Politics
hrynyshyn | January 20, 2010I awoke this morning in a universe with a quantum signature that differs from that of the universe in which I fell asleep. I know this because it's the only way I can explain last night's Republican victory in the safest Democratic seat in the Senate.
It's just like that episode of Star Trek: TNG, the one in which Worf keeps flitting back and forth between alternate realities, including one where the Borg is practically ruling the universe, Once Riker discovers there are realities in which they aren't, he's willing to sabotage the effort to heal the trans-universe rift so he can escape his…
grrlscientist | January 20, 2010
Who: Eric Alterman
What: free public presentation, "What Would Thomas Paine Think? Liberal Values in Obama's First Year"
Where: New York Society for Ethical Culture [travel instruction] 2 West 64th Street (at Central Park West) [map]
When: 700 pm, Wednesday, 20 January
Cost: FREE and open to the public
CFI-NYC's annual Thomas Paine Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Eric Alterman, media columnist for The Nation and Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College. The event takes place exactly one year after the inauguration of President Obama, and Paine's view --…
grrlscientist | January 19, 2010
Who: Eric Alterman, PhD
What: free public presentation, "What Would Thomas Paine Think? Liberal Values in Obama's First Year"
Where: New York Society for Ethical Culture [travel instruction] 2 West 64th Street (at Central Park West) [map]
When: 700 pm, Wednesday, 20 January
Cost: FREE and open to the public
CFI-NYC's annual Thomas Paine Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Eric Alterman, media columnist for The Nation and Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College. The event takes place exactly one year after the inauguration of President Obama, and Paine's view…
hrynyshyn | January 19, 2010Dear Massachusetts voters:
If for some reason you haven't yet decided who should get your vote in today's Senate election, consider this little piece of information about Republican candidate Scott Brown, courtesy of the Boston Globe:
Brown typically skips climate change and global warming when discussing the environment; he sees the emissions debate as an economic one, spokesman Felix Browne said. On his website, under "Energy and Environment,'' Brown supports an array of domestic alternatives to foreign oil - including wind, solar, nuclear, geothermal, and hydroelectric - but does not…
pharyngula | January 19, 2010Today is the day of a special election in Massachusetts, and it's important — it could weaken the Democratic majority in the senate, and derail what little hope we have for sensible health care. Get out and vote for the Democrat, Coakley, even if you think she is a little yellow dog.
The Colbert Report
Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Massachusetts Special Election
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political Humor
Economy
jstemwedel | January 18, 2010Session description: We will be talking about how the history of science and the history of the open-access movement have intersected. Steven Johnson touches on this theme in his latest book, The Invention of Air, in that 18th century British polymath Joseph Priestley was a strong advocate of publishing scientific data widely in order to create a greater dialogue between scientists. While Johnson only mentions this briefly in the case of Priestley, this theme runs strongly through the history of science and is what makes the debate over the patenting of genes or the availability of open-…
drorzel | January 18, 2010One of the less attractive features of the New York Times is its tendency to feature little profiles of horrible people. They're not presented that way, of course, but that's the effect-- I read these articles, and just want to slap everybody involved.
Today's story on marital tensions caused by environmental issues is a fine example of the form:
He bikes 12 1/2 miles to and from his job at a software company outside Santa Barbara, Calif. He recycles as much as possible and takes reusable bags to the grocery store.
Still, his girlfriend, Shelly Cobb, feels he has not gone far enough.
Ms. Cobb…
grrlscientist | January 17, 2010tags: I Have a Dream, Martin Luther King, Jr., MLK, politics, civil rights, history, United States, streaming video
If you live in the USA, then you should know that today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. This is my favorite holiday in the States because it celebrates values instead of gross consumerism. It celebrates America's core values of human/civil rights as well as freedom for all (not just for the rich, as is the case now).
Martin Luther King, Jr.
I Have a Dream
August 28, 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial, Washington D.C.
[Transcribed from the video]
I am happy to join with you today in…
catdynamics | January 17, 2010hey y'all - where have the Hubble Fellowships gone?
Einstein has announced (congratulations to the winners)
- the Hubble committee met, I'm told
so where are the offers?
Inquiring minds gots to know.
the rumour mill is grinding and needs some grist
j7uy5 | January 15, 2010The earthquake in Haiti is only the most recent in a series of
catastrophes stretching back over two centuries. It was not
always like this. Haiti, in fact, was once the most prosperous
colony in the New World. When it was a French colony, known as
class="bc_2">St. Domingue (
also called The Pearl of the Antilles), it
href="http://www.blackcommentator.com/71/71_robinson_haiti.html">generated
more wealth that the 13 British colonies that were to become the
United States.
