Policy
clock | December 10, 2007Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney have been promising something for a week, teasing us with tantalizing hints about something big. We were told to read Chris' article Dr.President, and then this morning another article, Science and the Candidates by Lawrence Krauss.
Finally, today a little before 2pm EST, we got the idea what it was going to be and at 2, they posted their Call for a Presidential Science Debate on their blog, as well as invited everyone to the brand new Facebook group of the same title.
They have started an initiative to organize a debate for the U.S Presidential candidates…
pontiff | December 10, 2007There's a new initiative to get a presidential debate on issues of science and technology: Science Debate 2008 (list of supporting Important People (capital letters) and bloggers (no capital letters).) I'm all for the idea, since I know little about the candidates positions related to science and technology. Which of course, is a bad excuse, and thus led me to try to dig deep into the intertubes and see if I could find a list of the candidates positions on science and technology.
Here is a collection of some of the relevant links I could find. For some candidates it was quite hard to find…
tsmith | December 10, 2007Still playing end-of-year catch-up with grants and manuscripts so posting will be sporadic, but I'd be remiss not to mention this story regarding presidential candidate Mike Huckabee's past views on HIV/AIDS:
In 1992, Huckabee wrote, "If the federal government is truly serious about doing something with the AIDS virus, we need to take steps that would isolate the carriers of this plague."
"It is difficult to understand the public policy towards AIDS. It is the first time in the history of civilization in which the carriers of a genuine plague have not been isolated from the general population…
mixingmemory | December 10, 2007If you haven't heard, fellow ScienceBloggers Chris Mooney and Sheril Kirshenbaum of The Intersection have launched a movement called Sciencedebate 2008, in which they demand that the presidential candidates have a debate entirely on science and science-related issues. They've received the backing of Nobel laureates, editors and journalists, prominent business people for this statement:
Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role…
aardvarchaeology | December 10, 2007Dear Reader, according to my server logs, you are likely to live either in the US or in Sweden. Considering the blog neighbourhood I'm in, and the contents of Aard, I believe you care about science. Regardless of party politics, and wherever we all are in the world, I think we can agree that we urgently need the next US president to be science-friendly, science-savvy and reality-based.
The Science Debate 2008 initiative has been launched to push science policy as a central issue in the US presidential campaign. Specifically, and using their not inconsiderable media clout, the original…
tfk | December 10, 2007A bunch of bloggers and some other fancy folks have gotten together to endorse a simple request:
Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we, the undersigned, call for a public debate in which the U.S. presidential candidates share their views on the issues of The Environment, Medicine and Health, and Science and Technology Policy.
The hope is for a…
tlambert | December 8, 2007Ben Thurley encounters a global warming denier at the Bali conference:
I just had my first conversation with a climate change sceptic/denier here at the UN Climate Change talks. I was at the Hadley Centre stand (it's a research unit associated with the UK Meteorological Office). Everything he said sounded strangely familiar, but it was funny to have a fairly posh Englishman telling me that "The southern hemisphere is cooling overall. " Sorry, I'm from the southern hemisphere, and believe me, Australia, like the rest of the hemisphere, is warming.
Yep, it was Monckton. So what's Monckton on…
purepedantry | December 5, 2007Daniel Drezner in reference to the altered US position towards Iran:
Tomorrow in Bizarro world politics -- Dick Cheney buys Mahmoud Ahmadinejad a flower.
UPDATE: Quote of the Day, Part 2 from Christopher Preble at Cato@Liberty
Were that question to be posed to George Bush, that most incurious of modern presidents, it appears we already know the answer, at least based on the President's public remarks. As the Post reported, "Bush defended his approach [toward Iran] during a televised session in the White House briefing room, saying 'our policy remains the same' regardless of the new…
oracknows | December 4, 2007Remember how I speculated that appointing die-hard antivaccinationists to the new federal panel on autism research and policy would be a propaganda boon to the antivaccination movement and the mercury militia? Surprise, surprise! It's already happening. Even less of a surprise, first off the mark to gloat is everybody's favorite whore for the mercury militia appearing (as usual) in his favorite house organ of antivaccination propaganda, The Huffington Post. First, of course, he has to "frame" things to represent himself as the brave, brave iconoclast, fighting against those evil scientists…
oracknows | December 2, 2007I'm always loathe to criticize a fellow ScienceBlogger, but, as the resident World War II buff and tireless debunker of Holocaust denial, I couldn't let this one pass.
While perusing the Last 24 Hours feed yesterday, I came across a most curious statement in a slapdown by Greg Laden of an attempt by Bruce Chapman to spin an appearance of John West at the University of Minnesota as anything other than an utter disaster. The debate was over who were the true advocates of eugenics, Christians or scientists, the argument being made that more advocates of eugenics in the U.S. in the early part of…
sb admin | December 2, 2007A quick look at Blood Lead Concentrations Less than 10 Micrograms per Deciliter and Child Intelligence at 6 Years of Age by Todd A. Jusko, Charles R. Henderson, Jr., Bruce P. Lanphear et al., published online in Environmental Health Perspectives.
