Science, technology, and the blue and red states

Yesterday I read an article by Richard Florida entitled "Creative Class War," which argues that the U.S. is losing the global battle for creative talent, in part because the current administration is hostile to such people.

While I think the article lays too much blame at the White House door, it's still interesting for the way it connects the rise of the creative class to the nation's political and cultural polarization (blue states are dense with creatives, red are not).

This morning, two data-points on that division. The first from David Farber's list:

Interesting--was just reading the description of the MyDoom worm on the symantec site (http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.novarg.a@mm.html) and noticed the following:

"When W32.Novarg.A@mm sends email, it avoids distributing to the domains that contain any of the following strings:"

...

"berkeley"

Meanwhile, on the other coast:

Georgia considers banning 'evolution'

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- The state's school superintendent has proposed striking the word evolution from Georgia's science curriculum...

[thanks to Paul and Heather, respectively!]