September 2009 Archives

Four California-based think tanks were among the most-cited by media members during 2008, according to rankings compiled by FAIR.

RAND, headquartered in Santa Monica, placed fifth overall, receiving 754 media mentions, a 4% increase from the year prior.

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It's been a big month for fans of hot electric cars.

Hot as in hot designs. Hot as in hot rod. And hot as in global warming and fuel use alternatives.

First came the reports that Tesla Motors Inc. bigwigs past and present had settled their dispute about who should be called the company's founder. (The answer: everybody!)

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In case you missed it, a story in the September 18, 2009 North American edition of The Indian Express recounts the successes, difficulties, and lessons learned from India's 2008-2009 unmanned, orbiting moon mission.

Lunar probe buffs and spaceflight fans can read all about the Chandrayaan-1 rocket and Moon Impact Probe launched by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO).

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The latest MacArthur Fellow Program Please Don't Call These Genius Grants Genius Grants have been made public, and at first glance, only one of the 24 Fellows from the class of 2009 has a direct think tank connection.

That person is Esther Duflo, and in addition to her M.I.T. affiliation, she's also director of development economics program at the Washington-D.C. based Center for Economic Policy Research.

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Today is Park[ing] Day. See here for more information about what that means, and here for a map of L.A. locations expected to sport ephemeral gardens, stages, and otherwise -- each the size of a single parking space.

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Day four of the four-part interview with Yaron Book, president of the Ayn Rand Institute, in Irvine.

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Day three of the four-part interview with Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute, in Irvine.

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Day two of TTLA's four-part inteview with Yaron Brook, president of the Ayn Rand Institute, in Irvine.

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The Ayn Rand Institute is the parent organization of the Ayn Rand Center, as well as the host of a Rand archive and a shrine of sorts – book covers, her desk, etc. – to the author and Objectivism founder. The Institute is located in the Von Karman Corporate Center, a non-descript Irvine office park. More on the building’s architecture is here and more about Brook is here.

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With President Obama scheduled on Wednesday, September 9 to make what's being billed as a major address regarding health care, the evening prior seemed like a good time to check in with a recent comprehensive report from the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research.

The Center's director, E. Richard Brown, was health policy advisor to the then-presidential candidate Obama. Brown is the lead author of the new report, "The State of Health Insurance in California: Findings from the 2007 California Health Interview Survey."

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Pepperdine Professor Robert Lloyd was recently named an "Academic Fellow" by the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a conservative Washington D.C.-based org. (Motto: "Fighting Terrorism and Promoting Freedom Through Research, Communications, Education, and Investigative Journalism.")

According to a Pepperdine press release, posted here:

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