Policy
clock | August 6, 2008McCain campaign complained that media is not covering him before they complained that media is covering him. Another example of a debate between John McCain and John McCain? Well, when you have a bad product, it is best not to have it reviewed. There is a reason why crappy movies are not shown to critics before they are released in theaters. McCain can win if he never ever shows up on TV between now and November. That way, many will be duped into thinking he was still the charming maverick he was back in....when was it, 19th century?
Not that media is actually slamming McCain like they…
mikethemadbiologist | August 4, 2008Ezra Klein has this to say about the Gang of 500 Mediocrities (also known as our national political press corps):
For reasons that I try not to speculate on before 9am, the media likes to make policy disputes sound incredibly complicated. Much too complicated for mortals to understand, or base electoral behavior on. Take this Time article on the various tax plans floating around the election. The piece argues that the plans are composed of loosely connected soundbites, lacking numbers or details or real information. To read it, you'd think the two proposals were impossible to estimate, or…
illconsidered | August 4, 2008Roger comes down on Junkscience for a refreshing change, usually prefering to disguise himself and mingle with the sceptics. Of course, if you read him carefully, he is not one, he just plays one on "the internets". It is all about personal positioning in a very public debate.
Roger posts about Steve Milloy, who has written a letter to the U.S. government's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) trying to stop certain corporations from "making potentially false and misleading statements pertaining to global warming and other environmental issues".
Of course, the statements he calls out…
sheril | July 28, 2008We've invited some excellent 'intersection personalities' to contribute here while we devote necessary time to completing our book. While we'll continue posting on politics, science, culture, and storms, our first guest is ready to make his debut tomorrow...
Introducing Philip H.
A coastal fisheries oceanographer, Philip left the boat bound life for ocean policy work in our nation's capitol. He is an LSU graduate, and thus nearly impossible to reach during college football season (though rumor has it he sometimes comes up for air when he runs out of snacks). Philip is also a newlywed,…
illconsidered | July 17, 2008(hat tip to In It For he Gold)
Here is a nice Q&A session wth Dr James Hansen, of NASA'as GISS institute covering things from weater vs climate to politics and policy. It's about 11 minutes
nisbetmc | July 13, 2008
Energy. Climate change. The food crisis. These are pressing and complex problems that span science, economics, politics, and culture. Yet when it comes to news coverage of these issues, attention tends be event-driven and sporadic. Perhaps worse there's often a policy vacuum in coverage.
At the science beat, there's coverage of the science. At the business beat, there's a focus on industry trends, trade regulation, and the occasional consumer profile. At the political beat, there's a heavy accent on strategy and conflict, with a narrow emphasis on just the Democrats' or Republicans' plan to…
clock | July 11, 2008I guess it is unlikely you have not already heard about the big brouhaha that erupted when Bill Donohue targeted PZ Myers for showing disrespect towards a belief that made some religious nuts go crazy and violent against a child (yes, Eucharist is just a cracker, sorry, but that is just a factual statement about the world). If not, the entire story, and it is still evolving, can be found on PZ's blog so check out the numerous comments here, here,
here, here, here, here and here.
Also see what Greg Laden and Tristero say. [Update: see also John Wilkins and Mike Dunford for some good clear…
illconsidered | July 10, 2008Roger Pielke Jr is back at his own teapot, blogging up a tempest or two again. Whether you agree with his points or not, he usually makes for provocative reading and comment threads can be very entertaining and informing. I have not hung around there for quite a while but will pay more attention from now on I think.
Anyway, this post is about his post from last Wednesday, titled "Climate Science and National Interests" - rather more general than its actual subject.
His implicaion would seem to be there is some hypocrisy on the part of the usual climate change activists and the IPCC but not…
j7uy5 | July 9, 2008Joshua Wolf and Robert Salo of Melbourne's Royal Children's Hospital
reported, in the
href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title%7Edb=all%7Econtent=t768481832%7Etab=issueslist">Australian
and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, on a case of a person
with delusional beliefs regarding climate change.
There is no openly-accessible abstract, (the link to the paywall page
is
href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content%7Econtent=a791365692%7Edb=all%7Eorder=page">here)
so we have to make do with
href="http://www.anorak.co.uk/global-warming/185486.html">a
news report:
We describe…
grrlscientist | July 3, 2008tags: politics, pollution, hunger, global warming, environmental destruction, biofuels, overpopulation, birth control, soylent green
Image: Matt Groening (The Simpson's).
A friend sent a link to an interesting article that was published today in the Guardian. This article reveals that the increased reliance on biofuels by the US and the EU is driving a worldwide food crisis. The confidential World Bank report, researched and written by an unnamed but "internationally-respected economist," has not been published but was instead leaked to the Guardian. Among other things, this report claims…
sb admin | July 3, 2008Obviously, the economy and Iraq are big issues on votersâ minds, but a new poll from Scientists and Engineers for America shows that candidates would also be smart to demonstrate their support for science. In fact, SEAâs Michael Stebbins reports that although the organization expected positive answers to their questions, they were stunned by the overwhelmingly affirmative response:
Eighty-six percent of those polled, for example, say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who is committed to preparing students with the skills they need for the 21st Century through public…
j7uy5 | July 3, 2008At last, they are being honest with us: you
have no rights.
