Links for 2009-11-08

A fourpart discussion on science, the media, and American society, featuring the authors of _The Republican War on Science_ and _Denialism_.

"Kessler fearlessly accuses major restaurant chains of a crime they brag about, relying on unnamed "insiders" to reveal that comestible pushers such as Cinnabon and The Cheesecake Factory deliberately make their food delicious--or, as he breathlessly puts it, "design food specifically to be highly hedonic." Kessler certainly has the goods on the corporate conspiracy to serve people food they like."

"This is every electronic repair tech I've ever dealt with. "

"Sorry: there's no measure I can think of by which the U.S. economy has done better since 1980 than it did over an equivalent time span before 1980. It may be something you've heard, it may be something you'd like to believe, but it just didn't happen."

"In four years of the power-beaming competition, LaserMotive is the only competitor to qualify for a cash prize.

Thomas Nugent and Jordin Kare, the company's principals, do not believe that a space elevator will be built any time soon, but they say the technology will find other commercial applications like powering small robotic aircraft. "This is a business for us," Mr. Nugent said. "We're trying to turn this into a commercial endeavor.""

"[C]ontra the received opinion I'd like to argue that in fact it's easily possible to be an perfectly effective president while spending shockingly little time behind the Resolute desk. In fact for much of early American history presidents did just that - ie, very little. The presidency and the country have both changed, but in my opinion even today the president simply doesn't have to do much to do perform his job with great competence. Now I don't expect that any modern president will actually take as little time as I'm going to suggest; the very type of person who is attracted to the job and can campaign effectively is necessarily the kind of person who's willing, able, and eager to manage as much as possible. But he doesn't have to be."