Two plane trips, two trains, one bus, one boat, one cab, and 30 hour without sleep, and it was all worth it. I’m currently on the island of Elba, off the west coast of Italy. The BaBar collaboration is meeting here, perhaps for the last time in this locale, to […]
The tumultuous Iraq War Supplemental lumbers forward [1]. Despite the President’s threat to veto the bill if it contains domestic spending, about half the Senate Republicans voted to include domestic spending in the bill. Whew. This one gets thicker every day. The AIP has highlighted the money proposed for NSF […]
It’s easy to forget that until the famous case in Dover, PA in 2006, the Discovery Institute and its passionate fight for the right to have intelligent design taught alongside evolution was succeeding in a number of test cases. The wedge strategy, a strategy to make intelligent design an equal […]
It’s unbelievable. I had my popcorn, a nice cold beer, and a stats sheet. I was all fired up to watch the unfolding grudge match of the Iraq War Supplemental. Now, I’m just tired of it. Who can keep track of it all? Democrats bypass the appropriators in the House. […]
This is going to be a stressful week. Deadlines for my research are starting to approach, and this coming weekend I fly to Italy for the last of the Elba BaBar collaboration meetings. Every four years, BaBar has convened in the spring in Elba to discuss the work that is […]
With all the disagreement about how to proceed on global climate change, you begin to forget that not that long ago energy companies were paying scientists to go out in public and speak against the science of climate change. We have gone from an era where scientists themselves were issue […]
I found this interesting article on the whole ecosystem of the innovation crisis: the “Gathering Storm” report, the America COMPETES act, the failure to fund all of this last year, the efforts to get science into the supplemental, and the connections between science and the economy. Science Magazine’s article [1] […]
As many programs on TV and radio – both humorous and not humorous – have noted, whether you call the state of the economy in “recession” or “slow-down”, people are generally unhappy with the financial state of the nation. Making things frustrating for the high-tech sectors of the economy critical […]
The controversial Democratic House strategy for pushing the Iraq War Supplemental through the House and into the Senate has failed for now [1], partly owing to Republican protest but also a “revolt” of Blue-Dog Democrats, more moderate Democrats who opposed the strategy and some of the extra funding proposals. Sounds […]
I posted a short note about a week ago, expressing concern that the hyper-politicization of the war supplemental had begun. Well, it has begun. As reported in several online news articles [1] [2], the Democrats in the House are trying to bypass the appropriations committee (with what looks like at […]
In his press conference this morning, the President defined the limits of his tolerance on the Iraq war supplemental: $108 billion. More than that, he says, and Congress can expect a swift veto. Since this supplemental is potentially to include science spending, and needs bi-partisan support to even get the […]
Back in 2005, just after the March Washington lobbying effort by SLAC and Fermilab users, a few of us at SLAC decided to setup a website that could serve as a hub for political action by scientists. It was intended to be a resource more than an organization (unlike SEA, […]