Culture
cmooney | January 17, 2009You can watch here, and here's the embedded video:
Topics discussed:
Chris's optimism vs. Carl's skepticism on Obama's science policy
Weighing the costs of environmental regulation
Stop the presses! Did NASA just discover life on Mars?
The Sanjay Gupta controversy
Carl predicts artificial life in 2009
The future for science writing
Again, the whole thing is here.
razib | January 14, 2009Arnold Kling put up a chart which shows how the Masters of the Universe were empty suits. He says:
The pattern is big egos, big money, and big power offering big promises, getting big media play, and making big mistakes (Spitzer's mistakes were relatively small, to be honest). To me, the fiscal stimulus represents yet another redistribution of power away from ordinary people and toward the elite, when already the imbalance is too high. I am more worried about rot at the top of society than at the bottom.
Kling notes that there is also rot at the bottom; the speculative credit binge mentality…
razib | January 13, 2009Afghan Schoolgirls Under Attack:
One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.
"Are you going to school?"
Then the man pulled Shamsia's burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia's eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.
razib | January 13, 2009The Man Who Made Too Much:
Hedge fund manager John Paulson has profited more than anyone else from the financial crisis. His $3.7 billion payday in 2007 broke every record, and he made it all by betting against homeowners, shareholders, and the rest of us. Now he's paying the price.
There's a lot of talk about how this is equivalent to currency speculation, but is it? I mean morally.
razib | January 12, 2009Over at Culture11, Will Wilson (a mathematics student at Yale) has an interesting article up, Screaming Shapes & Seven-Dimensional Donuts:
It is clear that reductionist and demiurgic approaches to science have stood unchallenged on the intellectual landscape for too long, and their profound philosophical and cultural implications left to unfold freely. Many will complain that explanation and understanding -- which shift the purpose of inquiry away from mere accuracy and toward knowledge of propriety -- is not the role of science. This may be true in the aftermath of the divorce of science…
razib | January 12, 2009Our local White Male Patriarch has a post up, What is science?, where he offers a very succinct definition. I have no great disagreements with his definition, but I will add my own overly simple one just to offer another dimension from the perspective of a non-Patriarchal Person of Color:
Science is a culture
razib | January 12, 2009This Joe Klein post where he points out that there is a lack of ethnic balance in Obama's rumored Middle East advisors is getting some play:
I suppose that it falls to Jewish males like Cohen (and me) to point out this discrepancy since anyone else making the observation would immediately be accused of anti-semitism by the usual suspects. But Cohen has listed some powerhouse Muslims, who would be a terrific addition to Obama's team--Shibley Telhami, Fawaz Gerges and Vali Nasr, among others. I'd also suggest that Pete Mansoor, a Palestinian-American who recently retired from the U.S. Army--he…
razib | January 12, 2009I have a piece up at Taki's Magazine, The Limits of Certitude. It might be read along with a post at ScienceBlogs, Science is rational; scientists are not.
sheril | January 12, 2009Except it's a bonobo.
Field and Stream magazine, 'The World's Leading Outdoor Magazine' has published their 'Best of 2008: Sasquatch Trail Cam Photos.' Thing is, the runner-up submitted by Pete Morgan of Bradford, Pennsylvania looks awfully familiar to my pal science author Vanessa Woods and I.
The reason? It's her photo.
Vanessa took the photo at Lola Ya Bonobo sanctuary last year. Mr. Morgan added a time stamp.
Bonobos are our closest living relatives, and share 98.7% of our DNA. Lola ya Bonobo is the world's only bonobo sanctuary, with over 60 orphans from the bushmeat and pet…
razib | January 12, 2009Turns out that the man who waged a one-man crusade against Bernard Madoff, Harry Markopolos, wants to be left alone. But here's the interesting point:
"Why would people think I feel good about this?" the past president of the Boston Security Analysts Society was quoted as telling the Boston Globe. "People think I'm a hero, but I didn't stop him. He stopped himself."
Markopolos obviously believed he was right, and that Madoff was a fraud, and that the nature of his Ponzi scheme meant that it would all collapse at some point. For most people the Madoff affair has a freak show quality, but not…
cmooney | January 12, 2009Kenneth Chang continues the Pluto blogging by asking readers to select a preference among the following planetary options:
The Current Answer: Eight. The current situation dictated by the I.A.U. where Pluto is a dwarf planet, not a planet.
