You should absolutely refuse such a request because if a UK minister is telling you to focus on "defense" they are clearly a foreign spy. The english word is defence.

Yes it is only once or twice a year but it's not something I'd be willing to give up so it's an important once or twice a year and it's the main reason I'd not replace the vehicle we use for such trips with an EV at the moment. Even a fast charger takes 30-60 minutes to charge you vehicle which will reduce your driving time by 1-2 hours assuming ~2 rechargers/day unless you are willing to run it down to almost zero and have a town with a charger in exactly the right location.

I'm sure the technology will improve - it's already come on by leaps and bounds in terms of charging speed from a few years ago - but until it does long distance road trips in an EV are much more hassle than in a ICE.

No, billionaires should not have any increased say over elections and laws due to their wealth than any other person. However, they should still be allowed the same voice as everyone else in supporting or opposing ideas although in practice holding them to that is going to be extremely hard to do.

The no-EDI directive already went out at few months ago. I know because I work outside the US but in an US-led collaboration and our US collaborators have had to shutdown participation in any and all DEI initiatives. However, if you read further down the article you will see the following:

This cut is much, much more than the funding spent on DEI and will basically mean that the NSF has to slash lots of major research projects. I'm not tied into the US system enough to know what this will mean in practice but in my own field of particle physics I suspect we are going to see one or more major US-led collaborations terminated and US involvement in others stopped or heavily reduced.

This isn't the pendulum swinging the other way, it's someone cutting the pendulum's cord.

Ok, so let's just assume for the sake of argument that your assertion is correct. How you would fix that? The obvious approach is to revamp the grant selection process and/or provide better guidlelines and criteria for studies you want to fund. The NSF had a less and 50% success rate for grants before the cuts so it is not like they had more money that applications and just had to fund whatever came along, if they really are funding "idiotic" studies it is because they are selecting the wrong studies to fund.

Taking a slash and burn approach to major science funding agencies budgets while simultaneously providing no guidance or instructions about what studies you want to fund is not going to fix the problem you claim exists. All it will do is decimate science across the US, culling both the research you like and that you do not equally because you have done nothing to change the selection process only reduce the level of funding.

That being said it is going to be great for those of us outside the US because now all the best students are going to be looking elsewhere to do research. However, overall we will not be able to fill the funding gap left by the US which means that some future excellent researchers and research projects are going to fall through the cracks and that's bad for science in general but terrible for science in the US. This is brexit-level stupidity and the consequences will last at least as long.

If you actually mean maize then I'd agree because the US select varieties for human consumption rather than for use as animal feed which is what most other places us it for. In the rest of the world corn is a generic term for cereal crops like wheat, barley etc. and the US varieties of those are different to Europe and so much less popular there.

I have a browser plugin that removes it so I don't have to remember to ignore it.

The solar system consists of multiple objects each with velocities that differ enough to make the question about which part of the solar system the object's speed is measured relative to important. Logically it would make the most sense to quote the speed relative to the Sun but since I'm guessing the speed measurement was done from Earth it may be relative to us. The difference in velocity between the Earth and Sun is sufficient that it makes a big difference.

For a car it's pretty obvious that the speed is relative to the local surface of the Earth - it's both the most relevant number and the one that is easiest to measure. Here the easiest to measure number (reltive to Earth) is not the most relevant (relative to the Sun).

You are completely missing the point. Apolitical is not "both-sideism" it's "not-taking-a-sideism". Trump's policies ignore scientific fact and his budget is slashing science research funding that will cause the US to lose its scientific lead. There is plenty there to criticise scientifically i.e. using rational, reasoned arguments based on evidence without any need to take a political stance.

Just because Trump is destroying all the social, legal and ethical norms does not mean that everyone else has to join in.

Would it? I'm not sure I could tell you the political affiliations of the supreme court justices in either the UK or Canada.

Well I'm trying to warn you about the problems of politicizing science and clearly my karma is paying the price but that's a price worth paying.

That depends very much on the planned use for an EV. Where I live in Canada we get no rebate at all and when we were looking at a new car a few years ago for run-about-town use we thought about getting an EV...at least until we saw the price after which we went ICE. Had there been a rebate to bring the EV price down to the point where the reduced fuel costs would have made it a worthwhile investment we'd have probably got an EV. Charging infrastructure was irrelevant to that decision because we only planned to use it around town and park it at home every night where it could be recharged..

Given how slow EVs are to recharge I suspect most people use EVs that way. The last thing I want to be doing is planning 0.5-1 hour stops every day when driving just to charge the EV even if there are plenty of fast chargers in every town. Until chargers are fast enough to be comparable to the 5 mins it tkes to fill a petrol tank or battery capacities increase so that you can drive all day and then charge overnight at your hotel EV adoption is going to be hampered for long distance use.

No, it's not scientific to choose politicians instead of pointing out the conqsequences of their chosen policies and then letting voters decide whom to vote for. We should be striving to keep science as apolitical as possible so that people on any part of the political spectrum can trust what scientists say and know that it comes from science and not politics. It's inevtiable that some politics will creep in because we have to get funding for our research but inviting politics in through the front door by endorisng a candidate like this was just stupid.

It's the same reason why in most countries (yes, I know not the US) judges have to remain politically neutral in public - if we knew the political persuasion of judges and they then make a legal decision in favour of a political party's position it immediately looks like they made the decision for political instead of legal reasons. Just look at the US supreme court - when the democrats controlled it republicans railed against its "political activism" and now the reublicans control it democrats are railing against it's political decisions. They are both right which is why having a court that makes what look like clearly political, instead of legal, decisions should be intolerable to all Americans, regardless of their political party.

Actually one of my problems with the article is that it completely fails to mention what the quoted speed is relative to. I'm guessing it is relative to the sun and not the Earth but since the Earth's orbital velocity is almost 30 km/s (well over 100,000 km/h) relative to the Sun it actually makes a significant difference whether the speed is relative to Earth or the Sun.

That's the problem with old laws in the UK. Some of them have become ridiculously lenient, like ones imposing financial penalties that a centuriy and a half of inflation has rendered largely meaningless. However, some others allowed exceptionally harsh penalties - specifically the death penalty - to remain at least a theoretical punishment for crimes like piracy, treason and some military offences until 30 years after the death penalty was "abolished".

Fortunately, with them being old laws piracy was defined as the sort involving ships not computer games.