Attorney General said so. He admitted it.
So, at least he's honest. See his picture to the
right? Doesn't he look like an honest gentleman? He
is.
In a recent
href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hngKSYm06_-CQxF9Afx1X9j1urdQD91LS2V00">interview
with reporters, Mukasey stated that it is "necessary to put
in place regulations that will allow the FBI to transform itself as it
is transforming itself into an intelligence gathering organization."
Now, the AP is reporting some details of that transformation. …
razib | July 2, 2008The Political Mind, Part III (Chapter 2), Chris sayeth:
Anyway, now on to that part I promised you about how real conservatives don't exist, or at least not in great numbers. Towards the end of this chapter, Lakoff gives us the concept of "biconceptualism." This means that some people have both progressive and conservative thoughts -- that is, they dig obedience in some areas of politics, and empathy in others (the two are mutually contradictory, so they certainly can't go together in the same political policy!). Unfortunately for us progressives, most conservatives don't realize they're…
mixingmemory | July 2, 2008Chapter 2 of Lakoff's new book is titled "The Political Unconscious, and it's absolutely terrible. It's also the first chapter likely to really piss off conservatives, or really anyone who might approach the chapter critically. Oh, and it has plenty of gratuitous neuroscience to top it all off.
First, let's look at what will inevitably piss conservatives off. Lakoff writes that there are "thoroughgoing progressives" who "hold to American democratic ideals on just about all issues," and that these progressives "are the bedrock of our democracy" (p. 46). Progressives, then, need to "reclaim"…
oracknows | July 1, 2008(Note Addendum before commenting, please.)
Is there any candidate who still supports the separation of church and state anymore? Heck, even Barack Obama seems to be pandering to the religious base these days:
CHICAGO -- Reaching out to evangelical voters, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is announcing plans to expand President Bush's program steering federal social service dollars to religious groups and -- in a move sure to cause controversy -- support some ability to hire and fire based on faith.
Obama was unveiling his approach to getting religious charities more involved in…
sb admin | July 1, 2008by revere, cross posted at Effect Measure
As the tomato Salmonella outbreak heads past the 800 case level, it's time to ask some questions about why we don't know the source of what is the largest produce associated disease outbreak on record. CDC has its own explanation, namely, that figuring out where tomatoes come from and where they go is much harder than they thought. Said another way, the experts in foodborne disease outbreaks at CDC and FDA didn't know much about the industry. Since tomatoes have been a frequent cause of Salmonella outbreaks, that seems odd, except that my experience…
revere | July 1, 2008As the tomato Salmonella outbreak heads past the 800 case level, it's time to ask some questions about why we don't know the source of what is the largest produce associated disease outbreak on record. CDC has its own explanation, namely, that figuring out where tomatoes come from and where they go is much harder than they thought. Said another way, the experts in foodborne disease outbreaks at CDC and FDA didn't know much about the industry. Since tomatoes have been a frequent cause of Salmonella outbreaks, that seems odd, except that my experience with CDC in recent years is that it is full…
razib | July 1, 2008From page 33 of Brian Magee's Confessions of a Philosopher: A Personal Journey Through Western Philosophy from Plato to Popper:
I came to realize, then that what matters above all else in politics is what happens, not what people say about it. And for the most part what happens is independent of my wishes. In politics especially, people tend to allow their wishes to influence their assessment of reality, and to mix up the two even at conscious levels of thinking. For instance, all my life I have bet on elections, and all my life I have found that many people assume that what I am betting on…
gregladen | June 30, 2008Do you drink bottled water or tap water? Water from a cooler (which is a big giant bottle) or from a filter built into a refrigerator or sink? Or do you Britta?
(Yes, let me be the first to verb that noun .... )
Increasingly we see resistance to bottled water. The Britta ads (one hour in a meeting, forever in a landfill) ... even if they are inaccurate, as most bottles are probably recycled ... may have an effect. I have seen, heard of, and even experienced the admonishment of anti-bottle activists (though I quickly add: I almost never drink bottled water. But I do occasionally. But…
ksharpe | June 29, 2008From June 29th through July 4th, 25 Nobel laureates and over 550 young scientists from all over the world are gathering in Lindau, Germany, at the 58th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. This year's meeting is dedicated to physics.
Beatrice Lugger, managing editor of ScienceBlogs.de, is in Lindau and will be sending her impressions of the meeting daily through July 4.
ScienceBlogs.de is also undertaking a German-language blog covering the meetings, here. Additionally, keep an eye out for short video interviews, in English, of Nobelists at Lindau on the ScienceBlogs homepage. Here's the first…