Policy
tfk | July 15, 2009There are a number of people who, even when they are right, get things very wrong.
To whit, Michael Gerson, former Bush speechwriter, reacting to Francis Collins's nomination as NIH director (h/t Joel). He notes that Collins is well-qualified, and that it's odd how a few people are agitated that Collins is forthrightly religious. He makes the odd claim that this speaks to the state of evangelical Christianity, when it doesn't really. If Francis Collins were typical of evangelicals, it would be great, but he's a pro-evolution, pro-stem cell, egghead scientist. Not a lot of evangelicals fit…
drorzel | July 14, 2009
funny-pictures-cat-upsets-your-gravity.jpg (JPEG Image, 500x398 pixels)
Finally, the problem with quantum gravity is revealed.
(tags: pictures silly animals internet physics gravity quantum)
Robert Wright: Why the "New Atheists" are Right-Wing on Foreign Policy
"It must strike progressive atheists as a stroke of bad luck that Christopher Hitchens, leading atheist spokesperson, happens to have hawkish views on foreign policy. After all, with atheists an overwhelmingly left-wing group, what were the chances that the loudest infidel in the western world would happen to be on the right?…
jstemwedel | July 13, 2009In the post where I reviewed it, I promised I'd have more to say about Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. As it turns out, I have a lot more to say -- so much that I'm breaking it up into three posts so I can keep my trains of thought from colliding. I'm going to start here with a post about the public's end of the scientist-public communication project. Next, I'll respond to some of the claims the book seems to be making about the new media landscape (including the blogosphere). Finally, I'll take up the much discussed issue of the book's treatment of…
jrosenhouse | July 13, 2009Writing at the Huffington Post, Robert Wright has a very bad post up about the New Atheists and foreign policy. Let's have a look"
It must strike progressive atheists as a stroke of bad luck that Christopher Hitchens, leading atheist spokesperson, happens to have hawkish views on foreign policy. After all, with atheists an overwhelmingly left-wing group, what were the chances that the loudest infidel in the western world would happen to be on the right?
No essay that starts like that is likely to have anything interesting or insightful to say. Atheists are overwhelmingly left-wing on…
revere | July 12, 2009Sunday and The Reveres have discharged their pastoral obligation to do a Freethinker Sermonette but there is other news on the religion front so we'll do a religious twofer. We've already discussed the nomination of Francis Collins to be NIH Director a couple of times (here, here and here; one post was linked in a Wall Street Journal online column by Steven Waldman, much to our surprise). Collins has religious beliefs that are quite different than most scientists because he has them at all. Just how different that is was revealed by a recent Pew Poll on public views of science, one section of…
pharyngula | July 9, 2009To return to Unscientific America again, I hardly touched on chapter 8, where they express their dismay at those uppity "New Atheists". I am not going to address his personal criticisms of me — there's no point, you obviously know I think he's completely wrong, and the uncharitable will simply claim my disagreement is the result of a personal animus — so instead I'm only going to address a couple of other general points that Mooney and Kirshenbaum get completely wrong. They plainly do not understand the atheist position, and make claims that demonstrate that either they didn't read any of the…
drorzel | July 8, 2009
Physics Buzz: Watch this!
"Forget the cheesy narrator and hokey graphics. Wobble the camera like you're Michel Gondry filming Eternal Sunshine. Ditch the pseudo-techno soundtrack that makes the kids shake their heads at you for trying to be hip, and go for something understated. Then you might have something as good as Colliding Particles.
The filmmakers behind this unusual web series have thrown pretty much every science documentary convention to the wind, and, in doing so, have hit on something great.(Face it, unless it's David Attenborough we can do without a disembodied voice booming…
sb admin | July 8, 2009Several months ago, I attended presentation by Michael Taylor, a former FDA deputy commissioner for policy whoâd recently become a professor here at the George Washington Universityâs School of Public Health. Taylorâs presentation, âBuilding a Prevention-Oriented Food Safety System: FDAâs Challenge and Opportunity,â explained why itâs so hard to ensure that our nationâs food supply is safe; factors range from the complexity and variety of food products to the fragmented regulatory structure for food. I remember that during the Q&A, someone brought up âthe egg rule,â and it prompted groans…
ddobbs | July 8, 2009
Ed Yong, echoed by Mike the Mad biologist PhysioProf asks what the heck investigative science journalism would look like. I hope to write more extensively on this soon. In the meantime, a few observations:
To ponder this question -- and to do investigative reporting -- I think it helps to have a sense of the history of science, which embeds in a writer or observer a sense of critical distance and an eye for large forces at work beneath the surface. Machinations in government surprise no one who has studied the history of government and politics. Likewise with science.
Science -- the search…
clock | July 7, 2009The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January.
Today, I asked Katherine Haxton of the Endless Possibilities blog (see the archives of her Nature Network blog here), to answer a few questions.
Welcome to A Blog Around The Clock. Would you, please, tell my readers a little bit more about yourself? Who are you? What is your (scientific) background?
