When sea science needed money, Navy loosened purse strings and discoveries followed!
These two statements are uncontroversial: the path of science is more or less determined by the educated curiosity of scientists; the funding of science is sometimes based on condition of usefulness. So, does usefulness affect science’s path? Sometimes it does, especially when the funder has skin in the game. Pharmaceutical...
The Bill and Melinda Gates divorce, wealth memes are just too funny to ignore
First, let’s get one thing out of the way: Memes aren’t supposed to be comfortable or nice. Hopefully they induce laughter, but they’re not above doing it at others’ expense. I get all that. And yet, I have got to say, all of these memes about Bill and Melinda Gates’...
Facebook under fire for allowing drug, beer ads that target children below 17
Teenagers on Facebook can be targeted by adverts endorsing alcohol, drugs, gambling, smoking and eating disorders, according to a report by a watchdog group. The Tech Transparency Project created six test adverts and submitted them to Facebook, saying it wanted to reach users aged 13 to 17. Facebook approved all...
People will die, but what is the tolerable ‘new normal’ in a post-Covid world?
On April 24, Perth in Western Australia entered a snap three-day lockdown when two people tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 – the first community infections recorded outside hotel quarantine in the state in more than a year. Pubs, gyms and playgrounds shut, remembrance-day services were cancelled and people were confined to...
US support for Covid vaccines patent waivers kicks off fierce resistance
In a historic move, the US government has announced that it supports waiving patent protections for Covid-19 vaccines, a measure aimed at boosting supplies so that people around the world can get the shots. “The extraordinary circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic call for extraordinary measures,” US trade representative Katherine Tai...
How South Africans who lost jobs since onset of Covid struggle to rebuild lives
Some 40 kilometres outside Cape Town, Leebah Bessick wipes sweat from her forehead as she digs a pitchfork into the earth at a neighbourhood community garden. It’s an unseasonably hot day at Blackheath Secondary School and even a shady corner of the garden offers Bessick and fellow gardeners little comfort...
Even in darkest realms of life, ‘Black and brown people are fetishes or body parts’
When Johnnie Keyes starred in Behind the Green Door, one of the first mainstream American adult films to feature a Black performer, he was credited merely as “African Stud.” It was 1972 and his co-performer Marilyn Chambers was a white woman, an influential casting decision that earned the film the...
The rich also cry: Couples make a killing as America’s ‘divorce industry’ booms
As Kenya and Africa in general experience a phenomenal rise in dissolution of marriages, divorce in the United States, Europe and other developed countries has transformed into a thriving industry from which couples are making a killing. The latest of such high-profile dissolution was announced on Monday this week when...
First genetically modified mosquitoes released into open air in Florida, US
After a decade of fighting for regulatory approval and public acceptance, a biotechnology firm has released genetically engineered mosquitoes into the open air in the United States for the first time. The experiment, launched this week in the Florida Keys – over the objections of some local critics – tests...
Press Freedom: Journalists take risks, put stories first before own health and safety
The European Federation of Journalists (EFJ) May 3 launched on a European survey on, World Press Freedom Day, as part of a wider campaign to push for a safer and healthier working environment for journalists. “The safety of journalists has been in the spotlight in recent years as a record...
