Politics
oracknows | January 28, 2009
If you've browsed the redesigned front page of ScienceBlogs, you'll see that our benevolent ScienceBlogs Overlords at Seed Magazine have started a project that they have so humbly termed The Rightful Place Project: Reviving Science in America, which is described thusly:
In his first speech as President-elect last November, Barack Obama reminded us of the promise of "a world connected by our own science and imagination." He recently stated, "promoting science isn't just about providing Resources--it's about protecting free and open inquiry... It's about listening to what our scientists have…
tqa | January 27, 2009
Remember how people were talking about it being a bad idea for Obama to single out Rush Limbaugh by name? As it turns out, the President seems to be walking away from that one clean. The political right? Not so much.
Politico just reported that a full-on pissing match between the radio commentator and Congressional Republicans seems to be developing:
Responding to President Obamaâs recommendation to Republican congressional leaders last week that they not follow Limbaughâs lead, the conservative talkmeister said on his show that Obama is âobviously more frightened of me than he is Mitch…
tqa | January 27, 2009
After reading a lot of different smart people try to explain why President Obama's attempts to reach some sort of bipartisan deal on the stimulus bill is a bad idea, I started to think about writing a post explaining why this really does make sense. Fortunately for me, Al Giordano was writing while I was thinking, which saves me a lot of trouble:
Rather, he's setting them up under the glare of the mass media to be seen as the unreasonable party in contrast to what everybody watching him on TV is going to view as reasonable and respectful. In sum, he's using them as props, and turning their…
clock | January 27, 2009My SciBling Chris was on Colbert Report last night. If you missed it, watch now:
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The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Obama's New Science Policy - Chris Mooney
Colbert at ChristmasColbert Christmas DVD
Green ScreenBill O'Reilly Interview
grrlscientist | January 27, 2009tags: politics, GWBush, satire, humor, funny, streaming video
That scumbag, GW Bush, seeks to comfort the millions of victims of his presidency as they try to make sense of the destruction he caused during the past eight years [2:58]
cmooney | January 27, 2009You can watch it here. Tons of funny stuff in Colbert's segment on science, which starts roughly at 6:15 and runs to roughly 10:45. I was on for about three minutes, and was instructed: "No monkey business. No evolution."
Of course, even though Colbert plays a rightwinger who thinks with his gut rather than his head and doesn't trust book learning, the truth is that his show features a ton of science content and, indeed, is doing vastly more than most other parts of the media to improve the role of science in our culture.
I was thrilled to be on.
jlynch | January 26, 2009Obama said: âMy administration will not deny facts -- we will be guided by themâ
And then actually began to do something about climate change.
A good start.
gregladen | January 26, 2009At 1:00 PM Central Time court procedings being in the Franken-Coleman senate race. A three judge state court will ultimately hear and rule on a lawsuit essentially filed by Coleman's team. The suit, an "election contest," alleges a number of problems with the current nearly-certified recount which gives Franken a small lead over Coleman.
All of these issues have been previously aired, and some but not all addressed by the State Canvassing Board. Most analysts currently believe that none of these alleged problems are real, or material in relation to the outcome of this election. Coleman…
oracknows | January 26, 2009Beginning on Friday after my post expressing amazement at something as rare as a 70° F temperature in January (at least around my neck of the woods), namely an actual provaccine article in the Huffington Post, a number of you began sending me links to a story that I find most disturbing, a mini-tsunami that continued all weekend. In fact, it's so disturbing that I kept procrastinating all weekend until I wasn't even sure I was going to write about it at all. But the comments kept coming, and I realized once again that, once one gains a reputation as a go-to blogger about a certain topic,…
clock | January 25, 2009In our heads, of course. All of our heads.
But Seed is asking, so let me elaborate briefly.
As I said before, science is not just active participation in research. Science is a mindset.
We are all born scientists, exploring the world around us and experimenting with it. When we grow up, we continue being scientists in our day-to-day lives.
If you walk into a room and flip a switch and the light does not come on, what do you do? I doubt that you throw yourself on the floor in fear, speaking in tongues, praying, blaming the Aliens or asking the Government to help you. You calmly go about…
catdynamics | January 24, 2009"Making supplemental appropriations for job preservation and creation, infrastructure investment, energy efficiency and science..."
So, the supplemental funding bill is moving through the House committee in sub-sections as different "Titles" of it are processed through the political sausage factory.
It is "House Resolution 1" - which is a statement on its priority level.
Huffington Post very kindly put up a pdf - all 647 seven pages.
