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Global contrapment, Rube Goldberg style

I had a crazy game called Mouse Trap when I was a kid. It involved an elaborate chain of mechanisms meant to trap a plastic mouse in a cage. When I read Chris Wood’s new Natural Security column I remembered that game — and shivered to imagine earth’s mechanisms as a game contraption, on a vast scale and speeding up. An excerpt of Wood’s column: Rube Goldberg is long dead, but the figurative machine to which he gave his name lives on. It’s that whimsical confection where a rolling marble tips a lever that sends a toy plane whizzing down

Do corporate funds trump publicly-funded science?

Researchers surprised even themselves when they set about measuring the impact of corporate versus public or government-funded research — and found that corporate funding had widespread benefits. They issued strong cautions: theirs is just one case study, more research is needed, oversight is crucial, and their findings don’t apply to product trials. But they do claim to have debunked a common assumption: that “corporate sponsorship turns leading universities into corporate vassals.” From my story today: A startling report seems to contradict the nostrum that government or non-profit-funded research is always more “useful” than corporate-funded research. A Comment  in the peer-reviewed

Putin’s playbook, Taiwan protests, and China’s ambition

Beijing claims to own Taiwan and its 23 million people, writes international affairs analyst Jonathan Manthorpe. Amid the student occupation of Taiwan’s parliament, it takes little imagination to construct a chain of events in which the students’ action cascades to a point where China’s leader, Xi Jinping, decides to emulate Russian President Vladmir Putin over Crimea — and press home China’s claim. Meanwhile the Western capitals, that profess to be driven by democratic impulses, have become disturbingly and dangerously inconsistent in their reactions to people power protests. An excerpt of Manthorpe’s new column:  At the moment, that is unlikely. But

Findings, Science. The Beginning of Everything we Know

Have scientists solved one of astronomy’s most elusive and enduring mysteries? Has an American team finally nailed the evidence to back the Big Bang ideas that scientists have discussed since Albert Einstein proposed them? Though it was suspected gravitational waves swept throughout the universe almost instantly after it began — in a mind-bogglingly rapid expansion, marking the birth of everything we think we know — nobody had found traces of those waves. Until now. The peer-reviewed science journal Nature reported today that an American team of researchers led by John Kovac, part of a project at the South Pole called

The pluck of one Irishman

Cheers to all on St. Patrick’s day. The Irish celebration has spread through much of the world alongside the popularity of Irish pubs. Today F&O‘s resident “Irishman” won’t be wearing green, and he certainly won’t hoist a green beer. (Dye in beer is sacrilege at the best of times.) In his new column for the Loose Leaf salon, The Pluck of the Irish: How a proud native cuts through the kitsch, Brian Brennan explains. An excerpt: Here’s what I will not do this St. Patrick’s Day: I will not call it St. Paddy’s Day or the 17th of Ireland. I

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