Science in Culture & Policy
bioephemera | November 6, 2008
Onlookers filed past the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue Wednesday night, viewing approximately 80 front pages from U.S. and world newspapers - all of which paid tribute to President-elect Barack Obama.
Related:
Useful Post-Election Links
Wow.
bioephemera | November 5, 2008
"Each face is made of approximately 150 million tiny carbon nanotubes; that's about how many Americans voted on November 4."
Carbon nanotube/silicon sculptures by MIT mechanical engineer Anastasios John Hart. More at nanobama and nanobliss.
In late 2005, Hart started experimenting with sculpting carbon nanotubes, one-atom-thick sheets of graphite (called graphene) rolled up into a seamless cylinder with a diameter of 1 nanometer. Because carbon nanotubes grow on a silicon substrate, he says, he began to sculpt them by altering the shape or thickness of the substrate. Hart also has learned…
bioephemera | November 5, 2008
"While the Democratic Party has won a great victory tonight, we do so with a measure of humility and determination to heal the divides that have held back our progress. As Lincoln said to a nation far more divided than ours, 'We are not enemies, but friends. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection.' And to those Americans whose support I have yet to earn -- I may not have won your vote, but I hear your voices, I need your help, and I will be your President too."
bioephemera | November 5, 2008
I expected that by now, last night's events would have sunk in. They haven't. So I've spent the morning cruising the intertubes.
DC's Newseum archives the front pages of major newspapers across the country - you can see their gallery of front pages here today, and can search for Nov. 5 at later dates. However, the intertubes seem clogged this morning, so you may have better luck loading the gallery slideshow of the best-designed front pages, put together by Robb Montgomery. He also includes international papers.
The full text of Barack Obama's victory speech in Chicago is here.
The full…
bioephemera | November 4, 2008Okay. . . my mom has been campaigning for Obama, and she sent me a great "Science for Obama" button. It morphs the features of Einstein with those of Obama.
Unfortunately, it was pointed out to me tonight that this unnatural union yields. . . Al Sharpton.
Agh!!!!!
(I took this photo myself just now - no Photoshop, I swear!)
bioephemera | November 3, 2008Duke's behavioral economist Dan Ariely, author of "Predictably Irrational" and founder of MIT's Center for Advanced Hindsight, was in DC for a talk today. He is a damn entertaining speaker. For example, his advice on wingmen/women: "If you ever go bar-hopping, who do you want to take with you? A slightly uglier version of yourself." If his book is as good as his talk, it's well worth reading.
But what everyone really wants to know is how our irrationality will impact tomorrow's election, and that's where the Q&A went. Unfortunately, Ariely suggested that despite recent reports of its…
bioephemera | November 3, 2008In the current New Yorker, Margaret Talbot summarizes the gaping chasm in attitudes toward teenage sex in Red and Blue America:
Social liberals in the country's "blue states" tend to support sex education and are not particularly troubled by the idea that many teen-agers have sex before marriage, but would regard a teen-age daughter's pregnancy as devastating news. And the social conservatives in "red states" generally advocate abstinence-only education and denounce sex before marriage, but are relatively unruffled if a teen-ager becomes pregnant, as long as she doesn't choose to have an…
bioephemera | October 29, 2008The Editors of SEED just officially endorsed Barack Obama:
Science is a way of governing, not just something to be governed. Science offers a methodology and philosophy rooted in evidence, kept in check by persistent inquiry, and bounded by the constraints of a self-critical and rigorous method. Science is a lens through which we can and should visualize and solve complex problems, organize government and multilateral bodies, establish international alliances, inspire national pride, restore positive feelings about America around the globe, embolden democracy, and ultimately, lead the world.…
bioephemera | October 22, 2008
"Migration"
Doug Aitken
Last year, on a brisk, cool day much like today, I was jogging near the National Zoo when I noticed a good-sized young deer ambling out of the Zoo, toward a busy road only a few carlengths away. Two passersby were frozen on the path; they could clearly foresee the pending disaster, but had no idea what to do about it.
I jogged right up to the buck, yelled at him, and made as if to slap him on the rump. He looked at me dumbfounded, as did the walkers. Then he ambled back into the bushes. Easy enough. But I think the concerned walkers expected the buck to gore me, or…
bioephemera | October 19, 2008On Friday, the Union of Concerned Scientists released a "report card" on media practices and scientific speech in federal agencies. According to UCS,
Both good policy and good practice in the communication of scientific results to the media are achievable goals for federal agencies. Yet there is no consistency among agency policies, and the ability of government scientists to speak freely about their research depends on the agency that employs them.
