(satire) *Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis reportedly cut the phone line outside a local nursing home Monday so no one inside could report any coronavirus data.*

*Secrecy has harmed UK government's response to Covid-19 crisis, says top scientist.*

University College London quietly renamed references to its former professors that supported the idea of eugenics.

What should we say about someone in the past who did important good things and important bad things? I think it depends on the relative importance of the good and the bad in the impact of that person's life.

Rutherford says that science refuted eugenics. Saini says that's false because science created eugenics — but that, if true, would not make Rutherford's claim false. It could be that science created eugenics and subsequently refuted eugenics.

But I think it is more valid to say that eugenics, as regards race, was pseudoscience created by racism.

To correct one error: sex-specific abortion is not a form of eugenics, because it does not alter (or aim to alter) the future gene pool. This is because sex is not a characteristic that can be altered by selection. Among humans, having a female parent does not make you more likely to be female, just as having a male parent does not make you more likely to be male.

It's otherwise for aphids: having a male parent increases an aphid's chance of being male. Indeed, aphids with solely a female parent are always female.

My views on sex-specific abortion.

British troops in Afghanistan are suspected of having murdered 15 civilians, and a court is demanding explanations.

So far this year, the world has shut down more coal power electric capacity than it has built.

We can't just count on the Invisible Hand to cancel new coal power plant construction, or the practice of burning coal. Paying for new coal plants is a waste of money, but those who build them will lobby governments to pay for their construction anyway. And they could even make a profit operating those plants, if they get a subsidy.