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pronald | September 4, 2012
The Top American Science Questions: 2012
"Whenever the people are well-informed," Thomas Jefferson wrote, "they can be trusted with their own government."
Science now affects every aspect of life and is an increasingly important topic in national policymaking.
ScienceDebate.org invited thousands of scientists, engineers and concerned citizens to submit what they felt were the the most important science questions facing the nation that the candidates for president should be debating on the campaign trail.
ScienceDebate then worked with the leading US science and engineering organizations…
jrosenhouse | September 4, 2012Going through withdrawal now that the London games are over? Well, you can console yourself with the thought that the Chess Olympiad is going strong, in Istanbul, Turkey. The United States has a very strong team, with top twenty players Hikaru Nakamura and Gata Kamsky taking care of business on the first two boards. The following position arose in the Round Seven match-up between the United States and host country Turkey. The Americans won the match with a decisive 3.5-.5 win, dramatically improving their medal chances. They were helped by Nakamura's win on Board One against Turkish…
gregladen | September 4, 2012The Science Debate Project, co-founded by my friend Shawn Otto of Minnesota, has been trying to get candidates for the office of President to engage in a public debate about science. There has been resistance to that idea, but at least, Obama and Romney were willing to answer a set of questions related to science and science policy. The questions with the President's and Romney's answers are HERE. A press release regarding the project is here.
Romney wants to improve education by allowing parents to send their kids to charter and private schools, and he wants to fund that. He is not sure…
gregladen | September 4, 2012Some time ago, a group of Internet Yahoos who shall not be named (the usual misogynist freaks who spend all their time harassing women who won't shut up) started a petition to get Rebecca Watson tossed off her podcast "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe." As I understand it, no one took that petition seriously, but as a show of support for Rebecca, on behalf of all of us, Haley Stevens started up a petition to keep Rebecca on the show. And now it is time for you to go and sign the petition. If there are not 1000 signatures on this petition soon the Internet Yahoos will win. Go now and…
gregladen | September 4, 2012This is a video of Kill-Me Kare Bare's "Hot Hot." Today, in the Twin Cities, we will have one of the hotter days of the summer, out of season, and thus one of the relatively hotter days of the year. And so...
jrosenhouse | September 3, 2012I'm currently reading Scott Aikin's and Robert Talisse's book Reasonable Atheism: A Moral Case for Respectful Disbelief. I'm finding it a strange experience. I agree with most of their substantive points, but I always find it off-putting when writers start boasting of their own civility and respectfulness.
I had to smile, though, when I came to this:
We take the Ontological Argument as the litmus test for intellectual seriousness, both for atheists and religious believers alike. Anyone who takes the question of God's existence seriously must grapple with this fascinating argument.…
gregladen | September 3, 2012Yesterday I was driving Julia down to Frog Town Midway where she had an exciting evening of political Phone Banking planned. We drove down Route 10 and merged onto God's Highway southbound where we encountered, in the center lane, a line of white Ford Econoline vans. They were in convoy all going in the same direction. I'm pretty sure I could see about fifty of them. Fifty white Ford Econoline vans. Not brand new but all in good condition. Most of the vans had a driver and passenger, a few had more people than that. there were no markings. We fell in behind them and followed them south…
lborkowski | August 31, 2012by Kim Krisberg
It's Tuesday evening and as usual, the small parking lot outside the Workers Defense Project on Austin's eastside is packed. The dusty lot is strewn with cars and pick-up trucks parked wherever they can fit and get in off the road. I've arrived well before the night's activities begin, so I easily secure a spot. But my gracious guide and translator, a college intern named Alan Garcia, warns me that I might get blocked in. It happens all the time, he says.
