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the reporter Mr.Chua Eng Wee of LianHe ZaoBao told me on phone in the evening of 19 May 2012 that someone from your group had called to SPH and requested to add in one sentence for their news report. On 19 May 2012 4pm, PM Lee and his team are all with your group together for the visitation. Thus, if you don’t investigate and clarify clearly, people may think it maybe PM Lee’s team who did it.
Speaking to TODAY, PAP Member of Parliament Baey Yam Keng, who sits on the Government Parliamentary Committee for Information, Communications and the Arts, reiterated that "no one can control the media and any responsible media would want full editorial independence".
“appreciates the power of science as a problem-solving tool and that seeks to exploit its methods of inquiry to resolve the great questions of the day”. Geek or non-geek, this is a manifesto we should all feel able to endorse.
the problem is not so much people turning their faces against uncomfortable truths, but rather that we don't appreciate the vital role science has to play in evidence-based policymaking.
Mark Henderson: There's very little of what you might term "anti-science" in politics, very few MPs who are actively hostile to what science has to offer. But there is, I think, a much broader problem of indifference to science. It's simply not something that the vast majority of our elected representatives, and indeed civil servants, have actually thought about.
Leaders today do not believe their job is to restrain popular will. Their job is to flatter and satisfy it. A gigantic polling apparatus has developed to help leaders anticipate and respond to popular whims. Democratic politicians adopt the mind-set of marketing executives. Give the customer what he wants. The customer is always right.
Having lost a sense of their own frailty, many voters have come to regard their desires as entitlements. They become incensed when their leaders are not responsive to their needs. Like any normal set of human beings, they command their politicians to give them benefits without asking them to pay.
How much authority should we give to such work in our policy decisions? The question is important because media reports often seem to assume that any result presented as “scientific” has a claim to our serious attention. But this is hardly a reasonable view
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A rational assessment of a scientific result must first take account of the broader context of the particular science involved. Where does the result lie on the continuum from preliminary studies, designed to suggest further directions of research, to maximally supported conclusions of the science? In physics, for example, there is the difference between early calculations positing the Higgs boson and what we hope will soon be the final experimental proof that it actually exists. Scientists working in a discipline generally have a good sense of where a given piece of works stands in their discipline.
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often, as I have pointed out for the case of biomedical research, popular reports often do not make clear the limited value of a journalistically exciting result. Good headlines can make for bad reporting.
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What's happening here is that both groups seem to have come to an understanding that Jesus is liberal on fellowship issues and conservative on moral issues. Liberals feel tension (cognitive dissonance) because they are not living up to Jesus' conservative views on morality. Conservatives feel similar tension about Jesus' fellowship views.
So, to reduce this tension, the liberals have convinced themselves that they are failing to live up to Jesus' liberal views, and the conservatives have convinced themselves that they are failing to live up to Jesus' conservative views.
And so, both groups can carry on believing that that they are doing their best to fulfill Jesus' edicts, even if they occasionally fall short!
These unemployed graduates have the knowledge and free time to plan revolutions. They would hang around in coffee shops and talk politics, and soon a revolution brews.
Recently, an Education Ministry official was reported to have told a US diplomat (source: Wikileaks) that Singapore did not plan to encourage more students to study in university, and the campus enrolment rate would stay at 20%-25%.
I wonder, if this is true, is it connected to concerns about the possibility of unmanageable unemployment among graduates here?
The most widely held theory of politics is also the simplest: the powerful get what they want. Financial regulation is driven by the interests of banks, health policy by the interests of insurance companies, and tax policy by the interests of the rich. Those who can influence government the most – through their control of resources, information, access, or sheer threat of violence – eventually get their way.
CommentsIt’s the same globally. Foreign policy is determined, it is said, first and foremost by national interests – not affinities with other nations or concern for the global community. International agreements are impossible unless they are aligned with the interests of the United States and, increasingly, other rising major powers. In authoritarian regimes, policies are the direct expression of the interests of the ruler and his cronies.
