We’ve been reading a lot lately about the rediscovered remnants of the Pink and White Terraces (also known as Te Tarata and Otukapurangi) near Mt. Tarawera in New Zealand, but […]
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A series of infographics comparing the two countries puts their growing rivalry into perspective.
Traditional communication campaigns seek to raise awareness, change behavior, or change policy. The FrameWorks Institute, in contrast, seeks to fundamentally reframe how Americans understand social issues, and through this new […]
As a follow up to his guest post yesterday on the prospects for independent book stores, I asked Paul D’Angelo, a communication professor at the College of New Jersey, his […]
Three books showed up this week with chapters by ME in them. Even without those chapters, each would still be a fabulous (although somewhat diminished) book. So as not to […]
Today I continue my week-long series related to gaming, cognition, and education. If you recall from yesterday, I am approaching this issue with the following question in mind: Why is […]
[cross-posted at LeaderTalk] A lot of folks have been asking important questions about school leader preparation lately. The most recent issue of AASA’s The School Administrator magazine profiles four key […]
The Ames (IA) Community School District – my kids’ district – is hiring both a new superintendent and a new high school principal for next year. Below is the letter […]
Iowa State University held its second annual ComETS symposium a couple of weeks ago. Faculty, professional staff, and a few outside folks gathered together to talk about technology integration and implementation […]
AAAS is sponsoring an important event pegged to the Holidays. Details are below and readers in Washington, DC can register to attend the event at the AAAS Web site. As […]
Obesity is a growing global health problem, and we all know why, don’t we? It’s the fault of corporations that sell corn syrup, and a starkly unequal society (why would […]
"I don’t know why the telephone, the analog landline telephone, was never formally mourned." Virginia Heffernan remembers when phones actually worked.
Most hot ideas and discoveries fade with time. But some scientific papers are genuine breakthroughs, whose importance only increases as the decades pass. This one, published in Science last week, […]
This week’s theme is epistemological unease in the sciences: Complaints in a number of disciplines that studies didn’t really find the effects they’re reporting. One reason for these worries is […]
[This is a guest post from Doug Green. If you’re interested in being a guest blogger, drop me a note. Happy reading!] Update: see also Don Watkins’ response to this […]
Over the past few years, a growing body of research from the social sciences has pointed to one of the major challenges in communicating about climate change. This research suggests […]
Today, Mike and I collaborated on the best bug ever filed. You can see it in it’s original glory here, or read the “edited for ease of reading” text version […]
Rep Bruce Braley (D-Ia) paid a visit to the “headquarters,” of the American Future Fund, a shadowy 501(c)4 group that has spent nearly $1 million to defeat him in the […]
For readers in the Beltway, I will be presenting at this upcoming panel on blogging sponsored by the DC Science Writers Association. It’s free if you don’t plan to partake […]
I’m obviously a bit late in commenting on the scientist-journalist debate that went on through last week, so I’m not going to weigh in at this point. (Round up of […]
It’s plain to see that I’m an optimist, sometimes more than is socially comfortable. The ease with which I dismiss the disastrous economic decline above serves as one example of that. I wrote that the recession will benefit our political system, and, before I cut this line, as having “rewarded our company for methodical execution and ruthless efficiency by removing competitors from the landscape.” I make no mention of the disastrous effects on millions of people, and the great uncertainty that grips any well-briefed mind, because it truly doesn’t stand in the foreground of my mind (despite suffering personal loss of wealth).
Our species is running towards a precipice with looming dangers like economic decline, political unrest, climate crisis, and more threatening to grip us as we jump off the edge, but my optimism is stronger now than ever before. On the other side of that looming gap are extraordinary breakthroughs in healthcare, communications technology, access to space, human productivity, artistic creation and literally hundreds of fields. With the right execution and a little bit of luck we’ll all live to see these breakthroughs — and members of my generation will live to see dramatically lengthened life-spans, exploration and colonization of space, and more opportunity than ever to work for passion instead of simply working for pay.
Instead of taking this space to regale you with the many personal and focused changes I intend to make in 2009, let me rather encourage you to spend time this year thinking, as I’m going to, more about what we can do in 2009 to positively affect the future our culture will face in 2020, 2050, 3000 and beyond.
The last of Etna Week here on Eruptions has guest blogger Boris Behncke talking about the volcanic hazards posed by Mt. Etna.
A perspective from Vanderbilt University professor John Greer: When a candidate goes on the offensive to show the harm in an opponent’s preferred policies or an inconsistency between an opponent’s […]
The Metcalfe Institute at the University of Rhode Island has announced its 2008 Grantham Prize winners for environmental reporting. The series “Choking on Growth” by The NY Times on China […]
This semester in the sophomore-level course I teach on “Communication and Society,” we spent several weeks examining the many ways that Americans are using the Internet to alter the nature […]
At Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School on Monday, about fifty faculty and students turned out for the lunch time seminar on Framing Science. The Q&A generated traditional questions but also a […]
Next week, I will be teaming up with Chris Mooney at Cal Tech for an evening lecture followed by a day long science communication seminar for the university’s graduate students […]
Yesterday, the LA Times ran a feature describing separate communication efforts by the American Geophysical Union and a small band of climate scientists-turned-activists. The effort by AGU seeks to engage […]
Earlier this month, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation officially announced its 2009 Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research. Ten projects involving sixteen scholars from the country’s top research universities were […]