Election '08
apalazzo | November 10, 2008This weekend a group of postdocs and grad students got together for a spontaneous celebration.
Yes, the economy is in the tank, job prospects for even us academics are looking worse, but over the past week we've all felt a sense of relief. To quote a cliché that has never felt more true, the nightmare is over. Perhaps now we could once again cherish what makes America so special for all of us. So there we were, Americans, Canadians, Germans, Portuguese, Chinese, and Japanese having a great time. We toasted to Obama and kissed an anti-American administration goodbye. You might be wondering,…
apalazzo | November 7, 2008The following was lifted from an email I sent to a friend yesterday. I've since modified it by incorporating David Brooks and Paul Krugman's columns as they clearly support my arguement that the framing wars have begun - it is a critical time and we must all continue the fight. OK here the email:
As for Obama, the expectations are high, maybe too high. But politics is a constant battle. We progressives have won a major victory for now, but there's still more to do. We'll see if Obama makes the right moves to enact change, or if the whole thing collapses either due to the DLC, pressure from…
apalazzo | November 5, 2008Just like a giant, well controlled, negative result right wing ideology has been repudiated. If I were a card-carrying member of the GOP, I would take a long look at the last 8 years, and a hard look at the demographics of this election. I won't reiterate my displeasure of libertarian fundamentalism with respect to the market, instead we'll be looking at what happened yesterday. Here are some eye popping numbers for you:
In 2050 more than 50% of American will be a member of a racial minority group, be it Hispanic, Black or Asian. So how did they vote?
Black: 95% Obama, 4% McCain
Hispanic: 66…
apalazzo | November 3, 2008OK this will hopefully be my last entry on the election -
From Seed's endorsement of Obama to the comments of various bloggers on ScienceBlogs and elsewhere it is obvious where most scientists stand on the political spectrum, but why?
Yes, it is true that most scientists I know are lefties when compared to the American political landscape. Is it that surprising that those who pursue a career in discovering deeper truths also tend to be slightly idealistic? But these statements neglect a deeper truth, this being the fundamental problem with American conservatism in 2008. In the past 30 years…
apalazzo | October 30, 2008
This is what happens when a politician gets advice from political operatives instead of professionals who have dedicated their lives to understanding the topic in question.
apalazzo | October 24, 2008The New York Times Editorial Board on Proposition 1: Courting Chaos in Massachusetts
From NPR, Brian Lehrer interviews Naomi Klein. Also check out her latest book, The Shock Doctrine.
And if you missed it here's Klein on the Colbert Report:
Note trhat even Colbert is shocked by Klein's last line on the prison industrial complex.
Thomas Frank, Columnist for the Wall Street Journal and author of What's the Matter with Kansas?, wrote an excellent expose on how right wing ideology drove the current wave of corruption in Washington. This new book is called The Wrecking Crew and I highly…
apalazzo | October 22, 2008If you live in Massachusetts, one of the most important votes you'll be casting is for or against proposition 1.
What is proposition 1? It's the right-wing libertarian delusion that the best government is no government. Written by that societal piranha, Grover Norquist, proposition 1 would cut the state income tax by half next year and eliminate it by the following year.
Now let's get this straight, no one likes paying taxes, but running a state costs money. And in this financial climate where the state can expect less revenue from property taxes, sales taxes and income taxes, and when…
apalazzo | October 15, 2008A message from Marty Chalfie, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of GFP:
apalazzo | September 15, 2008Here we are going to look at the best available figures for offshore drilling, specifically the areas that are currently off-limits. That's what the fight is about.
First, how much oil we consume and how much we "produce":
The bottom line is that we consume a heck-of-a-lot more, close to twice what we currently produce.
And how much more could we get "offshore" from areas that are currently off-limits? Well if you comb all the literature out there, the simple answer is that we don't really know. Here's the closest that I've been able to get from an article in Scientific American:
The…
apalazzo | September 13, 2008Well since the current US election has taken over my blog, I've done a couple of things. First, I've created a new category Election '08 where you can find all my rants on this year's federal elections. Second, I've joined a new group blog, A Vote for Science. About nine of us sb bloggers will be contributing and the site will be up shortly is live, go check it out.
