Politics
pontiff | January 9, 2008Can markets predict elections? Alea summarizes last night's primary results: Ooops! From my perspective, I find the ideas of markets predicting future events fascinating, if for no other reason than my original motivation for studying physics was tied up deeply in questions about predicting the future.
I believe that, fundamentally, we cannot predict the future. Why? Not necessarily because of quantum theory (did I surprise you there?) and not because of arguments based on chaos theory (and I worked at the Santa Fe Institute ;) ), but because of the locality of physics. In a world with…
tqa | January 9, 2008
As the dust settles in New Hampshire, people are starting to talk about the winners and losers, and what it all means in the grand scheme of the election. Some are looking for excuses reasons why Obama didn't actually pull off a win when every poll conducted in the known universe last week said he would. Others are discussing the critically important question of whether the whole "tears" thing helped or hurt Clinton, and whether the emotions were real or fake. Then there's the pressing question of whether Fred Thompson's arrival in South Carolina was a calculated political decision, or if it…
clock | January 9, 2008So far, Obama has a 1st and a 2nd, Clinton a 1st and a 3rd, and Edwards a 2nd and a 3rd. In terms of delegates they are all three very close (25 Obama, 24 Clinton, 18 Edwards). All the candidates have spent most of their money and their big donors have all maxed out, so they are all strapped for cash and all three have roughly equal amounts of money to go on.
Now that the phase of retail politics is pretty much over, the national polls are starting to be important as indicators how Super Tuesday may work out. Here is the latest summary of the Rassmussen tracking national poll:
The…
clock | January 8, 2008Following his (excellent) article in Seed on the topic, my SciBling Chris Mooney blogs about the future of the position of the Science Advisor to the President, suggesting some potential names, and Matt Nisbet, RPM, Blake Stacey, Brian Switek, Scott Hatfield, Lila Guterman, Larry Moran, Mike Dunford, Flavin, c4chaos, Gordon Watts and PZ Myers chime in with their own opinions on the potential candidates.
For some reason, all the bloggers are focusing on popularizers of science and charismatic figures. But the job of a Science Advisor to the President is not really that public (unless the next…
razib | January 8, 2008Can I get a "What, what?!?!" You can check out the results real time. Here are the exit polls. I'm not going to do the final tally yet since it won't come in at 100% for a few hours, but it looks like I really messed up with Obama vs. Clinton. But I'm in plenty of company. I doubt Paul is going to catch Giuliani either, though I wanted to pick a surprise there instead of just going with the safe bet (it isn't like there was as much uncertainty in New Hampshire as there was in Iowa where we had months of talking and a few straw polls and national surveys to go on). No more predictions…
gregladen | January 8, 2008If you are in New Hampshire, you must read this latest important political news before going to the polls...
Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters
Ron Paul's Old Newsletters Filled With Bigotry And Conspiracy Theories
Obama's anthropology connection
gregladen | January 8, 2008Eco-friendly cotton from Africa is making its way onto the backs of U2 fans across the world, thanks to a new partnership between Hard Rock International and the ethical T-shirt company edun LIVE. Founded by U2 frontman Bono and his wife Ali Hewson, edun contributes proceeds from the sale of its 100% African cotton tees to the Conservation Cotton Initiative (CCI), a program run by the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS). CCI helps lift African farmers out of poverty by providing education on proper land management, organic cotton growing techniques, and wildlife conservation.
Read the rest…
evolvingthoughts | January 8, 2008
Some things I spotted today..
It's Alfred Russel Wallace's birthday. Mike Dunford has a post card. I always think that if Wallace had recognised that selection is not all about survival, he could have come up with an account of social selection causing big brains (the so-called Machiavelli hypothesis) instead of Spirit.
The Environmental Action blog is calling for the resignation of the head of the EPA for refusing to allow California to regulate emissions. See also Effect Measure.
Two really good Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy articles have been just published:
Animal Cognition…
clock | January 8, 2008Obligatory Reading of the Day, by Glenn Greenwald:
"Do they ever think about anything without reference to some high school cliche?"
goodmath | January 8, 2008 Sorry, but as a software guy, I just couldn't resist mocking the sheer insane
hypocrisy of this.
