Several important articles related to Mitt Romney's comment on the "47 percent who don't pay taxes."

Mitt Romney's '47 percent' includes real-life millionaires   Huffington Post
Who doesn't pay federal income taxes (legally)   NY Times
Are taxes high or low? A further look   NY Times

Amazingly, Kanzi the bonobo chimp, who can speak sign language and innovate new "words", has learned to make flint tools of multiple varieties to get at food hidden inside a log.  His creativity in tool making and use rivals our early hominid ancestors.

Bonobo genius makes stone tools like early humans did   New Scientist

Mathematician Peter Turchin is putting his genius to work in a novel new area: history.  By studying population sizes in relation to collective violence in empires, he's managing to predict periods of civil unrest.  He calls his new science cliodynamics, after Clio, the muse of history.

There is much to be wary of in this; history is not easily ( Read more... )

This landmark study links rise in greenhouse gases to ocean warming with "virtual certainty."

It also has a list of the top ten carbon-emitting countries.  The USA and China lead by a huge margin.

Human-induced ocean warming study addresses the 'dominant role' of people   HuffPost

And this one shows insane ice melt this week in Greenland.  Normally ( Read more... )

New studies suggests that von Economo neurons (VENs), which are involved in empathy and shared by humans, chimps, gorillas, dolphins, whales, giraffes, hippos, macaques, and perhaps all mammals, may be the cells that give rise to the experience of consciousness.  That's a big ol' thorny philosophical claim, but if true it could revolutionize our ( Read more... )

The emotion of disgust is turning out to be a major factor in our supposedly rational thinking.  Studies are showing those experiencing disgust are more likely to morally reject minority groups, and that our supposedly-rational moral judgments may be just ad hoc rationalizations for emotional moral reactions.

The following article is especially good ( Read more... )

Thankfully, no, they mustn't.  Harmony Rose, who made over 200 videos before leaving the industry recently, is now training as an EMT.  There has been controversy, including the consideration of firing Rose.  But fortunately:

"Of the over 500 comments that appear under the story on WDBJ's Facebook page, nearly all support Rose's continued work with ( Read more... )

Rhetoric of over-taxation seems to be just that - rhetoric.

Boy, are Americans not overtaxed   HuffPost

The problem with articles like these is they don't help the layperson understand how to tell climate change results from just randomly extreme weather patterns, leading to a public that blames every unseasonal freeze and heatwave on global warming, in reaction to which the climate change deniers become even more skeptical.

How global warming is ( Read more... )

Controversy over the talk surrounded the Higgs boson:

Is it blasphemous to describe science as magic?  Religion Dispatches
The magic of the Higgs boson particle   Religion Dispatches
Stop calling it the "God particle"!   i09
Scientists still chasing the Force, getting closer   Gizmodo