Barack Obama extols the virtues of Abraham Lincoln and that other guy

In today's speech, Barack Obama extolled the virtues of Abraham Lincoln, mentioning Charles Darwin along the way. It's a terrific speech articulating the balance between individual liberties and the common good. A key quote: What if we were "consumed with small things--petty things--when were were called upon to do great things." To hear an American President actually mentioning the work of Charles Darwin in a good light, listen in starting about the 6-minute mark.

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Republicans Reveal Attitude Toward The Future

The rhetoric that accompanied Obama's election included much from the downsized Republicans about looking forward to working with the new president and coming to grips with national problems in the spirit of a fresh start. However, the stimulus package---which may well be too big---has forced the Republicans to declare themselves. We're hearing a lot about wanting more tax cuts---almost exclusively tax cuts---in lieu of spending in the form of direct aid. This is a Republican mantra now. Tax cuts. The question, of course, is really this: what good are tax cuts when you're already buried in debt? Granted, it frees up (theoretically) money for critical and immediate payments, but if the idea is to put people back to work tax cuts are not the solution. Because corporate America is mired in over-leveraged debt burdens that must be paid down before something mundane like hiring can happen. Tax cuts, therefore, won't have any kind of immediate impact on the jobless rate. In time it might, depending on several other factors, the most significant of which would be a newfound corporate sense of ethics which would prevent them from continuing the pillage of their own capital for all the things that have gotten us into this mess in the first place. Labor is at the bottom of the ladder of what they see as important---hence the tongue lashing Obama gave them for paying out bonuses while asking for federal aid. As for working people? What good does a tax cut do someone who isn't paying taxes because he or she has no income? But this was to be expected. It is an attitude born out of the mixed priorities of what has become the Right, one of which is fiscal responsibility (I used to support Republicans on this count) the other of which is the more Libertarian view (borne of the Grover Norquist faction) that government is always the problem and must be pruned back radically. Hence tax cuts, in order to curtail revenues in order to force the government to reduce its size and, one must realize, its influence.

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61 degrees

My family is keeping our thermostat at 61 degrees this winter. We decided to bring it down from our traditional 65 degrees in order to save energy. [Note: Late at night at my house, the temperature automatically drops down to 55]. I've put a thermometer in various rooms to check the accuracy of the thermostat. The actual daytime temperature ranges from 59 to 62 in the various rooms. When we are all gone for the day, we manually set the temperature down to 55. When I mention "61 degrees" to people, most of them are surprised; some of them are aghast. Apparently, at least among Americans, 61 degrees is an usually "cold" temperature for the interior of a house in the winter. Over the past couple of weeks, I even heard from several people who keep their thermostats above 70. When you browse the Internet, you will find numerous "authorities" advising you to set the thermostat down to 65 to save energy (e.g., here). Here's an informal survey of quite a few folks. Apparently, even our new energy-conscious President likes it toasty indoors.

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"To restore science to its rightful place"

It's not that I'm infatuated with the words of Potus44, but Barack Obama's inaugural address (that I've already addressed) hit quite a few notable notes. One of which was the promise to "restore science to its rightful place". He also said,

"Promoting science isn't just about providing Resources-it's about protecting free and open inquiry... It's about listening to what our scientists have to say, even when it's inconvenient - especially when it's inconvenient.

That's a breath of fresh air, indeed. But the real question and challenge will be: What exactly is this Rightful Place? The previous administration acted as though they believed that science belongs after political expedience and the Bible, not necessarily in that order. They fired or censored anyone whose carefully calculated conclusions disagreed with their prejudged opinions. It will be a long time cleaning up the resulting mess. Mike the Mad Biologist posted: To Restore Science to Its Rightful Place, We Need to Redefine Elitism. In brief, science is not easy to follow once you reach the discoveries of The Enlightenment and beyond. It takes a certain amount of education and dedication to know good science from pseudoscience. And this is anathema to American principle of Democratic Populism, the idea that all men are not only "created equal", but are in fact equal.

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High-resolution multi-stitched inauguration photo

At Barack Obama's inauguration, David Bergman kept busy with his robotic camera mount used in tandem with his Canon G10 camera. After the inauguration, he used his Macbook Pro to stitch together the resulting 220 images into one gigantic 2gb tiff file. The resulting 1,474 megapixel image is dramatic and fun to explore. Equally impressive is that the Gigapan camera mount and the G10 camera he used are not expensive--they can both be purchased for less than $1,000 (less than $500 each).

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