Figure 1 – The carbon cycle

Update: To read other articles in this series, click here.

Over the last few decades, scientists have learned a lot about how life interacts with the air, land, and sea. And in the process, they’ve made observations that have demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that the increasing carbon dioxide in the air is from people burning coal, petroleum, and natural gas.

So how did the scientists put together all the pieces to make a complete conclusion? They started with an understanding of how plants use carbon during photosynthesis. That knowledge showed that the increased carbon dioxide in the air was from plants. Then they formulated some guesses as to where that much plant-based carbon dioxide could come from and, by process of elimination and careful accounting, determined that the source was human consumption of fossil fuels. Full story »

Last October, country music star Hank WIlliams, Jr. made a remark about Obama and Hitler playing golf, touching off a controversy that saw ESPN end its relationship with Williams (who had been singing the Monday Night Football intro song for what seemed like 100 years). Williams reacted predictably:

After reading hundreds of e-mails, I have made MY decision,” he wrote. “By pulling my opening Oct 3rd, You (ESPN) stepped on the Toes of The First Amendment Freedom of Speech, so therefore Me, My Song, and All My Rowdy Friends are OUT OF HERE. It’s been a great run.

So, this was a Toes of The First Amendment Freedom of Speech issue, huh? [sigh] Williams’ fans and the semi-literate sports talk DJs who cater to them were as bad, if not worse. Full story »

We all know how conservatives hold up home schooling as an ideal. In addition, they value private, charter, and religious schools over public schools (unless, of course, they’re owned by corporations). None of this disguises a deep-seated distrust for edu-ma-cation.

On February 25, at Talking Points Memo, Evan McMorris-Santoro reported on Rick Santorum’s reaction (which he subsequently walked back somewhat ) at a campaign appearance to President Obama’s plan to make college more accessible.

“President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college,” Santorum said. “What a snob!” Full story »

by Anonymous

The situation is Chardon is all too familiar: a bullied outcast with a troubled home life snaps. If TJ Lane had broken in the usual manner, he might have committed suicide. But TJ snapped differently and took a gun to his tormenters. In an instant, any sympathy for his situation is gone and he’s just a thug, maybe a psycho, and the words “Columbine,” “Goth,” and “Dark Side” start getting thrown around.

Bullying has always been a fact of life in the US–now it’s commercialized and glorified as entertainment. A lot of people turn in to American Idol and other reality shows not for the great performances, but for the truly dreadful ones and the cruelty that follows. The losers tuck their tails between their legs, cry for the camera and their supporters and go home to face down the humiliation.

That’s what the victims of bullying are supposed to do: suck it up.

But victims fall into three categories: the A Victims, those who put up with it until they can get away from it; the B Victims, those who break and turn on themselves; and the C Victims, those who go all Carrie on the world. Full story »

I greatly enjoy dissecting the news and tearing it apart. Unfortunately, there is such a vast wealth of poorly presented news that it’s often like shooting fish in a barrel. I also enjoy shredding the statements of public and private officials. If the wealth of poor journalism is merely unfortunate, the dicta of officials is a treasure trove of calamitous proportions. Put the two together and we get not a gilded lily, but far too frequently a sugar-coated cyanide capsule.

My general rule of thumb is simply this, “first, doubt.” A healthy skepticism is necessary if we are to avoid being utterly and completely manipulated on every front by hired opinion brokers. If someone goes to the great trouble of presenting “information” (a description of the content which is debatable from the start, as it’s rather likely to be mere noise), especially if that someone has a budget to do it, it’s a safe bet there’s an agenda behind the presentation and a sincere desire to persuade the audience. Full story »

Yesterday the American Moustache Institute announced plans for the “Million Moustache March,” the objective of which is to encourage men to grow moustaches. It’s all about economics, they say.

According to AMI research, mustached Americans earn 4.3 percent more money than “clean-shaven Americans” on average per year. Therefore incentivising mustache growth would boost the economy.

It was a slow news day and this one got some play. Of course, the idea that you can grow the economy by growing a moustache is silly. And while the correlation between moustaches and earning power may well be genuine, it’s more likely coincidence than causality. No reasonable person really believes that not shaving will get them a 4% raise, or a job that pays more.

But over the last seventy years, the U.S. government has pushed the same silly idea, and the education industry has taken that argument and turned it into an insanely successful marketing ploy. Full story »

“I will be with you on your wedding-night.” – Frankenstein’s Monster

Well, it looks like Romney has caught up with Santorum in one way.