It was the first of two August evenings I'd spend observing the project in action and meeting the workers who help lead its…
gregladen | August 31, 2012Today is Mike Haubrich's birthday. Have you checked out his blog lately? A sampling:
On Race and The Republican Party
The Moon Landing
On Original Sin
Matt Young Gets Inside the Ark Park’s Sales Pitch
gregladen | August 31, 2012Hitler finds out that the hoped for Arctic Sea Ice recovery isn't happening, and that Anthropogenic Global Warming is real.
gregladen | August 30, 2012A couple of items for you over at the X Blog. We have His and Hers writing instruments, and I finally made my own Hitler parody called "Hitler finds out that Surly Amy is sending 32 women to the Skeptics Conference in Berlin"
gregladen | August 30, 2012That would be funny.
Tim Dickinson has some pretty amazing investigative reporting in which he notes that the origin story for Romney is that he ...
... took leave of his duties at the private equity firm Bain Capital in 1990 and rode in on a white horse to lead a swift restructuring of Bain & Company, preventing the collapse of the consulting firm where his career began ... campaign aides spun Romney as the wizard behind a "long-shot miracle," bragging that he had "saved bank depositors all over the country $30 million when he saved Bain & Company."
What really happened was…
gregladen | August 30, 2012I like to ask people who believe in reality the following question: "What is the one single piece of evidence that convinces you that reality is real?" The answer is always easily debunked. For example:
"Evidence": Reality is real because I can sense the world around me.
Answer: Senses have been known to fool people, quite often.
"Evidence": Reality is real because if I base predictions on my understanding of it, they are generally accurate, so my understanding of it is probably pretty accurate.
Answer: Predictions are not evidence.
"Evidence": When people from entirely different…
'An issue that affects all of us': Young workers center takes on wage theft in the Rio Grande Valley
lborkowski | August 27, 2012by Kim Krisberg
For six months, Jorge Rubio worked at a local chain of tortilla bakeries and taquerias in the cities of Brownsville and San Benito, both in the very southern tip of Texas. Rubio, 42, prepared the food, cleaned equipment, served customers. Eventually, he decided to quit after being overworked for months.
On his last day of work this past January, his employer refused to pay him the usual $50 for an 11-hour workday. The employer told Rubio that sales were too low to pay him. A couple months later, Rubio was referred to Fuerza del Valle, a young workers center in Texas' Rio…
gregladen | August 27, 2012This is a book for global warming sketpics so they can be more convincing in their skepticism. The title is "The Scientific Guide to Global Warming Skepticism."
Hey, wait a second, I might have that wrong. This might be a book for people who want to take a scientific approach to skepticism about global warming. CLICK HERE to get the PDF file. It is not very big.
And click here to find out more information about where the book comes from.
gregladen | August 26, 2012For the second time in a row, storms have interfered with the Republican National Convention. The political party that denies science, and in particular, denies climate change, that thinks NOAA built an Ark and that has no interest in the kind of regulation that saves Libertarians from themselves when Hurricanes hit settled communities, is being messed with by Big Weather.
Which brings us to our discussion of Isaac.
Isaac is still a tropical storm, and he is getting better organized, though slowly. The beginnings of an eye are becoming visible. It is expected that Isaac will become a…
gregladen | August 26, 2012In Defense of Science: An Interview with NCSE’s Eugenie Scott
A few weeks ago I wrote about what happens when people respond to well-established science with disbelief or mistrust. As I noted, this is an occupational risk for researchers who work on vaccines (and journalists who write about them), which is why I told a cautionary tale about rejecting science in the face of super-bugs. The piece resonated with readers, but not in the way I’d hoped. Of nearly 220 comments, the vast majority opposed vaccination, for various reasons, rejecting the science.
As I considered how to respond, I…
gregladen | August 25, 2012World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the Internet is a new book by Michael Chorost. I've not thoroughly read it yet but I've looked through it and I've listened to an interview with Chorost. Here's the book description from Amazon to give you an idea what it is about:
What if digital communication felt as real as being touched?
This question led Michael Chorost to explore profound new ideas triggered by lab research around the world, and the result is the book you now hold. Marvelous and momentous, World Wide Mind takes mind-to-mind communication out of the…