The Banana Peel Project

With the lady responsible for my normally time-shifted sleep schedule roaming the country without me, I’ve had to find something to do in the wee hours of the morning.  Here’s a few of the things that have been keeping me awake lately.

Recasting PCAST

Are we about to enter a brave new world where policy is actually based on knowledge?  And if so, does science influence policy or does policy influence science?  Of course it goes both ways, but it’s no easy task deciding how to set up the new President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.  The acronym may sound like someone using a spittoon, but SEED’s Robert Koenig is asking some important questions about how science may or may not be able to direct policy.

Striving for an activist PCAST will not likely prompt Obama to abolish it, as Nixon did, but it could potentially lead to an irrelevant panel. One key to making PCAST influential, experts say, is choosing topics that mesh with the White House agenda. Obama has given a number of indications of what those topics should be.

Will an “activist PCAST” lead to confusion and policy paralysis, with conflicting experts unsure whether solar energy, space station repairs, or the environment is more worthy of our precious dollars?  Or can science actually provide some direction?  The United States is sorely in need of some new values–the only question is, where should we look for them?

Freakonomics takes on marijuana decriminalization

The author’s parenthetical (and unfounded) pessimism aside, there’s a lot to be said for the possibility for national cannabis decriminalization.  A swell collection of perspectives: a scientist, a smuggler, an economist, an activist, and an enforcer all chime in on the possibilities and difficulties involved in decriminalizing, taxing, and regulating pot.  It’s getting harder and harder to find convincing arguments to the contrary.

Happy like God: Aristotle, Rousseau, and the vita contemplativa

A beautiful short article by Simon Critchley, philosopher at the New School for Social Research, arguing that contemplation–thought, self-attention, critique–is the key to happiness in a busy and materialistic world.  In our conscious autonomy, in contemplation of our relationship with the world, we can be as gods.

To be like God is to be without time, or rather in time with no concern for time, free of the passions and troubles of the soul, experiencing something like calm in the face of things and of oneself.

Check it out, and then go take the rest of the day off.