Monthly Archives: September 2011

Unsustainable “Sustainable Development”

It would seem that there is nothing sustainable about decimating a region’s social fabric. But somehow displacing 20,000 Ugandans to develop a British tree plantation is considered “sustainable development” under the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism. This incident, brought to … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Climate Change, Economics & STEM Research, Environmental policy, Open Access, Science and technology ramifications, STEM Policy, Sustainability, Risk Management, & Long-Term Security, TechnoScience & Technoscientism | Leave a comment

The Not-So-Green Mountains

A spectre is haunting environmental activism – the spectre (and apparent paradox) of unsustainable “sustainable development”: Bulldozers arrived a couple of weeks ago at the base of the nearby Lowell Mountains and began clawing their way through the forest to … Continue reading

Posted in Climate Change, Environmental policy, Science and technology ramifications, Sustainability, Risk Management, & Long-Term Security, TechnoScience & Technoscientism | Leave a comment

NSF Centers for Ocean Science Education Excellence

Just a note from beautiful Berkeley, CA — wrapped up a meeting with COSEE evaluators and PIs yesterday about a survey they have done and a follow-up they are planning of the impact of COSEE on scientists. This is a … Continue reading

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Economist Paul Krugman Questions Economics

I’ve never liked the notion of talking about economic “science” — it’s much too raw and imperfect a discipline to be paired casually with things like chemistry or biology, and in general when someone talks about economics as a science … Continue reading

Posted in Broader Impacts, institutionalizing interdisciplinarity, Interdisciplinarity, Public Pedagogy, Science and technology ramifications, TechnoScience & Technoscientism, Transdisciplinarity | Leave a comment

Natural Gas not Better for Climate than Coal, says NCAR study

It’s time for politicians to move on to the next silver bullet for climate change: natural gas won’t cut it anymore. Drilling for shale gas has already been shown to be a high risk process that can grievously pollute aquifers … Continue reading

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Meet the New Draco – Same as the Old Draco

The term draconian, meaning ‘excessively harsh,’ traces back to an ancient Athenian statesman from the late 7th century BCE – Draco.  In response to social strife generated by an economic crisis, he instituted laws whose very severity was supposed to … Continue reading

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Wangari Maathai, R.I.P.

Wangari Maathai shuffled off the mortal coil on 25 September 2011. She was a leading environmental activist and became renowned the world over as an advocate for tree planting and a champion for social justice and human rights. She became … Continue reading

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How to Fix Humanities Grad School

There is a must read article on Slate for anyone professionally involved in the humanities. Now I know why I haven’t overused the term ‘must read’: so I can make it count when I really mean it!  Read. This. Article. William … Continue reading

Posted in Accountability, Future of the University, Open Access, Sustainability, Risk Management, & Long-Term Security | 1 Comment

A closer look at fracking

No, I’m not referring to Battlestar Gallactica. I’m talking about drilling for natural gas, which, here in Texas — and especially in Denton — is kind of a big deal. CSID Faculty Fellow Adam Briggle has been blogging about fracking … Continue reading

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Faster than Light Paradigm

Thomas Kuhn would be ecstatic at the next paradigm busting that might open a shift in our thinking… Nothing is supposed to move faster than light, at least according to Albert Einstein’s special theory of relativity: The famous E (equals) mc2 … Continue reading

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Stop the Tuition Madness!

Colleges are bidding up tuition prices faster than a hedge fund manager at an art auction. Over the past 10 years the cost of private college has jumped more than 60%, nearly three times as much as incomes over the … Continue reading

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Resisting the Corporate Theft of Seeds

A little more to think about vis. Mr. Mosiak’s posts on the Food Movement & on Intellectual Property Rights. We are in a food emergency. Speculation and diversion of food to biofuel has contributed to an uncontrolled price rise, adding … Continue reading

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Intellectual Property Rights at What Human Cost?

When both the dynamics of a global economy and universal notions of moral decency line up behind a trend it would seem like a fool’s errand to try and stop it. However, the Obama administration is currently doing just that … Continue reading

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Meet the 2011 Fellows – MacArthur Foundation

$500k, no strings attached — an alternative notion of accountability. Also a pretty interesting list of pretty interesting folks who just got such an offer from the MacArthur Foundation. Meet the 2011 Fellows – MacArthur Foundation.

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Having Fun & Doing Research

Where the human mind trumps the human created algorithm: …a microscope gives only a flat image of what to the outsider looks like a plate of one-dimensional scrunched-up spaghetti. Pharmacologists, though, need a 3-D picture that “unfolds” the molecule and … Continue reading

Posted in Broader Impacts, Metrics, Peer Review, Public Philosophizing, Science and technology ramifications, TechnoScience & Technoscientism, Transdisciplinarity, Transformative Research | Leave a comment

Where does the Food Movement Stand?

By food movement, I mean the push to reform the globalized energy and capital intensive food system in the direction of more locally sustainable and less energy intensive food systems. The Nation is hosting a forum in which prominent activists in … Continue reading

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Stepping into the Moral Terrains of an Other Environmental Identity

Robert Melchior Figueroa, philosopher—environmental justice studies–collaborator on the CSID funded interdisciplinary project on the Mesa Verde Story. Philosophers tend to approach their questions and subject matter from several angles.  They have an area of study within a discipline that must … Continue reading

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Children+Internet=Education?

Should public elementary/secondary school students be immersed in a constant stream of technological innovation to better prepare them for the “real world” or should something as ho-hum as a low student teacher ratio be prioritized instead? Amy Furman, a seventh-grade … Continue reading

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Badly in Need of Aristotle

At the td-net conference on inter- and transdisciplinarity. The theme: evaluation of ID/TD. The focus: on how to make academic research more relevant. There is an irony here. In some cases research is way too relevant. The revolution in military … Continue reading

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Texas’ Higher Education Policy: ‘Save Money. Live Better.’

Here are some links to articles and debates regarding Texas Governor Rick Perry’s higher education policy, which some critics have called the Wal-Martization of the university: Texas Gov. Rick Perry Wages an Assault on State’s University Establishment – Washington Post … Continue reading

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Mesa Verde, Interdisciplinarity: Endpoints… Process…

Update on a previous post by Steve Wolverton The Mesa Verde team has now persisted through many months, and these blog posts represent initial products of our experiment to tell the stories of our experiences in the field through the … Continue reading

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Climate Reality: Preaching to the Choir?

Deeply as I appreciate the difficulty of finding policy traction regarding global warming (starting with the poverty of the term itself), I have to question whether efforts like Climate Reality, launching tonight at 7 PM central time, are doing more … Continue reading

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A Newly Unfolding Story of an Older History: Part II

This post by David Taylor builds upon his previous one: “An expansionist imperialist culture feels most comfortable when it is able to believe that the people it is exploiting are somehow less than human. When it begins to get some … Continue reading

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Emotion Detector Can See When We’re Lying

Apropos of a recent CSID panel on transhumanism, a totally new approach to lie detection driven by advances in applied cognitive science illustrates how technological development carries embedded assumptions regarding values (in this case, of the relative value of individual … Continue reading

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Crossing Boundaries with Film in the Mesa Verde Region

Melinda Levin, documentary film director, collaborator on the CSID funded interdisciplinary project on the Mesa Verde Story As a documentary film director and theorist, I often interact and collaborate with others who take me outside of my proverbial comfort zone, … Continue reading

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