
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