Politics
razib | September 15, 2008John McCain Answers Science Debate 2008. Compare with Obama's side by side.
sb admin | September 15, 2008The ScienceBlogs Command Center has decided to fire up a group blog for election season. It's called A Vote for Science, and several Sb'ers and others will be writing about the candidates and science policy (including yours truly).
If your a political junkie and a science geek, cruise on over and check it out.
pharyngula | September 15, 2008You can now read McCain's position, as well as Obama's, on science policy at SEFORA and at Science Debate 2008. I tried to read them comparatively — the big differences that jumped out at me are that McCain wants to build lots and lots of nuclear power plants, and that McCain runs away from the issues of genetics and stem cells as fast as he can — but I just can't care very much about McCain's answers at all. I don't believe anything positive he might say.
I just want to ask, if he is so pro-science, does that mean we can ask his running mate about the dinosaurs now?
clock | September 15, 2008A Vote For Science is a new blog here on scienceblogs.com, dedicated to science issues in the current election:
With less than two months left before the next U.S. president is elected, ScienceBlogs wanted to dedicate a space to campaign politics. A Vote For Science is a group blog that will focus on the candidates' science policies. It is managed by many interested ScienceBloggers, as well as guest blogger Ivan Oelrich of the Federation of American Scientists.
gregladen | September 15, 2008You've heard about ScienceDebate 2008, an effort to cajole the candidates for the US presidential election into addressing science issues. Not long ago, Obama agreed to address the questions that the ScienceDebate 2008 team put forward (with your help) and just now, McCain has finally gotten on board. The two sets of responses are provided in a post at The Intersection.
In realted news, there is a new blog ... a group blog ... that has just officially opened to the public (though a few of you hacked into it prematurely). It is called A Vote for Science.
Ivan Oelrich of FAS, who is not a…
clock | September 15, 2008A couple of weeks ago, Barack Obama answered the 14 science questions. Now we hear that McCain has answered them as well. If you can believe they still care about Reality (or will let McCain care, if elected), check his answers (side-by-side with Obama's) here.
Compare and contrast....
drorzel | September 15, 2008As you might have guessed from yesterday's tease, the folks at ScienceDebate 2008 have now managed to get answers from the McCain campaign (to go with Obama's froma few weeks ago). Which means that while you may never see them answering science questions on a stage together, you can put them head-to-head on the Web, and see which you like better.
Of course, the key question regarding McCain's answers is "How long does it take him to mention elements of his biography?" The answer: There are 186 words before you get to:
I am uniquely qualified to lead our nation during this technological…
gregladen | September 15, 2008For the last three or four decades, a delusional cult has spread within the United States, the leaders of which have every intention of taking over the country, in fact, the world. Sounds funny, but it really is not. If you don't think this is true, you are naive, and if you have not seen this happening you are not really looking.
Sarah Palin's Churches and The Third Wave from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo.
If John McCain is elected president, it will be because of the strength of this cult, in combination with the power of racism manifest as the so-called "bubba vote" whereby a large…
clock | September 14, 2008This post was first written on October 28, 2004 on Science And Politics, then it was republished on December 05, 2005 on The Magic School Bus. The Village vs. The University - all in your mind.
Eric at Total Information Awareness wrote two excellent posts on something that touches me personally, yet has much broader consequences on the country as a whole: the well-organized and well-funded assault of the Right on the University (check some links in the comments section, too): Freedom Fighters and Academic Freedom Fighters.
There were a couple of other articles on the same topic, e.g.,The…
clock | September 14, 2008...to revisit this discussion. Keep the current election in mind as you read all the posts.
clock | September 14, 2008Its Not Just Palin -- Its The Message.:
The brilliance of the McCain strategy and messaging is that it includes a trap for Obama. To push back on the McCain claim of "country first" and "the original mavericks who will shake up Washington" the Obama campaign's attack of "four more years of George Bush" becomes a problem. In a country that yearns for post-partisan change the Obama campaign risks sounding too partisan and like more of the same.
Morning podcast with Jay Rosen (please LISTEN to the entire podcast - will make you think!):
That led me to the idea that perhaps it's not Obama that…
clock | September 14, 2008
This is one a couple of posts about Creationism, written originally on May 1st, 2005.
Creationism Is Just One Symptom Of Conservative Pathology
I am not an "evolutionist". I am not a "Darwinist". I am a biologist. Thus, by definition, I am an evolutionary biologist. Although my research is in physiology and behavior, I would never be able to make any sense of my data (or even know what questions to ask in the first place) without evolutionary thinking.
As I am also interested in history and philosophy of biology, I consider myself a Darwinian. But not a "Darwinist" or "evolutionist" - those…
razib | September 14, 2008A few years ago it was shown that white America fertility correlated 0.86 to voting for George W. Bush in 2004 on a state by state level. What that means is pretty simple, if you have the 50 states + DC, and plot their white fertility on the X axis and % voting for George W. Bush on the Y axis the variation of X could predict about 3/4 of the variation of Y. That's pretty good. But what about on an individual level? The differences here aren't so stark. In short, those whites who voted for John F. Kerry wanted nearly as many children as those whites who voted for George W. Bush. They…
oracknows | September 14, 2008Heh.
"Please, ask this one about dinosaurs."
"I invite the media to grow a pair. And if you can't, I will lend you mine."
gregladen | September 14, 2008Would you prefer this:
or this:
Even if you do not live in MN 6th district, you must CLICK HERE and send money to Tinklenberg's campaign.
pharyngula | September 14, 2008The resemblance is uncanny and hilarious. She'll be in great demand if a certain unqualified ignoramus stumbles into the White House.
After you're done laughing, though, sober up to the horror.
clock | September 14, 2008At Quail Ridge Books
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 17, 7:30 p.m. Thomas Frank (WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS?) RETURNS
with his new, much reviewed book, THE WRECKING CREW: CONSERVATIVE RULE IN THEORY AND PRACTICE, which examines the Washington culture that politicians have given us.
terrasig | September 14, 2008Oy vey! So this is how to handle them bloggers? Thanks for my morning chortle walking back from the driveway this morning with the Sunday New York Times:
And four months ago, a Wasilla blogger, Sherry Whitstine, who chronicles the governor's career with an astringent eye, answered her phone to hear an assistant to the governor on the line, she said.
"You should be ashamed!" Ivy Frye, the assistant, told her. "Stop blogging. Stop blogging right now!"
And how dare you exercise the First Amendment!
But PharmGirl just castigated me on putting this up, saying that we really need to get over the…
clock | September 14, 2008 This was an early post of mine building upon George Lakoff analysis of the psychology underlying political ideology. It was first published on September 04, 2004 (mildly edited):
I keep going back to George Lakoff's "Moral Politics", as I did "here"
and "here", because I believe this book provides very important insights into the psychological sources of ideology, or worldview, from which all political stances logically follow. As I stated "before", it is not a perfect book. First, it is written in a pretty dry academic style. Long lists, in my opinion, should be taken out of the main body…