I remember the excitement and hope that accompanied JFK into the White House. This is the first time in half a century that I sense the same excitement. When I look at the racial situation in the US during...
POSTED Friday, November 14, 2008

Right now, I am in Basel, Switzerland, keynoting the Swiss Innovation Forum, so I have witnessed firsthand the European reaction to Obama’s victory. The European response has been ecstatic. People spontaneously organized many election parties to watch the election...
POSTED Thursday, November 13, 2008

Barack Obama’s election is the single most historic moment I have personally lived through. It’s not just a historic American moment — it seems like most of the planet is cheering at America now. Seeing how much of a...
POSTED Wednesday, November 12, 2008

The election is upon us, and we all look forward to it being over. Both presidential candidates have stated their positions with regard to science, e.g., in response to Science Debate 2008, not always with equal clarity. Many thoughtful...
POSTED Monday, November 3, 2008

Conventional wisdom says that foreign policy does not determine the winner in US Presidential elections. Particularly not when domestic economic anxieties are high — and that kind of anxiety has probably never been higher in several generations. Still —...
POSTED Monday, October 27, 2008

It’s time to vote. Yes — in the elections in November — but not only that. I’m talking about the voting you do every day. Every time you drop a dollar, yen, mark, yuan, frank, rial or pound on...
POSTED Wednesday, October 8, 2008

On the first day of February 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson had a phone conversation with Senator Eugene McCarthy in which he hoped to tone down McCarthy’s criticism of America’s escalating military involvement in Vietnam. Johnson, clearly frustrated by...
POSTED Wednesday, September 3, 2008

I love transparency, and I wish I believed it could save the world all by itself. Transparency, of course, is the opposite of opacity, secrets, anonymity… all those affordances that can hide bad behavior, foster bribery and corruption, and...
POSTED Monday, August 11, 2008

On May 2, 2008, Cyclone Nargis touched down on Burma’s western coast, and – according to top U.S. diplomats – may have claimed the lives of 100,000 people. As Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science has...
POSTED Wednesday, August 6, 2008

In this year’s Presidential campaign, we have seen little debate between candidates about science, even with an unprecedented movement to encourage them to debate. The science community is not of one mind about the wisdom of such a debate...
POSTED Monday, July 28, 2008

When trying to save the world, it helps to put things into a larger perspective by thinking about civilizations that may have already confronted these problems. In particular, astrophysicists, when we try to find evidence for life in outer...
POSTED Monday, July 28, 2008