The website www.spreadingromney.com is working to introduce a new word into the language. Just as Santorum in now best known as the frothy fecal matter accompanying anal sex (or something like that), this group is now proposing the following definition:

romney (rom-ney) v.1. To defecate in terror.

One part of me hopes this doesn’t take (the part that predicted Romney would win the nomination. The other part doesn’t give a santorum.) It’s hard to feel sorry for Romney, even though we have a mutual friend who swears he’s a great guy and would make a great president, because he deserves some punishment for the deliberate distortions and outright fibs he’s told trying to cozy up to the Base. But today the AG of Ohio switched his endorsement from Romney to Santorum, which could be nothing or it could be the first rat running down the hawser. Full story »

I was originally going to respond to a thoughtful piece by Jane Briggs-Bunting here at Scholars & Rogues, “Is the media simply racist? Detroit News columnist hits the mark on Bashara murder coverage,” but the more I thought about the matter, the more I disagreed with her conclusion that columnist (actually editorial page editor) Nolan Finley’s piece “Finley: If life’s cheap, murder’s not news” is either poignant or accurate.

Somehow, I missed the sensational headlines about the Bashara murder since it happened, but then again, I don’t generally keep up with national news of local murders for pretty much that very reason…the sensational aspect. Full story »

I hope you made the time to read Wufnik’s post from Friday. Entitled “Surrounded by people ‘educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought,’” his analysis of our culture’s “active willingness to be deceived” represents one of the iconic moments in S&R’s history. If you didn’t see it yet, go read it now.

In addition to the questions the post explicitly addresses, it also raises other critical issues that deserve equally rigorous treatment. One point for further consideration, for instance, lies in his use of the word “educated.” I don’t think it’s terribly controversial to suggest that our society is, by a variety of metrics, more educated than perhaps any society in history. Those metrics would include factors like “number of people who attended college.” At the same time, we are significantly less educated if we pay more attention to factors like the much harder to quantify “capacity for critical thought.” Full story »

It’s easy to blame China for lots of stuff. Its absurd veto (along with Russia, someone else we can blame stuff on) of the recent Security Council Resolution over Syria. Its persistent devaluation of the renminbi to keep it cheap to the US dollar. The fact that it owns an extraordinary amount of US debt, and keeps buying more, giving it increased influence in US economic decision-making. Its constant and never-ending theft of other countries’ intellectual property. Its refusal to stop building coal power plants. Its somewhat slavish adoption of all things American except democracy. Its reluctance to bail out Saab. Its complete lack of anything like a good rock and roll band.

If you’re one of those people for whom any or all of the above casts a cloud over your ability to make it through the day, help is at hand. Your worst nightmares may soon be over. And all we had to do was sit back and let the Chinese embrace yet another Western cultural institution—the Business School. Full story »

Joe Paterno is dead. Lots has been written and more will be added to the pile in the coming days and weeks. So let me add my two cents while the thoughts are fresh in my mind.

Had the last few months not happened we’d now be anointing JoePa for sainthood. As you’ve been told so many times before, and are now hearing all over again, he was all that was good and true in collegiate athletics, a man who did things the right way, etc. The thing is, that’s a woefully simplistic commentary on Paterno and how he did business. Also, the last few months did happen. So we now find ourselves needing to address Paterno’s legacy in two parts. Let’s do the ugly bit first. Full story »

New trouble is brewing at Penn State, though the school is operating within the state’s Right to Know law. ABC News has reported that the five current and former Penn State employees enmeshed in the Sandusky abuse scandal are all still on the school’s payroll.

The five are fired football coach Joe Paterno, former president Graham Spanier (who remains a tenured faculty member, as does Paterno), assistant coach Mike McQueary (who is on paid leave), former vice president for finance Gary Schultz (who resigned), and former athletic director Tim Curley (who is also on leave). The latter two are facing criminal charges of perjury and failure to report alleged sexual abuse. Penn State is reportedly paying for their legal defense, as well. Full story »

In any functioning community there are three different levels of responsibility, namely legal, ethical, and moral. The least of these is our responsibilities as defined by local, state, and federal law. That former Penn State football coach Joe Paterno met this lowest of expectations is not in dispute – Sandusky’s prosecutors have explicitly stated that Paterno met the legal requirements of reporting child sexual abuse to his superiors at Penn State. But when the police were not notified, when Sandusky was not shut out of the athletic facilities, why did Paterno not rise to meet his ethical responsibility as an authority figure, or his moral responsibility to report the abuse to the police? I don’t know, and after Paterno’s interview, I’m not entirely sure that he knows either.

