Save the… tigers!

Via Sepia Mutiny comes the sobering reminder that we as humans have an enormous impact (often negative) on the world we live in. Just a little over a century ago, there were 100,000 tigers in the wild; today, that number is less than 5000. SM points to an article in Time Asia which details the plight of the tiger in India. What’s most unfortunate is the point mentioned in the artcile and explained further in one of the comments to the article here: namely, that the tiger population is reaching a point (if it hasn’t blown past it already) where the population is too small to support long term health and proper evolution of the species… *sigh*. If you have ideas on ways that bloggers can make a difference, I’d recommend posting in the comments to the diary at Sepia Mutiny.

The Republican war on science

There’s a fantastic entry over at DailyKos today that talks about the current administration’s political interference in science. Rep. Brad Miller (D-North Carolina) recently tried to introduce an amendment to curb the tide of the Republican war on science by codifying the existence of the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which was rejected last week. As the author of the post says:

…blind pursuit of an ideological agenda at the expense of reality leads, sooner or later, to catastrophe: The science and technical information produced by these tax supported agencies includes research and data that bears a direct relation on public health and safety. The potential end result of repressing or censoring objective analysis aiding in any policy decision where facts count can be profoundly tragic.

Well worth the read.