Policy
cevans | April 23, 2010
The North Korean government has made an operating system called "Red Star."
Despite the fact that very few North Koreans have a computer, let alone Internet access, Red Star is designed to provide a safe operating environment in line with North Korean political philosophy of "juche," or self-reliance (as well as, admittedly, monitor user activity).
The Red Star O.S. takes fifteen minutes to install, uses a popular Korean folk song as its start-up music and features a calendar which starts counting time from the birth of Kim Il-sung, making 2010 the year 99. Amazingly, it's Linux-based, with…
clock | April 18, 2010The Bride Of Coturnix and I are flying to NYC early tomorrow morning and leaving Thursday afternoon. While we set Monday and Thursday to be "for us", we are flexible if anyone wants to meet for coffee or lunch - just let me know and we can arrange something. We plan to meet with my brother late Monday night for dinner or drinks (depending how timely is his flight in) but we can meet earlier.
On Tuesday and Wednesday, we will attend the 140 Characters Conference organized by Jeff Pulver:
At #140conf NYC we will be taking a hard look at something Jeff Pulver calls "The State of NOW" and the…
gregladen | April 16, 2010Bachmann's health care claims falter
Bachmann has said the new health care act will unleash a wave of new federal funding for abortion ... contrary to Bachmann's claims, the law doesn't fundamentally change federal policy on abortion ...a Bachmann spokesman has backed off her prediction...
Tea Party rally cost taxpayers nearly $14k
...Bachmann solidified her place in the national spotlight ... when she gathered thousands of Tea Party activists in front of the U.S. Capitol for a "House Call on Washington," to stop the Democrats' health care bill..... Months later, official expense reports…
drorzel | April 16, 2010
YouTube - Real Word Problems From My Physics Book - PH17
Amazingly, this isn't the silliest problem I've seen in an intro physics book...
(tags: education physics science silly video youtube)
Twitter / @busynessgirl/Calcwars
Newton, Leibniz, meet Twitter. Twitter, Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz.
(tags: silly math science history internet)
Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 153202 (2010): Scattering in Mixed Dimensions with Ultracold Gases
"We experimentally investigate the mix-dimensional scattering occurring when the collisional partners live in different dimensions. We employ a binary mixture…
oracknows | April 15, 2010Although this blog is not the Denialism Blog, there is no doubt that one of the overarching themes of Respectful Insolence has been, since its very beginning, combatting science denial. Go back to the very beginning and read a couple of my earliest posts, dating way back to 2004. In one of them I discussed cancer cure testimonials and why they are almost never evidence of efficacy of a given alt-med therapy, a post that, in my ever-insolent opinion, holds up with anything I write today. In another one, I wondered how intelligent people could use alt-med, and in another one I discussed "…
bioephemera | April 12, 2010Wednesday night, Radiolab's "science cabaret" program, Awe-mageddon, kicks off at 7pm with its first live video webcast, hosted by Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich:
"AWE-MAGEDDON" will feature Radiolab's trademark mash-up of world-class scientists, artists, philosophers and generally interesting people sitting down with Jad and Robert to explore the interdisciplinary nature of big ideas. For the first time ever, a Radiolab event can be experienced by audiences around the globe via live video webcast, available at www.wnyc.org/thegreenespace.
Their guests will be Iain Couzin, assistant…
emjohnson | April 9, 2010With yesterday's announcement of the historic nuclear arms treaty signed by Russia and the United States (that would reduce existing stockpiles by as much as 30%) I thought I would repost my piece on Edward Teller's nuclear legacy from September, 2003 that was originally commissioned by The Nation magazine (though ultimately went unpublished). Also see my posts Intimidating the Soviets: A Hiroshima Anniversary Memorial and The Population Bomb, Nuclear Winter and the Role of Science in Public Advocacy. Yesterday's treaty is the first step in dismantling the nuclear policies that this would-…
nisbetmc | March 30, 2010Last month, Judith Curry had an important essay at Physics Today that deserves more attention than it has received.
Curry argues that unlike the industry-funded climate skeptic movement of the past, contemporary debate is driven by a new generation of blog-based "climate auditors" who merge their own professional expertise with online communication strategies to demand a greater level of transparency in climate science. Here's how Curry describes the movement:
So who are the climate auditors? They are technically educated people, mostly outside of academia. Several individuals have…
tqa | March 29, 2010
Next week, I'm going to be in the UK. My plans for the trip are centered on two things: the room I've booked in London for the week, and the 8-day rail pass I purchased a couple of months ago. This morning I hit the National Rail website to start figuring out exactly which trains I need to take to get to the destinations I've been planning to hit. After the third or fourth inquiry I ran, I began to notice a disturbing pattern: every train I might want to take had a little yellow exclamation point icon under "status". Clicking through to details brought up a notice that, "industrial action…
nisbetmc | March 24, 2010Not unexpectedly, the Slate article last week generated a range of reactions at blogs, on twitter, and in personal emails that I received. This topic is not going away and as I have more time over the coming weeks I will be returning to it.
Below is a brief run down of reactions.
