Taken from slightly left of center in the theater of the Hayden Planetarium. Click image for more info
Anti-science propaganda has found a home on the Right. But no one is immune to conspiracy claims, especially when it's their worst fears that are being exploited. The anti-vaccine racket is just such a denizen, one that does not lay neatly across the traditional ideological axis. Progressive leaning victims may tend to suspect Big Pharma whereas conservative leaning ones may be more likely to blame the government. But politically, it's an equal opportunity deal. This wouldn't be the first time it has claimed someone we
like and admire:
Anti-vaccination is contagious. It’s a giant case of the Panic Virus. As social creatures, we still learn a lot from our friends. I know a lot of our personal family choices were based on observing what our friends did and how it worked out for them. Mayim [Bialik] decided to investigate Attachment Parenting when she saw her friends doing it, and I’m willing to bet she started to hesitate about vaccines based on the opinions of her friends, too.
Stay tuned. I'll have an essay on the anti-vaccine phenomenon and some of the pseudoscience behind it tomorrow on Sunday Kos.
- Sunday Sunday Sunday, tomorrow, one day only! ... Of course it has to be on that network:
More than 30 years since the original series, Cosmos will once again find its way into people’s homes, this time led by Neil deGrasse Tyson. The new series—called Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey—premieres this Sunday, March 9, at 9:00pm ET/PT on FOX.
- It's always nice to see religious beliefs about nature coming down on the side of working class patients and common sense when it comes to the failed War on Some Drugstm.
- There was a time, not that long ago, when it was unknown if there was a single planet orbiting a star outside of our own solar system. We now know many stars have planets, billions in our galaxy alone, that there are planets wondering loose untethered to a star, and that even exotic objects like supernova remnants and brown dwarfs probably have them. And the most common stars in the universe, modest red and yellow dwarfs, are teeming with new worlds:
The research also suggests that habitable-zone super-Earth planets, where liquid water could exist and therefore make them possible candidates to support life, orbit around at least a quarter of the red dwarfs in the Sun’s own neighborhood.