Philadelphia's Franklin Institute has just released a joint press release with ScienceDebate2008 (PDF) that serves as a kind of reminder that this thing is still on--and we're hoping the candidates will appear. It is in a critical state just before its primary, and many leading science voices in Pennsylvania are signing on. To wit:
So far in Pennsylvania, Science Debate 2008 has growing support from some major players. Drexel University, Carnegie Mellon University, Temple University, Lehigh University, Lafayette College, the Chemical Heritage Foundation, The Fox Chase Cancer Center, and the Franklin Institute have all signed on institutionally to the initiative, as have their presidents. It has also gained executive level support from GlaxoSmithKline, Merck, and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the Executive Directors of the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Living Beyond Breast Cancer, The Scientist magazine and the Pepper Hamilton law firm.
So where are the campaigns on all of this? Well, as our press release reveals, they are more than aware of the event:
The group is in communication with the campaigns, and members of the Science Debate 2008 organizing committee as well as the National Academy of Sciences and the Council on Competitiveness, a group of university and corporate CEOs focused on economic competitiveness, will be in Philadelphia on Friday, March 14th, to begin preliminary preparations and make further announcements at an expected 11 AM press conference at The Franklin that day.
More news when we have it....
For some reason, my Tivo picked up a CSpan program the other day that covered a talk by Lawrence Krauss that mentioned the presidential science debate (you can click the video in the above right of the page):
http://www.aei.org/events/eventID.1553,filter.all/event_detail.asp
Re Jon Winsor
The file can be downloaded using a download manager such as nettransport as it uses the mms protocol.