earth, today: photographed by suomi npp weather satellite, 27th january 2017.
next time you get a chance, don’t forget it might be your last.
image credit: noaa. selection&post: ageofdestruction
age27 janeiro 2017
Nearly 2/3 of military deaths in WWI were in battle. In previous conflicts, most deaths were due...
Nearly 2/3 of military deaths in WWI were in battle. In previous conflicts, most deaths were due to disease.
In light of the recent gag orders on US scientists...
Story time:
I’m a scientist and while I was in undergrad I had an 8 month work term in a laboratory and one time my mom came to pick me up to go home for holidays or whatever and I took her around the lab to see what I was doing and to let her meet my supervisor, who we both love to this day.
The next year I was in a different lab working on a project for my degree and again, mom was coming up and I wanted to show her the lab. I asked my new supervisor for permission because well, its a lab, there are lab and sciency things happening and mom wanted to see the multi-million dollar electron microscopes I was using. You try to restrict people that don’t know what they are doing from the environment because there are many dangers, chemicals, machines, expensive equipment etc plus it’s just polite. I made sure to tell him she wouldn’t touch anything
Well he said something to me that I always think about and that I think is relevant. He said (or or less):
“I’m paid by tax payers, this research is mostly tax payer funded. Of course you can bring you mom in because she pays taxes and should know what she pays for.” For him it wasn’t even a question of if I was allowed to, it was silly, it was of course she can come and see the lab!
Now that does not mean just anyone can or should be able to walk in and take a look around. It’s a dangerous environment if you don’t know what you are doing and obviously I was there to ensure she didn’t touch anything.
But the message stuck with me during all my research, which has been mostly tax payer funded (government funding for stipend and grants and PI’s paid from government funded unis, etc).
The tax payers pay for (a lot of) scientific research. They should be allowed to know what is going on and (figuratively) see into the work spaces they are paying for. That supervisor also said that the more the tax payers understand about research the more they will want to fund it and the better society will be.
When someone is trying to block the results or data that the tax payers pay for, that is not good. It’s blocking transparently into what the government is doing with your money. The money you pay in taxes. It also makes it easy for them to defund important research because if the ‘common people’ aka tax payers can’t see where that money is going they won’t support it which in turn allows the government to feel it can get away with reducing funding to researchers.
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Tagging some people in the hopes they could boost this, because I feel it is an important message:
@nanofishology, @entoderek, @thebrainscoop, @ehmeegee, @squidscientistas, @wilwheaton
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Apollo 1 Crew Honored
January 27th 1945: Liberation of AuschwitzOn this day in 1945,...
January 27th 1945: Liberation of Auschwitz
On this day in 1945, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland was liberated by the Soviet Red Army. One of the most notorious camps of Nazi Germany, Jews and others persecuted by the Nazi regime were sent to Auschwitz from 1940 onwards. During its years in operation, over one million people died in Auschwitz, either from murder in the gas chambers or due to starvation and disease. As the war drew to a close and the Nazis steadily lost ground to the Allied forces, they began evacuating the camps and destroying evidence of the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed there. The leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, ordered the evacuation of the remaining prisoners at the camp as the Soviet Red Army closed in on the area. Nearly 60,000 prisoners from Auschwitz were forced on a march toward Wodzisław Śląski (Loslau) where they would be sent to other camps; some 20,000 ended up in the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany. However, thousands died during the evacuation on the grueling marches, leading to them being called ‘death marches’. 7,500 weak and sick prisoners remained in Auschwitz, and they were liberated by the 322nd Rifle Division of the Soviet Red Army on January 27th 1945. Auschwitz remains one of the most powerful symbols of the Holocaust and the horrific crimes committed by the Nazi regime against Jews and numerous other groups.
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