Freedom – Page 21 – Things Are Good

Canadians Want Science to be Free

Scientists in Canada have come under attack and censorship under the federal Conservative government and Canadians want that to change. Science Uncensored is a new organization focused on ensuring that research funded by the government is freely available to Canadians and that the government stop censoring research results. In the past few years, research on the damage of salmon farming to the effects of climate change on Canada have been held back from public release due to alleged political pressure. It’s great to see people who want evidence-based debate on policy standing up against this sort of intervention in scientific research.

If your Canadian, I encourage you to take a few minutes and send a message to your MP to voicing your support for open and free science.

Informed public debate is the foundation of democracy. Informed means, at the very least, having the scientific information that we have paid for through our tax dollars available for discussion. This means allowing our publicly-funded scientists – whose salaries and research costs we pay – to communicate freely.
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In early 2012, a number of science and science journalism organizations signed a letter to Prime Minister Harper asking that the muzzling of government scientists stop. Despite this and other actions, the muzzling has continued and the situation is getting worse. Just last month Democracy Watch and the University of Victoria Environmental Law Centre submitted a letter to the Information Commissioner asking her to investigate and determine whether the new science-communication policies are even legal.

Find out more at Science Uncensored.

Get Rid of Stuff, Do What You Love

Often we hear that spending on experiences make for a happier life than buying into consumerism. In concept it sounds great, but many people think that it’s hard to rejig their life to be focused on doing things rather than consuming things. This TED talk is about breaking free of that passive normality and living life to its fullest.

Open-Access Science Growing in Reach

Many academic journals charge a subscription fee that is out of reach for the common person, which means that independent researchers and students are at a disadvantage when it comes to accessing information. Elementa aims to make research about the anthropocene era we’re in freely accessible for everyone.

Elementa follows the example of organizations such as PLoS, who offers peer-reviewed research to academics worldwide on an open-access, public-good basis. Elementa aims to facilitate scientific solutions to the challenges presented by this era of accelerated human impact on natural systems. It is committed to the rapid publication of technically sound, peer-reviewed articles that address interactions between human and natural systems and behaviors. Six knowledge domains form the structure of the publication, each headed by an Editor-in-Chief – Atmospheric Science, Earth and Environmental Science, Ecology, Ocean Science, Sustainable Engineering, and Sustainability Sciences.

It’s not just academic journals that are freeing knowledge to make it more available in the USA. The White House has recently stated that research funded by the American government will be freely available:

The White House has moved to make the results of federally funded research available to the public for free within a year, bowing to public pressure for unfettered access to scholarly articles and other materials produced at taxpayers’ expense.

“Americans should have easy access to the results of research they help support,” John Holdren, the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote on the White House website.

The Ideal 25 Hour Work Week

The currently popular 40 hour work week is a fairly modern notion and it’s thanks to unions that we don’t have something like an 80 hour work week. Times have changed and now scientists in the field of biodemography have suggested that a 25 hour work week is optimal. It allows people to spend more time living life than working in exchange for working later than the currently popular age of retirement.

â€œIn socio-economic terms it makes a lot of sense. The important thing is that we all put in a certain amount of work â€“ not at what point in our lives we do it. In the 20th century we had a redistribution of wealth. I believe that in this century, the great redistribution will be in terms of working hours.â€
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â€We know that elderly people are prepared to continue working if theyâ€™re capable of doing so. And Iâ€™m guessing that young people would prefer to work less while theyâ€™re young if they have the option of working more when they get older.

Marijuana Decriminalization Lowers Youth Crime Rate

Marijuana has been recently decriminalized in a few states in the USA, and based off of data from California the overall rate of youth arrests will drop dramatically. This is good news because now so many young lives won’t be destroyed for participating in using a drug that has negligible health effects (way less than alcohol) and is an insanely costly law to enforce. In Canada, the majority of Canadians encourage decriminalization for similar reasons.

The San Francisco-based Center on Juvenile & Criminal Justice (CJCJ) recently released a policy briefing with an analysis of arrest data collected by the California Department of Justiceâ€™s Criminal Justice Statistics Center. The briefing, â€œCalifornia Youth Crime Plunges to All-Time Low,â€ identifies a new state marijuana decriminalization law that applies to juveniles, not just adults, as the driving force behind the plummeting arrest totals.

After the new pot law went into effect in January 2011, simple marijuana possession arrests of California juveniles fell from 14,991 in 2010 to 5,831 in 2011, a 61 percent difference, the report by CJCJ senior research fellow Mike Males found.