TBC: Morning Musing 12.1.14

Well, post holiday weekend I have 2 things for your perusal.

First the bad news:

Next battle in the war on science

The war over science is heating up on Capitol Hill.

GOP House members have had little success reining in research agencies so far, but, emboldened by their growing majorities, they’re hoping for better luck next year. They plan to push proposals to cut funding for global warming and social science research, put strict new rules on the National Science Foundation’s grant-making process and overhaul how science informs policy making at the EPA.

At the same time, however, researchers and their advocates in the Democratic caucus are taking increasingly aggressive stances of their own: Rather than answer GOP objections one by one, or brush them off, they’re making a larger issue of what they see as heavy-handed interference based on ideology rather than methodology.

Jump!

The second is an eerie look at Chernobyl almost 30 years later:

Chernobyl’s eerie desolation revealed by camera mounted on drone

A camera mounted on a drone has revealed the eerie post-apocalyptic landscape of a town abandoned after the nuclear power station at Chernobyl exploded nearly three decades ago.

The British documentary maker Danny Cooke has travelled to Pripyat, just a few miles from the power plant, which was once home to 50,000 people. It was evacuated soon after the disaster on 26 April 1986 that killed 31 people and sent large quantities of radioactive particles into the atmosphere over the western part of the then Soviet Union and Europe as far as away Wales.

His video, Postcards from Pripyat, Chernobyl, marks the first time the area has been seen from the air. He shot the footage while working on a segment for US current affairs programme 60 Minutes on CBS, which was broadcast last week.

So how you doin’?  ðŸ˜€