Policy
mikethemadbiologist | June 23, 2009I'm wary of criticizing Paul Krugman. I'm a firm believer in the DeLong Rules of Krugman, which can be paraphrased very simply:
Don't disagree with Paul Krugman.
Re-read rule #1, you fucking moron.
Nonetheless, I think Krugman, in an otherwise excellent column, misstates the motivations behind the 'centrist' Democrats opposition to the public option for healthcare:
Yes, some of the balking senators receive large campaign contributions from the medical-industrial complex -- but who in politics doesn't? If I had to guess, I'd say that what's really going on is that relatively conservative…
tfk | June 18, 2009Netroots Nation is rolling out their panels for the next meeting (August 13-16, Pittsburgh, PA). It's an interesting mix, with more than any one person can handle. If my experience last year is any guide, it'll be a struggle just to keep up, and there will be lots of times when I'll have two or more simultaneous panels I want to attend. I just hope my panel isn't scheduled opposite anything really fun.
That's right campers, I said my panel. The abstract isn't live yet, but we're just dotting a few t's and crossing some i's. The title is "Science Denial and Science Policy." A group of…
sb admin | June 16, 2009When discussing the costs of various healthcare reform proposals, itâs crucial to keep one thing in mind: doing nothing would be a financial disaster. If we donât change the rate at which healthcare costs are growing, total health spending is projected to double over the next 11 years, from an expected $2.6 trillion this year to $5.2 trillion in 2020. Medicare and Medicaid will eat up a growing share of the federal budget; employers will stop offering insurance as premiums become harder to afford; and families will struggle to pay for needed healthcare. These problems all exist today, and…
thusspakezuska | June 11, 2009Welcome to our discussion of The Gender Knot by Allan Johnson. This is the second post in the discussion series. We will be discussing Chapter 1 "Where Are We?" You can find all posts connected to this discussion here.
As noted before, there is an updated edition of the book now available. In the first post, I was working with the 1997 edition. I now have the new edition and this post is based on that edition. The first chapter is available online here. If you haven't had a chance to read the chapter, maybe you'd like to go now and read the pages covering "Women and Patriarchy" and "…
palmd | June 11, 2009I know, I know, I don't usually do politics, but Rush is really chapping my ass right about now. His comments are always outrageously hate-filled diatribes, and he's getting harder to ignore every day. What's worse, his followers eagerly suckle at the teat intolerance, finding solace in his affirmation of their own bigotry. And finally, he is cynical beyond any hope of redemption.
First, he is virtually a Holocaust denier, and as we know, Holocaust denial is always a manifestation of hatred of Jews.
"He [Obama] is beating Germany up. He is ripping them to shreds over something they did…
sb admin | June 9, 2009The last time we had a major health reform proposal was the Clinton administration, and it didnât go well. Ezra Klein explains the reasons: Instead of bringing members of Congress and stakeholders into the process early, the administration drafted a detailed proposal and then presented it to Congress. Those in favor of reform failed to mount a coordinated campaign for it, while the Republicans, guided by a memo from William Kristol, united in opposition against it and ruled out compromise. And even before the administration presented its plan, the health-insurance industry was spreading fear…
nisbetmc | June 4, 2009Next week there will be big news on the science communication front. In anticipation, I was just going back over some things that I have written on the topic over the past decade. I ran across an essay I wrote for Skeptical Inquirer from 2003, which I posted below the fold. The essay puts into context an interesting debate that took place in the pages of The Guardian between eminent UK scientist Susan Greenfield and science communication professor Jon Turney.
Greenfield's side of the debate reflects a continued dominant line of thinking referred to as the "deficit model," the assumption that…
nisbetmc | June 1, 2009In an article in the Sunday edition, WPost reporters Steve Mufson and Juliet Eilperin detail how Obama during his presidential campaign took the lead in urging his staffers to re-frame their message on energy and climate change. As the headline notes, Obama's campaign and White House has gained traction by "re-framing" the issue in terms of jobs and national security, the type of communication strategy and bully pulpit leadership that I urged was necessary in an April article at the journal Environment.
Unfortunately, as I wrote last week and detailed at Environment, though the White House is…
tfk | May 27, 2009Ned Ryun, son of former Olympic miler and stumbleprone former Congressman Jim Ryun, is worried about Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama's nominee to replace David Souter on the Supreme Court.
How worried? "I have a sneaking suspicion," he writes, "that she has a different view of the Constitution than our Founders did."
I kinda hope so, truth be told. Our Founders thought that the Constitution should allow slavery, should not grant equal rights to women, should not apply equally without regard to race, thought that the Senate should not be directly elected by the states' voters, and generally…
tfk | May 21, 2009Reluctant as I am to endorse anything on America's Shittiest Website™, this article should be required reading for any politically active atheist. It's written as advice for social conservatives/political evangelicals, but for reasons which have implications I won't get into, it applies equally well to the New Atheists or whatever their favored term is these days.
