Barack Obama on the economy: we can’t go back to business as usual

One of Obama's main points today is that we can't go back to what we have been doing:

[W]e have to realize that we cannot go back to the bubble-and-bust economy that led us to this point.

It is simply not sustainable to have a 21st-century financial system that is governed by 20th-century rules and regulations that allowed the recklessness of a few to threaten the entire economy. It is not sustainable to have an economy where in one year, 40 percent of our corporate profits came from a financial sector that was based on inflated home prices, maxed-out credit cards, over-leveraged banks and overvalued assets. It's not sustainable to have an economy where the incomes of the top 1 percent has skyrocketed while the typical working household has seen their incomes decline by nearly $2,000. That's just not a sustainable model for long-term prosperity.

For even as too many were out there chasing ever-bigger bonuses and short-term profits over the last decade, we continued to neglect the long-term threats to our prosperity: the crushing burden that the rising cost of health care is placing on families and businesses; the failure of our education system to prepare our workers for a new age; the progress that other nations are making on clean energy industries and technologies while we -- we remain addicted to foreign oil; the growing debt that we're passing on to our children. Even after we emerge from the current recession, these challenges will still represent major obstacles that stand in the way of our success in the 21st century. So we've got a lot of work to do.

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Some things you might not know about orgasms

Science is a big tent. It includes such topics as orgasms. Mary Roach is the presenter in this fora.tv video. A psychologist and sex researcher, Mary is the author of several books, including her latest, Bonk: The Curious History of Science and Sex (2008). She takes this topic almost seriously, dishing out memorable stories along the way.

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Bill Moyers discusses disbelief with Jonathan Miller

I recently had the opportunity to view Bill Moyers' 2007 interview of British intellectual Jonathan Miller, who produced the PBS series, "A Brief History of Disbelief." It’s a lively and thoughtful interview (it lasts about 20 minutes). Here are some excerpts, but it is well worth watching the entire thing:

For a very long time, atheism was not an affirmation; it was accusation. I mean, it was talked about, that there were atheists, in those same ways that there were Communists under the bed. You know, there were they were they were around, but no one knew where they were or what they looked like, or and so forth. For me, I am only a disbeliever by virtue of the fact that I'm surrounded by people who make assertions to which I cannot lend my assent. -- BILL MOYERS: When you hear the word "God," what goes off in your head? How do your brain cells fire? JONATHAN MILLER: Well, I mostly, I haven't the faintest idea what people are talking about. -- I hate the word, "spiritual," anyway because it's been hijacked by this ghastly sort of new age lot, who talk about "spirituality." What I would say is, I have moments of - I suppose you might call them transcendent feelings; feelings which rise above what is immediately in front of me. -- I'm reluctant to use the word 'atheist' to describe my own unshakeable disbelief and that's not because I'm ashamed, afraid or even embarrassed, but simply because it seems so self evidently true to me that there is no God that giving that conviction a special title, somehow dignifies what it denies.

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Kenneth Miller’s unrelenting attack on creationism

Kenneth Miller is a professor of biology at Brown University. He is also a widely published author (co-author of high school and college biology textbooks used by millions of students). He is also a practicing Roman Catholic who has served as an expert in several court cases concerning creationist school boards that have tried to muzzle classroom science. In his most recent book, Only a Theory: Evolution and the Battle for America's Soul, Miller makes an unrelentingly strong case against creationists of all stripes, including those who advocate "intelligent design." I did not realize the strength of the scientific case based upon the analysis of the genomes of human beings and other animals. How strong is it? It is at least as strong as the fossil record, arguably much stronger. I already knew a few things about the arguments based on genome analyses. For instance, I had often read that the genomes of chimpanzees and humans were 99% the same (or, at least, 96% the same). I also knew that all animals possessed Hox genes, essentially "toolkits for generating body form." Miller reminds us that "it is the same kit whether that animal is a honey bee, a fish or an elephant." The Hox genes prove "deep connections between animal groups." Miller points out that these similarities are even much more striking than Haeckel's (admittedly exaggerated) embryonic drawings. In fact, Haeckel "actually understated the evolutionary case each of these embryos possesses the same developmental toolkit, revealing both are common ancestry and the similarity of form and function produced by the workings of the evolutionary process." These profound Evo-Devo findings (the combination of development and the study of evolution) show that we "no longer need to make a distinction between the two types of change known as macro evolution and micro evolution. We don't need to attribute special mechanisms for large-scale changes. Evo-devo "reveals that macro evolution is the product of microevolution writ large." According to Miller, these should be "chilling words" to the ID crowd.

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Sticker that acts like a credit card

An RFID Microchip, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons You can now obtain a sticker that acts as a credit card. That's right, you read me correctly: you can stick it to your cell phone, wallet, shoe, coffee mug, etc. The possibilities are endless! Actually, I've exaggerated a bit. You can stick the sticker almost everywhere, but the technology is not so new. In fact, the credit-card-sticker has been in use in Japan and Malaysia for some time now. The sticker contains a chip that uses Radio-frequency identification (RFID) to emit a signal. That signal, like the magnetic strip on your average credit card, contains information that allows you to "charge" a purchase. Sound familiar? You may be using RFID already, in the MobilePass wand that you use at the gas station. The Chicago Transit Authority has been utilizing RFID for years, and the New York Transit Authority is preparing to start a trial. In fact, your very own United States passport may contain RFID technology. So why am I such a scaredy-cat? I received a replacement credit card today because my account number "may have been illegally obtained as a result of a merchant database compromise and could be at risk for unauthorized use." I was not informed of the time, place, manner of the "compromise" and if the identity of the "compromisers" or their methods are known, I remain ignorant of them. I'm leery of the credit-card-sticker because where there's a will, there is a way. Just Say No! Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons History suggests that RFIDs can be remotely read and stolen, cloned, infected, or otherwise used for unintended purposes. Now, Visa is preparing to launch a product that allows you to use your phone as a credit card (and not just in Malaysia). This means that if you're using the technology and you lose your phone, you may be losing your expensive toy, contacts, pictures, applications, etc. stored on that expensive toy, and control over the use of one or several of your credit card accounts. Sure, there are ways to encrypt this information, but with every safeguard comes a more determined hacker. I'm going to stick to the inconvenient plastic card because the "authorities" are used to tracking its thieves and (I would not discount this factor) it's probably less sexy to steal!

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