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Friday, May 24th, 2013
The statement can be found here online. Here it is below with some of my thoughts. The American Astronomical Society (AAS) has issued a statement addressing the potential elimination of the education and public outreach (EPO) activities in NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, as called for in President Obama’s fiscal year (FY) 2014 budget proposal. The [...]
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Wednesday, May 1st, 2013
This has been a rough week for me on the funding front, getting two NSF grant proposals turned down. I expected it at some level, since the odds have gotten so bad (about 10-12% in astronomy, last time I saw hard numbers). So you have to have a great proposal, or at least one that [...]
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Saturday, April 27th, 2013
I just became aware of this crazy stupid quote from congressman Joe Barton (R-Texas) from 2010: Wind is God’s way of balancing heat. Wind is the way you shift heat from areas where it’s hotter to areas where it’s cooler. That’s what wind is. Wouldn’t it be ironic if in the interest of global warming [...]
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Thursday, April 18th, 2013
Here’s an interesting article about the political soul of science fiction, conveniently cast as left vs. right. I’m going to trash the concept of this article a bit, but bear in mind that I do find it interesting and thoughtful. I mean, the author of the article even agrees with me that this is in [...]
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Tuesday, April 2nd, 2013
Hank Green of Scishow: I have grant proposals in, less likely to be funded now. One source of past Launchpad funding totally gone now, another much harder to get. Instead of oil subsidies, how about science and education investments? Share/Bookmark
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Monday, April 1st, 2013
I just saw a pretty shocking story. Details below. Jim DeMint, former Republican senator and well-known immigration hawk, now head of the Heritage Foundation, is spearheading a lawsuit in order to get DC comics to expel Superman from the United States, or at least turn himself in to the INS. Superman was born on Krypton, [...]
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Wednesday, March 27th, 2013
Superman was born on Krypton and sent, without choice, to live in the United States. Illegally. Yet he somehow became associated with “truth, justice, and the American way.” The American way is immigration. Even if you’re a native American, you immigrated to North America over the Bering land bridge at some point in the distant [...]
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Monday, February 18th, 2013
From wikipedia: Poe’s law, named after its author Nathan Poe, is an Internet adage reflecting the idea that without a clear indication of the author’s intent, it is difficult or impossible to tell the difference between sincere extremism and an exaggerated parody of extremism.[1] Yesterday on my blog in the context of meteors I [...]
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Wednesday, December 12th, 2012
I wanted to pass on an informational email from the American Astronomical Society on this topic: Informational Email 2012-11 Joel Parriott, Director of Public Policy joel.parriott@aas.org Subject: The Fiscal Cliff and the American Astronomical Society The President and Congressional leaders are in negotiations to forge a compromise to avoid the full array of tax increases [...]
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Sunday, October 28th, 2012
Still in Brazil, but in the airport waiting for the first leg of the trip to start. I think I’ll avoid the possible “Frankenstorm” on the flight back tonight. Thoughtful article about using geoengineering to tackle climate change. We’re probably going to need it. Much better to avoid a problem through prevention rather than surgery…diet [...]
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Tuesday, October 9th, 2012
From a comment left on yesterday’s Sunday Starlinks post, an “Honest Trailer” for Prometheus. I had not heard of this video series before, but if they’re all this dead on and funny, I’ll be watching a lot more: On Broun and his science from “the pit of hell” crazy crap, others have commented too (e.g. [...]
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Saturday, October 6th, 2012
So says Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), a member of the House SCIENCE Committee. (Don’t forget his colleague on the committee, Todd Akin (R-MO), who has some non-scientific biological ideas about how women’s bodies respond to legitimate rape.) At least he got the Big Bang in there. Usually it’s that attention whore evolution getting all the [...]
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