Policy
mikethemadbiologist | October 5, 2008
(from here)
Well, the bailout bill passed, and we'll have to see if it actually does anything. What's gone missing in the discussion surrounding this bill (among other things) is any discussion of the assumptions underlying this legislation. Ian Welsh spells them out:
If you believe any of:
1) That the paper will not return high enough [profits] to recoup losses, since Treasury will be buying it at above market value;
2) That this is the beginning of more than a normal recession;
3) That Paulson in particular and Treasury in general will not make getting the money back a priority, but…
clock | October 3, 2008In today's Grist - Politics and the Dinner Table: Weighing Obama's and McCain's stances on food and farm policy:
In the end, Pollan is likely right: Whatever the candidates are saying now (or not saying at all), events may require the 44th president to deal with food issues in ways that break radically with past policies. Silly ideas like propping up ethanol production may soon be unthinkable. One candidate has demonstrated openness to the notion of sustainable agriculture and "local and regional food systems"; the other hasn't. Neither will likely push bold change unless forced to do so.…
Breathing Space: On the Historical Connections of Allergies and Landscapes, with Author Gregg Mitman
bcohen | October 1, 2008Part 1 | Pt. 2 | Pt. 3
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The World's Fair is pleased to offer the following discussion about Breathing Space: How Allergies Shape Our Lives and Landscapes (Yale University Press, 2007), with its author Gregg Mitman. Prof. Mitman is Interim Director of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and William Coleman Professor of History of Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is also a professor in the Department of Medical History and the Robert F. and Jean E. Holtz Center for Science & Technology Studies.
If you were to ask how one could hold together so many…
mstebbins | September 26, 2008FYI for everyone. John McCain has recanted his offer not to campaign and postpone the debate tonight. In other words, GAME ON! Tonight's debate is going to focus on foreign policy and national security. Will they discuss some of the big issues that never get discussed in the foreign policy debates.
Here are some questions that me and my colleagues at the Federation of American Scientists came up with earlier this year...
The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty would ban all nuclear explosions for military or civilian purposes. The United States signed the treaty in 1996, but the Senate…
nisbetmc | September 25, 2008Back in July, I sat down for an hour long interview with the new TED-like social media site Big Think. The innovative project features "hundreds of hours of direct, unfiltered interviews with today's leading thinkers" segmented by topic category and spliced into 3 to 4 minute conversations.
The general focus of the interview was on the nature of strategic communication with an emphasis on science and environmental topics. Big Think has organized the conversations into 11 different sections. I link to several of these below with the description from the site. The themes will be familiar to…
nisbetmc | September 25, 2008
Bush-Gore Debates 2000: The focus was on performance rather than substance.
For those that have seen the Nisbet/Mooney Speaking Science 2.0 talks over the past year, you might have witnessed during the Q&A some disagreement over the merits of actually having the presidential candidates participate in a "Science Debate."
As I have said at these talks, I think the goal of raising the profile of science and environmental policy in the presidential election is a good one, it's just that I have doubts about whether or not pushing for an actual debate between the candidates is the right…
oracknows | September 25, 2008Less than a month ago, I got a bit perturbed by some vile rhetoric written by a left-wing blogger named Matt Stoller, who referred to John McCain as a "crazy, cancer-ridden dishonest madman." As you recall, I administered a bit of not-so-Respectful Insolence to him. It wasn't so much because I like John McCain. Indeed, I've pretty much decided that McCain is a lost cause, a shadow of his former self. I would have voted for him in 2000, but in the last eight years he's let his ambition to become President utterly destroy whatever honor he had left, a truly sad thing to see given his previous…
nisbetmc | September 25, 2008
Bush-Gore Debates 2000: The focus was on performance rather than substance.
For those that have seen the Nisbet/Mooney Speaking Science 2.0 talks over the past year, you might have witnessed during the Q&A some disagreement over the merits of actually having the presidential candidates participate in a "Science Debate."
As I have said at these talks, I think the goal of raising the profile of science and environmental policy in the presidential election is a good one, it's just that I have doubts about whether or not pushing for an actual debate between the candidates is the right…
clock | September 25, 2008A follow-up on last night's repost (originally from April 06, 2005)...
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I've been wavering in how to call the Right Wing. When I say "conservatives" I get attacked for equating conservatism with GOP (with implication that conservatism is good but GOP is not conservative any more). When I call them Regressives, I am told I miss the point, because they should be described as conservatives. Should I just call them Republicans? Not damning enough. People, make up your minds!
What follows is a mix of stuff I have already written before on this blog…
scientificactivist | September 24, 2008Since our paper on the role of blogs in academia was published earlier this week, we've received quite a bit of feedback from the across blogosphere. Befittingly, the authors of the paper have contributed to this, as Tara gave her thoughts on her blog, I gave mine on my blog (Shelley has been busy traveling for interviews, so she hasn't had a chance to weigh in yet), and we published a list of acknowledgments. (I'd also like to thank our respective universities' press offices for their outreach efforts. I found Oxford particularly pleasant to work with, and they even put up something on…
clock | September 23, 2008This post (from January 14, 2005) is how I see the political/ideological landscape in the USA.
