Policy
revere | March 3, 2010The Reveres consider themselves progressives (check the masthead), a word used for people who believe government has a role to play to make the world better, but also tend to be social libertarians. Many scientists and doctors are progressive in that sense. But it's a mighty big tent, and apparently covers some folks whose politics I agree with on many issues but can still be very far from what progressives also call the "reality based community." Very far. Far, as in "they can't see it from where they are."
Literally:
Atlanta Progressive News has parted ways with long-serving senior staff…
hrynyshyn | March 2, 2010As regular readers will know, I prefer the term "pseudoskeptic" over "denier" when it comes to those who insist we needn't be worried about climate change. This is because the common denominator among any set of such characters tends to be a misapplication of the scientific method, a failure to apply rigorous skeptical analysis to the subject. Not all of these pseudoskeptics are deniers, as this list from Foreign Policy makes clear.
Indeed, the distinctions among the selected "Guide to Climate Skeptics" make it even more important to choose our descriptors carefully. I would argue that…
nisbetmc | February 28, 2010What does climate change mean to you? from Andrea Posner on Vimeo.
Students in AU Professor David Johnson's class on interactive media have created a social media and discussion site for tonight's American Forum on "The Climate Change Generation: Youth, Media, and Politics in an Unsustainable World."
Features at the site include video interviews with AU students on the topic (see above), a Twitter feed that student attendees and public radio listeners will be posting to, a Facebook group, a news aggregator on climate change, and various topic driven discussion boards with topics ranging…
mikethemadbiologist | February 28, 2010Or as I like to say--people have to like this crap. Two events over the last month, the reappointment of Bernanke to Fed Chairman and some Senate Democrats' new-found opposition to using reconciliation to pass healthcare reform with a public option, highlight one reason why Democrats lose elections: rather than focusing on outcomes, they focus on the process, on the 'atmospherics.' Consider the reappointment of Bernanke. It's pretty clear that he's more concerned with keeping inflation ludicrously low, which will fail to combat massive unemployment--which is one of his legally mandated…
bioephemera | February 20, 2010
A quick follow-up to my mention of Edward Tufte last week: you should be aware that Edward Tufte's brief classic, Data Analysis for Politics and Policy, is available online as a PDF here. It's worth a skim in your spare time - and worth sharing with people who don't necessarily appreciate the limitations of statistics.
stoat | February 16, 2010Wolf Hall is a now-immensely-well-known tale of a slice of Henry VIII's reign; a period I know little about: we skimped it at school and it gets throroughly mythologised anyway. The chief hero is Cromwell (not Oliver) who is portrayed (correctly,as I understand it) as a brilliant administrator and generally competent chap; as to whether he was really nice underneath, I neither know nor care.
What is chiefly interesting is the playing out of certain grand themes in the period. It was part of the development of civilisation, really, a time when people, under pressure of necessity, realised that…
emjohnson | February 13, 2010 Haitian girl wearing the Disney princess shirt made in her country. Image: BBC NewsInter Press Service has just begun a new series focusing on the development loans to Haiti and the strings attached that have effectively removed the Haitian government from managing their own affairs. I spoke with IPS reporter William Fisher last week and this morning appeared on WZBC in Boston to discuss this story. This is the little known history of Haiti and forms the backdrop to why the earthquake that hit this island nation has been so devastating.
According to Fisher's article:
It is an unusual…
drorzel | February 13, 2010
WINTER OLYMPICS: Robert Teklemariam will raise Ethiopia's flag | Richmond Times-Dispatch
"On Monday in Vancouver, Robel Teklemariam will compete for Ethiopia in the 15-kilometer cross country skiing event.
This will be his second Olympics but the first with his mother in attendance. To qualify, he traveled the world on a shoestring budget, chasing down qualifying races as he lugged his skis across Europe on a train. His goal is to inspire a nation of citizens -- most of whom haven't seen snow.
"What he's proving is that when you put your heart to it, it doesn't matter where you were born,"…
mikethemadbiologist | February 7, 2010If you're looking for a good primer on Big Shitpile and other recent economic events, I highly recommend Peter Goodman's Past Due: The End of Easy Money and the Renewal of the American Economy. It's well written, and does what many other books about the recent economic collapse fail to do: puts it into a larger context. But this small excerpt from Past Due hits the nail on the head as to what our problem is:
Washington has grown accustomed to muddy compromises that can be spun into clear-cut victories by both parties, as their leaders appear on Sunday television talk shows to argue over…
oracknows | February 4, 2010I realize I complain periodically about when I get into what seems to me to be a rut in which I'm writing pretty much only about anti-vaccine lunacy. This is just such a week, when the news on the vaccine front has been coming fast and furious, first with Andrew Wakefield's being found to have behaved unethically and dishonestly by the British General Medical Council, only to be followed up a few days later with the news that the editors of The Lancet had retracted his 1998 paper, the paper that started the MMR scare in the U.K. and launched a thousand autism quacks. Meanwhile, the cranks…
drorzel | February 3, 2010
Researchers use infrared cameras to determine taste quality of Japanese beef
"Imagine going into a local supermarket or butchery, pulling out your cell phone and using its camera to instantly check for the best piece of meat on display. That is one of the applications that some in Japan hope could become possible one day from scientific research into using infrared cameras to grade the taste of high-quality beef."f
(tags: optics food science physics biology Japan news)
I don't know what this has to do with eBooks, but I'll blog it anyway § Unqualified Offerings
"The Defense Secretary and…
mikethemadbiologist | January 29, 2010A very quick, nearly Twitter-esque point. Reading this post by Mike Stark about the Bernanke confirmation, it is remarkable (and disturbing) how few senators seem to realize where Bernanke stands on unemployment. What's worse is how far off the radar screen the Fed is for so many of the senators interviewed. If I were a senator, making sure as many of my constituents were employed would be my top priority (not only is it good policy, but it's good politics). The Fed plays a large role in that. The divorce between what affects the political prospects of senators and the lives of their…
nisbetmc | January 29, 2010
Much calamity has been made in popular books and by liberal commentators about the public's scores on quiz like survey questions tapping basic knowledge of scientific facts or the public's recognition of prominent figures in science.
