My talk at Maryland last Thursday went pretty well– the impending Snowpocalypse kept the audience down, as people tried to fit in enough work to compensate for the Friday shutdown, but the people who were there seemed to like it, and asked good questions. If you weren’t there, but want to know what I talked… Continue reading Talking to My Dog About Science: Why Public Communication of Science Matters, and How Weblogs Can Help
Category: Politics
Weather Explains Politics
In the wake of recent political developments, there has been a lot of hand-wringing about why Democrats in Congress are so spineless, and have been unable to pass meaningful legislation despite huge majorities. After thinking about my travel plans last night, I think I have the key to the Grand Unified Theory of American politics.… Continue reading Weather Explains Politics
The Amazon Kerfuffle
(I really loathe both the longstanding practice of marking a scandal by appending “-gate” to a name and the newer version “-fail.” I don’t have a better alternative, but I hate both of those. Somebody get to work on a better scandal signifier.) So, the hot topic of the moment is the hissy-cow being thrown… Continue reading The Amazon Kerfuffle
Hearts, Minds, and Health Care
This Timothy Burke post on the current political moment deserves better than to be buried in the Links Dump. He’s beginning to despair because it looks like “there are many things which could happen which would improve the lives of many Americans which are not going to happen and perhaps cannot happen.” Take health care,… Continue reading Hearts, Minds, and Health Care
When Oldsmobiles Turn Into Cadillacs
Kevin Drum checks in with the latest from the class wars: In the middle of a rant about healthcare reform and the compromise over the Cadillac tax, one of Andrew Sullivan’s readers says this: The idea that public employees make less than those in the private sector is a myth that needs to die. Most… Continue reading When Oldsmobiles Turn Into Cadillacs
Public Knowledge of Science: The More Things Change, the More They Don’t
The NSF’s Science and Engineering Indicators report came out not too long ago, and the bulk of it is, as usual, spent on quasi-quantitative measures of scientific productivity– numbers of degrees granted, numbers of patent applications for various countries, etc. I find all of those things pretty deeply flawed, so I tend to skip past… Continue reading Public Knowledge of Science: The More Things Change, the More They Don’t
The Latest from Awful Yuppie Town: Green Divorce
One of the less attractive features of the New York Times is its tendency to feature little profiles of horrible people. They’re not presented that way, of course, but that’s the effect– I read these articles, and just want to slap everybody involved. Today’s story on marital tensions caused by environmental issues is a fine… Continue reading The Latest from Awful Yuppie Town: Green Divorce
The Visual Misrepresentation of Quantitative Information: Wages and Debt
Regular readers will know that I have a bit of a Thing about bad graphs used in the media and on blogs. When people use stupid presentation tricks to exaggerate features of data to make their argument look stronger, it bugs me. But what really irks me is when people use stupid presentation tricks to… Continue reading The Visual Misrepresentation of Quantitative Information: Wages and Debt
Climate, Weather, and Public Opinion
There’s a Kenneth Chang article in the New York Times this morning on the ever popular topic of “If the globe is warming, why is it so darn cold?” It’s a good explanation of the weather phenomenon that’s making the morning dog walk at Chateau Steelypips so unpleasant. This reminded me of something I’ve wondered… Continue reading Climate, Weather, and Public Opinion
Bell Labs vs. the LHC
A number of people have commented on this LA Times op-ed by Steve Giddings about what physicists expect to come out of the Large Hadron Collider. It includes a nice list of possible particle physics discoveries plus a few things that will annoy Peter Woit, and also includes the obligatory note about spin-offs: All this… Continue reading Bell Labs vs. the LHC