Here are the "grades" UCS gave each agency:
But what does this actually represent?
Honestly, what bothers me about this "report card" is that it…
bioephemera | October 15, 2008In the interest of supplying an educational, scientific alternative to the third presidential debate, I give you this:
This video is the creation of those kooky Europeans at Marie Curie Actions, who also gave us this disturbingly throbbing website. It all has something to do with science education and careers, but I can't look away from the video long enough to tell exactly what.
If this is what an EU research career is like, I may have left science too early.
bioephemera | October 15, 2008
If you had to persuade a medieval peasant that the world was round, how would you do it? Why do you believe the world is round? And what does the American public in general think?
One of the hardest tasks I encountered as a professor was getting my students to recognize that all of their convictions - even assumptions as basic as "the world is round" or "the sun will come up tomorrow" - are built on a lifetime of accumulated experience. Sometimes the experience is direct: we've all seen the sun come up. But sometimes it's not. We often underestimate how little direct evidence we have for our…
bioephemera | October 7, 2008Dymaxion SkeletonMatthew Day Jackson, 2008
I had a pleasant surprise at our Apple blogging panel last week, when my friend Christopher Reiger of Hungry Hyaena dropped by. He's posted a thoughtful response to some issues we touched on very lightly in the panel.
Like Brian and I, Christopher was a little disappointed that the panel didn't delve into the philosophy of science blogging, or examine whether blogging helps us interlink magisteria that are normally discrete. (I happen to think it does, which is why I blog). Of course if we had gone there, it probably would have been a much longer,…
bioephemera | October 3, 2008A recent PLoS Genetics paper triggered a sea change in the way genetic data is handled by research institutions like the NIH, the Broad Institute, and the Wellcome Trust. The paper, which came out last month, demonstrated that it's possible to identify a single individual's DNA in a pool of DNA from thousands of different people - something previously assumed to be about as feasible as finding a needle in a haystack.
Using the cumulative effect of tens of thousands of tiny differences in each individual's DNA (called SNPs), a team led by David Craig were able to determine if a specific person…
bioephemera | September 29, 2008
A new conservation international ad for the "lost there, felt here" campaign pays visual tribute to the Amazon's nickname "lungs of the world."
bioephemera | September 27, 2008Apparently this is the latest cover of Nature:
No comment. . . seriously, I didn't even think this was real, but I've seen it enough places now to think it probably is. Hilarious.
update: forgot to mention it's via stinque
bioephemera | September 15, 2008
Today, Sciencedebate 2008 got as close as it's likely to come to its original goals: John McCain released his answers to the "14 top science questions facing America." Barack Obama released his two weeks ago, so you can now compare the candidates' positions on those 14 science questions side-by-side.
It seems that everyone has an opinion on whether the original goal of a televised debate on science themes (which the National Academies volunteered to host) was a good idea or not. Everyone will also have an opinion on whether these questions are the best ones - and how the vice-presidents'…
bioephemera | August 19, 2008My friend Don Engel, a physicist, is running for delegate to the Maryland Assembly. In addition to understanding math far better than I ever will, he's extremely web-savvy, and has harnessed Facebook to mobilize supporters.
A few days ago, Don sent out this link to his ElectBlue page:
As a scientist, I'm excited about bringing a different, much-needed perspective to the state legislature. As far as getting there, this perspective has a handicap attached. My personal network has many scientists and techies. Other candidates' networks tend to have many former law school classmates who…
bioephemera | August 18, 2008Jen Ouellette takes lethal aim at the myth of the sexless girl-geek in this post, which made me want to pump my fist and cheer and go out dancing in a sexy dress and look in a microscope and write a blog post all at the same time:
The mistake many people make, however, is to over-compensate too far in the other direction, wherein anything remotely "girly" is somehow exerting undue pressure on young girls, with no thought to the possibility that maybe some girls genuinely like this stuff. Maybe this is part of who they are. Maybe they also like science and math. Ergo, we are putting a whole…
bioephemera | July 30, 2008Following up on last month's buzz about the Internet killing literacy, this NYT article baldly states,
Clearly, reading in print and on the Internet are different. On paper, text has a predetermined beginning, middle and end, where readers focus for a sustained period on one author's vision. On the Internet, readers skate through cyberspace at will and, in effect, compose their own beginnings, middles and ends.
Yes, internet reading is nonlinear. Yes, it may be tied to some disturbing trends in youth literacy (the article cites the same National Endowment for the Arts data and Atlantic…