CommentsIt is a compelling narrative, one with which we can readily explain how politics so often generates perverse outcomes. Whether in democracies, dictatorships, or in the international arena, those outcomes reflect the ability of narrow, special interests to achieve results that harm the majority.
CommentsYet this explanation is far from complete, and often misleading.
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Interests are not fixed or predetermined. They are themselves shaped by ideas – beliefs about who we are, what we are trying to achieve, and how the world works. Our perceptions of self-interest are always filtered through the lens of ideas.
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. Interests are not fixed or predetermined. They are themselves shaped by ideas – beliefs about who we are, what we are trying to achieve, and how the world works. Our perceptions of self-interest are always filtered through the lens of ideas.
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there may well be people smart enough to comprehend the enormous engineering scale of the challenge, but have found clever ways to disguise its magnitude by saying, for example, that Australia could decarbonise its economy by simply building a big 50km x 50km solar panel. Considering the enormous arid, sunny expanses of Australia, this figure can actually come across as underwhelming (!), as mentioned in this government report by ABARES (the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics) – http://adl.brs.gov.au/data/
warehouse/pe_aera_d9aae_002/ (part 10.3.1, page 268), and in this presentation by a Melbourne urban planner, Rob Adams, who is talking about future energy use in Australia (though he misquotes the 50km x 50km, i.e. 2500 sq. km figure as 50 sq. km) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?aeraCh_10.pdf v=ZYJpdH-VGwc (15:44 in). -
I did some simple maths from your presentation, which I think produces a comparable figure to the one mentioned in the ABARES report and Adams' presentation (assuming that each Cloncurry solar farm is roughly a hectare, 100m x 100m, in area – though this may well be an underestimate):
25% decarbonisation = 50 776 solar farms
100% decarbonisation = 203 104 solar farms = 450 x 450 solar farms approx.
(450 solar farms x 100m) x (450 solar farms x 100m) = 45km x 45km (rounded up to 50km x 50km)
Undoubtedly, it is more appealing to say that Australia’s carbon-free future lies in building one big 50km x 50km solar panel somewhere in the middle of the desert, rather than saying that Australia’s carbon-free future lies in building more than 200 000 solar farms. This is similar to the example you give of the hard imagery of dozens of nuclear plants versus the soft imagery of clean, green initiatives in the UK – a case of same difference.
I’m a Christian and ultimately come to Christ through faith. With climate change no faith is required. There is a large and growing body of evidence. The way nature works applies the same to Republican and Democrat, Christian and Muslim, animal, tree and stone. Why do people who profess to love and follow God roll their eyes? Luke 16:2 says “Man has been appointed as a steward for the management of God’s property, and ultimately he will give account for his stewardship.”
It’s a message that my father put succinctly: Actions have consequences.
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During a 2007 homecoming banquet for Iraqi war vets I asked my personal hero, Senator John McCain, if he thought this could all be some cosmic coincidence. He rolled his eyes. “Paul, I just returned from the Yukon, where a village elder presented me with a tomahawk that had just melted out of the permafrost. The answer is no.”
How did so much of the Republican Party enter perpetual denial? We’ve turned climate science into a bizarre litmus test for conservatism. To pretend that heat-trapping gases can be waved away with a nod and a smirk is political fairytale. No harm. No foul. Keep drilling.
The meteorologist and energy entrepreneur Paul Douglas is keeping up his valuable effort to depoliticize the science pointing to a growing human influence on the climate. Last month, I noted a post in which he described the scientific case posed by the unabated emissions of greenhouse gases. He described himself as a “Republican deeply concerned about the environmental sacrifices some are asking us to make to keep our economy powered-up, long-term.”
