America is a beautiful – and decidedly pluralistic – country. Our education system contains 12,546 locally controlled school districts. Charter schools have gained hundreds of thousands of students in recent years. Private school enrollments are up, and the classical school movement has exploded. Whether one favors traditional public schools or not, those of us… Continue reading Civics Needs Pluralism | RealClearEducation
JWST Spies a Giant Space Hamburger—and Maybe Planetary Origins, Too
I remember once going to a restaurant and, being pretty hungry, ordering the biggest burger on their menu. I grossly overestimated my appetite; what arrived at my table was a ridiculously huge slab of meat, almost impossible for me to finish. Still, it was a lot smaller than HH 30, a cosmic “hamburger” billions of… Continue reading JWST Spies a Giant Space Hamburger—and Maybe Planetary Origins, Too
The COVID-Era Smearing – and Resurrection – of Trump NIH Appointee Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
Above, “fringe epidemiologists” behind the Great Barrington Declaration: Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, and Jay Bhattacharya. The latter is now poised to run the National Institutes of Health, which sought to stifle him during the COVID pandemic. By Paul D. Thacker, RealClearInvestigationsMarch 4, 2025 Jay Bhattacharya was in pretty terrible shape five years ago. He was… Continue reading The COVID-Era Smearing – and Resurrection – of Trump NIH Appointee Dr. Jay Bhattacharya
The Physicist Working to Build Science-Literate AI
Physics dazzled Miles Cranmer from an early age. His grandfather, a physics professor at the University of Toronto, gave him books on the subject, and his parents took him to open houses at universities near their home in southern Ontario, Canada. The Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics was a favorite. “I remember someone talking about… Continue reading The Physicist Working to Build Science-Literate AI
DOGE’s Key Revelation: A Federal Budget Made Into a Maze Impervious to Reform
As Elon Musk and his tech team urge their fellow Americans to become “domestic auditors” to help rein in federal spending, people have been encouraged to use the Treasury Department’s usaspending.gov website to identify and track government finance. Your go-to source? Guess again, say experts. usaspending.gov But usaspending.gov is wrong on the biggest picture, RealClearInvestigations found. The total… Continue reading DOGE’s Key Revelation: A Federal Budget Made Into a Maze Impervious to Reform
Years After the Early Death of a Math Genius, Her Ideas Gain New Life
But using Mirzakhani’s limited formula, Monk and Anantharaman saw a way to prove a relatively large spectral gap. “It looked almost like a miracle,” Anantharaman said. “It’s still quite mysterious to me that it works so well.” What if she and Monk could sharpen Mirzakhani’s formula to count the more complicated geodesics, too? Perhaps they… Continue reading Years After the Early Death of a Math Genius, Her Ideas Gain New Life
Why Can’t the Pentagon’s Army of Budget Bean Counters Shoot Straight?
Above, the “Non-Violence” knotted gun on display at the U.N. and elsewhere. It could also serve as an apt symbol of the Pentagon’s impenetrably twisted bookkeeping. By Bob Ivry and Jeremy Portnoy, RealClearInvestigationsMarch 3, 2025 To crack down on Pentagon spending, the Defense Department adopted a program in 2015 to track spending on lodging and… Continue reading Why Can’t the Pentagon’s Army of Budget Bean Counters Shoot Straight?
Why Aren’t We Losing Our Minds Over the Plastic in Our Brains?
Our brains are full of plastic. This was the fun news I read earlier this week while picking up dinner take-out, packed in plastic containers, crammed in a plastic bag and accompanied by Styrofoam cups. Great, I thought, convenience culture is killing us. But is it? This is the problem with the slew of research… Continue reading Why Aren’t We Losing Our Minds Over the Plastic in Our Brains?
This Method of Cooking a Perfect Egg Sounds Absurd, But Scientists Swear Its Worth It
February 14, 2025 3 min read How Do You Cook a Perfect Egg? Scientists Have Figured It Out Materials scientists have found a way to perfectly cook an egg white and egg yolk simultaneously By Arminda Downey-Mavromatis edited by Andrea Thompson Hard-boiling, soft-boiling or using a trendy sous vide—no matter the approach, cooking a whole… Continue reading This Method of Cooking a Perfect Egg Sounds Absurd, But Scientists Swear Its Worth It
The ‘Elegant’ Math Model That Could Help Rescue Coral Reefs
Plasticity differs from evolution because it happens within an individual’s lifetime. Understanding a polyp’s adjustments can therefore help biologists grasp the limits of adaptation in an era of unprecedented change. How quickly does coral grow? How densely can polyps pack together? What shapes do colonies assume to adapt to different environments? What’s the minimum number… Continue reading The ‘Elegant’ Math Model That Could Help Rescue Coral Reefs