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We use the words Left and Right to describe Liberal and Conservative ideological and political leanings. The phrases stem, if I remember correctly, from the seating arrangement in the first French Parliament in the late 18th century. That was a long time ago. By now, most people realize that a straight Left/Right continuous line does not represent the ideological spectrum very well, yet the terms are still in constant use and, more importantly,…
clock | September 23, 2008This is an old anti-Libertarian screed (from December 2004) that is bound to attract trolls (and traffic)....
Much of the stuff on this blog is based on the bimodal (bipolar?) view of the world: there are Conservatives and there are Liberals, and that's it. Lakoff, Ducat, Frank and the like spend much time explaining the two, or just trying to explain the strange Conservative animals to the Liberals.
But, as I stated before, only about a third of Americans are core Conservatives and another third are core Liberals. What about the remaining third? Also, as only about a half of Americans vote,…
goodmath | September 22, 2008 With the insanity that's been going on in the financial world
lately, a bunch of people have asked me to post a followup to my
earlier posts on the whole mortgage disaster, to try to explain
what's going on lately.
As I keep saying when people ask me things like this, I'm not an economist. I don't know much about economics, and what little I do know, I tend to find terribly boring. And in this case, the discussion inevitably gets political, so I'm expecting lots of nasty email.
Anyway, with that said, I've been doing a lot of reading, to try to understand this mess. And I'll try to explain…
grrlscientist | September 22, 2008tags: socialized medicine, uninsured Americans, health care policy, election2008, politics
I have a confession to make: I am an American who has no health insurance, and I have been so ever since my postdoctoral funding ended four years ago. But I am not alone: according to the most recently available statistics, somewhere between 45-47 million Americans are living without any sort health care coverage, and every year, more and more working adults and families join the ranks of the uninsured. Shockingly, according to the Urban Institute's estimate, 22,000 Americans actually died in 2006…
grrlscientist | September 21, 2008tags: socialized medicine, uninsured Americans, health care policy, election2008, politics
I have a confession to make: I am an American who has no health insurance, and I have been so ever since my postdoctoral funding ended four years ago. But I am not alone: according to the most recently available statistics, somewhere between 45-47 million Americans are living without any sort health care coverage, and every year, more and more working adults and families join the ranks of the uninsured. Shockingly, according to the Urban Institute's estimate, 22,000 Americans actually died in 2006…
grrlscientist | September 21, 2008tags: politics, federal budget, funding freeze, science funding, technology funding, McCain, Ike Brannon
United States Federal Budget Discretionary Spending.
I just learned that, according to Ike Brannon, an economist and senior policy adviser to presidential candidate, John McCain, all funding -- including funding for scientific research -- will be frozen for one year if McCain is voted into the White House.
"The purpose of the freeze is to evaluate each and every program, looking at which ones are worthwhile and which are a waste of taxpayer dollars," Brannon told the Task Force on the…
grrlscientist | September 20, 2008tags: politics, federal budget, funding freeze, science funding, technology funding, McCain, Ike Brannon
United States Federal Budget Discretionary Spending.
I just learned that, according to Ike Brannon, an economist and senior policy adviser to presidential candidate, John McCain, all funding -- including funding for scientific research -- will be frozen for one year if McCain is voted into the White House.
"The purpose of the freeze is to evaluate each and every program, looking at which ones are worthwhile and which are a waste of taxpayer dollars," Brannon told the Task Force on the…
razib | September 18, 2008FuturePundit points me to a new paper in Science, Political Attitudes Vary with Physiological Traits:
Although political views have been thought to arise largely from individuals' experiences, recent research suggests that they may have a biological basis. We present evidence that variations in political attitudes correlate with physiological traits. In a group of 46 adult participants with strong political beliefs, individuals with measurably lower physical sensitivities to sudden noises and threatening visual images were more likely to support foreign aid, liberal immigration policies,…
mstebbins | September 18, 2008I am flabbergasted by the chilling reports that as mayor of Wasilla Sarah Palin was involved in the decision to force victims of rape to pay for their own exams and rape kits. If this story is true, then every newspaper and "news" program should be talking about it. What can you say to that? If it's true then it is just about the most soulless act I think I have ever heard of a politician. If this story turns out to be false, then someone needs to offer a huge apology. This is evil stuff.
"Eight years ago, complaints about charging rape victims for medical exams in Wasilla prompted the…
gregladen | September 18, 2008The other day I was reading this really fantastic blog and came across the following campaign video. This is for Ashwin Madia, running for Congress in Minnesota's Third Congressional District. Have a look:
Is there something interesting about this particular ad?
Listen. My understanding is that if Barack Obama is elected as POTUS, he will be the first president in the United States of America who already, on his own, uses email.
Let that sink in for a moment.
I am probably typical of a scientist/academic, in that I was using email in the conventional sense in the 1980s (bitnet and…