Hello! I'm Katherine and I'm a chemist.…
drorzel | July 7, 2009One of the most interesting suggestions made by Chris and Sheril in Unscientific America is the idea that science needs to play political hardball (page 158, in the endnotes):
Why not form a nonpartisan science political action committee, or PAC, devoted to funding candidates who are either scientists themselves or who make science a strong priority and have good records on science issues? With adequate fundind, the PAC might select, say, five or ten members or candidates to support each election cycle. If there's a desire to be really aggressive (and we have mixed feelings about this…
drorzel | July 6, 2009
Star Formation
"This blog is for the Physics and Astronomy Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR, the sort of acronym that takes some real self esteem to embrace) to communicate with CUR members, the wider scientific community, and the general public."
(tags: science academia education blogs)
Salt Office Life » 10 Ways to Take a Bad Author Photo
Note to self: talk to Matt M. about getting a good author photo.
(tags: books writing pictures publishing)
Chart of the Day | Mother Jones
"I'd agree that Palin's appeal is essentially based on class resentment. She gets her…
drorzel | July 6, 2009Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future is the new book by Chris and Sheril of The Intersection (formerly on ScienceBlogs, now at Discover), and they were kind enough to include me on the list of people getting review copies. It turned up on Friday (after I'd already started Newton and the Counterfeiter). I read it this afternoon, partly at lunch with SteelyKid (who, alas, was woken up by somebody else's ill-mannered child), but mostly in the back yard on a surprisingly pleasant afternoon. It's a quick read-- only 132 pages of text, plus 65 pages of (unmarked)…
drorzel | July 4, 2009
slacktivist: The short straw
"Tony Perkins looks nervous, unsure if he should be glad he gets to go first. He reaches out and makes his choice. Grinning broadly, he holds up the long straw for the others to see and, chuckling to himself, makes his way to the back of the room.
âItâs not fair,â says George Weigel of the Ethics & Public Policy Center. âWe had to take Santorum. We should get a pass this time.â"
(tags: politics US silly stupid blogs slacktivist)
Answers to Selected Questions
"As I promised a week ago, I am posting answers to a few of the 42 questions which constituted the…
tfk | July 3, 2009Sarah Palin is utterly batshit.
Look, I can see not running for reelection: she wants to run for president in 2012.
That alone is pretty dumb, since she was less popular than John McCain, and McCain/Palin couldn't beat Obama in 2008. In 2012, all signs suggest we'll have national health insurance and a growing economy, so why would anyone pick Palin to ruin it?
But she wants to run in 2012. Fine. Why resign from office now? She doesn't want to be a lame duck? Fine, then why stay in office for a month? I mean, her official resignation will happen on my birthday, which is thoughtful of…
mikethemadbiologist | July 3, 2009see more Lolcats and funny pictures
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a letter (and I encourage others to do the same) calling for a strong public option in whatever healthcare legislation is passed. In the letter, I described the frustration that many rank-and-file Democrats have towards their elected leaders (and yes, it's not the 'base'; >80% of Democrats is nearly the whole damn party--and some of the dissenters oppose the public option because they feel it's too weak):
When you ran for office, you talked about "change." When it comes to our nation's health, now is the time for change.…
razib | July 2, 2009Lots of chatter about The Blogosphere 2.0, a post which has 7 bullet points:
- The A-List Doesn't Matter Anymore
- It's all about niche blogs
- Blogger Burn Out
- Reader burn out
- MSM yawns
- Huffington Post.
- Twitter and Facebook
Not much I'd disagree with in the generality. Multiple times that politics/general interest weblogs have linked to me it is noted that I'm a "specialist/technical weblog," but I really think everyone is focused on a specific area at this point. It's just that political and policy weblogs seem to think everyone has a general interest in their topic. Also, I do…
gregladen | July 1, 2009Dear MSNBC,
I know it is appropriate to have a range of opinions among the talking heads representing a news agency, and MSNBC certainly does have a range. Pat Buchanan, regular commentator on two or three MSNBC news shows, probably serves at the most conservative individual in the MSNBC panoply.
But he has to go now.
This letter comes as a reaction to Buchanan's most recent column, which addresses Darwinian theory and evolution in an over the top intellectually dishonest, inaccurate, and offensive manner. I will not discuss the details of his absurd column; several of my colleagues on…
mikethemadbiologist | June 29, 2009Over the weekend, I had started writing a post titled "When Will [economist Paul] Krugman Have His Creationist Epiphany?" It was inspired by a comment left on a Krugman post about "the Great Ignorance which seems to have overtaken much of the economics profession -- the "rediscovery" of old fallacies about deficit spending and interest rates, presented as if they were deep insights, the bizarre arguments presented by economists with sterling reputations."
While Krugman argues this is due to flat-out ignorance, a commenter made a great point (italics mine):
This is a point I've kept making to…
mikethemadbiologist | June 27, 2009I think some people don't realize the extent to which movement conservativism is not about policy, but an existential sense of self. I realize that I come across as pretty partisan, but, for me, it's ultimately about objectives: if I want a public option for healthcare, it's because I think it will improve healthcare. If there were compelling data that wearing pink mumus and whirling rubber chickens around our heads would improve healthcare, then pink mumus and rubber chickens it is. But what strikes about movement conservativism (which is very different than a conservative impulse--there…