Regardless of Paterno’s reasons, it was his failure to meet his higher responsibilities that resulted in the Penn State Board of Trustees voting unanimously to fire Paterno as head coach of the Nittany Lions. The Trustees are charged with guaranteeing the reputation of the university, and as an alumnus (1995, BSEE), I applaud them for having the courage to fire a Penn State icon. Full story »

Today is a national holiday to celebrate the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the famed civil rights leader.

Government buildings are closed, the post office is closed, most K-12 schools are closed and many universities cancel classes for the day.

The idea behind the holiday was so people could focus on the good works of Dr. King.

Years ago, when I was a faculty member at Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan, students had protested the fact that campus remained open and classes, except for two hours midday, met, as usual. Top level administrators responding to student pressure decided to change the calendar and cancel classes. The only one objecting was then-Vice President Wilma Ray Bledsoe, the only African American (and, I believe, woman) on the cabinet at that time. Full story »

Paul Isom is looking for a new job today. He was the student media director at East Carolina University. Why was he canned?

On Nov. 8, the [student] newspaper published a full-frontal photo of a streaker who ran onto the field during that weekend’s home football game. The decision prompted outcry from some readers and from university administrators who said it was “in very poor taste.”

If this photo was so controversial and in “very poor taste,” why did the university require two months to decide to give Isom four hours to clean out his office and get outta Dodge?

No doubt lawyers were consulted. After the photo was published, the university’s vice chancellor for student affairs, Virginia Hardy, presaged what would come to pass:

We will be having conversations with those who were involved in this decision in an effort to make it a learning experience. The goal will be to further the students’ understanding that with the freedom of the press comes a certain level of responsibility about what is appropriate and effective in order to get their message across.

Learning experience my ass. The goal of the lesson being taught here is to warn student journalists and their advisers to not cross the university when it comes to maligning its image.
Full story »

Is “Higgs boson” a creative particle or energy field? Can we thus infer an “anti-God particle,” as anti-matter opposes matter, or dark energy battles gravity?

Any covenant with Godhead, in my book, comes down to Creation. Genesis, the source of time, space, and being; in short, existence. Especially our piddling existence. Without creation as we know it, we’d be deficient in mass, not even rocks; or with multiverse speculations, we could also be someone else, who knows where, gabbing with utter aliens. Because we esteem existence (over all the sorry alternatives), let us greet the New Year by honoring the force that could well have made something real out of, well, something not. The “God Particle.” Hallelujah!

If this particle is a particle. Full story »

by Hannah Frantz

So I was thinking the other day about the number of times I thought about buying a plane ticket home. I would say it probably happened once every 2 weeks or so. As I was thinking about each of those instances I realized how happy I am that I didn’t actually follow through. I’m down to only 5 days left in Rwanda until I board a plane home, and for the first time, I can’t actually believe I’m going back. It seems really surreal.

There have been a lot of really rough times on this trip. The memorials were really emotionally trying, but on the flip side they’re what brought our group together because we were able to help each other through it. The homestay was not an easy adjustment either, but it was probably one of the best learning experiences I’ve even had. Being stared at no matter where I went and knowing that everyone perceived me as a foreigner was really trying. But now I know what it’s like to be an outsider and how to cope with that.

I feel like I’ve changed a lot on this trip, no matter how generic that sounds. Full story »

by Melissa Wood

Tilikum, a massive 22.5-foot-long orca whale living in captivity at Sea World Orlando, has been involved in three fatal incidents. The most notorious of these, the death of 40-year-old trainer Dawn Brancheau, occurred on Feb. 24, 2010.

Brancheau’s death garnered copious amounts of media attention and sparked numerous debates about the humanity of keeping killer whales captive.

Humans began capturing and putting orcas on display in the 1960s. In 1985 a female named Kalina became the first captive-born orca to survive more than a few days.

Tilikum, captured at the age of 2, off the coast of Iceland, has been living in captivity since November 1983. But since Brancheau’s death, Tilikum has been kept in almost total isolation from the other killer whales captive at Sea World Orlando, according to its representatives.
Full story »

Props, yo. (And thanks to Wendy Redal for passing it along….)