The "No Planet Left Behind" Option: 13. If a planet were any round object in orbit around the Sun, that would include not only Pluto, but also the asteroid Ceres and three Kuiper Belt objects, Eris, Haumea and Makemake. The number of planets would continue to increase in the coming years.
The Historical Precedent Choice: 10. If Pluto were set as an…
sheril | January 12, 2009
It's no coincidence that our forthcoming book, Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future is due out at around the fiftieth anniversary of C.P. Snow's famous lecture entitled "The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution." As Chris explained last week at Science Progress, Snow's delineation of the broad disconnect between the scientific and humanistic ways of thinking has resonated powerfully across the last half century, and describes a problem that's very much still with us. And with that we reveal a bit more about a theme of our narrative--as we'll continue to…
sheril | January 9, 2009Grad students are used to making tough choices, living on a small stipend, and facing an uncertain job market. But can they survive anticipated budget cuts at their institutions? Friends in PhD programs across the nation are reporting the same conversation is happening in pubs at various coordinates located near research universities:
Who won't be funded next year?
Did you hear we're being encouraged to finish as fast as possible?
How much of the school's endowment was lost?
Did you get the email from the department?
Thank God I'm almost done/Thank God I've got 4 more years/Thank God I'm…
cmooney | January 9, 2009Kenneth Chang notes that Neil deGrasse Tyson has a new book coming out very soon: The Pluto Files. Apparently deGrasse Tyson caught a lot of hell over the years for being involved in the slighting of Pluto over at the Hayden Planetarium, long before the International Astronomical Union finished the banishment in 2006.
I'll look forward to reading Tyson's book, but as a Plutophile I gotta say, the plaque that the Rose Center for Earth and Space provides to explain its Pluto demotion (which I learned about thanks to Chang's post) isn't very impressive to me. It reads like this:
Our solar…
sheril | January 9, 2009The NYTimes suggests this recession will last at least into the summer, and now with over 11 million Americans unemployed, do readers think the stimulus package will be enough?
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amillikan | January 7, 2009
When Dr. Isis first joined ScienceBlogs, she attracted attention with her bombastic commentary, gravity-defying shoes and a persona that steamrolled the stereotypical image of the safety goggle-wearing white male scientist. Those who oppose her are immediately forced to face their preconceived notions of what it means to be a scientist and acknowledge the gender barriers that exist in the field when she innocently asks, "What's wrong with being an incredibly hot woman and someone who does good science?"
But who is the real Dr. Isis, and what makes her tick? To find out, I ventured to a realm…
cmooney | January 7, 2009My latest Science Progress column is about the "2009 Year of Science" efforts underway--centered in significant part on the twin Darwin anniversaries and the 400th anniversary of Galileo's invention of the telescope. I juxtapose these events with the likely role of science in Washington over the next year, and worry about culture war divisiveness as the anniversaries bring up the bad old science-religion battle. To wit:
It's totally Bush era to argue endlessly over how science clashes with religion; and it's absolutely critical to use science to get us out of the energy and climate mess we're…
cmooney | January 6, 2009Both of your bloggers did, so I thought I'd post about it.
I thought the film was great, but I have two comments. First: Is it not a better version of Forrest Gump--the same magical Southern epic storyline, with an everyman main character who goes to war, goes to sea, and loves his momma, but thankfully in this case is not also a glorification of anti-intellectualism?
And second: Was not the whole Katrina angle sort of extraneous and even cheapening? What did that have to do with the story? And if they were in New Orleans in the 1960s, how did they miss Hurricane Besty, Katrina's mini-me?
I…
razib | January 5, 2009Madoff Investor Awaits 'Imbecile' or 'Dupe' Verdict:
Patrick Littaye, co-founder of Access International Advisors, lost his savings after investing with Bernard Madoff, expects to lose his house in his hometown of Saint-Malo, France, and says he'll canvass investors over the next few weeks to see whether he has also lost his business.
Littaye, 69, invested all of his own money with Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC last year, enticed by the firm's positive returns as other hedge funds slumped. His error was compounded because he borrowed money to increase the return on his…