This week in science: Nature beautiful and fierce

Here's one of the biggest problems with YouTube in the view of many. Bill Nye the Science Guy posted a video that read in part:

And I say to the grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world, in your world that's completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that's fine, but don't make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and taxpayers for the future. We need people that can'we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.

Many of the the comments that followed were depressing to say the least. It's not just that it's sad, either, it's a bad trend when a technological society seriously flirts with the idea of tossing the most useful human discipline overboard in favor of narrow interpretations of metaphorical stories that appeal to one's individual vanity and collective ideology.

• Fake Science can be hilarious. Just for a reminder though, this is what real science looks like complete with cool pictures of transitional critters: how the turtle got its shell.
• Pretend President Mitt Romney toured damage from Hurricane Isaac, where I predict he will 1) find enormous flaws in the federal response to moderate storm damage, and 2) not mention that the Ryan-Romney pseudo-budget would gut help for storm victims or any other victims of conservatism'when they don't come to the attention of a near billionaire.
• Two worlds circling two stars that are circling each other.
• If the rate of Arctic sea ice melt keeps up, forget about records, we're going to need a bigger graph.