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Is a Fact Not a Fact If You Disagree With It? Or If Its Existence Inconveniences You? What’s with all this denial of facts? Why deny there is dangerous climate change going on? Why deny that the vast human population is influencing climate? Why deny that evolution has been the dominant force of change in living organisms? Why deny that species are going extinct under human assault? Why deny that we are over-fishing the oceans? Why deny … well you get the drift. Once “ facts ” are established, then proven and re-proven and confirmed and re-confirmed, the “ ” s go away, and they are then just facts . But the denying just keeps on going. And the simple fact is that nearly all of this kind of denying comes from the right side of the political spectrum. As if your political position should have any effect on facts. Is there something inherent about “conservative” thinking that makes denial a central tenet? It’s often difficult to see what the connection is be

What, ME Libertarian? Want to see a powerful piece on "The War on Drugs?" Dennis McCuistion's Public TV Talker puts this " war's " feet to the fire. As much as I lean more Liberal than Libertarian, I found myself saying a few amens to this session. Criticizing the WOD is a political hot potato too scary for most elected types to even consider, but it is a massive boondoggle that deserves some serious revamping. (Great comment from an audience member: "There's no "War on Tobacco" and smoking is down from 65% to 21% of the American population. Drug use is up ." What's wrong with that picture? And later this week, the show tackles "Should Illegal Drugs Be Legal?" Whooee , baby. Those Libertarians are wild . [UPDATE: OK, here is the next show . Good stuff.]

No Delay in Getting Right I love CNBC for its energy, humor, expertise and credible reporters. I love Bloomberg TV for its straight-ahead, no-whooshes production plus expertise and credible reporters. I gave Fox Business News a chance, sampling it maybe 20 times since it went on, even with my great distaste for Fox News. So far, no love. Why I don't love it: It feels smarmy to me. (Maybe all those blonds?). "Happy Hour" is ridiculous - especially up against Fast Money on CNBC. And CNBC's Larry Kudlow is a better fiscal conservative than anybody on Fox. But wait! There's more I don't love. Yesterday afternoon, Cutesy Cavuto wanted some "expert" commentary on the bipartisan move in Congress ( The bill passed 291 to 127, with support from 64 House Republicans) to clamp down on predatory lending practices . Who did he get? Tom Delay no less, who promptly said it was Democrats trying to ruin a "great market system" that had put &quo

As Big as The Sun The exploding comet (!!) 17P/Holmes now has an atmosphere that is bigger than the sun. You can read all about it , including where it is in the sky, how you can find it and how you can watch it apparently eat a star. All exciting stuff if you have so much as a whit of astronomy in your soul. Even if you don't, CHECK THIS OUT. If you don't think this is animated, your brain works differently from mine. Let me know.

The First Trillionaire It's gotta happen. One of these days somebody - probably a Bahrainian you never heard of - will become the world's first trillionaire ( Wired Magazine says it will be Bill Gates). Imagine if whoever it is has Bill and Melinda Gates's charitable sensibilities! Let's see, a trillion is a thousand billions. A billion is a thousand millions. A million is a thousand thousands. So a trillion is a thousand thousand thousand thousands. That's a lot. It looks like we will spend even more than that on W's war. (I've been interested in how little Americans seem to realize how much a mere $billion is. Even our newscasters seem to phumpher around with the difference between a bil and a mil.) The best commentary I've seen on wasted trillions is in today's Christian Science Monitor (one of my favorite newspapers). Commentator Woody Tasch makes the fine suggestion "If Iraq is worth $1 trillion, let's allot just as much to ben