And yes, elections have also been called in my home country. For the record, I have been living in the US for 11 years now but that might be changing in the near future. In fact, I'll be up in Toronto late next week for a quick…
apalazzo | September 12, 2008We ask our volunteer army to go out and fight for our country, the least we could do in return is to treat them well, regardless of whether any one of us supported the decision to send the army in the first place. One of the best pieces of legislation ever to be passed was the GI bill - it send many WWII vets off to college and helped build the large middle class. In contrast, the Bush administration has treated its soldiers and vet like crap. But let's focus on John McCain, of all politicians we should have expected that HE would have supported legislation that would have improved the lives…
apalazzo | September 11, 2008In a comment to yesterday's post Rev Matt stated:
There is also a correlation between teen pregnancy and religion.
I tried to look up the stats for the US and couldn't find any. What I discovered (mostly from this study) was that in the US religiosity correlates with a lower rate of contraception use (not surprising), a delay in the age of a person's first sexual experience (not that surprising) and a decrease in abortion. So in the US it is not clear what the correlation is between teen pregnancy and religiosity. (If any one can find that data, let me know.)
ON THE OTHER HAND there does…
apalazzo | September 10, 2008A certain segment of the US population is obsessed with "family values" and the "culture wars". This has been on full display ever since Sarah Palin was nominated as McCain VP. But let's face it, the facts are often at odds with the religious right's core beliefs. This idea that the country's problems have to do with a lack of "family values" and the spread of "liberal, secular ideals" is wrong on so many levels.
So where to start? Well I'm here to point out some facts. And here's one for you: divorce correlates with religiosity. Yes it's true, the more religious you are the more likely you…
apalazzo | September 8, 2008Sorry folks, my new apartment is not yet hooked up to the web and on top of that I was down in NYC last week. As a result no new posts. And no facts ... but as soon as I have some time I'll continue that series. If you have some facts or stats about the current state of the US please post it (them) and alert me. These last few years have culminated into a horrible empirical result, a GOP lead government leads to failure. However the focus of this election has not been on that simple fact but instead seems to be about CRAP.
PS Over the weekend I picked up Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, it…
apalazzo | September 2, 2008This weekend I moved from the Backbay to Cambridgeport, aka Junior Faculty ghetto. It's conveniently located at the near BU, Harvard and MIT. It is probably one of the most overeducated (if such a term existed) neighborhoods on the planet.
So, in today's "let's talk about the facts" entry I'll encorage you to check out JuniorProf's entry.
apalazzo | August 30, 2008And I won't even talk about the whole Global Warming issue. Governmental funding of science is fundamentally important to our economic future.
First let's look at funding for the National Institutes of Health, the main source of money for biomedical research in the US:
Joseph j7uy5 @ Corpus Callosum points out:
I can't help but notice that the funding leveled off the same year that the Iraq War started.
How about the Physical Sciences, Engineering, Math & Computer Sciences? They have all flat-lined since GWB came to power:
On the biggest issues of our time, energy, the story is no…
apalazzo | August 29, 2008One of America's strengths was that people looked up to the US. 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 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. And it's worse then that - we actually bombed a country and then fail to build it back up again.…
apalazzo | August 29, 2008I'm Canadian. Back when I lived in Canada, health insurance was never a worry. Sure you might have to wait a bit before you got it, but you could always count on being sen by a doctor when ever something is wrong. If you want you can get additional health insurance that will pay for upgrades, but almost all Canadians will never let go of Universal Healthcare. But what is the situation down here in my adopted land? (I've lived in the US for ten years) The Democrats want to change things, they recognize that the system is broken. In contrast the GOP claims that the status quo is just fine, that…
apalazzo | August 28, 2008Again here's a simple graph that says it all.
And they say that Democrats are fiscally irresponsible.
apalazzo | August 28, 2008Instead of vague platitudes, Clinton uses empiricism to make his points in last night's speech - America needs to look at what happened over the past 8 years. From last night's speech:
The choice is clear. The Republicans in a few days will nominate a good man who has served our country heroically and who suffered terribly in a Vietnamese prison camp. He loves his country every bit as much as we do. As a senator, he has shown his independence of right-wing orthodoxy on some very important issues.
But on the two great questions of this election -- how to rebuild the American dream and how to…