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THE
WITCHES OF
AGNESI REFLECTIONS BY TWO WOMEN, SCIENCE WRITERS, AND CITIZENS ON THE PURSUIT OF SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE AND HOW IT AFFECTS OUR LIVES |
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Policy BIOETHICS What’s the difference between a chimpanzee, a sewage sludge hauler, and my mother? As I discovered while following the plight of an Austrian chimpanzee called Hiasl, that’s a very good question. Hiasl was captured in Sierra Leone in 1982. A pharmaceutical company attempted to smuggle him into Austria for its vivisection laboratory, but he was seized in customs. In 2007, the sanctuary where he had ended up went bankrupt, and a philanthropist wanted to donate money for his support. But according to Austrian law, only a person can receive money. The sanctuary’s creditors would get the donation – and the vivisection lab would get Hiasl. [Read more] ECONOMICS Good News: Fewer Choices I read some great news in the New York Times the other day: supermarkets are getting smaller and offering fewer choices. “After years of building bigger stores — many larger than a football field and carrying 60,000 items — retailers are experimenting with radically smaller grocery stores…. ‘The average person goes shopping for 22 minutes,’ said Phil Lempert, who edits Supermarketguru.com, a Web site that tracks retail trends. ‘You can’t see 30,000 or 40,000 products. We are moving into an era when people want less assortment.’” [Read more] ENERGY IF WE CAN PUT A MAN ON THE MOON... Back in 1961, when John F. Kennedy called for the United Sates to “commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth”1 it was a daunting proposal. He was asking us to pull together as a nation. To expend millions of dollars and hours of effort toward a common purpose. To put other national priorities aside and focus on this one monumental task. And he was asking us to do all this without promising a specific tangible benefit. [Read more] Review: When Science Goes Wrong When Science Goes Wrong: Twelve Tales from the Dark Side of Discovery by neuroscientist Simon LeVay (Plume, 2008) is fascinating reading for those of us who take an interest in the impact of science on society. LeVay presents 12 stories of disaster in a range of scientific and technological fields such as medicine, engineering, psychology, meteorology, forensic science, and volcanology, and over a period of time from 1928 to the present. [Read more] Nuclear Power Now? August 1945. America uses the horrifying and horrible power of atomic bombs in nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Today we struggle with our attitudes toward the use of nuclear power for domestic, peaceful purposes. We could attribute this unease to some sort of collective squeamishness related to those days in 1945 but my informal survey reveals far less moral concern lurking behind our reticence. The possibility of meltdown and the long-term safety of waste disposal top the list of considerations with, "We'll just wind up paying a fortune for nuclear power, too" close behind. [Read more] ENVIRONMENT Is the Mystery of the Disappearing Honey Bees Really a Mystery? A Spring Without Bees: How Colony Collapse Disorder Has Endangered Our Food Supply, by Michael Schacker, presents a compelling case for immediate action on behalf of the honey bee. This thoroughly-documented narrative details the stresses on hives today and includes an in-depth discussion of the practical ways bees can be saved without hindering crop production. [Read more] GOVERNMENT Will Obama Create a Cabinet-Level Science Position? Whether or not Barack Obama was your choice in this past election, it’s clear changes are in the making. I’m most eager to see if Obama will go with the recommendation made in letters to then-Presidential candidates Obama and McCain in October. These letters called for the speedy post-election appointment of a newly-created “Assistant to the President for Science and Technology” as a cabinet-level position. [Read more] Identity Crisis Americans are uniquely concerned with individuality, independence, and personal identity. But research shows that there is a powerful social, collective element to identity, too. In our single-minded focus on individual identity, we may be neglecting to demand policies that strengthen our social and civic identities. Consider our voting system. Practices such as “caging” cause the identity and eligibility of many citizens to be challenged at polling places for questionable reasons. [Read more] WATER Who owns rain? The idea that anyone “owns” rain struck Bolivians as so outrageous that it fueled a massive “Water Revolt” in 2000. Ownership of rainwater was not the immediate issue, but it came to symbolize everything Bolivians hated about the heavy-handed economic policies imposed by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. [Read more] All content © 2008 Last updated November 16, 2008 |