There's a right-wing political site out there, called RedState.com. RedState
is serious far-right - constantly bemoaning the nanny-state, the culture of entitlement,
the virtues of personal responsibility, and so on. According to RedState, Social Security
is bad - people should save for their own retirements, not rely on the government to take care of them. Socialized medicine must be avoided at all costs: people should pay for their
own medical insurance, not expect the state to do it for them…
laelaps | January 8, 2008The Buzz on Sb today has to do with Matt Nisbet's endorsement of Francis Collins to be the science adviser to the next presidential administration, and everyone seems to be piling on. (I had originally written a post about this topic but foolishly deleted it because I thought no one would really care. I guess that shows me.) RPM has presented the most thorough response so far, showing that Collins has waffled on some important scientific concepts despite his work at the National Human Genome Research Institute (his theistic leanings definitely flavor his statements about evolution and biology…
drorzel | January 8, 2008One final note on the teachers-unions argument: The comments to the original post on the low regard for teachers relative to lawyers immediately jumped on the union thing. Commenter Doug Hering provided what's probably the best statement of the causal link:
I do agree that teachers must be treated as professionals. However, part of that is eliminating a union. How many professional groups have unions? It seems to me that gives the impression of a non-professional class of employees.
You hear this sort of thing all the time, most frequently from engineers and computer-industry people, and…
pharyngula | January 8, 2008For Mike Huckabee.
Collins is a good choice for any candidate who thinks sucking up to a religious constituency is more important than getting the best advice about science. For anyone who actually wants advice about science, I recommend RPM.
drorzel | January 8, 2008Commenter "Matt" wrote a comment that pissed me off, and while it's probably futile to take on union-bashing again, it does highlight a couple of the things that make this so frustrating.
In response to several people observing that teaching is not the cushy 8-to-3, summers-off job that lots of people claim, he writes:
Here are the facts. Teachers do not "have" to work harder than the rest of us. They do not "have" to deal with different or unique problems. Granted, some choose to work hard and some choose to deal with parents, misbehaving kids, etc. But people the world over in all jobs have…
pharyngula | January 8, 2008This is a strange one — some kind of weird political rant. I'm pretty sure this fellow doesn't care much for Hillary Clinton.
RE: Coming witchcraft of Senator Hillary RODHAM CLINTON in politics, also.
Like in the witchery, at her age of 61 years old Senator Hillary RODHAM CLINTON is to become overnight a candidate for a change, pulling a rabbit out of her hat. This can happen only in the witchcraft that she and her husband William J. CLINTON, former President reportedly believe in and practice. This is what comes up in the Google search under words of their names, witchcraft, satanic and/or…
jlynch | January 7, 2008A study in Heath Affairs ranks the US worst among 19 industrialized nations in preventable deaths in 2002-’03. Rankings are:
France (64.8 preventable deaths per 100,000 people)
Japan (71.2)
Australia (71.3)
Spain
Italy
Canada
Norway
Netherlands
Sweden
Greece
Austria
Germany
Finland
New Zealand
Denmark
Britain
Ireland
Portugal
United States (109.7)
The authors note that the problem with the US is not the health care system itself, but access to the system, with 47 million people (of ~300 million) lacking health insurance.
Interestingly, the US dropped five slots since 1998, and while…
gregladen | January 7, 2008Accepting the 2007 TED Prize, Bill Clinton says he's trying to build a better world to hand his daughter. Unequal, unstable, and unsustainable, our world must correct its course, and private citizens ("like me") can be powerful forces for change. His Clinton Global Initiative, fresh from success negotiating down pharmaceutical prices in the developing world, is now running a pilot health care system in Rwanda, based on the work of Dr. Paul Farmer in Haiti. In 18 months, its shown potential as a model for the entire developing world. Clinton's TED wish: Help him build this system in Rwanda, to…
pontiff | January 7, 2008For a New York Times article What is it About Mormonism?, the following lines which made me guffaw:
The framers recognized, of course, that a candidate's religion (or lack thereof) would enter political debate, and they were prohibiting only a formal test for taking office. But they were also giving their imprimatur to Jefferson's appealing notion that a person's beliefs about religion were no more relevant to his politics than his beliefs about geometry.
Leaving aside jokes about the candidates debating whether the universe is open, flat, or closed, I'm guessing that the Renaissance man…