Foreign Policy magazine has a timeline of the modern-day disasters that
set the stage for the
href="http://…
emjohnson | January 15, 2010Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4
Richard Hofstadter wrote in Social Darwinism in American Thought that this political theory was "one of the leading strains in American conservative thought for more than a generation." In this series I have shown many of the inconsistencies that exist in the literature on social Darwinism and have emphasized the main objections that scholars have raised about the utility of the term.
In Part 1 I presented the standard definition of social Darwinism as defined by Richard Hofstadter and R.J. Halliday. In Part 2 I highlighted the common objection that there…
grrlscientist | January 14, 2010
Who: Eric Alterman
What: free public presentation, "What Would Thomas Paine Think? Liberal Values in Obama's First Year"
Where: New York Society for Ethical Culture [travel instruction] 2 West 64th Street (at Central Park West) [map]
When: 700 pm, Wednesday, 20 January
Cost: FREE and open to the public
CFI-NYC's annual Thomas Paine Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Eric Alterman, media columnist for The Nation and Distinguished Professor of English and Journalism at Brooklyn College. The event takes place exactly one year after the inauguration of President Obama, and Paine's view --…
sastyk | January 14, 2010John Michael Greer has a superb piece up about our reluctance to seriously consider real community and organizational strategies. I think it is well worth reading for anyone interested in this question of community - because we have to ask ourselves, if this is the tool we've got, why do so few of us want to do the work? Why are so few of us able to do the work?
It's interesting to speculate about why that took place. I suspect many of my readers have encountered Robert Putnam's widely discussed book Bowling Alone (2000), which traced the collapse of social networks and institutions…
drorzel | January 14, 2010Regular readers will know that I have a bit of a Thing about bad graphs used in the media and on blogs. When people use stupid presentation tricks to exaggerate features of data to make their argument look stronger, it bugs me. But what really irks me is when people use stupid presentation tricks to trample their own arguments.
Today's exhibit for the prosecution is this graph by Mike Konczal via Kevin Drum comparing median wages to household debt over the last thirty years:
The blue line is debt, the reddish one income (adjusted for inflation, I believe). Both data sets are normalized so…
emjohnson | January 14, 2010Scientific innovation relies on open communication and always has. It has only been through the free exchange of information and ideas that scientific pioneers have expanded the boundaries of knowledge. Through books, pamphlets, letters, journals, and now blogs, scientists communicate their results and imagine new frontiers in the natural world. But even as we reach our highest point of scientific achievement have we failed to learn the lessons that history teaches?
The barriers to science have always come in the form of restricting information. Figures such as Copernicus, Kepler,…
ddobbs | January 14, 2010
We don't have a government-run system. But our system is so expensive that our government's partial role is pricier than the whole of government-run systems.
via voices.washingtonpost.com
Absorb that: Our supposedly efficient supposedly free-market healthcare system costs us more in government spending alone than other countries spend on government-run systems.
Posted via web from David Dobbs's Somatic Marker
pharyngula | January 13, 2010A new Pew survey has some encouraging results about intermarriage in America: people seem to be more willing to accept it. The numbers show that a majority across the board will readily accept a family member of a different race.
Although I do have to find a few continuing problems there. Who are the biggest bigots in the poll? White people. There doesn't seem to be anything said about that unsurprising result.
There are also some kinds of marriages that would be unacceptable. Guess who?
The survey finds that most Americans also are ready to accept intermarriage in their family if the new…
pharyngula | January 11, 2010Here's what we get in American government: a room full of morons, eyes squeezed shut, bobbing their heads back and forth as they beg an invisible man in the sky to smite health care reform. Witness this and realize that religion is a pathology, an evil mind-rot that makes the stupid even more stupid.
(via the prayercast on RIght Wing Watch, which is full of examples of this kind of lunacy)
emjohnson | January 11, 2010Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4
In Quentin Skinner's celebrated history The Foundations of Modern Political Thought he writes that:
If the history of political theory were to be written essentially as a history of ideologies, one outcome might be a clearer understanding of the links between political theory and practice.
In Part II of this series I highlighted how a common objection to the political theory of social Darwinism is that it was a misapplication of Darwin's science to already existing ideas. A second objection is that there is no core theoretical framework that would make the…