5 simple chemistry facts that everyone should understand before talking about science

The Logic of Science

One of the most ludicrous things about the anti-science movement is the enormous number of arguments that are based on a lack of knowledge about high school level chemistry. These chemistry facts are so elementary and fundamental to science that the anti-scientists’ positions can only be described as willful ignorance, and these arguments once again demonstrate that despite all of the claims of being “informed free-thinkers,” anti-scientists are nothing more than uninformed (or misinformed) science deniers. Therefore, in this post I am going to explain five rudimentary facts about chemistry that you must grasp before you are even remotely qualified to make an informed decision about medicines, vaccines, food, etc.

1). Everything is made of chemicals

This seems like a simple concept, but many people seem to struggle greatly with it, so let’s get this straight: all matter is made of chemicals (excluding subatomic particles). You consist entirely of chemicals…

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Does doing difference deny dominance? (vocal fry, sports sex testing, and resting bitch face edition)

Family Inequality

Does women’s behavior make them less equal?

“Guess what,” Camille Paglia said the other day in Salon. “Women are different than men!”

Usually when people point out gender differences, they don’t just mean men and women are different, they mean “women are different from men.” As an archetypal example, in “Do women really want equality?” Kay Hymowitz argued that women don’t want to model their professional lives on male standards, and therefore they don’t really want equality:

This hints at the problem with the equality-by-the-numbers approach: it presumes women want absolute parity in all things measurable, and that the average woman wants to work as many hours as the average man, that they want to be CEOs, heads of state, surgeons and Cabinet heads just as much as men do.

So the male professional standard is just there, and the question is what women will do if they want equality. Of course, what women (and men) want is a product…

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Simple Solutions to Complex Problems

The Blog of David Mark Keirsey

Is not a good idea.

So says her, and she should know:  she has done the research.

It’s complicated, and there are no panaceas.

Real Complex.  It’s hard work.

Politicians, Lawyers, Journalists, and the Public at large love simple explanations and simple solutions: let the Government or the Market solve it.

Simple Solutions for Complex Problems: NOT A GOOD IDEA.  Many Simple Solutions are Fast Ideas.

Rather it’s communication: both cooperative and competitive.

Her ideas are slow ideas: complicated. And the world took awhile to recognize them.  She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics three years before her death.

“Lin Ostrom cautioned against single governmental units at global level to solve the collective action problem of coordinating work against environmental destruction. Partly, this is due to their complexity, and partly to the diversity of actors involved. Her proposal was that of a polycentric approach, where key management…

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Homage to World

The Blog of David Mark Keirsey

Go Ask Alice,
When she is ten feet tall
And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you are going to fall.

Tell them a hookah-smoking, caterpillar
Has given you a call
Call Alice
when she is small.

She came into my focus, late: when I was 29 years old.

I really didn’t see her clearly when I was young.  She was Pollyanna to me.  The Energizer Bunny personified.  My Gaia.

From the beginning, she would read to me what I was interested in. I learned to read by listening to her.  Not fairy tales, not silly stories, but from the natural world: she read from Time Life: The World We Live In.

Time Life Book: The World We Live In

She had been there all along, the all encompassing foundation: at the start, there in the beginning, my World, my life.

She encouraged my passion…

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