cmooney | January 7, 2009My latest Science Progress column is about the "2009 Year of Science" efforts underway--centered in significant part on the twin Darwin anniversaries and the 400th anniversary of Galileo's invention of the telescope. I juxtapose these events with the likely role of science in Washington over the next year, and worry about culture war divisiveness as the anniversaries bring up the bad old science-religion battle. To wit:
It's totally Bush era to argue endlessly over how science clashes with religion; and it's absolutely critical to use science to get us out of the energy and climate mess we're…
sheril | January 7, 2009Yesterday, President George W. Bush set aside 195,000 square miles of Pacific ocean habitat under executive authority granted by the Antiquities Act. He created three new national monuments which ban seafloor mining, most commercial fishing, and limit recreational and indigenous harvest.
The new areas include the waters surrounding Howland, Baker, Jarvis and Wake islands; Rose, Palmyra and Johnston atolls; Kingman Reef; the three northernmost Mariana Islands; and the deep seafloor of the Mariana Trench.
And with a stroke of his pen, W. protected more ocean than any other political leader in…
cmooney | January 6, 2009CNN is reporting that one of its own is being considered for the Surgeon General post. I have nothing against Sanjay Gupta, and I don't think he's unqualified. In fact, someone with so much television and communication experience would probably help raise the profile of the office.
However, let's not forget that he Gupta and CNN really made fools of themselves in an episode from 2002 that we should never forget--the Clonaid fiasco. As I reported back in 2004 in Columbia Journalism Review:
Consider the great 2002 cloning hoax. In the media lull following Christmas, one Brigitte Boisselier --…
sheril | January 6, 2009
Science Progress has just announced their most popular features of 2008:
Some of them dealt with major controversies over political interference with science at the Environmental Protection Agency, the teaching of creationism, and women's access to reproductive health services. Others tackled challenges of a networked world, or considered how policy can better harness the talents of a burgeoning scientific workforce.
It's worth a read so go see what made the list (you might even recognize a couple of the authors). Still, I'm most interested to hear from readers... What would you rank as the…
cmooney | January 6, 2009Both of your bloggers did, so I thought I'd post about it.
I thought the film was great, but I have two comments. First: Is it not a better version of Forrest Gump--the same magical Southern epic storyline, with an everyman main character who goes to war, goes to sea, and loves his momma, but thankfully in this case is not also a glorification of anti-intellectualism?
And second: Was not the whole Katrina angle sort of extraneous and even cheapening? What did that have to do with the story? And if they were in New Orleans in the 1960s, how did they miss Hurricane Besty, Katrina's mini-me?
I…
sheril | January 5, 2009Ocean champion Leon E. Panetta will take over the Central Intelligence Agency.
In disclosing the pick, officials pointed to Mr. Panetta's sharp managerial skills, his strong bipartisan standing on Capitol Hill, his significant foreign policy experience in the White House and his service on the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel that examined the war and made recommendations on United States policy. The officials noted that he had a handle on intelligence spending from his days as director of the Office and Management and Budget.
Details at The Caucus Blog...
sheril | January 5, 2009Unless you've been on a desert island for the past few months, you've likely heard about Isis The Scientist; one of ScienceBlogs best new additions. Dr. Isis a physiologist who blogs about balancing her research career with the demands of raising small children, succeeding as a woman in academia, and shoes. In fact, her arrival sent a shockwave of shoes across the blogosphere, inspiring even the most unusual suspects to ponder the pump. So here's my contribution to the mix... These arrived Friday:
I'll be featuring them prominently at this year's annual AAAS meeting in Chicago where I'm…
sheril | January 4, 2009
Since NOAA accounts for 65% of the Commerce Department budget, I'll be paying close attention to what happens next. Details at the New York Times:
WASHINGTON -- Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, one of the country's most prominent Hispanic politicians and President-elect Barack Obama's choice to be commerce secretary, on Sunday dropped out of consideration for that post. He attributed his decision to the ongoing investigation of a company that has done business with New Mexico.
sheril | January 4, 2009When North Carolina temperatures dip, the old houses in Durham typically offer a crevice here or there for slipping in. And mice are kind of like sea cucumbers in the way they squish themselves through even the smallest vulnerability.
