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Michael Bloomberg Defends Science
blonde rser writes "This weeks Scientific American Podcast plays excerpts from NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's commencement address at John Hopkins University (text and video can be found online).
Once he gets past the standard pomp and circumstance he makes a strong, pro-science speech. It is impressive how he very directly demonizes those that would politicize stem cell research, global warming, Terry Schaivo, and evolution." From the speech: "Hopkins' motto is 'Veritas vos liberabit' - 'the truth shall set you free' - not that 'you shall be free to set the truth!'" Stirring stuff.
While I applaud Mr. Bloombergs speech to me he represents a rather puzzling person. Why is this guy a repulican. Not just him but also people like arnold schwarzenegger, Andrew Sullivan etc. I mean if you are not against gay marriage, if you don't think pre-emptive war is a good idea, if you are pro life then why are you are republican. Before anybody says anything about fiscal responsibility or smaller government I will ask you to go look up the track record of republican presidents regarding those items.
I am especially puzzled about Andrew Sullivan. This guy is gay, the republican party tried to pass a platform saying that homosexuality was a disease!. They are trying their best to deny him the right to marry, to serve his govt, live wherever he chooses etc and yet he is still a republican. Can anything be more important to you then having the same rights as everybody else in the country?
Weird.
evil is as evil does
Its peculiar that Bloomburg should be calling for these matters (stem cell etc) not to be politicised since he, as a politician, has got to be aware that everything has a political dimension somewhere along the line, even if indirectly, which is why politics is so very important and not to be trivialised or dismissed.
Politics at its height is concerned with these profound questions; not just lowely administrative questions of how the rubbish/garbage is to be collected, and the roads maintained.
Dude, Terry Schiavo is not a terribly complex issue, and there was nothing "questionable" about her state. As was clearly documented at the time, her brain was gone. Tragic, but true. Those desperately trying to pretend that she had some higher-order function left were denying science, medicine, and facts. The craven politicians trying to get mileage out of the tragedy were disgusting, even by Washington D.C. standards, with actual-doctor Bill Frist the most egregious and hypocritical.
Just notice that even such "harmless" decisions as "1 child per family" program in China have some not-quite-expected consequences where there many, many more boys being born than girls. They are heading to a big social crisis in 15-20 years this way (and they know it). Expect arrival of single horny chinese young men hunting for your daughters wherever you live.
Not only horny - but economically disenfranchised. "1 Family 1 Child" means that for every 2 retired people there will only be 1 working person. The US has concerns about their social security pyramid scheme collapsing because american families have something like 1.8 kids. China's got it much worse with around 1.05 kids. I would be leaving the country if I were forced into that kind of scheme too - which only makes it worse for the ones who don't leave.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
"It is unacceptable that stem cell research is being outlawed pretty much everywhere"
It's mainly just been outlawed in the US, and specifically in projects that take funding from your government (as I understand it).
It's a quite bizarre situation. If stem cell research had been banned outright, then it would make more sense as at least it could be looked at as an ethical decision. This ban on funding is an entirely political point - the US science system has been hobbled entirely to make a political point.
Still - when your scientists are phoned and asked which party they vote for, before they get their money (and nobody seems to care)
*shrugs*
You reap what you sow.
I think you mean: many more baby girls being murdered than boys.
Come on! You know that facts have a strong liberal bias!
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
The funny thing is that stem cell research isn't tightly controlled. In fact I'm not sure there are any real limiting restrictions at the moment. There is certainly a ban on federal funding of most stem cell research (a ban to which Bloomberg is referring). However, if some old rich white guy wants to drop a few billion on stem cell research in the hopes of extending his own life, he is completely allowed to do that. And I don't think their is much of a political movement trying to deter him from doing so either.
Maybe it's just me but I find it very scary that somebody holds a 'pro-science' speech and gets commended for it, the fact science has to be defended in this day and age is bad enough already, that there are so few people with cloud doing it that we can find the time to cheer about individual cases of it happening is even scarier.
Bloomberg has been one of the biggest fundraisers for Bush, since he "switched parties" from Democrat to Republican to get Giuliani's endorsement in the 2001 NYC mayor election. And for 5 years his news network has ignored Bush's attacks on science, like the rest of the mass media. Now that everyone is hearing how Bush destroys science to please the retards who want to vote down the "brainy" people to their level of medieval slavery, there's a big backlash. Especially in NYC, where being smart is second only to being rich as the ticket to being rich.
Bloomberg is talking science in the public speeches for the media, and raising money for BushCo behind the scenes. Just like Arafat used to talk diplomacy in English on TV, and terror in Arabic through the grapevine.
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make install -not war
Republicans used to be about small Government. Bloomberg is doing it. Washington Republicans are doing the exact opposite.
He's fiercely pro-business, so much so that he's essentially running the NYC administration and government as a business. The Washington Republicans are running the country as a huge piggy-bank of favors to The Party supporters.
Bloomberg has done wonders in improving the NYC services. The 311 service is just amazing in how well and inexpensively it does what it does. The Washington Republicans were in charge of the Katrina mess.
When Bloomberg cuts services, as unpopular as that is, he cuts the ones that don't perform. The Washington Republicans cut the services their faith based agenda doesn't accept no matter how efficient they are.
I'd rather have more Bloombergs as Republicans (or Democrats for that matter).
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
We keep trying, but Religion keeps showing up on our front porch at 3:00am, drunk with power and demanding to come in to "talk" about the "controversy".
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