Thoughts Before The Alarm Sounds

     (1) Large is small. According to the GOP definition, any business, e.g., a partnership or a Limited Liability Company, that passes its net income through to its owners for inclusion on their personal federal income tax returns is a small business. There is no limit to the amount of income such a company can earn! For example, privately owned companies Cargill and Koch Industries each had over $100B in revenues in 2011, yet qualify as small businesses under the GOP's definition!      While agreeing in principle that the tax code needs revision, the Democratic Party would limit the definition of small business to one that has a net income not exceeding $250,000. While that figure may be a bit low, it certainly makes more sense than basing it on how the paperwork is set up.      (2) The estate tax is killing small business. Through 2012, there is no estate tax on estates not exceeding $5M in value. Unless Congress extends...

      The disagreement between climatologists and deniers goes on. In a 2009 survey, 97% of respondents who listed climate science as their area of expertise, and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change, agree that human activity is "a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures."       In a recent CNN poll of the general public, when the question “. . . from what you have heard or read, do you believe increases in the Earth's temperature over the last century are due more to the effects of pollution from human activities, or natural changes in the environment that are not due to human activities?", 50% replied human activities, 46% said natural causes, and 4% were unsure.       There seems to be a general mistrust of the findings of science, which I believe is due primarily to the constant barrage of false information ...

      Dreams can take us to magical places and into seemingly impossible situations. In a dream we may walk out of our front door into a new and strange, even scary, landscape. We may be transported into a strange and nightmarish land of fantasy. There appears to be no limit to the range of our dreams.       But a limit does exist. All dreams are personal, and both research and common sense indicate that one can only dream of things that one knows about. That is not to say that one needs to actually experience dizzying heights or fierce dragons, but a person who has never heard of a dragon will not dream of one.       Dreams are usually triggered by an event which has occurred while one is awake: a problem that is being worked on, a traumatic event, or even something as innocuous as a scene in a book, or a song being played in the background. While one is asleep, the mind tries not only to file the memory of th...

      In the blog “Dark Science” on April 4th, I wrote about the similarity between the search for “luminiferous aether,” during the 19th century, and “dark matter” during the 21st century. Both of these are good examples of what scientists do.       Both experiments follow the same pattern. Here is an outline of the general procedure: 1.) A scientist observes an event in his particular area of expertise – an event that has some questionable aspect, such as light waves traveling through empty space without an intervening medium, or the actual mass of the universe exceeds the sum of the observable mass. He postulates some reasonable explanation such as luminiferous aether or dark matter. 2.) He sets up an experiment or observation whereby his postulate can be tested. (Michelson-Morley Experiment or the Large Hadron Collider.) 3.) He runs the experiment and systematically observes the results. 4.) He interprets the results based on...

      The theory that light consists of waves was proposed as early as the last half of the 17th century, and was almost universally accepted until the late 19th century. However, the theory did pose a significant problem.       It was thought that waves always were propagated through some kind of medium. For example, water waves needed water to spread and sound waves needed air. But how could light waves propagate through empty space? How did light from the sun travel through the vacuum of space to arrive on earth?       So scientists came up with the idea of the “luminiferous aether,” an invisible medium which pervaded space. This idea held sway until 1887, when Albert Michelson and Edward Morley performed their ground-breaking experiment which proved that the luminiferous aether did not exist. Although in some experiments light appeared to be a wave, it did not require a propagating medium.   ...

      In Kentucky, a recently introduced bill would encourage teachers to discuss “the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories,” including “evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.” I agree that a discussion of the last item on the list is an excellent topic for a class in ethics, although I am not sure there is such a class in public schools. Too many right-thinking people think that is a job for the parents.       Perhaps teachers should take the legislature at its word and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories. Period.       The advantage, of course, is that such theories express the most up-to-date knowledge we have of how the universe works. And they work. Eliminate all scientific theories and we are suddenly back in the dark ages – no television, no radio and no travel that is not dependent upon horsepower, to name a few things.   ...

      According to a recent poll conducted by Yale University, the percentage of respondents who believe climate change is happening dropped from 71% in 2008 to 57% in 2010, while those who do not believe climate change is happening rose from 10% to 20% over the same period. The rest “don’t know.”       Given the assumption that climate change is real, the percentage that think it is due to human activities dropped from 57% to 47%, while those who think it is natural rose from 33% to 36%. Again, the rest don’t know.       This is in spite of the increasing barrage of dramatic pictures of cracking and shrinking polar ice caps at both poles, the poleward migration of warm water animal and vegetable species, and the gradual submersion of low lying islands. How much proof does one need?       I believe the decline in belief in climate change is due to the recent release of emails from U.K ...