We’re doomed

It is astonishing to me that the US, which owes a lot of its dominance in the world to the science and technology that it produces, has on its main policy-setting body, the House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, people who seem to be determined to undermine the very things that the nation depends upon. They may do this for a variety of reasons: venality because of the people who give them money, stupidity, or religious fanaticism but the end result is the same.
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Cell phone addiction

It is a stereotype of the current college generation that they are addicted to their cell phones. A couple of professors at Baylor University decided to ask students enrolled in their class to fill out an online survey about the amount of their cell-phone use in 24 different categories to see the degree of cell phone addiction and any gender differences, where an addiction was defined as “the repeated use of a substance despite the negative consequences suffered by the addicted individual”.
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Shift in the climate change zeitgeist

There has been long-standing opposition in the US to recognizing that anthropogenic climate change is a real phenomenon and needs to be taken seriously, with great efforts taken to discredit the research. The opponents have taken strength from the fact that religious ideas are strong in the US and a significant segment of the population are science skeptics and willing, even eager, to repudiate the conclusions and recommendations of the scientific community, even promoting cranks like Christopher Monckton, who was beautifully made fun of by an Australian TV show.
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When religious beliefs and medical needs collide

Judges have a difficult job. Author Ian McEwan has a long piece where he looks at cases in the UK where the law intersected with religious beliefs. He focuses on the decisions by one appeals court judge Sir Alan Ward who seems to be a remarkably humane and thoughtful judge and how he handled two cases where he had to go against the beliefs of families and the religious institutions they belonged to.
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The western allergy epidemic

In the US people have allergies to many things, the most common ones being pollen, dust mites, mold, wasps and bees, cats and dogs, industrial and household chemicals, and foods such as milk, nuts, and eggs. Growing up in Sri Lanka, I cannot remember anyone in my family or friends who had allergies, apart from a very few people who had asthma and thus had occasional breathing problems. No one seemed to have the need to avoid foods and plants, apart from varying degrees of lactose intolerance.
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What self-driving cars still cannot do

While I am enthusiastic about self-driving cars and its promise of increasing the mobility of those unable to drive as well as the possibility that such cars may be better drivers than humans, via Machines Like Us I came across this article by Lee Gomes says that we should not overestimate what they can currently do, because the road tests that they have done so far that produced 700,000 miles of accident-free driving have been under very limited conditions. There is still a long way to go and some major technological hurdles to overcome.
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Lead and violent crime

While police forces around the country have been massively increasing the numbers and size and scope of their weaponry, in the process becoming quasi-military forces without the training that the military receives, violent crime (and teen pregnancies) has been steadily and quite dramatically declining over the last four decades. It would be a mistake to think that this negative correlation has a causal basis in that stronger policing has led to the decline because the decline has been nationwide and benefited areas that changed their policing as well as those that did not.
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Why return trips seem shorter

We have all felt it. The return trip from some place seems to be quicker that the outward trip, especially if you were going to a new place. I used to think that this was due to the fact that on the return trip we were now familiar with the route, which meant that we did not have to pay close attention to where we were going and that this somehow translated into the journey seeming to be shorter
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