Jodi runs a Stanford post-doc book club, and a few months ago the club’s book was “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan. That book catapaulted Pollan into the public eye, making him a spokesperson for the food movement in this country. It’s not a wheatgrass and hemp-humping diatribe. It’s an […]
Politics
277 posts
One of the funnier moments caught on video by NCSE during the TEA hearings [1] was when Chairman McLeroy misread seminal work by Stephen Jay Gould, and employed his misreading to justify teaching weaknesses of a scientific theory. Gould was a critic of the viewpoint that gradual changes in species […]
The case of a fired Texas Education Agency science director raises an interesting new development in the struggle in education between the definition of science and non-scientific forces seeking their way into the classroom [1]. It’s been a while since I paid close attention to these state-by-state developments [2], but […]
FY09 has been quietly signed into law by President Obama, after passing both Houses of congress with only fanfare over earmarks. This is not Obama’s budget; this is President Bush’s last budget, loaded up by Congress. Now the important work begins: FY10. FY10 is due by Oct. 1 of this […]
[Editorial note: the title of the piece should have been “Yellowstone is Sinking”, since it’s Yellowstone, not Yosemite, which is a super-volcano. The original text has been edited to correct this.] Right after President Obama’s address to the nation, the Republicans mounted a short response led by Governor Bobby Jindal […]
President Obama’s address [1] to the two houses of Congress was a fairly predictable survey of the current economic crisis, foreign policy, and a host of other issues. Delivered with his usual eloquence, even garnering a few laughs from both sides of the aisle, a few things jumped out at […]
I recently made the analogy between the potential mis-management of stimulus money to hire lots of people, and the mis-management of diabetes [1]. This analogy resulted from a conversation with a close colleague of mine. Today, my discussions with that colleague (I’ll respect his privacy for the time being, referring […]
I have known several diabetics. They manage their condition by becoming intimately familiar with how their body responds to certain food, how their stomachs hold and release food, and how that translates into rises and drops in blood sugar. Spikes in blood sugar have to be anticipated and mitigated with […]
Reports today [1] indicated that the result of the House/Senate conference on the stimulus plan resulted in the re-introduction of the House science numbers into the bill. Whether it will pass on a second vote in the House and Senate is in question, but if it does it means $3B […]
As satisfying as it was to see a state supreme court in Pennsylvania rule against a school district that tried to teach intelligent design as science; as satisfying as it was today to see a special court rule that routine childhood immunizations are NOT linked to autism [1], I am […]
At a time when scientists and politicians are trying to raise the federal investment in research, selling it not just for its intended work but its benefits to society, we see the emergence of criticism of some of the culture in the federal research agencies. Specifically, an astronaut has apparently […]
Today, members of the three teams from the Fermilab, SLAC, and U.S. LHC users’ communities met at Fermilab to set the stage for a late April trip to Washington DC. We discussed many things; much of the morning was occupied by information intake, while the afternoon was devoted to method, […]