Culture
cmooney | November 7, 2008This morning at 11 ET, I'm going to be on this program with Tom Ashbrook:
Remembering Michael Crichton, from "The Andromeda Strain" to"Jurassic Park," "ER," and "State of Fear." We'll look at the blockbuster master's long reach.
Guests:
Lev Grossman, book critic for TIME magazine.
Lynn Nesbit, Michael Crichton's literary agent. She signed him in 1965 while he was still a medical student.
Chris Mooney, journalist and author of "Storm World: Hurricanes, Politics, and the Battle Over Global Warming" and "The Republican War on Science."
Tune in if you're interested.....
sheril | November 7, 2008'Your victory has demonstrated that no person anywhere in the world should not dare to dream of wanting to change the world for a better place.'
- Nelson Mandela in a letter to Barack Obama
We now have the opportunity to restore America's reputation. Let it be.
sheril | November 6, 2008Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the fourth-ranking House Democrat and a close friend of Mr. Obama's from Chicago, has been offered the job of chief of staff, and although he was said to be concerned about the effects on his family and giving up his influential role on Capitol Hill, many Democrats said they expected him to accept it. Mr. Obama named John D. Podesta, the former Clinton White House chief of staff, to lead his transition team along with Valerie Jarrett, a longtime adviser, and Pete Rouse, his Senate chief of staff.
Read on at NYTimes...
sheril | November 5, 2008Obama unoffical winner in North Carolina
Democrat Barack Obama is the unofficial winner in North Carolina, but the victory over Sen. John McCain won't be sealed until provisional ballots are counted and certified next month.
Unofficial returns show Obama ahead by 13,746 votes.
Trends over the last 14 years point to Obama having a wider lead after the provisionals are counted, said Gary Bartlett, executive director of the State Board of Elections.
Let 'the new south rise'...
cmooney | November 5, 2008
Wow...I have written lots of critical things about Crichton, but I also stand a bit in awe of the massive influence he has had on the image of science in our culture. I only met him once, and he seemed a very kind, humble man in person. Not to mention overpoweringly gigantic--I believe he was something like 6'9". Obviously his anti-global warming novel, State of Fear, was wildly controversial (to say the least), but his legacy is far bigger than this one late in life work, and whatever else you say, one has to respect and acknowledge his cultural impact.
How do people think we should define…
sheril | November 5, 2008On the dawn of what some anticipate will be a new golden age for American science, we must remember the challenges ahead for President Obama. Times of change bring enormous possibilities, and in our latest post at Talking Science, we discuss opportunities in the next Administration:
President Obama cannot save science alone. He needs an army of people behind him with the resolve to realize the change that they've already dared to dream. This requires a sustained lobbying effort, not just put forth by science community, but coming from concerned citizens across America who understand that our…
razib | November 5, 2008Over at Culture11 James Poulos refers to the Great Flip; the Republicans of 1860 were a regional party of the North and Greater North (e.g., California). Today to a great extent that is the position of the Democrats; the narrow wins by Barack Obama in Florida, Virginia and North Carolina were due to suffrage of non-whites (which wasn't an issue in 1860) and the "fake" parts of these states dominated by recent migrants from the North. Take a look at the map below to see the flip for yourself.
But the flip was not just regional, it was also ideological. In the wake of Abraham Lincoln's…
sheril | November 5, 2008"This election had many firsts and many stories that will be told for generations. But one that's on my mind tonight's about a woman who cast her ballot in Atlanta. She's a lot like the millions of others who stood in line to make their voice heard in this election except for one thing: Ann Nixon Cooper is 106 years old.
She was born just a generation past slavery; a time when there were no cars on the road or planes in the sky; when someone like her couldn't vote for two reasons -- because she was a woman and because of the color of her skin.And tonight, I think about all that she's seen…
razib | November 4, 2008David Boaz of the The Cato Institute observes that Barack Obama is Not Just the First African-American President:
But his achievement is even more striking than "first African-American president." There are tens of millions of white Americans who are part of ethnic groups that have never produced a president. The fact is, all 42 of our presidents have been of British, Irish, or Germanic descent. We've never had a president of southern or eastern European ancestry. Despite the millions of Americans who came to the New World from France, Italy, Poland, Spain, Scandinavia, Russia, and other…
razib | November 4, 2008Please read this post from Mark Blumenthal on the purpose and uses of exit polls. I'll probably starting digging through them and start posting facts and charts late tonight trying to smoke out interesting regional and social dynamics. You can check the exit polls yourself; don't take someone's word when they assert something, check it yourself, pundits lie or are misinformed a great deal of the time. I learned that from listening to election "coverage" during the primaries on the radio, I can't imagine what TV must be like....
sporte | November 4, 2008This quarter, I'm using a wiki with my bioinformatics class and posting sometimes about the things that I learn.
Two things I've been experimenting with are:
Setting up pages for individual students so they can take notes while they're working.
Embedding a Google form into one of my wiki pages for student assessment.
Here's a diagram showing some of the pages in my bioinformatics class wiki site.
Syllabus: I suppose this reflects on my own lack of organization, but I use the syllabus as a dynamic document, making changes and adding information throughout the course. There are…
sheril | November 4, 2008by David Lowry
From the battleground state of North Carolina, I am receiving text messages and phone calls urging me to vote about every half hour. Something special is brewing here, you can taste it in the damp air as the peak fall color of red and yellow leaves negates the need for sunshine.
From the day Obama blew out Hillary in the NC primary and lifted a PBR to the sky in downtown Raleigh, I knew something special was about to occur.
North Carolina is the state where the civil war ended (in Durham, look it up) resulting in the birth of the cigarette onto the world stage. It is the…
sheril | November 4, 2008fivethrirtyeight.com: Obama 349, McCain 189
NYTimes: Obama 291, McCain 163, 84 tossup
CNN: Obama 291, McCain 157, 90 tossup
Readers projections invited......
sheril | November 4, 2008Nate's got the final anticipated scorecard up:
Now hold on tight as election day unfolds...
razib | November 3, 2008This is the last Jay Nordlinger post. I suspect what's going on here is a chasm between different Ways of Knowing, but this anecdote that he passes on is just bizarre:
So, my husband is black, I am biracial (white/Korean). Here is my three (homeschooled) children's experience of life: All their black and Korean relatives are voting for McCain (security, taxes, marriage, and abortion). All their white relatives are voting Obama (well-meaning, misguided liberals). At least half the Republican families they know are black homeschoolers.
What exactly does this mean? The myth that the proportion…
sheril | November 3, 2008
Today marks our inaugural post on our newest blog over at Talking Science; a very cool non-profit founded by NPR's Ira Flatow and dedicated to creating media projects which make science 'user friendly'. We'll be contributing to the biweekly 'Intersection Edition' where we'll blog about some of our favorite topics from climate change to storms and science policy.
The Intersection at ScienceBlogs will also return in full force now that we're nearing completion of our forthcoming book Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future about the growing disconnect between…