Maggie Gallagher, a loon associated with various fringe evangelical projects like limiting access to marriage and complaining loudly about how much sex everyone else is having, observes:
Social conservatives simply have not been…
nisbetmc | May 19, 2009For readers in the Madison area, I will be giving a lecture on Thursday, June 25 at the University of Wisconsin as part of the university's summer lecture series. The lecture is free to the public and takes place in 1100 Grainger Hall from 7-9pm.
The series focus this year is on the intersection of science, public communication, and politics, with a number of top scholars in the field slated to speak across the summer. Below is a description of my talk, representing many of the themes discussed at this blog, in forthcoming articles and book chapters, or in current projects.
What's Next for…
bioephemera | May 16, 2009Students and laypeople alike often view biotech patents with baffled disbelief. How is it possible to patent bacteria? Mice? Cell types and DNA sequences? How can someone else "own" gene sequences that all of us have carried inside our bodies since birth?
Honestly, as a biologist, the concept of patenting a gene doesn't really throw me for a loop. Think about it: although we all have genes, we can't read them unless we use a variety of lab techniques, many of them patented. In turn, reading the sequence isn't any use unless we know why we care - that this gene is relevant and can be used to…
gregladen | May 12, 2009I always liked Jesse. I didn't agree with about half of his policies, but I did not have the automated lefty knee jerk reaction against him that almost everyone I know had. Hey, he did after all, beat Norm Coleman in that governor's race!
Of course, he also beat my candidate, Humphrey. But in so doing Ventura demonstrated what happens when we Democratic Farm Laborers in Minnesota get together to put up a candidate for governor: We screw it up. Humphrey was not the candidate for that election. So we got Ventura. Hatch was not the candidate for the last election. So we got Pawlenty.
I…
nisbetmc | May 12, 2009
Several colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have a new study out that shows not surprisingly that like-minded conversations drive attitude extremity relative to science policy.
Analyzing data from a national panel survey conducted between 2002 and 2005, graduate student Andrew Binder and his collaborators find that after controlling for demographics and news use, like-minded discussion pushed respondents' position on stem cell research to the extreme ends of the distribution, either towards strong support or strong opposition.
The study comes out of the research group at…
drorzel | May 8, 2009
The Final Frontier: The Science of Star Trek: Scientific American
"To get a sense of how much actual science has made its way into the science fiction universe of Star Trek, ScientificAmerican.com spoke to Lawrence Krauss, author of The Physics of Star Trek, the first edition of which appeared on bookshelves in 1995. [...]
We asked Krauss about the plausibility of crossovers from the Trek universe, including warp speed, humanoid aliens such as Klingons and, of course, whether anyone will be "beamed up" by Scotty or otherwise, anytime soon."
(tags: science astronomy physics culture…
tfk | May 8, 2009Roger Pielke, Jr. is a respected scholar of science policy, but he's got a contrarian streak a mile wide that gets him into trouble occasionally, as for instance his feud with Joe Romm of Climate Progress. It is also apparent in his survey of a fight over oyster farming off the coast of Point Reyes. His title, "The War on Science Continues" is, he insists, "a bit of irony, of course, as there never has been a 'war on science,' just politics as usual, sometimes played more hardball than others, especially by the previous Administration."
His example of an ongoing war on science involves…
hrynyshyn | May 6, 2009Here's how I would have liked to have introduced this post:
The good news is that, other than for an increasingly marginalized minority, the focus of attention on climate policy has shifted from the reality of global warming to the economic tools needed to address the problem.
Sadly, climate change denialism remains relatively robust and widespread, with more half of all Americans and popular columnists of George F. Will's stature still unwilling to accept the science. I have no choice but to acknowledge the task of getting everyone on board will require more time and energy, even while we…
jstemwedel | May 5, 2009By email, following on the heels of my post about the Merck-commissioned, Elsevier-published fake journal Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, a reader asked whether the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JPandS) also counts as a fake journal.
I have the distinct impression that folks around these parts do not hold JPandS in high esteem. However, it seems like there's an important distinction between a fake journal and a bad one.
Kathleen Seidel of the Neurodiversity Weblog wrote a meticulous examination of JPandS and of the professional society, the Association of…
bcohen | May 5, 2009The World's Fair is pleased to offer the following discussion about The Caveman Mystique: Pop-Darwinism and the Debates Over Sex, Violence, and Science (Routledge, 2007), with its author Martha McCaughey. McCaughey is a Professor of Sociology and the Director of Women's Studies at Appalachian State University.
Professor McCaughey's work fits at the intersections of gender, sexuality, science, technology, social movements, and the media. I first met her during her tenure at Virginia Tech, where she distinguished herself as a leading feminist scholar in science studies, an atypically…
drorzel | May 4, 2009
The 25 most important movies ever made about war and diplomacy. - By Fred Kaplan - Slate Magazine
"Last week, in the online edition of Slate's sister publication Foreign Policy, two of its regular bloggers, Stephen M. Walt and Daniel W. Drezner, drew up lists of what they regard as the best movies ever made about international relations.
Both are eminent international-relations professors, Walt at Harvard, Drezner at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. It's no surprise that neither of them gives our own film critic, Dana Stevensâor, for that matter, Gene Shalitâthe slightest cause…