I was able to work for five weeks of the summer of 2011 at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. This is the one place that all biologists should want to spend time, whatever the focus of their interests and research. Alas, too many don’t. I learned much that summer as MBL lived up […]
The Iran war exposed a potential weakness in the architecture of American sea power. Precision strike can threaten the forward bases that sustain expeditionary fleets while distributed weapons and sensors can contest maritime access without command of the sea. If Iran demonstrated the problem, China presents it a fortiori.
Since the Supreme Court's 2018 decision to overturn the federal ban on sports gambling, the response from punters has been beyond the wildest dreams of gambling companies.
Part the First: If You Stretch Biomedical Science Too Far It Breaks, Every Time. Gene editing using CRISPR technology has made possible great leaps in biomedical science, and Emanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna were rightly awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry for it in 2020. The prospects for CRISPR in therapy for tractable genetic diseases […]
For centuries, military innovation has pursued the objective of reducing the time between observation and action. But what happens when decision latency becomes so short that meaningful human cognition no longer participates in combat? This article argues that warfare is approaching a phase transition in which the traditional objective of faster decision-making gives way to a new engineering challenge: preserving stability and control within machine-speed autonomous military systems.
Let the legal battles begin. The developer behind California's largest data center is already suing, but not even the mighty Supreme Court is a match for Mother Nature.
Part the First: They Really Are Serious About Destroying American Science (but that has been clear from the beginning). The Wall Street Journal writes: White House to Direct Billions in Research Funds Toward AI, Away from Colleges (no archive). In a new report and memo released Tuesday, the White House Office of Science and Technology […]
Things have only gotten worse for the Ellison family tech and media empire (Oracle, Paramount, TikTok) as they face mounting legal and financial pressure on all fronts.
STAT News is an essential news source for all things Biomedicine (i.e., Big Medicine plus Big Pharma), from the delivery of health care in the clinic to the basic research that is the foundation of clinical care, to the unremittingly garish politics of the moment that affect the entire structure of science in America. The […]
Military secrecy is essential to national defense, but it carries an inherent institutional risk. This article introduces the concept of Secrecy Degeneration: the gradual transformation of classification systems from protecting military capabilities to protecting the institutions responsible for developing them.
Having destroyed Graham Platner's candidacy in Maine, the AIPAC-funded Democratic establishment has turned its full attentions to Michigan where it hopes to use Black voters to stop anti-war candidate Dr. Abdul El-Sayed.
Unions rightly criticize GOP policies but what do they have to say about their own failed leadership and that of the Democrats with which they have bound themselves.
Part the First: What the Longevity Bros Miss: The Office of Science and Society (OSS) at McGill University is one of the best newsletters of its kind and has provided much to think about today’s Coffee Break. In this first part, it is not too difficult to understand the desire to live long and prosper. […]
