They don't seem to be related.
http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/p...

"the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"

But not taking action has consequences, too. Rather scary ones, in this case, I think one could argue. Maybe the responsible thing to do is to is to take a more deliberative role in how our species is altering the environment, rather than just allowing ourselves to continue to alter it according to maladapted systems and nonconscious collective behavior.

between articles submitted with the term "correlation" in the summary, and with comments taking the article to task for being wrong about correlation implying causation.

Nevermind that most of the articles make no such claim at all.

But is it causal? Hmm..

Reminds me of some other science paper which said that no machine can ever be conscious.

Perhaps they were right. I don't think anyone's ever proved humans are conscious either, except by defining it that way.

BMW... mainstream..?
Anway, tripling a small number is still a small number. Whether the numbers are small is impossible to judge from the summary.. or the article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...

To solve this, though, we don't need smart guns, we need smart gun owners.

Good luck with that. While your impractal solution fails to be implemented, the rest of us would prefer to have one in place that saves lives.

We can agree that the problem is people. That doesn't mean that the workable solution involves fixing those people.

Science education at the primary level has long emphasized the products of science, with little regard for the process. Science teachers are a product of this system as much as everyone else. Most of them just aren't equipped to draw a distinction between science and pseudoscience.

Mumbling something about falsifiability isn't going to fly without motivating it and showing evidence, whether or not they have internalized those concepts themselves. Holding them to higher standards won't help, as there aren't enough qualified individuals to go around, unless some sort of mass teaching approach becomes the norm, and it's hard to see that working well with kids.

This is not an educational problem. It's a cultural problem, and it needs a broader approch.

Nobod's suggesting we send colonists! Well, nobody serious.

We've sent a lot of probes to Mars in the last couple of decades, a number of which soft-landed. A mission to take astronaust to Martian orbit could be done in a few years, with proper funding. A more likely scenario is landing and getting back, that would take a couple of decades to plan and develop, but it isn't really that far fetched.

Pneumonic plague being transmitted by air isn't news. It's a form of the disease that gets into your lungs, after all. Also, the primary vector isn't rats at all, but fleas, which often go directly from person to person.

The article's credibility is not helped at all when it mentions the plague virus, when it is actually caused by a bacterium.

Ok, you can't send em back, and the gov't says they aren't legal here. Why not a third destination?

simple, just use the existing, tried 'n true APIs until the new ones are vetted. I hack on my brain all the time. All the sane kids are doing it!

Who watches the watchers watching the watchers watching the watchers?