Science Education & Policy
Hank |
In Science Left Behind I wrote a segment about a national discrimination issue that was eroding not only science, but the very notion of fairness in our culture.
No, it wasn't the lack of Republicans in faculty jobs at universities. It was instead that, for decades, schools had been using skin color to routinely impede the chances for the best students to get admitted. They were using racial profiling to skew who got to attend.
This wasn't 1950s Alabama, it was - and is - mainstream academia from the 1970s on.
Few colleges bucked the Federally mandated discrimination and refused to use racial…
Hank |
Apparently the EPA has not yet discovered how to do a video conference.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced that Administrator Gina McCarthy will promote President Obama’s Climate Action Plan to cut carbon pollution, slow the effects of climate change and leave a cleaner environment for future generations by doing an Earth Week Tour, flying around to talk about how we should cut emissions.
She likes to fly. When she is not flying around to save all of us from emissions, she is commuting to Washington, D.C. weekly from her home in Boston.
The EPA idea of promoting…
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries has decided to adopt a national recreational fishing policy, a move greeted enthusiastically by sportfishing and boating enthusiasts, who have been urging efforts by the National Marine Fisheries Service to advance and protect saltwater recreational fishing.
Small, independent businesspeople want more centralized, remote decision-making? Absolutely, when the alternative is up different states all being lobbied by activists.
The announcement comes on the heels of a recent series of meetings on Capitol Hill during which the…
Environmentalists generally regard people as the enemy, but that is a mythology only held by urban fundraisers working for environmental corporations. In actuality, sportsmen are some of the biggest protectors of the environment. They are even more protective of the environmental than the US Environmental Protection Agency, they are just more practical and not motivated by the latest political fads.
Photo credit: Brendan Burns. Link: Sportsman's Alliance for Alaska.
One of the latest political fads involves a mine in Alaska - the EPA is against it after a tertiary analysis, disagreeing with…
Between 2000 and 2010, native-born Californians had fewer children and a giant chunk of the middle class fled the state, but California's population still grew by 3,390,000.
The state is expected to add another 13 million people by 2050, according to estimates by the California Department of Finance. The increase, based on U.S. Census Bureau and California Department of Public Health data, is going to be driven by mass immigration and births to immigrants. During the 2000 to 2010 period, 2,580,000 immigrated to California and 2,474,300 births were to immigrants, according to…
Hank |
A decade ago, science academic was worked into a holy war by the belief that President Bush hated science. What were the reasons? They are hard to remember now. He federally funded human embryonic stem cell research for the first time - but he limited it to existing lines. That was a big one, for people who were never voting for a Republican anyway.
It was a more gullible time. Political activists had no trouble at all spreading the belief that it was a "ban", something that would be impossible today, because we learned how to read and use Google since then.
10 years later,…
Hank |
I was cautiously optimistic when Dr. Ernie Moniz was tapped as Energy Secretary, for two reasons. First, he wasn't picked because he was obsessed with CO2 and $9 a gallon gas, the way Steven Chu was, and second, he had political experience.
The only thing better was if he had some actual energy experience, but that is asking too much. Bizarre left-wing anti-energy pundits like Joe Romm think actual experience is overrated anyway. Perish the thought that energy, which is driven by the private sector, actually have billions of dollars of taxpayer money being managed by someone who knows…
Hank |
Kansas Republican Mike Pompeo, a Congressman from Wichita, is behind a bill to create a national standard for mandatory for review of GMO foods by the FDA, called the"Safe and Accurate Food Labeling Act."
What? Have Republicans gone over to the anti-science dark side too? No, Pompeo sides with science and recognizes GMOs are safe. He says this is more to cut off state ballot initiatives popping up across the country, which are invariably hijacked by homeopaths, alternative medicine gurus and the $29 billion organic industry to claim a facade of 'food awareness' but really are just warning…
The legacy of European science and biotechnology is good - Europeans say that health research is important - but modern acceptance of science remains lacking. However, a new survey by Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale - Inserm - shows that Europeans may discard their recent stance against science and embrace progress again. It will take a culture of science literacy on par with the United States and a culture that shakes off government control, according to the results.
Inserm is a biomedical research organization in Europe, and to mark its 50th anniversary, wanted…
A giant chunk of America may want to regulate, restrict and drive out business but this is still the best place to be for entrepreneurs. The USA remains the most entrepreneurial economy in the world, according to the 2014 Global Entrepreneurship and Development Index (GEDI). Australia and Sweden came in second and third place.
The GEDI index combines data on entrepreneurial activities and aspirations with data describing how well the country supports entrepreneurial activity in the US and 119 other countries across the world and was carried out by researchers from Imperial College…