The Scientific Activist
Archives for June, 2008
A VP Candidate From the Heart of Texas?
Posted by Nick Anthis on June 26, 2008 When my girlfriend told me that Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi had suggested that Barack Obama choose Chet Edwards–my former (and George W. Bush’s current) congressman–as his running mate, I thought she was pulling my leg. But, she was serious, and–as usual–she was right. Here’s the video from Newsweek (although you can watch commercial-free…
I Don’t See You, So You Can’t See Me
Posted by Nick Anthis on June 25, 2008 Apparently, the Bush Administration has adopted a sophisticated new strategy for not dealing with global warming. From The New York Times: White House Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an…
Supreme Court to Address Navy Sonar Exercises
Posted by Nick Anthis on June 24, 2008 On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Winter v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a case regarding the Navy conducting sonar training exercises in the proximity of marine mammals–some of which are threatened or endangered species. A large body of evidence indicates that these sorts of sonar exercises–which generate extremely loud underwater sounds–damage the hearing…
Obama’s Support of Corn Ethanol Unlikely to Change
Posted by Nick Anthis on June 23, 2008 I’ve been pretty open here about my support of Barack Obama’s bid for the presidency, but one issue I certainly disagree with him on is his support of corn ethanol subsidies. Unfortunately, it looks like that this is one issue he’s unlikely to improve on, as The New York Times reports today that ties to…
The Future of the Internet
Posted by Nick Anthis on June 18, 2008 This evening, I was watching The Colbert Report–a show that, along with The Daily Show, I’ve been enjoying much more frequently lately since they began posting full (free and internationally-available) episodes online–and I stumbled across this interview from last night’s show with Jonathan Zittrain, a professor of internet law at Oxford:
A Shout-Out From CJR
Posted by Nick Anthis on June 9, 2008 Just a bit of self-promotion here, but on Friday I got a nice mention by Curtis Brainard in the Columbia Journalism Review blog The Kicker: Yesterday, The Scientific Activist blog (part of the ScienceBlogs.com community) carried a keen-eyed piece of media criticism, turning the rating scheme of The Washington Post’s “Fact Checker” blog back on…
Fact-Checking The Washington Post’s Claims About Its Role in Unearthing the 2006 NASA Censorship Scandal
Posted by Nick Anthis on June 5, 2008 A report by the NASA inspector general released earlier this week acknowledged that political appointees in the NASA press office censored climate scientists from 2004 to 2006. That would have been interesting news… about two years ago. Yawn. What caught my eye, though, were these claims in an article by The Washington Post’s Juliet Eilperin:…
More on the Levine Stem Cell Article
Posted by Nick Anthis on June 5, 2008 Yesterday, I blogged about a recent article correlating a nation’s research output related to human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) with its policies on hESC research. There was one particular source of uncertainty, though: As Levine points out, he didn’t actually count papers that published results on hESCs, but papers that cited the original hESC paper.…
Performance in Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research Correlates With National Policies
Posted by Nick Anthis on June 4, 2008 The conclusion stated in the title of this post may seem painfully obvious, but a new study published in Cell Stem Cell by Aaron Levine (assistant professor at Georgia Tech and author of Cloning: A Beginner’s Guide) backs it up with some hard data. To come to this conclusion, Levine compared a country’s output of…
With Nomination Secured, Obama Should Reevaluate Health Care Proposal
Posted by Nick Anthis on June 4, 2008 Last night was a historic night, with Barack Obama finally effectively clinching the Democratic nomination by surpassing the “magic number” of required delegates. Barring any last-minute fight over delegate rules from Hillary Clinton’s campaign (something that I think is not likely to happen), Barack Obama in the Democrats’ nominee. Of course, we knew from the…