Politics
gregladen | November 5, 2014The Potter Metaphor
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone is the first in a series of books that are metaphorical of the central theme of politics and society in the Western world. Voldemort represents purity of race and racism, the good Witches and Wizards of Hogwarts represent the struggle of self aware consensus around the idea of fairness. The key protagonists -- Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, and Ron Weasley, together with a few others -- succeed because of the diversity in ability they collectively represent.
One of the key moments in J. K. Rowling’s book is the solution of the potions…
drorzel | November 3, 2014Blogging will continue to be light to nonexistent, as it's crunch time in a lot of ways at the moment, including our double tenure-track search. Which it would be inappropriate to talk about in any more detail than "Wow, this is a lot of work."
There are, however, two academic-job-related things that I probably ought to mention briefly. One is this Inside Higher Ed Essay about metaphors for the academic hiring process, which rightly points out a lot of the problems with the "lottery" analogy that lots of people like to use. In fact, Gerry Canavan argues, it's best understood as a game:
But…
jdupuis | October 31, 2014This past Tuesday I gave a talk as part of the York University Department of Science & Technology Studies' STS Seminar Series. Not surprisingly, my talk was centred on the work I've done as a chronicler of Canadian science policy issues. The title and abstract of my talk are:
Evidence vs. Ideology: The Canadian Conservative Government's War on Science
Canada has entered an era of decision-based evidence-making, where scientific and other evidence takes a back seat to an ideology of political partisanship in the service of economic development and “prosperity.” Where once we could hope…
gregladen | October 29, 2014Fred Upton is the incumbent Republican Congressional Representative for southwest Michigan’s 6th district. Upton is considered to be one of Michigan’s most powerful Republicans. He is the Chair of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, which is an important position in relation to climate change. He has been in the House since being elected in 1986. Most of his elections since then, including after redistricting (when he went from the 4th to the 6th district) were easy wins. In 2012 he was “primaried” by the righter-wing, but still won handily (Wikipedia editors, note that Upton’s Wiki entry…
oracknows | October 28, 2014
One of the biggest medical conspiracy theories for a long time has been that there exist out there all sorts of fantastic cures for cancer and other deadly diseases but you can’t have them because (1) “they” don’t want you to know about them (as I like to call it, the Kevin Trudeau approach) and/or (2) the evil jackbooted thugs of the FDA are so close-minded and blinded by science that they crush any attempt to market such drugs and, under the most charitable assessment under this myth, dramatically slow down the approval of such cures. The first version usually involves “natural” cures or…
jdupuis | October 24, 2014It has been a year since I last updated my chronological listing of the Harper Conservative government's war on science. The newly updated master list is here, where you can also read more about this project in general. The previous update from October 2013 is here. Some preliminary metrics about the impact of that original post in the wider world are here.
This update contains 140 new incidents, mostly from between the last update and now. They have been integrated into the master list.
Some notes.
Many of the incidents I list are programs or locations that have sustained significant…
gregladen | October 14, 2014This is an endorsement by Climate Hawks Vote, which I support.
Climate Hawks Vote is delighted to endorse in four California Congressional elections, joining our prior endorsement of Scott Peters (CA-52, San Diego). In order purely alphabetical, they're Lois Capps, Heidi Hall, Mike Honda, and Ted Lieu.
Lois Capps (CA-24, Santa Barbara) has earned our endorsement by being a tireless advocate for action on climate. She has the second-highest score among all Democrats in the House of Representatives on our scorecard measuring leadership. Her climate resilience ideas, in particular, have been…
gregladen | October 12, 2014This is an endorsement by Climate Hawks Vote, which I support.
Climate Hawks Vote is delighted to endorse Scott Peters in California’s 52d Congressional District of San Diego for his strong climate leadership and for taking first place in our August 2014 survey. And his approach just may break partisan gridlock in Congress.
Scott Peters has a reputation as a problem solver. Climate hawks tend to fly on the left wing of the Democratic Party, but Peters has demonstrated that climate transcends political partisanship. He’s spoken out onsuper-pollutants, national security, and resiliency, all…
gregladen | October 10, 2014This is an endorsement by Climate Hawks Vote, which I support.
Climate Hawks Vote announces endorsements of two Michigan Democrats: Paul Clements for Congress in Michigan’s Sixth District, and Gary Peters for Senate, because the Koch brothers and Big Oil need to stop using Michigan’s shores as a dumping ground for their pollution and Michigan’s politicians for their agenda.
Paul Clements is challenging none other than Fred Upton, chair of the House Energy & Commerce Committee - these days, the House Big Oil Lackey Committee. As the face of Big Oil, Upton was named the number one enemy of…
gregladen | October 8, 2014This is an endorsement by Climate Hawks Vote, which I support.
We’re working our way through scoring Senate Democrats on climate leadership, using the same lodestar that we’ve used on House Democrats: who’s leading on climate by engaging the public? It’s slow going - results might not be final until mid-October or later. However, given the intense interest in certain races, we’re releasing a few scores early. Jeanne Shaheen has earned a high score, and thus our endorsement, for her deep commitment to energy efficiency.
Jeanne Shaheen, New Hampshire Senator, has earned a very high score on our…
gregladen | October 8, 2014This is an endorsement by Climate Hawks Vote, which I support.
