Month: October 2012

2012 Florida State Constitutional Amendments – Politics Florida Style

October 21, 2012

The proposed amendments to Florida’s State Constitution are emblematic of what has gone wrong with our government. Some are just plain dumb. For example, Amendment 1 removes the individual mandate for healthcare at the state level but have no effect on the federal Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare.” Equally frivolous is Amendment 6 that prohibits public funding of … More 2012 Florida State Constitutional Amendments – Politics Florida Style

The Illusion of Retrospective Omniscience

October 18, 2012

Maybe it’s because the presidential campaign is approaching its quadrennial periapsis but headlines seem to be increasingly salted with criticisms of the administration based on retrospective omniscience – the ability to know everything about an incident after it has occurred. While such criticisms tend to garner the headlines they are unfounded and are either derived … More The Illusion of Retrospective Omniscience

The Xs and Os of the proposed Romney Military Budget

October 13, 2012

As can be seen in the graph below, Romney’s base defense budget will increase by $355 billion (55%) from 2013 to 2022. But is that enough to protect the United States from an existential military threat from other nations? A case study my be illustrative. Source: http://goo.gl/Z1ryD Since Romney has characterized Russia as “our number … More The Xs and Os of the proposed Romney Military Budget

NPR should up their game on reporting “Science”

October 10, 2012

Recently, I was listening to NPR Morning Edition as Steve Inskeep and Shankar Vedantam were doing a segment titled “A lively Mind: Your Brain on Jane Austin.”[1] It was an interesting discussion of how a researcher, Natalie Phillips, decided to do a study that used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure brain activity while subjects … More NPR should up their game on reporting “Science”