Long Game

The term, "war on cancer" wasn't coined in the 1970s but dates back at least to the early 1900s. Somewhat ironically, a series of promotional cards packaged with cigarettes in the 1930s included a card that explained how the latest cutting edge technology could help win the "War on Cancer."

Karl Schroeder, science fiction author of the novel Permanence, writes about the Fermi Paradox. The Fermi Paradox says that if there is an infinite universe there must be an infinite number of civilizations at advance stages that would emit evidence of their presence, but as far as we see in any direction, there are none. The skies should be full of aliens, but are not. Why not?

"There are periods when the international system undergoes radical shifts in a short time. The last such period was 1989-1991. During that time, the Soviet empire collapsed. The Japanese economic miracle ended. The Maastricht Treaty creating contemporary Europe was signed. Tiananmen Square defined China as a market economy dominated by an unchallenged Communist Party, and so on. Fundamental components of the international system shifted radically, changing the rules for the next 20 years. We are in a similar cycle, one that began in 2008 and is still playing out."

This month marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the discovery of Mitochondrial Eve, the common ancestor of every human alive today. Here's everything you need to know about why the mother of humanity is so important.

People are starting to notice the great divide. The tea party sees the aloofness in a political elite that thinks it knows best and orders the rest of America to fall in line. The Occupy movement sees it in an economic elite that lives in mansions and flies on private jets. Each is right about an aspect of the problem, but that problem is more pervasive than either political or economic inequality. What we now face is a problem of cultural inequality.

The Wall Street Journal has published one of the most offensive, untruthful, twisted reviews of what scientists think of climate change; the WSJ Lies about the facts and twists the story to accommodate the needs of head-in-the-sand industrialists and 1%ers; The most compelling part of their argument, according to them, is that the editorial has been signed by 16 scientists.

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board has long been understood to be not only antagonistic to the facts of climate science, but hostile. But in a remarkable example of their unabashed bias, on Friday they published an opinion piece that not only repeats many of the flawed and misleading arguments about climate science, but purports to be of special significance because it was signed by 16 "scientists."

In this annual report on Mexico's drug cartels, we assess the most significant developments of 2011 and provide updated profiles of the country's powerful criminal cartels as well as a forecast for 2012. The report is a product of the coverage we maintain through our Mexico Security Memo, quarterly updates and other analyses we produce throughout the year.

The first list is the membership of Edison's MPPC cross-licensing trust group: Biograph, American Vitagraph Company, Selig Polyscope Company, Lubin, American Star Films, American Pathe Pictures, Essanay Studios, and Kalem Company. Those companies ruled the motion picture world 100 years ago. How many of them exist now? How many of their names even ring a bell except in some antique, ghostly corner of our brains? Now here's a list of the "pirate" film companies that were formed by the "outlaws" who fled to California to escape the legal constraints of Thomas Edison back in the eastern U.S.: 20th Century-Fox, Paramount Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Universal Studios (successor company to Laemmle's IMP) and Warner Bros.

"5 Myths About the Chinese Communist Party" - an interesting look at some assumptions that Westerners tend to make, and how they are classically wrong (like so many things we take a magnifying glass to).

We spend a lot of time thinking about futurism, but the past is pretty interesting, too. In this week's "Ask a Physicist" we get extra speculative and think about what things may have been like before the beginning of time. What was there before the Big Bang? Did anything exist before our current universe? Here's what we know.

"What kinds of developmental thresholds would any planet of sentient beings pass through? The creation of writing would be a huge one. The unleashing of cheap non-biological energy is another. The invention of the scientific method is a giant leap. And the fine control of energy (as in electricity) for long-distant communications is significant as well, enabling all kinds of other achievements. Our civilization has passed through all these stages; what are some future transitions we can expect -- no matter the fashions and fads of the day? What are the emergent thresholds of information and energy organization that our civilization can look forward to? Most of these thresholds are gradual, so we can't assign dates, but each of these structures seem to be a natural transition that any civilization must reach sooner or later."

As Russia and the United States prepare for their respective presidential elections, tensions between the countries are growing. The central point of contention is U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) plans. Russia has several levers, including its ability to cut off supply lines to the NATO-led war effort in Afghanistan, to use in the standoff over BMD, but the United States could retaliate by supporting the current protests in Russia. Moscow is willing to escalate tensions with Washington but will not push the crisis to the point where relations could formally break.

The Tennessee Tea Party demands that textbooks remove references to the Founding Fathers' slave ownership and violence against Native Americans. 2012-31-01 - Video Clip | Comedy Central

"...the central concern of the Anti Kitten-Burning Coalition is not a defense of kittens, but an accusation against most other people. They are not driven by their opposition to kitten-burning, but by their opposition to a make-believe faction of other people whom they imagine favor kitten-burning. That this vast bloc of pro kitten-burning people cannot be found and does not exist does nothing to dampen their enthusiastic campaign against these supposed monstrously cruel others. It is a delusion, but the AKBC enjoys this delusion." Thanks to Allen Cook for the pointer.

"The human body harbors at least 10 times more bacterial cells than human cells. Collectively known as the microbiome, this community may play a role in regulating one's risk of obesity, asthma and allergies. Now some researchers are wondering if the microbiome may have a part in an even more crucial process: mate selection and, ultimately, evolution."

Rand regarded "reason" as the supreme virtue: "I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism," she wrote; "and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows."

Rand places enormous stress on individual conscious reasoning. "Reason" is her chief moral virtue and is considered a necessity to man's survival. Not surprising, Rand regarded "reason" as particularly important in ethics. Rand regarded any attempt to derive ethical behavior from intuition or gut feelings or emotion as mere "whim worship," which she denounced in fierce, vigorous language.

The idea of Germany having an independent national strategy runs counter to everything that Germany has wanted to be since World War II and everything the world has wanted from Germany. In a way, the entire structure of modern Europe was created to take advantage of Germany's economic dynamism while avoiding the threat of German domination.

1848 in Europe was the year that wasn't. In the spring and summer of that year, bourgeois intellectuals and working-class radicals staged upheavals from France to the Balkans, shaking ancient regimes and vowing to create new liberal democratic orders. The Arab Spring has periodically been compared to the stirrings of 1848. But with the exception of the toppling of the Orleans monarchy in France, the 1848 revolutions ultimately failed. Dynastic governments reasserted themselves. They did so for a reason that has troubling implications for the Middle East: Conservative regimes in mid-19th century Europe had not only the institutional advantage over their liberal and socialist adversaries but also the moral advantage.