Now he’s going further, taking his argument to the commerce-oriented Bloomberg Businessweek Web site in a piece titled “Climate Change Has Nothing to Do With Al Gore” (the first of a two-part post, Douglas says)
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How did so much of the Republican Party enter perpetual denial? We’ve turned climate science into a bizarre litmus test for conservatism. To pretend that heat-trapping gases can be waved away with a nod and a smirk is political fairytale. No harm. No foul. Keep drilling.
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I’m a Christian and ultimately come to Christ through faith. With climate change no faith is required. There is a large and growing body of evidence. The way nature works applies the same to Republican and Democrat, Christian and Muslim, animal, tree and stone. Why do people who profess to love and follow God roll their eyes? Luke 16:2 says “Man has been appointed as a steward for the management of God’s property, and ultimately he will give account for his stewardship.”
Camila Vallejo is beautiful! She’s glamorous! She’s captivating and young! She is a favorite topic in the tabloids! She has a secret boyfriend she kisses “languorously!”
And that is why she is a popular and effective leader in Chile’s student revolution.
The New York Times Magazine dedicates an inordinate amount of space over its seven pages relaying anecdotes about her looks and explaining how captivating her appearance is, rather than, you know, offering a detailed account of her personal history or, say, an in-depth look at her politics.
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It is certainly valid to analyze the role the prominent person’s appearance plays in their public perception. But from the title on down, the article fetishizes her looks, makes it a focus of the profile, and tacitly uses it to explain away her power and popularity. Not only does this lead to a one-dimensional rendering of her story, it undermines her work and person.
Public-policy issues always have dimensions beyond science, and require more than technical responses. When framing debates, policy-makers should prioritize discussion of social benefits as well as science: there are many good non-scientific reasons to reduce global environmental footprints and consumption frenzy, and to pursue greater justice, for instance.
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Rather than assuming that disputes are solely scientific, opening up these decision-making processes would render their primary nature more honestly political and economic, while giving proper weight to scientific reason and evidence.
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[T]hey miss a crucial point: the ingrained assumption that scientific evidence is the only authority that can justify policy action — scientism — is what renders both policy and its supporting science vulnerable to the dogmatic amplification of doubt.
The doubters' success lies in the way that policy questions are framed, with science placed at the centre. If a policy commitment is reduced only to a question of whether the science is right or wrong, then evidence can easily be made to unravel. Paradoxically, this happens when science attains its greatest political influence, when it goes beyond supplying the facts to defining the public meaning of problems. Public-policy issues always have dimensions beyond science, and require more than technical responses. When framing debates, policy-makers should prioritize discussion of social benefits as well as science: there are many good non-scientific reasons to reduce global environmental footprints and consumption frenzy, and to pursue greater justice, for instance. If the many factors that go into a policy commitment are recognized, science does not become the sole centre of authority and the sole target for opposition.
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A more enlightened institutional culture around science and policy would foster wider debate about the implications of interventions, and of burdens of proof weighed against social benefits and the costs of erroneous outcomes. This might resemble the 'extended peer review' system of philosopher-sociologists of science Jerome Ravetz and Silvio Funtowicz, in which specialists (including non-scientists) review policy-relevant scientific claims but a wider variety of stakeholders bring further knowledge to bear in interpreting them. Rather than assuming that disputes are solely scientific, opening up these decision-making processes would render their primary nature more honestly political and economic, while giving proper weight to scientific reason and evidence.
Where both administrations and their respective critics get into trouble is when they try to hide political judgments by invoking science to justify or crticize decisions that are ultimately grounded in values. A perfect example is the debate over the so-called "emergency contraception" which is inherently political as a battleground for the US abortion wars. Combatants on all sides of the debate invoke science as justification for their political positions.
So long as we live in a democracy rather than a technocracy, such debates are to be expected. Bringing the values at stake out into the open will not only help to depoliticize science, but will also help to improve the practice of democracy.
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All judgments that involve "drawing a line" between one thing and another are inherently political judgments, in the sense that trade-offs between competing values are unavoidably involved.