The current CDC definition of elevated blood lead in a child is 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood (written as 10 μg/dL). However, there is increasingly compelling evidence that lower blood lead levels are associated with decreased performance on intelligence testing. At the same time, it has just been reported that the EPA has just…
gregladen | November 20, 2007Save the date: November 30th. The Christain Study Center knownas the MacLaurin INstitute, of the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Campus will sponsor this event:
Darwin's Dangerous Idea: The Distubring Legacy of America's Eugenics Crusade
Friday, November 30, 2007
7:00 PM - 9:30 PM
FREE
Email contact: osbu0001@umn.edu
A hundred years ago in 1907, Indiana passed the world's first forced sterilization law. In subsequent years, dozens of states passed similar laws, including Minnesota in 1925. These laws were part of a crusade to breed better humans known as "eugenics." Promoted by…
nisbetmc | November 20, 2007
At the Columbia Journalism Review, managing editor Brent Cunningham argues for a new journalistic beat that covers the obscuring uses of language and messaging in politics. The essay is part of a special issue devoted to "Orwell in '08."
The benefits of a "rhetoric and framing" beat would be obvious and sorely needed, as he asks:
What if on 9/11 our major media outlets had employed reporters whose sole job it was to cover the rhetoric of politics--to parse the language of our elected leaders, challenge it, and explain the thinking behind it, the potential power it can have to legitimize…
mikethemadbiologist | November 19, 2007I often always have many unpublished posts in my cue, so I was going to let my response to Katha Pollitt's Nation column about the sexism behind a lot of the Senator Clinton bashing slide by, but then I read Amanda's post about Pollitt's column. Onto what Pollitt wrote (italics mine):
The more people insist that sexism plays no part in the primary campaign or its media coverage, the more likely I am to vote for Hillary Clinton and I'll bet I'm not the only one. Her poll numbers with women are rising, after all. I think a lot of women are just fed up to here with the sexism they see around…
oracknows | November 19, 2007There's a rather interesting bit of vaccine politics going on in Prince George's County, Maryland being reported by the AP and The Baltimore Sun:
Scores of grumbling parents facing a threat of jail lined up at a courthouse today to either prove that their school-age kids already had their required vaccinations or see that the youngsters submitted to the needle.
The get-tough policy in Prince George's County was one of the strongest efforts made by any U.S. school system to ensure its youngsters receive their required immunizations.
Two months into the school year, school officials realized…
mikethemadbiologist | November 17, 2007How can a CNN debate be considered news when questions supposedly asked by the audience are actually scripted? Isn't that lying as opposed to news? CNN, at a recent Democratic debate, according to one questioner, screened and scripted every 'audience' question (italics mine):
Maria Luisa, the UNLV student who asked Hillary Clinton whether she preferred "diamonds or pearls" at last night's debate wrote on her MySpace page this morning that CNN forced her to ask the frilly question instead of a pre-approved query about the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository.
"Every single question asked…
tlambert | November 16, 2007Via James Hrynyshyn, Nature has a good summary of the state of climate politics in the lead up to Bali. There's even a decent summary of the state of play in Austrlia.
Any campaign veteran will tell you that voters are fickle, switching from candidate to candidate and issue to issue as the whim takes them. But in Australia, voters may have changed their minds once and for all on the issue of climate change. In mid-2006, something seemed to shift climate from an 'issue of concern' to the top of the list of people's most serious considerations. ...
Blame any number of factors for the switch:…
sheril | November 14, 2007It had to happen sooner or later for a site at the nexus of science, politics, and pop culture... Look to our sidebar at the newest feature - The InterSeCtion SoundTrack link
We're kicking things off with Van Halen's 'Right Now':
Reader's sometimes question why we care so much about the environment, engage in policy, and believe a better future is possible...
It's what's happening
Right here and now
Tell me, what are ya waitin' for?
Turn this thing around
At any given moment, we may change our selection to whatever we feel reflects the present tone and topic.
jjacquet | November 13, 2007Posted by Jack Sterne, jack@oceanchampions.org
While many in the blogosphere celebrated the announced retirement last week of Rep. Jim Saxton (R-NJ), we had the opposite reaction. Ocean Champions has built a fantastic relationship with Saxton over the last few years, and he has been a staunch advocate for ocean conservation.
Indeed, we consider Rep. Saxton as one of the true success stories of Ocean Champions. For years, Mr. Saxton had been extremely responsive to a highly vocal, but not very conservation-oriented, group of recreational fishermen in his district. We knew Mr. Saxton to be a…
mikethemadbiologist | November 12, 2007One of the most successful anti-poverty programs ever created in the U.S. is the Social Security program. Despite that, conservatives and Republicans, primarily for ideological reasons, have attempted to dismantle the program--if not in one fell swoop, then incrementally.
One of the tactics that conservatives have used is to try to convince people that Social Security "won't be there" when they retire. To do this, they gin up the notion that Social Security is in crisis, even though that is simply not true. The reason for this is that, as mandated by law, the Social Security Trustees are…