Tag Archives: science

Encouraging Innovation

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President Obama wants students to improve their math and science skills, he said November 23. President Obama said the key to meeting the world’s greatest challenges “will be reaffirming and strengthening America’s role as the world’s engine of scientific discovery and technological innovation. And that leadership tomorrow depends on how we educate our students today.”

American 15-year-olds rank 21st in science and 25th in math when compared to their peers around the world, and the administration seeks to improve those numbers by providing incentives to students and schools to strengthen their skills. Obama announced the launch of Educate to Innovate, an initiative in which private companies have contributed more than $260 million towards education efforts in these fields.

Obama also announced a new White House initiative: a science fair. Winners of national competitions in science and technology will be invited to the White House to show off their works.

“You know, if you win the NCAA championships, you come to the White House,” Obama said. “Well, if you’re a young person and you’ve produced the best experiment or design, the best hardware or software, you ought to be recognized for that achievement too.”

Obama nominates geneticist to lead National Institutes of Health

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President Obama has nominated Francis Collins to be the next leader of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH.) Collins is a well-known geneticist in the science community who has spoken about what he sees as the compatibility of science and faith. My colleague Daniel Gorelick has written all about this on his blog, Science Planet. Go read it!

Five Reasons Why Blogging About Democracy Is Cool

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Have you read America.gov‘s science blog, Science Planet? It’s one of my favorites. The author, Daniel Gorelick, is a scientist who is taking a year off from research to work at the State Department. I think he’s missing the lab, because on May 20 he published a list of five reasons why scientific research is cool.

So now I’m making my own list of five reasons why blogging about democracy is cool:

1. You are your own free press. Check out this map (PDF) from Freedom House that tracks press freedom throughout the world. You’ll notice that relatively few countries have completely free presses. But with the Internet, a large number of people have found an alternate outlet to express their views without censorship.

2. Surfing the web is your job. Any good blogger has to keep attune to the blogoshpere. Had I not been surfing the web looking to see what other democracy bloggers were up to, I would have missed all the online discussion on Vote Report India, which led to a great story about how the internet is helping people report on political events.

3. You get to talk about yourself. Some people are shy. Others, like myself, enjoy any excuse to talk about themselves. Turns out my life is quite a democratic exercise – I’ve never had to reach too hard to find examples of how my life has been shaped by democratic ideals and practices. In recent weeks I’ve talked about baking, about honeymooning, even about going to the doctor.

4. People hand you ideas. I can’t tell you how many articles or blog entries I have written thanks to ideas suggested by people who comment on the blogs I write for.

5. When you don’t have a good idea for a blog entry, you can just throw up a top five list!