Finding Melville’s Whale: The Specksynder (Chapter 33)

Posted on By Andrew Thaler
Uncategorized

Chapter 33 of Herman Melville’s classic – Moby Dick. Read along with us and discuss this chapter or the book as a whole in the comments. Visit this page for the complete collection to date: Finding Melville’s Whale. The Specksynder Such it is on a whale ship that officers, even captains, serve at the harpoons’ will. … Read More “Finding Melville’s Whale: The Specksynder (Chapter 33)” »

Grading President Obama on science and conservation

Posted on By David Shiffman 6 Comments on Grading President Obama on science and conservation
Conservation

Earlier this week, Dr. M of Deep Sea News evaluated President Obama’s science and conservation policies and awarded him a B-. I gave President Obama a C+ overall after his first 100 days in office, noting that some things haven’t had enough time to be given a fair grade,  and I think things have gotten much worse since then. I was a little shocked at how high this grade was, and I left Dr. M a snarky comment (sorry, Craig).

In the interest of fairness, I wanted to find a way to objectively grade these policies. The best that I can find is the Obameter, run by non-partisan fact checker Politifact. Basically, they record every promise that President Obama made during the campaign and since he’s become President, and they keep track of how each is progressing. Each is rated “promise kept”, “compromise” (something similar happened though not exactly what was promised), “in the works” (not done yet but actively being worked on), “stalled” (no work being done but it may happen at some point), and “promise broken”.

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