Science

When members of one side of the political divide argue among themselves, it can be instructive for the general population. So it is with the debate now being engaged on the right about the HPV vaccine Gardasil and Texas Gov. Rick Perry's executive order that required all Texas girls to receive it before entering sixth grade. There is a developing consensus among conservatives (it seems to me) that:

Cool:

This is certainly a welcome switch:

The White House announced Friday that it is shelving a major planned Environmental Protection Agency regulation that would have tightened smog standards, dealing a huge blow to environmentalists that had pushed the Obama administration to resist industry pressure to abandon the regulation.

The Indianapolis Colts are giving us a false sense of hope by taking Peyton Manning off hte "physically unable to play" list:

Manning himself puts little importance on his current consecutive played games streak. He wants to play, and play at a high level. 

So, the media hyped the hell out of Hurricane Irene, and then the whole thing sort of fizzled:

The media and the United States federal government [are] trying to live up to their own doom-laden warnings and predictions while a sizeable number of ordinary Americans just carried on as normal and even made gentle fun of all the fuss.

Only Monday and we already have two strong contenders for most preposterous argument of the week. First is this case being made here for the addition of a new civil right -- and, no, it's not from The Onion but From The New York Times:

A more radical solution may be needed: why not offer legal protections to the ugly, as we do with racial, ethnic and religious minorities, women and handicapped individuals?

Well, this is better than using them to line birdcases or wrap fishes:

The Internet is delivering a slow death to newspapers, but many of us still have piles of the stuff around the house that a microbe called TU-103 will convert to butanol, a biofuel that is nearly as energy dense as unleaded gasoline.

With Steve Jobs' retirement announcement, a lot is being said about his tremendous successes. But he had a lot of spectacular failures, too, like the Apple I and Lisa. We could learn something by concentrating on those:

This is pretty cool. We're always being told how many species are being made extinct by our damn selfish human behavior. So it's nice to know there's another part of the story:

For centuries scientists have pondered a central question: How many species exist on Earth? Now, a group of researchers has offered an answer: 8.7 million.

The green future is here:

For the first time ever, more of the corn crop may go into gas tanks than into the stomachs of cattle and poultry destined for kitchen tables.