We’re endorsing climate hawk Shenna Bellows to be the next Senator from Maine because business as usual is no longer good enough in the face of a local and worldwide crisis. Long-time incumbent Susan Collins admits the existence of a problem, to her credit; but far from proposing credible solutions, her actions range from policy homeopathy to delay to active hindrance.
While working on our sophisticated scorecard measuring leadership - not just votes - on climate for Senate Democrats, we are also tracking four Senate Republicans…
oracknows | October 8, 2014
I mentioned yesterday that this week is Naturopathic Medicine Week 2014, or, as I like to call it, Quackery Week. At the time, I wasn’t sure when or if I was going to do another post about the quackery that is naturopathy this week. I was going to play it by ear and see what came up. Then, one of my commenters mentioned this subreddit, Read what naturopaths say to one another. Conclusion: manipulative, poorly trained, and a threat to public health. Now, I’m not a big fan of Reddit, largely because I can’t figure out how to find things easily, and I hate the sheer ugly and user hostile…
gregladen | October 5, 2014We really only know things work when we test them to the limit and see what it takes to make them fail, or nearly fail. All those air planes and space ships and regular shops and nice cars that usually don't fail have a pedigree of prototypes or prototypes of parts that were pushed until they broke. Chickens fired into running Boeing 757 engines with a special Chicken Cannon. Crash dummies driving vehicles into specially built walls. Rocket engines exploding on test ranges. But many systems are never tested that way, and really can't be. We build the systems and convince those who need…
oracknows | October 3, 2014
Countering the misinformation regularly promulgated by the antivaccine movement, be it antivaccinationists who are completely off the deep end, like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the crew at the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism, or that epitome of the Dunning-Kruger effect mixed with an annoying self-absorption and coffee klatch vibe (that is when it's not a wine party), The Thinking Moms' Revolution, or from seemingly more "reasonable" antivaccine advocates like pediatricians Robert "Dr. Bob" Sears or Dr. Jay Gordon. The reason is simple. Vaccines save lives. They prevent children from…
aardvarchaeology | October 2, 2014I did a fun exercise with my Umeå archaeology freshmen Monday: a role-playing debate about the ethics of burial archaeology. The framework was a hearing at the Ministry of Culture regarding a planned revision of the Ancient Monuments Law.
I assigned randomised groups of up to 4 students roles as archaeologists, neopagans, the Swedish Church, a housing development firm, Satanists, Saami nationalists and recently arrived Syrian Orthodox Turks. Each group got a slip of paper telling them what their opinions were about burial archaeology, above-ground curation of human remains and reburial. I…
jdupuis | September 26, 2014
Science Advice: Cultivating the necessary functions in Canada
A rough guide to science advice
Principles and politics of scientific advice
What do policymakers want from academics?
Tips for Academics Who Want to Engage Policymakers
Top 20 things scientists need to know about policy-making
Top 20 things politicians need to know about science
12 things policy-makers and scientists should know about the public
Science in an Age of Scrutiny: How Scientists Can Respond to Criticism and Personal Attacks
The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate…
oracknows | September 25, 2014Ever since the latest outbreak of Ebola viral disease in West Africa, there has been panic that’s metastasized to the US, even though the risk of a major outbreak here is very low. Unfortunately, whenever there’s panic over a disease, whatever the disease is, there soon follows quackery in response to that panic, from quacks who are either looking to make a buck or who are true believers (or both). For instance, I’ve seen high dose vitamin C touted as an Ebola remedy. I’ve also written about deluded homeopaths claiming that homeopathy can be used to treat Ebola. One particularly deluded…
drorzel | September 23, 2014Modern media being what it is, I should get out in front of this, so: I am guilty of putting words in Einstein's mouth. I mean, go watch my TED-Ed video on particles and waves, or just look at the image up top-- that very clearly shows Einstein saying words that he probably never said. And it's my fault.
Well, OK, I didn't actually put those words in his mouth-- the animator did that. What I wrote is "Einstein himself described [the photoelectric effect] as the only truly revolutionary thing he did." Which isn't really a quote, but a paraphrase. And it's really a paraphrase of something…
aardvarchaeology | September 22, 2014The Sweden Democrats (SD) is a racist populist party that got 13% of the vote in the recent Swedish parliamentary election. They got into Parliament four years ago at the expense of the Labour Party. This time around they more than doubled their support at the expense of the Conservative Party, who lost a precarious hold on government to Labour and the Greens.
The 87% of the country who didn't vote for the racists are asking how the fuck this could happen. A common and, to my mind, convincing explanation starts from the demography of the SD voters. Sweden has low unemployment, high general…
drorzel | September 18, 2014The London School of Economics has a report on a study of academic refereeing (PDF) that looked at the effect of incentives on referee behavior. They found that both a "social incentive" (posting the time a given referee took to turn around the papers they reviewed on a web site) and a cash incentive ($100 Amazon gift card for meeting a 4-week deadline) worked to increase the chance of a referee accepting a review request, and improved the chances that they would meet the deadline. The effect of cash was a little smaller for tenured faculty, but they were slightly more susceptible to the…