Yet as social scientists have shown in various studies and have argued, we really shouldn't be surprised by the survey results on science literacy. Nor do studies find that these scores on literacy quizzes account for much of the variance in public opinion and perceptions about science-related debates, especially in comparison to other more influential factors…
mikethemadbiologist | January 27, 2010Because I simply can't handle any more Democratic clusterfucks or depressing thoughts about science funding, I want to vent my spleen on bad political reporting. Take this story about two tax-related ballot items in Oregon. One might think that a story about two proposed tax-related measures in a national paper (i.e., one that doesn't follow Oregon politics) would actually explain what those two items were.
You would be wrong.
In fact, if you read the whole article (I don't really recommend it), these are the only descriptions of the ballot measures:
On Tuesday, voters here and across…
drorzel | January 27, 2010
Science Channel Refuses To Dumb Down Science Any Further | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
"Along with Bunting's remarks, the Science Channel issued a statement claiming that it currently airs more than 150 programming hours that are tangentially, and often laughably, related to science, and that staff members are unable to bring themselves to make those hours even more asinine. "
(tags: science television onion silly education)
The Mid-Majority : In the Band for a Day
"Several minutes before tipoff, the director made a short announcement. "We have a guest today," he said. "…
cortex | January 26, 2010Cable news is not good for the soul. People make fun of Jersey Shore, but at least those randy kids don't reinforce our deep-seated political biases. A new paper by Shawn Powers of USC and Mohammed el-Nawawy of Queens University of Charlotte looked at the effect of international cable news on the ideology of its viewers. Not surprisingly, they found that people were only interested in "news" that didn't contradict what they already believed:
Powers and el-Nawawy show that global media consumers tuned in to international news media that they thought would further substantiate their opinions…
nisbetmc | January 25, 2010For readers at Harvard, I will be participating in a panel discussion at the Kennedy School of Government on Thurs. Feb. 4 from noon to 2pm. Details are below and at this link.
The big draw, of course, will be fellow panelist Andrew Revkin, making one of his first public appearances since taking a buyout from his full time position at the New York Times.
February 4, 2010 - 12:00pm - 2:00pm
Contact Name:
Christine Russell
Cristine_Russell@hks.harvard.edu
Harvard Kennedy School Nye B/C, Taubman Building, 5th Floor 79 JFK Street Cambridge, MA
"The Public Divide Over Climate Change: Scientists…
tfk | January 22, 2010Having blown an easy win in the Massachusetts Senate race, DC Democrats seem intent on blowing the dreams of millions of Americans, and the best chance of reforming the health insurance industry to make it more equitable â a policy long held up as a major reason to vote Democratic. The Times reports on the search for consensus on how to move forward:
Even as Speaker Nancy Pelosi affirmed her commitment to pass far-reaching health care legislation this year, members of Congress and health policy experts began Thursday to deal with the reality that a smaller bill would have a better chance.…
jrosenhouse | January 21, 2010I thought Rachel Maddow had a very smart take on the fallout from the Massachusetts Senate race. I've placed a lengthy excerpt below the fold.
On paper, after Al Franken was finally certified as winning in Minnesota, Democrats had a filibuster-proof, 60-seat majority. On paper, that's what they had. But in reality, those 60 votes included a bunch of senators who really had no interest in voting with the rest of the Democrats on much of anything. Their little unicorn--their little myth of 60 reliable votes led the Democrats to draft policies in a way that they thought maybe could get all…
mikethemadbiologist | January 20, 2010These will have to be some quick hits, since I'm at a meeting; I'll try to revisit them later this week:
1) The absolute numbers indicate that Democrats lost this election:
In 2008, Obama received 1,904,097 votes; in 2009, Coakley received 1,058,682.
In 2008, McCain received 1,108,854 votes; in 2009, Brown received 1,168,107 votes.
This is a massive defection by Democrats--it's nearly a 50% drop for Democrats versus the Republicans holding steady in absolute numbers. 20% of Obama voters crossed over to Brown.
2) Following on #1, the entire active rank-and-file warned the Democratic '…