Author: jlolds

Native Angeleno, professor of Neuroscience and Public Policy at George Mason University

Fall semester draws to a close

My university made the news today with the announcement of the gift of a large and strategically located piece of land out near Dulles International Airport–we do keep growing here at Mason, in spite of these interesting times.

I’m ready to turn in grades, finish up the business of the various committees that I chair and then early next week head for the holiday break, which we’ll be taking up in the Virginia Blue Ridge at our Wintergreen House.
On behalf of all of us at the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study, here’s wish you and yours a very happy holiday and a great 2010.
Jim

The Economist weighs in on state finances

One of my favorite newspapers (their term–it sure looks like a magazine) views the current fiscal disasters of the U.S. states (e.g. California) through the Keynesian lens here. Basically being forced constitutionally to balance their budgets, the states are being forced to raise taxes and cut spending–exactly the opposite of what John Maynard Keynes would have recommended under the current circumstances.

The American Dream

David Brooks and Gail Collins on the future of the American Dream. I find myself agreeing with both of them. But without an economy that heavily leverages advances in science and technology, it’ll be very difficult for me to be at all optimistic about the future. So we not only need a creative class (think Richard Florida), we also need that creative class to be producing real products that offer solutions to our huge problems (think the intersection of climate and energy or health care).

Open letter to Congress from US Scientists

Can be found here.

Money quote:

These “multiple independent lines of evidence” are drawn from numerous public and private

research centers all across the United States and beyond, including several independent

analyses of surface temperature data. Even without including analyses from the UK research

center from which the emails were stolen, the body of evidence underlying our understanding

of human-caused global warming remains robust.


The dangers of email revisited

I and many others have been following the so-called “Climate-gate” story out of the U.K. As has been well-described now, hackers broke into servers and released emails between respected climate change scientists which were, at the very least, embarrassing. This incident may have very far reaching consequences for policy, but is also a reminder of how potentially damaging electronic mail can be (at a professional and personal level).

I’ve written about this matter before, but it’s useful to remind readers of the following heuristic: if you’re not comfortable seeing your words as a headline in tomorrow’s New York Times, then it’s better not to hit that send button.
And as a corollary, always check to see who’s actually on the cc line.
Jim

Happy Thanksgiving to loyal readers

Here at our Wintergreen house, we’re listening to holiday tunes, baking bread and leisurely making our way through yesterday’s Financial Times. It’s time to say thank you to all of my readers, especially those who have contributed their own thoughts from time to time.

It’s also a good time to give a shout-out for collegiality in science. There’s been a lot of sturm and drang recently among both climate scientists and, to some extent, in the computational neuroscience community. Collegiality facilitates collaboration and is essential for trans-disciplinary science to progress (at least until we all become experts in all fields–a while I think).
Happy Thanksgiving!
Jim