Policy
clock | September 17, 2008Here's another topic seen through the Lakoffian looking glass (July 23, 2005):
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Why is there a widespread belief that the difference between patriotism and nationalism is one of degree: loving one's country versus loving it even more? I think that the difference is not quantitative but qualitative - the phrase "love for one's country" used by the two kinds of people (patriots and nationalists) is based on very different meanings of the words "love", "for", "one" and "country".
I am assuming that this confusion arises from the fact that…
thusspakezuska | September 17, 2008I really did not think I would live to see the day when a major political party in the U.S. would find it necessary to add a woman to the ticket in order to win the presidency. It's a shame I can't be at all happy about the particular party and woman making history. However, if you will recall, I predicted something like this situation some time ago. I just got the particular woman wrong. As I noted in a comment on that post:
...the majority [of] people will love a non-traditional candidate who is a conservative much sooner than they will love a non-traditional candidate who is a liberal…
apalazzo | September 17, 2008Once upon a time, one of America's greatest strengths was its ability to lead. Citizen from other nations looked up to the US as a model. In WWII soldiers would give up to the US on purpose, because they knew that they would be treated fairly. How do I know this? My grandfather who fought for the Italians was one of them. Imagine that type of power. You are so highly regarded that your enemies would rather give up to you than fight you.
But we've squandered that. In the name of fighting terror, we torture. In the name of justice, we invade a country without justification. In the name of…
nisbetmc | September 16, 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…
ioelrich | September 15, 2008Welcome to Seed's latest blog, Vote for Science. Seed set this blog up to cover science, science policy, and science politics relevant to the November election. The current plan is that the blog will run only until the election. Maybe it will continue. We shall see. I have been told I am a "guest blogger," which means, I think, that I will disappear when the blog disappears. I am a chemist/physicist by training and have worked in science and R&D policy. I am now heading up the Strategic Security Program at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), but my views expressed here do…
clock | September 14, 2008Its Not Just Palin -- Its The Message.:
The brilliance of the McCain strategy and messaging is that it includes a trap for Obama. To push back on the McCain claim of "country first" and "the original mavericks who will shake up Washington" the Obama campaign's attack of "four more years of George Bush" becomes a problem. In a country that yearns for post-partisan change the Obama campaign risks sounding too partisan and like more of the same.
Morning podcast with Jay Rosen (please LISTEN to the entire podcast - will make you think!):
That led me to the idea that perhaps it's not Obama that…
palmd | September 13, 2008Both candidates have proposals for reforming America's health care system. You can read them yourself (Obama's here, McCain's here, and a detailed comparison here).
As statements of policy, these plans focus on the big picture of American health care: how to cover the uninsured, how to pay for insurance, how to contain costs. There is little to be said about specific diseases. Now, we can argue about the merit of talking about health care policy without talking about diseases, but it's not a bad idea. Larger policy statements focus on the system as a whole---they don't need to declare a…
drorzel | September 13, 2008A while back, at dinner, I made my usual complaint that Slacktivist doesn't get enough attention. Kate expressed some doubts, because he certainly seems to have a large number of readers and commenters.
The problem is, it's not read by the people who really need to be reading it, and today provides an excellent example. Steve Benen at the new and prolific Washington Monthly is mystified by Sarah Palin:
Let's not play games. Yes, there have been a variety of foreign policy maxims dubbed the "Bush Doctrine" over the years. If Sarah Palin heard the question and said, "Which one?" I would have…
clock | September 12, 2008Under the fold....
Alaska is right next to Russia:
She was referring to the Diomede Islands which straddle the International Date Line in the Bering Straits. Big Diomede is on the Russian side of the line and Little Domede is on the Alaskan side. There is a village of about 150 Eskimos on Little Diomede who live mostly by fishing and walrus hunting. The islands are only two and a half miles apart, so it's easy to see one from the other on a clear day. In the winter when the ice is frozen you can walk across in about an hour.
Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch, #82:
That,…
clock | September 11, 2008Don't Think of a Maverick! Could the Obama Campaign Be Improved?:
In 1980, Richard Wirthlin -- Ronald Reagan's chief strategist -- made a fateful discovery. In his first poll he discovered that most people didn't like Reagan's positions on the issues, but nevertheless wanted to vote for Reagan. The reason, he figured out, is that voters vote for president not primarily on the issues, but on five other factors -- "character" factors: Values; Authenticity; Communication and connection; Trust; and Identity. In the Reagan-Carter and Reagan-Mondale debates, Mondale and Carter were ahead on the…
mikethemadbiologist | September 11, 2008One of the tools that people interested in framing use is the focus group. I've always been wary of them because I think researchers and the participants can strongly bias your results. Joe Klein described a focus group involving Colorado independents. Klein describes the group:
There was some doubt among commenters that these independents were actually...independent, especially since a majority of them voted for Bush last time--but that's how Independents broke in Colorado in 2004. Four years ago, I attended a Hart focus group of undecideds in Kansas City and it soon became apparent that…
clock | September 10, 2008Under the fold, as we do here every day....
