So this is what science is turning into:
a pawn in a ruthless game of political chess. Maybe it's
naive to think there was ever a time when scientific findings could be
accepted as universal axioms on which important policy decisions could
be based. But our nation's war on science seems to be cruising straight
toward a critical face-off. And the politicians seem to think they hold
the upper hand, but I'm not sure they do.
At some point, somehow, soon, this country had better find a way to
reconcile and reunite science and politics, to get the two working in
concert, not at ugly odds with each other. We're destined for decline if
we don't.
Best Styrofoam recycler among us: a fungus? Well, OK, not a
fungus exactly;
a bacteria would be more accurate. (But when a rhyme is
needed, it's OK to stretch definitions a bit, right?)
Scientific American reports that biologists at a university in
Ireland have found a bacteria "that can exist quite happily on a diet of
pure styrene oil -- the oil remnant of superheated Styrofoam -- and, in
the process, turn the environmental problem into a useful, biodegradable
plastic."
Sounds like a pretty useful little critter to me.
Businesses and residents in New York and California itching to
install solar panels on their roofs to cash in on new tax credits
and other subsidies being offered by those states would be wise to wait
a while, according to
this article
from Slate.com. The market is temporarily out of whack. A law passed in
Germany in 2004 offering a supersubsidy to those who install solar
panels has been so wildly popular that it has tripled the price of
polysilicon, the basic material in roof panels that converts photons
from the sun into electricity.
A bunch of new polysilicon plants are due to come on line in the next
couple years, which will bring the price for the material back down to a
normal level. In this case, as the Slate article concludes, "the worm
will go to the bird that waits."
Next up we have
an item from our Readers Send Us The Strangest Links
Department. This story, from a web site called Haaretz.com, is titled "Mashup
mania," and it involves, well, a new Internet mania called mashups.
So what's a mashup? The technical way to describe it would be
something along the lines of "a hybrid application that combines content
taken from more than one source." In layman's terms, it's an
(apparently) very simple and user-friendly way to create personalized
maps incorporating Google's or Yahoo's mapping systems.
Thus, people have created mashups that show a city's best sledding
venues; the most efficient ways to get from Point A to Point B on a
subway; apartments available for rent, segmented by location and price;
all the Chinese restaurants or pizzerias in a given area; and on and on.
The list is potentially infinite and is limited only by the creators'
imaginations.
The most interesting mashup I saw was the one that concludes the
story. It's called GarbageScout.com, and it's basically a way to
furnish one's home for free: It directs people to useful items abandoned
on sidewalks all over New York City. Furniture scavenging has gone
virtual.
Let's end the day with
a story from our Wacky America file, courtesy of
the Laramie [Wyo.] Boomerang. The headline: "Goats on garbage win
best of snow." The story has to do with a snow sculpting contest. I
dare you to click the link, read it, and try not to smile.