We discovered Gus and Jaq last month. I was up late working on the manuscript when a suspicious looking critter with whiskers crossed the kitchen. So your resident blogger invested in $20 plug-in eradicators. (My old Classics professor swears by them). Touted as the humane alternative to snap traps, they supposedly emit a high frequency sound somewhat akin…
sheril | January 2, 2009From the New York Times:
From Australia, to Asia and Europe and the United States on Wednesday, the message in the latest economic reports was clear: manufacturing continued to slump amid the worst slowdown since the Great Depression.
And yet today, the fickle Dow topped 9,000, but I can't shake the memory of that email from September...
Are readers optimistic for 2009?
sheril | January 1, 2009One Year In 40 Seconds by photographer Eirik Solheim
These images were captured in Oslo, Norway as the seasons changed and audio was recorded on site.
cmooney | December 31, 2008My last Science Progress column of the year answers the critics of John Holdren, who strike me as being pretty off base. In particular, I explain that Holdren is not some ideologue who wants to use climate policies to wreck the economy; that an ancient bet he and Paul Ehrlich made against Julian Simon (and lost) isn't some big disqualifier; that the term "denier," which Holdren has used, is no big deal, and in fact, is a time-honored part of the English language; and that despite what some say, Holdren obviously knows the difference between science and policy.
Anyways, you can read the full…
sheril | December 31, 2008
New Year 2009 faces a troubled economy, international unrest, and a changing planet, but also ushers in the new presidential administration with opportunities to set better policies that may yet alter the path we're on...
What are readers' greatest hopes for 2009?
sheril | December 30, 2008The latest publication of Issues In Science And Technology features an article I co-authored with ScienceDebate CEO Shawn Lawrence Otto. We discuss building the ScienceDebate2008 initiative, lessons from the election, and what's needed to create an environment where the public's understanding and appreciation of science policy will make scientists critical in the political process. Here's an excerpt from Science on the Campaign Trail:
Probing further, the Science Debate team learned that science was seen as a niche topic by the campaigns, and a presidential debate dedicated to science policy…
sheril | December 30, 2008Troy and Gabriella may tell popular stories through music, but just imagine the epic that might unfold by training more high school students in molecular biology and bioinformatics.
sheril | December 29, 2008Every week or so, someone asks yours truly to weigh in on women in science. I have. Including a couple of times here. But like Britney's career, the subject keeps making a comeback...
How do we break through that glass ceiling, defy expectations, and succeed in a man's world?
Now more than ever, it seems that science bloggers everywhere are exploring feminist philosophy and the gender divide. And so ladies and gents, what do you think it means to be a woman in science and when is femininity alright in the lab? Most recently, there's been discussion of whether we (science blogettes)…
sheril | December 29, 2008Sure I'm concerned over Bush's last stand against the environment, but this piece from the Environmental News Network is, simply well... you decide:
In a few hundred thousand years, after all weather
effects of 21st century climate change have disappeared from the earth's surface, after our quietly smoldering nuclear waste has been extinguished, two destructive impacts traceable to George Bush's policies will yet remain.
The first is extinctions. Species that have died out, including the subset resulting from Bush's environmental policies, will forever deprive our evolving biosphere of their…
sheril | December 27, 2008
About 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light-years away, M104 is one of the largest galaxies at the southern edge of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster
Dark shapes with bright edges winging their way through dusty NGC 6188 are tens of light-years long. The emission nebula is found near the edge of an otherwise dark large molecular cloud in the southern constellation Ara, about 4,000 light-years away.
See all 50 images at the Hindi News Channel. [Thanks Kevin]
sheril | December 26, 2008
Round the outer ring are shown the 23 chromosomes of the human genome. The lines in blue, in the third ring, show internal rearrangements, in which a stretch of DNA has been moved from one site to another within the same chromosome. The red lines, in the bull's eye, designate switches of DNA from one chromosome to another.
More at The New York Times...