Politics
-
Viva Hubble?
According to National Public Radio: Report Discourages NASA Plan to Save Hubble A confidential report commissioned by NASA has concluded that the space agency’s plan to use a robot to save the Hubble telescope is highly risky. The robot would install two new instruments and replace batteries and gyroscopes. But the report suggests NASA should…
-
Science, Money and Teaching in Britain
With the closure of University departments throughout England (Chemistry at Exeter and Architecture at Cambridge just announced this week), and the Science Minister called to the Parliamentary Science and Technology Committee today, UK science funding has been making headlines (or at least showing up on media radar) over the last couple of days. Currently, departmental…
-
NASA’s Future: man or machine?
New York Times Editorial: NASA’s Budgetary Gift Horse: With its hands free to redistribute a hefty 2005 budget, the space agency should funnel more resources into its unmanned programs. Congress … granted NASA unprecedented authority to move funds about … to stitch together a viable program within the available resources. That puts a special burden…
-
Science in Bush’s America
Wired News: Science Braces for Second Term Climate change. The teaching of Darwinian evolution. Stem Cell research and reproductive rights. Industrial waste. Exploring Mars. Many or most of us scientists disagree with the Bush Administration’s policies on many of these and other issues. That becomes a real problem when they start interfering with the flow…
-
Powell in 2008?
·
US Secretary of State Colin Powell resigns: he’s a pro-affirmative action military moderate… So: for the Democrats?
-
Theory?
Evolution textbooks row goes to court: “United States: School board in court after it tried to placate Christian fundamentalist parents by placing a sticker on science textbooks saying evolution was ‘theory, not fact’.” (Via Guardian Unlimited.) With their usual linguistic slight of hand, the fanatics formerly known as the Christian Right have managed to conflate…
-
A divider, not a uniter
·
The pundits have been falling over themselves to find “the” explanation for the Democrats’ loss this week. Was it values — “gays, guns, and god”? Was it better organization headed by Karl Rove? Was it not wanting to ditch a wartime [sic] leader? As usual, all of these things are true — no single explanation…
-
Getting used to disappointment
·
When I was six years old in 1972, somehow we kids waiting for the bus home from school got to talking about politics — who our parents would be voting for in the next election. To this day, I remain proud that my parents were the only ones voting for McGovern. He lost, of course,…
-
The Red and the Blue
·
I’ve only lived in blue counties in blue states in blue regions (and the even-bluer countries of Canada and the United Kingdom)… (Map courtesy USA Today)
Search
Recent Posts
Categories
- Academia (64)
- Art (57)
- Miscellanea (100)
- Music (71)
- Net (63)
- News (27)
- Politics (109)
- Science (331)
- Uncategorized (4)