Politics

I heard today that Mayor Bloomberg of NY has succeeded in persuading the city council to vote in favor of extending term limits for elected officials [1]. This struck at my moral center for leadership, which I elaborated on a few weeks ago [2] – the Cincinnatus model. Cincinnatus was […]

The following is imagined, and purely fictional, in the same way that Galileo’s “Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems” was a work of fiction about actual scientific principles. Some of the text is taken from Ref. [1]. (cue music) Mr. Tom Brokaw: Our issues this Sunday:  He is a […]

I micro-blogged last night some thoughts I had on the debate. This debate left me with a few questions, which I’ll try to address here. 1. “$3M for an overhead projector in a planetarium? I wonder if he means one of those super-expensive star projectors? Sounds like education.” (http://www.cooleysekula.net/chirp/index.php?action=shownotice&notice=32) This […]

I don’t want to sound paranoid, but I think Barack Obama is following me. The other day I was in Cleveland, east of the downtown area. As I left the city, heading southwest for Cincinnati, I turned on the radio. It was then that I heard it: Barack Obama was […]

Very briefly, what stood out for me was the dedication with which Obama brought back to the fore the need to strengthen the U.S. science and technology effort. Incredible that he mentioned it, two to three times, at moments when the issues was foreign policy. Regarding McCain, what really jumped […]

A friend of mine today informed me that McCain’s answers to the 14 ScienceDebate2008 science policy questions were in [1]. When another friend informed me of the availability of Obama’s answers many weeks ago [2], I gave my personal reactions to some key issues that are of importance to me. […]

To be complete, I also analyzed the “Wills/Bys” in the McCain and Obama acceptance speeches, to teach out the content of their words on the issues important to them. I find the substance quotient, SQ = 1/2 * (N_wills + N_bys)/N_issues to be: McCain: 0.45 Obama: 0.82 I had to […]

There’s been a lot of crap flying in the Presidential campaign this year. Fact checking was important in the ’04 election, and the lack of it led to the term “Swift-boating”. I started browsing fact-checking websites [1] to see what I could find from people with more resources than I […]

After posting my thoughts on the VP speeches [1], with my personal reaction to Gov. Palin’s “Read’em their Rights” remark at the end of my post, I came to realize that the contradiction in her speech was deeper than I had originally appreciated. When a friend of mine e-mailed me […]