Michael Zimmerman, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center on Humanities and the Arts at the University of Colorado, in an email posted with his permission:
The sharp Republican-Democrat polarization in climate and in much of the country in general demands efforts to "transcend the ideological divide,"…
hrynyshyn | March 23, 2010The Economist's reputation as the intellectual's news outlet of choice is probably undeserved -- its questionable choice of correspondents and lack of bylines, heavy editing and conservative politics undermine it's credibility in my book -- but because it's widely read in elite circles, it's hard to ignore. So the magazine's feature treatment of climate science is worth looking at. I am pleased to report that, while The Economist may be a straggler when it came to embracing the science, it is now fully on board.
In any complex scientific picture of the world there will be gaps,…
tfk | March 22, 2010Casey Luskin, Disco. DJ and legal eagle sparrow asks "When Is it Appropriate to Challenge the [scientific] 'Consensus'?"
Simple answer: When you can make a convincing scientific argument.
Casey disagrees, joining Jay Richards â Prodigal Son of the Disco. 'Tute â in arguing that:
we must carefully examine the scientific, sociological, rhetorical, and political dynamics of a debate to determine if the consensus deserves our assent, or our skepticism.
This actually combines several errors. First, one can be skeptical of something which deserves assent, and indeed to which one does assent.…
mikethemadbiologist | March 22, 2010Diane Ravitch, along with releasing her new book The Death and Life of the Great American School System, has been issuing a lot of mea culpas about her role in advocating for a lot 'accountability' educational reforms. When I first started reading this NY Times article, which signaled the beginning of the PR offensive, I had the same reaction Arthur Levine:
"She has done more than any one I can think of in America to drive home the message of accountability and charters and testing," said Arthur E. Levine, a former president of Teachers College, where Dr. Ravitch got her doctorate and began…
mikethemadbiologist | March 10, 2010One of Massachusetts Republican Senator Scott Brown's campaign gimmicks was to drive everywhere in a pickup truck, thereby 'proving' that he's a regular guy (never mind that he's very wealthy). One wonders what would have happened to Scott's image had the Coakley campaign stumbled across this little sartorial tidbit (by way of Rumproast; italics mine):
Arianna told me that he showed up for his first real date with her mother, Gail Huff, a TV newscaster to whom he has been married for more than 23 years, in pink leather shorts. It's family lore.
The pinkish color drained from his face when I…
tfk | March 9, 2010When I started tweeting (@JoshRosenau), I was unconvinced. I'm already overwhelmed with silliness and interesting people writing interesting stuff, so why would I a) want to read more and b) want to restrict myself and others to 140 characters. And the character limit still grates, though I'm learning to have smaller ideas.
But what's nice about twitter is that it's a massive conversation across continents with the people you like chatting with. And the 140 character limit eliminates the throat-clearing and extended explanations that tend to come into contentious blog posts. You can link…
nisbetmc | March 8, 2010At NewYorkTimes.com, Alex Kaplun of Greenwire reports on emails exchanged among several prominent climate scientists regarding possible plans to fight back against the "neo-McCarthyism" of political leaders such as James Inhofe.
The anger on the part of several scientists that is revealed in the emails is understandable. These scientists, members of the National Academies, have been personally attacked by commentators and threatened with legal action by Inhofe.
I have a great deal of respect for many of the scientists mentioned in the article. However, I side with the warnings offered by…
pharyngula | March 6, 2010I've been on a few job search committees, and I've been on a few job searches myself, and there's a standard piece of boilerplate we put on all of our job ads.
The University of Minnesota is committed to the policy that all persons shall have equal access to its programs, facilities, and employment without regard to race, color, creed, religion, national origin, sex, age, marital status, disability, public assistance status, veteran status, or sexual orientation.
Whenever we start a job search, too, human resources reviews whatever we do, and we also get to attend a meeting where we're…
razib | March 4, 2010My posts below on IQ, politics & religion resulted in a fair amount of blogospheric response, and weird comments. A few quick points
1) I think results on standardized tests are informative and correlate reasonably with a host of life outcomes. If you don't think they do, that's fine, I don't particularly care. But just do note that your dismissal of IQ carries no weight with me. Additionally, though I believe IQ to be substantially heritable, even that's not necessarily important in this case (since I am not focusing on evolution). Rather, realized test scores correlate with other…
mikethemadbiologist | March 4, 2010By way of Brad DeLong, I came across this post by Adam Samwick that expresses puzzlement over why Republican healthcare obstructionism hasn't hurt Republicans (or so it would seem; italics mine):
You don't succeed as a political party by denying other political parties the opportunity to craft policy that serves their constituents. You succeed as a political party when you craft policy that serves your constituents.
Actually, for the Palinist Right, which has taken over the Republican Party, that's not true at all. For the Palinists, politics is never about policy, but a politics of…
nisbetmc | March 3, 2010
Graham, Kerry, Lieberman, and Gore all share the same goal but are moving to differentiate themselves as a way to claim credit for climate action and to appeal to different audience segments.
At The NYTimes.com, Greewire's Darren Samuelsohn examines Senator Lindsey Graham's strategy to define cap and trade legislation as "dead." The Senator's declaration has been most notably quoted in a January article at the New York Times and in an article Saturday at the Washington Post, with his remarks much discussed and debated among other members of Congress, by advocates, in the blogosphere,…