Science and Politics
tqa | January 7, 2008
Today's Wall Street Journal has a page A1 article (and accompanying blog post) about John Edward's decision to invoke the Nataline Sarkisyan case in his campaign-trail discussions of health care. Sarkisyan, you may remember, was the 17-year-old California girl who died a few weeks ago, shortly after her family's insurance company turned down her doctors' request that they cover a liver transplant for her. The tone of the article is somewhat negative toward Edwards' decision, and not all of their criticism is entirely unfair.
Edwards, they claim, "has been bashing big health insurers in…
tqa | December 11, 2007
Last night, in Oslo, Al Gore delivered a simple, powerful message. It's a familiar message to anyone who has watched him speak since 2000, or watched his movie, or read his books. It's simply a call for nothing more or less than the need for all of us to accept responsibility for the effects of our actions:
So today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the…
tqa | December 10, 2007
Why - and when - do bridges fail? How and why does veterinary usage of some medications pose a risk to humans? How important is it to be absolutely certain that global warming is causing an increase in hurricane strength before taking action on the issue? How important is space exploration? How much money should we spend on science education? Do we need to re-examine the way the federal government handles its many science research agencies?
All of those questions - and many, many others that involve science - have the potential to shape the future of the United States for better or worse…
tqa | November 7, 2007
John Wilkins was browsing through the Convention on Biological Diversity's website, and decided to compile a listing of the countries that are not parties to the treaty. I replicated his experiment and came up with something similar. It's not a very long list:
Andorra (Wilkins missed that one)
Brunei
Iraq
Somalia
The Holy See
The United States of America
Most of those countries can be excused for not being parties to the Convention. Iraq and Somalia both have more pressing concerns (although it's worth noting that Afghanistan became a party to the Convention in 2002). Andorra has a long…
tqa | October 15, 2007
Apparently, Matt Nisbet didn't think that one poorly-reasoned critique of Gore's ability to communicate science was enough for the weekend, because he tossed out another a day later. You might recall that in his first critique, Nisbet claimed that Gore contributes to the partisan divide over climate change. His presentation of the issue is too alarmist, Matt claimed, which makes it easy for Republicans to dismiss the entire message. In this latest post, he claims that Gore has had "limited success" in getting the American public to be more aware of the problem because a lot of people have an…
tqa | September 17, 2007
In "The Republican War on Science" Chris Mooney referred to the Newt Gingrich-led Congress' decision to eliminate the Office of Technology Assessment as "a stunning act of self-lobotomy." If anything, he was lowballing the effects. For those of you who aren't familiar with this agency (and don't feel bad if you're not; it's been dead for 12 years), the OTA was a nonpartisan Congressional agency. It's job was to provide Congress with an objective analysis of the complex scientific and technical issues relevant to various issues that were relevant to measures under consideration.
Ostensibly…