The Wars of John McCain:
John McCain believes the Vietnam War was winnable. Now he argues that an Obama administration would accept defeat in Iraq, with grave costs to American honor and national security. Is McCain's quest for victory a reflection of an antiquated pre-Vietnam mind-set? Or of a commitment to principles we abandon at our peril? Is there any war McCain thinks can't be won?
Numbers are Fun: McCain/Palin Bankrupts America edition:
To understand what that means in the context of a national campaign, all it takes is a little arithmetic.…
jrosenhouse | September 10, 2008Yes, another political post. What can I say?
Here's Michael Kinsley providing still more evidence that the Sarah Palin seen on television and discussed by the media bears little resemblance to the Sarah Palin that has been governing Alaska for the last two years:
Sarah Palin thinks she is a better American than you because she comes from a small town, and a superior human being because she isn't a journalist and has never lived in Washington and likes to watch her kids play hockey. Although Palin praised John McCain in her acceptance speech as a man who puts the good of his country ahead…
oracknows | September 10, 2008I hate postmodernism.
Well, not exactly postmodernism per se, but I hate it when pseudoscientists and purveyors of dubious "alternative" medicine treatments invoke bizarre postmodernist-sounding arguments to attack science or, in the case of medicine, science- and evidence-based medicine. Usually these attacks involve a claim that science is nothing more than one other "narrative" among many others, a "narrative" that isn't necessarily any more valid than any other. Even worse, these sorts of arguments often claim that science (or, in this case, evidence-based medicine) is nothing more than a…
clock | September 8, 2008Under the fold, due to length. Like the previous couple of roundups, take your time - bookmark, read, and use later.
Fisking a debunking:
Clever Wife regularly participates in a forum for craftspeople who make soap. Lately the forum has included some long digressions into politics. She is usually capable of responding to the misinformation she sees, but occasionally she asks for my help. The other day someone posted a list of "rumors" about Sarah Palin debunked by someone named Charlie Martin, a computer programmer in Colorado. Charlie's list on his blog Explorations is now up to 71 points…
revere | September 8, 2008We've come to expect politicians to shade the truth on occasion and we've seen some recent high profile examples of outright lying. For example, John McCain's repeated claim that Sarah Palin sold the previous governor's luxury jet on ebay and even "made a profit". Every part of that claim is a fiction and McCain had to know it. George Bush, of course, lied as a matter of policy, with deadly consequences. At least Clinton's lies were essentially harmless to lie and limb. Then there's Sarah Palin. She lies, too, principally about herself and her record. The list of her lies is getting pretty…
bcohen | September 8, 2008Part 1 (below) | 2 | 3 | 4
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Note: This author-meets-blogger set was produced by guest blogger Jody Roberts, whose prior contributions can be found here, here, and here.
On behalf of The World's Fair, Roberts recently cornered historian and STS scholar Michelle Murphy to talk about her award-winning book Sick Building Syndrome and the Problem of Uncertainty: Environmental Politics, Technoscience, and Women Workers (Duke University Press, 2006).
Odds are you're reading this edition of author-meets-blogger while sitting at your desk in your office. Odds are that office is a virtual…
tqa | September 8, 2008
Last week, right around the time that Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin were mocking community organizers at the Republican Convention, I found myself talking about how community organizing can help us become more effective when it comes to dealing with issues where science and politics intersect.
I think this is something that we really need to do. The political groups that are opposed to science are typically very well organized. This is true for the anti-evolutionists, it's true for the global warming denialists, it's true for the anti-vaccinationists, and it's true for the anti-…
clock | September 7, 2008Under the fold....
Senator to president: A new day:
But is it a good thing for senators to be frozen out of the process? Though governors may make better candidates, it's not clear that they're well prepared to deal with the complex mix of personalities and parliamentary procedures that will decide whether their agenda is quickly passed or quietly strangled.
Unocommon Ground:
Admittedly, the general tone of this site over the past week or so has been one of unabashed anger and outrage. While I won't apologize for this -- mostly because I feel like the more that people throw down the gauntlet…
nisbetmc | September 7, 2008As I have written in various articles, when it comes to science debates, the public is far more likely to be miserly in reaching a judgment than fully informed. Most citizens are cognitive misers relying heavily on information short cuts and heuristics to make up their minds about a science controversy, often in the absence of knowledge.
As a result, in order to effectively engage the public, scientists and their organizations need to adapt their communication efforts to the realities of human nature and the media system. This means recasting, or "framing," their communication efforts in a…