The Awesome Science of Chinonomics

You could say that parasites are evil creatures. They're selfish, manipulative, and insidious. When they infect a host, they hope they don't kill it while they live within (since killing the host would mean killing itself). In that sense, parasites are tangentially symbiotic with the living things they infect. They existentially need a propagator --a host to help them spread themselves as efficiently as possible. Parasites can even take reign of the infected being's behavior for their own benefit: Sneezing is the common cold virus' effective way to propagate itself. Cuddling is the way an infectious virus makes kids look for closeness, so the infection jumps easily to the next host. The Gordian worm manipulates the brain of an infected cricket into jumping into water in order for the worm to mate. We rarely stop to think about this, but interwoven ideas (Narratives) are parasitic, evil body-less "creatures" too. Like parasites, Narratives can't surviv...

Broadcast speech is a public good. Like air. You don't really see it, but it's there; permeating every aspect of your life. You silently feed off of it. You pollute it, and you mess it up for everyone else around you. You know it's dirty. You know it's toxic, and you try to avoid the malicious part of it, but it's always there, a nagging background noise that drones and drones incessantly, chipping away at your sanity. No one really wants to be in charge of keeping it clean, because it's next to impossible to do it. Yes, some high-level, clumsily written rules exist, but nothing that really prevents you or anyone else from spoiling it for everybody else. Oh, yes. The slippery slope argument. You can't contain free speech in any form because then you have to forbid all  speech under this magically simplistic view. And no one wants to live in an oppressive society, right? God forbid someone is forced to use some basic common sense to avoid mocking the...

Two days ago I was having a couple of drinks with some friends. Among the many topics over which we blew off steam, someone mentioned an article about clean energy on the NY Times by Robert Bryce stating that Gas is Greener . Since I am someone concerned with the state of the planet (we pay for wind energy , we recycle glass/paper/cans, we even use biodegradable diapers for our toddler) I was intrigued by that statement. I mean, I am open-minded. Al Gore could be all wrong and all the over-priced eco-friendly services and eco-friendly diapers we use could make no difference to improve the world we live in (although to be honest the current heat wave in the US is a nagging reminder that he might not be that crazy after all) or even worse: these so called eco-friendly energy sources could, the NYT article stated, be actually more harmful to the environment than the traditional non-eco-friendly ones. If you have not (or do not intend to) read the above mentio...