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If democracy is to work, political representatives must not only be formally installed in government posts but must in some sense gain control of large-scale bureaucracies that constitute the modern state. (p. 4)
A commitment to the orderly transition of governmental control via elections necessarily means that those in charge will change (p. 109):
Any commitment to democratic values necessarily means accepting a measure of instability in the top governing levels.
Yes, section 377A of Singapore's Penal Code bans homosexual conduct between males. But let's not forget that as of 1970, sodomy laws prohibited homosexual acts in every state in America except Illinois. In 1986, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of sodomy laws in Bowers v. Hardwick, a decision overturned only nine years ago. And even today, The New York Times says Kansas Statute 21-3505, a criminal sodomy law, is "used as justification to harass and discriminate against people."
Did these laws render 1960s, '70s and '80s America unfit for liberal arts education? No. Did the Yale faculty abandon its pursuit of light and truth in 1986, when our highest court ruled against its ideals of openness and tolerance? Of course not. Has Yale severed ties with Kansas? Why, then, should section 377A preclude liberal arts education in Singapore?
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. Because the Singaporean government funds Yale-NUS, one may worry that, even beyond gay rights, national policies will dictate the campus climate at Yale-NUS. They won't. Yale-NUS students, like the many NUS students who openly debate and criticize government and university policy in class and in publications such as the Kent Ridge Common, will make sure of that.
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Just like America, Singapore has laws and norms of which I disapprove. A vibrant gay party scene doesn't mean that gays have equal rights — they don't. Yet Singapore has seen notable liberalizations over the past 10 years, including the launch of high-profile gay rights organizations and government approval for large-scale gay festivals and gatherings. Notwithstanding its historical restrictions on free speech and assembly, I applaud Singapore's steps toward equality.
Think about it: The results of climate science, delivered by scientists who are overwhelmingly Democratic, are used over a period of decades to advance a political agenda that happens to align precisely with the ideological preferences of Democrats. Coincidence—or causation?
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This study explores time trends in public trust in science in the United States from 1974 to 2010. More precisely, I test Mooney’s (2005) claim that conservatives in the United States have become increasingly distrustful of science. Using data from the 1974 to 2010 General Social Survey, I examine group differences in trust in science and group-specific change in these attitudes over time. Results show that group differences in trust in science are largely stable over the period, except for respondents identifying as conservative. Conservatives began the period with the highest trust in science, relative to liberals and moderates, and ended the period with the lowest. The patterns for science are also unique when compared to public trust in other secular institutions. Results show enduring differences in trust in science by social class, ethnicity, gender, church attendance, and region. I explore the implications of these findings, specifically, the potential for political divisions to emerge over the cultural authority of science and the social role of experts in the formation of public policy.
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"The cultural ascendency thesis predicts a uniform increase in public trust in science across all social groups.
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the debate over morality in America has less to do with moral outcomes and more to do with a vision of how society should look based on idealistic remembrances of how things were. So people like Mr Munro and the Republican candidates believe America is in a moral slump. The odd thing is, people on the left might actually agree, though for very different reasons. They are upset by the perceived greed of the 1%, and the broad acceptance of torture and war as foreign-policy tools. In the end, the debate over morality more closely resembles two distinct monologues.
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over the past several decades the crime rate has fallen dramatically, despite what you may think. The homicide rate has been cut in half since 1991; violent crime and property crime are also way down. Even those pesky kids are committing less crime. There are some caveats to these statistics, as my colleague points out, but I think we can conclude that crime is not the cause of America's moral decline.
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Abortion has returned as a hot-button issue, perhaps it is eating away at our moral fiber. Hmm, the abortion rate declined by 8% between 2000 and 2008. Increases in divorce and infidelity could be considered indicators of our moral decay. There's just one problem: according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, the divorce rate is the lowest it has been since the early 1970s. This is in part due to the recession, but infidelity is down too.
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