Attempts by the Obama administration to regulate greenhouse gases are highly unpopular here because of opposition to large-scale government intervention. Some are skeptical that humans might fundamentally alter a world that was created by God.

If the heartland is to seriously reduce its dependence on coal and oil, Ms. Jackson and others decided, the issues must be separated. So the project ran an experiment to see if by focusing on thrift, patriotism, spiritual conviction and economic prosperity, it could rally residents of six Kansas towns to take meaningful steps to conserve energy and consider renewable fuels.

via In Kansas, Climate Skeptics Embrace Green Energy – NYTimes.com.

via Linkpile.

Reporters could do better, but isn’t it also the scientists’ responsibility to help distill complex scientific issues for the rest of us? Ten years ago, Jane Lubchenco, Obama’s pick to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, created the Leopold Leadership Program at Stanford University to sharpen scientists’ communication skills. Pam Matson is the current director. She says scientists have a lot to learn about getting their message across.

PAM MATSON: Well, I think it’s a special problem of scientists because we are taught how to communicate with one audience, and that is our audience, other scientists. We’re taught to provide lots of background information. We focus on the details of how we do the research, the uncertainty around our results, and then only at the very end do we talk about the conclusions, the bottom line. And so, I think most of us have to be taught to turn that around if we’re talking to the public, talking to decision makers of any sort, to put the bottom line up front.
On The Media: Transcript of “The Science of Media Relations” February 13, 2009

Emotions vs. Rationality in decision making.

Artists need to embrace the emotional influence their work has in decision making.

Mainly for Jay and Duncombe. I think at the core, one of the things he’s talking about, is if all that work getting Obama elected actually mattered…

I’m tired of reading and looking to design as Art, making people to be confused about it. Some people are just looking for fame, and not really thinking on giving creative answers. The world is about to explode, and we have to fill our heads with more and more warm gadgets. Enough!

User Mike K in response:

Interesting. While I do absolutely agree that the world faces large problems and that the role of design should be forcefully stronger in helping solve them, that in no way illigitimizes the need for conceptual or artistic design. In fact, as in science, many useful discoveries come from this type exploration as much as they do from pointed purposeful problem solving.

found on: Rhizome

This struck me. I suppose I never considered scientists playing around and stumbling upon answers they weren’t looking for. And that as a means of research. Of course could be used as a “get out of jail free card” for any practitioner but I think it’s valid.

This is an except from the end of the interview that I thought was relevant to the questions we’re asking in How to Win.

Gross: Do you think some of the tactics that you took on were in some part this youthful expression of anger, something that only a young person would do?

Ayers: Absolutely.

Gross: What fits into that category?

Ayers: Well I think that you’re caught up in a street demonstration and you are young and full of fire and you just spontaneously find yourself spilling onto the streets. Leaving the line of march. And deciding to throw a rock at the window of a military recruiter. That’s spontaneous opposition. It’s not well thought out, um, but it makes a certain amount of sense but it’s not part of a larger strategy that’s thought through.

Gross: Is there a level of doubt that you feel when you were young you didn’t allow yourself to entertain because you had to feel so committed to the cause and what your plan was that you couldn’t allow certain doubts to enter your mind?

Ayers: Yeah I think that I live with doubt today, every day, all the time. And it is different than being young and certain and jacking yourself up to do certain things. I argue to my students, I argue to young people all the time that you cannot live a political life – you can’t live a moral life – if you’re not willing top open your eyes and see the world more clearly. See some of the injustice that’s going on. Try to make yourself aware of what’s happening in the world.

And when you are aware, you have a responsibility to act.

And when you act, you have a responsibility to doubt.

And when you doubt, you can’t get paralyzed. You have to use that doubt to act again. And that then becomes the cycle. You open your eyes, you act, you doubt, you act, you doubt.

Without doubt you become dogmatic and shrill and stupid.

But without action, you become cynical and passive and a victim of history. And that should never happen.

P.S. If you haven’t seen the Academy Award nominated Weather Underground documentary, I highly recommend it. You can watch it in its entirety below:

The Democrats were able to snatch the mantle of newness from the neo-cons by running a candidate that the Republicans simply couldn’t. Nothing could be more unique, more new, and therefore more suited to the End of History word view than a black man with a very global-sounding name.

You can get this as a life size cardboard cutout

Thanks to You Tube and hip celebrity initiative, Obama was not just a presidential candidate, we was part of Will.i.am’s posse, he was sang about by hot chicks on the internet, and we was the subject of a super cool/patriotic (but not the old fuddy duddy patriotic, the new fashionable patriotic) Shepard Fairey poster. Obey. Vote Obama. Never before has a politician’s mug been emblazoned on more baby tees, baby bibs, and urban-chic stickers. You could be radical, fight the system, and be part of the greatest wave of youthful idealism to break on the shores of the US since the hippies. Without having to really do that much. Ah, and this is the challenge for people who want change beyond just a new member of the two-party establishment every 8 years.

He's even on skateboards

Real change requires people to alter how they live, not just what buttons they wear, and what levers they pull twice a decade. How to make people swoon over local produce, bike to work, and become tax resistors is an entirely more difficult proposition. But one that’s infinitely more important than which candidate to Obey Giant.

The Brand Called Obama

Life in the Post Political Age

Moving to the Center of Elite Consensus

Obey Giant Vote for Change
(embeddable videos of celebrity endorsements)

Tri-Valley CAREs (Communities Against a Radioactive Environment) out of Livermore, New College in San Francisco and two allied groups filed the bid for the Livermore contract on Oct. 27. At the time, they acknowledged they had little chance of winning it, but said they hoped the bid would encourage public support for phasing out the lab’s nuclear weapons work and diverting its thousands of scientists into research on global warming, alternative energy sources and other peaceful enterprises.

On Friday, Tri-Valley officials said the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons complex for the U.S. Energy Department, had rejected the bid. Officials said the call for phasing out nuclear weapons work was “inconsistent” with Energy Department and Nuclear Security Administration strategic planning.

read more – LIVERMORE / Anti-nuke activists lose out on bid to run weapons lab

This weekend was the first big test, a kickoff for the so-called Great Schlep, and so far, momentum has been building with the pace of a nice brisket. Though about seven million people have watched Ms. Silverman’s four-minute Web video explaining why “visiting your grandparents could change the world,” the schlep remains mostly virtual.

Mik Moore, 34, co-director of Jewish Council for Education and Research, the nonprofit group behind the project, said 100 people visited Florida this weekend to convince older Jewish voters that Mr. Obama should be president, while about 100 more visited relatives in other swing states.

Declaring it “a really good start,” Mr. Moore said he hoped that dozens more would officially schlep before Election Day.

read more:

Laugh at a Campaign Pitch? Sure. Visit the Grandparents? Not So Much. – NYTimes.com