Science is in Title III - starting page 48.
What have we got?
NASA: $400M for science - at least $250M of which to accelerate climate research missions; $150M…
amillikan | January 24, 2009
Monday, January 26, ScienceBlogger Chris Mooney will be a guest on The Colbert Report, hosted by the one and only Stephen Colbert on Comedy Central. Mooney and Colbert will discuss Bush's "war on science" and how the Obama administration can change the scientific climate in America.
Mooney is a contributor to The Intersection where he blogs with Sheril Kirshenbaum. Together, the two have co-authored a book titled "Unscientific America: How Science Illiteracy Threatens Our Future." The book hasn't been released yet, but you just can't get enough of Chris Mooney, you can pre-order the book…
amillikan | January 24, 2009In his inaugural address January 20, President Obama made a promise to America to "restore science to its rightful place." At Seed Media Group, we are firmly committed to President Obama's vision and will work to make it a reality. To this end, we have launched a new initiative we're calling The Rightful Place Project, to invite a national discussion around the President's idea of a "rightful place" for science. Come join in.
illconsidered | January 24, 2009Nature magazine recently published a paper showing that Antarctica has actually been warming about .1oC/decade since the 1950's. It was the cover story:
A new reconstruction of Antarctic surface temperature trends for 1957-2006, reported this week by Steig et al., suggests that overall the continent is warming by about 0.1 °C per decade. The cover illustrates the geographic extent of warming, with the 'hotspot' peninsula and West Antarctica shown red against the white ice-covered ocean.
That the antarctic seemed to be slightly cooling despite elevated greenhouse gas levels has been a…
revere | January 24, 2009Writing a pseudonymous blog day after day can be wearing, especially as you get no personal recognition for it. That's the point of a pseudonym, after all. But sometimes things happen that are even better than personal recognition. On January 6, 2009, Vintage Books published the trade paperback original of THE NATION GUIDE TO THE NATION, edited by Richard Lingeman and Scienceblogs.com is recognized in it and Effect Measure gets a special mention. Here's a promotional description:.
Part Whole Earth Catalog, part 1000 Places to See Before You Die, and part Zagat, THE NATION GUIDE TO THE NATION…
evolvingthoughts | January 24, 2009It came as an email. Then it was on the Seed Bloggers Forum. Now it's on my frigging Facebook - they really want me to answer this:
In his first speech as President-elect last November, Barack Obama reminded us of the promise of "a world connected by our own science and imagination." And on Tuesday, in his inaugural address, President Obama cemented his commitment to a new ethos and culture by vowing to "restore science to its rightful place."
At Seed, we are firmly committed to President Obama's vision and want to help make it a reality. We begin today by asking you, our friends and…
oracknows | January 24, 2009It's no secret that I'm a Mac geek, at least not to any of my readers, family, or friends.
Neither is it a secret at my job that I'm a Mac geek, mainly because, although the university where I'm faculty is perfectly fine with Macs, the cancer center where my laboratory, clinic, and office are housed is not. Indeed, one might even say it goes beyond that in that it borders on being Mac-hostile. Oh, the IT department doesn't actually forbid Macs (although until a recent change in organization it was clear to me that they would clearly very much like to do so), but, until the recent hire of one…
grrlscientist | January 24, 2009tags: GW, George Bush, top ten best GW moments, humor, funny, streaming video
This video shows you the one reason that I'll miss GW: because now that GW is gone, comedians will have to work for a living -- just like the rest of us! [2:12]
gregladen | January 23, 2009The following is a proof developed by a number of economists at Harvard. It is a proof of the inability of women to understand technologically complex problems, math, engineering, that sort of thing. it is claimed that it almost always works.
Now, I'm not saying that Larry Summers was party to this proof, or even in the room at the time. I'm. Not. Saying. That.
Well, he was in the room. Not that that means anything.
Anyway, on to the proof.
Find a female, any available female, and give her the following information:
1: The speed of sound is approximately 720 miles per hour.
2: The speed…
terrasig | January 23, 2009I came home this evening after a grant submission and uploading a bunch of grant reviews hoping to open a bottle of Gruet Brut and write up my account of last week's Friday Fermentable Live!!! at ScienceOnline'09.
While sitting down, my dear PharmGirl, MD, asked me to read this op-ed essay and scrolled it such that I could not read the author. I immediately suggested that the author was Bill Clinton or Henry Kissinger.
While I was raised in an unusual form of ethnic catholicism (not Roman), I have had just as many Jewish colleagues as Muslim given where I grew up and where I have lived since…