Mad rantings about politics, evolution, and microbiology
Mad rantings about politics, evolution, and microbiology. Comment policy: say what you want, but back it up with an email address. I don't like anonymous trolls.
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February 28, 2007
Moselio Schaechter, former American Society of Microbiology president, has a blog, Small Things Considered. It's pretty good. But the promo letter ASM sent around had one annoying thing.
Posted by Mike at 5:56 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
John Emerson on David Brooks' most recent expedition in ersatz sociology--this time a rant about the parenting habits of Brooklynites:
Posted by Mike at 11:14 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 27, 2007
Category: Bloggity Blog
Thanks to YouTube, bloggers regularly post video. Sites like Flickr allow the posting of pictures. But there's one thing that I haven't seen--or more accurately, heard.
Posted by Mike at 5:41 PM • 13 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
What happens when you take Science Blogs "basic concepts" and add it to Conservapedia, the information website for complete morons? You get more fun than a barrel of monkeys (which, of course, are not related to humans...). Here's what the Stupid People have to say about genes
Posted by Mike at 11:41 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 26, 2007
When I heard that Republican Senator and presidential candidate John McCain spoke at the Discovery Institute, I was disappointed but not surprised. In March, there's going to be a report released about antibiotic resistance in bacteria. A major finding of the report:
Posted by Mike at 4:57 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A recent Gallup Poll about support for the Iraqi Occupation notes something very interesting: Jews are more likely to oppose the war, even after party affiliation is taken into account. Gallup states, "It is unclear why Jewish Americans show such strong opposition to the war." My answer?
Posted by Mike at 11:51 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
...the man who helped bring you Iran-Contra, you know you've gone too far. Seymour Hersh has a new article in the New Yorker about the Bush Administration's Middle East 'strategy.' It's more ridiculous than Iran-Contra.
Posted by Mike at 9:02 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 25, 2007
Category: Bloggity Blog
Here are some links for you; science first:
Posted by Mike at 9:20 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Tolerance
Here's an interesting little bit about intolerance by Karl Popper from The Open Society and Its Enemies: The Spell of Plato.
Posted by Mike at 1:46 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
What happens if you want to fight a war, and the generals threaten to not show up?
Posted by Mike at 9:18 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 24, 2007
And it's free! Bob Altemeyer, whose work on the authoritarian mind significantly influenced John Dean' Without Conscience, has released a free online book, The Authoritarians, which is about, well, authoritarians.
Posted by Mike at 2:50 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
At a recent National Press Club roundtable about the effect of the internet on the job of the White House correspondents, journalist Richard Wolffe had this to say about bloggers:
Posted by Mike at 10:29 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 23, 2007
I feel bad for John Stewart and Stephen Colbert because when idiots unintentionally parody themselves, their gig will be up. Conservapedia is going to be the gift that giving...for bloggers anyway. Here's what it says about the Holocaust (and, yes, this is the entire entry):
Posted by Mike at 10:21 AM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 22, 2007
...El Jefe Maximo is still pushing the elimination of the estate tax because the offspring of the ludicrously wealthy need a break:
Posted by Mike at 5:17 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Some of my fellow ScienceBloglings have written about Conservapedia's treatment of evolution. What has always puzzled me about creationists is the rather frequent denial of mutation. For example, in the section on macroevolution, titled "Is the theory of macroevolution true?"*--which should tell you what's to come right away, the entry reads...
Posted by Mike at 10:12 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
we might want to issue them rifles.
Posted by Mike at 10:00 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 21, 2007
Category: Katrina
That's what the cast of the British reality TV show Top Gear asked while visiting New Orleans one year after Katrina.
Posted by Mike at 7:11 PM • 8 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Can someone explain to me why the Nevada Democrats want to host a primary presidential debate on Fox News?
Posted by Mike at 4:23 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
By now, you might have read this NY Times article about Senator Clinton's difficulties in dealing with her vote to go to war. While others have commented on her disturbing belief in executive authority--which gets awful close to the 'unitary executive' concept espoused by the Bush administration, a loyal reader pointed out a very interesting part of the article that I had overlooked.
Posted by Mike at 11:47 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 20, 2007
Senator and Republican presidential candidate John "Snuggles" McCain do it? For that matter, evangelicals do it--even before getting married. This makes McCain's support for abstinence-only sex education even more ridiculous. But let's talk more about sex, baby.
Posted by Mike at 4:02 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 19, 2007
...than develop a new radiation warning symbol?
Posted by Mike at 4:31 PM • 16 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
If you thought Bernie Kerik was bad, wait until you hear about Republican presidential hopeful Rudi Giuliani's new best friend: Paul Singer, a long time Republican campaign contributor who has pledged to raise $15 million for Giuliani. The phrase "vulture capitalist" might sound trite, but when you hear how Singer made (and still makes) his fortune, you'll agree there's no other way to describe it.
Posted by Mike at 10:45 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
A Merry President's Day to everyone. May our future presidents not suck as badly as the current one. Here are some science links for you.
Posted by Mike at 10:29 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 18, 2007
Chris Bowers of MyDD.com has one of the most bizarre posts I've ever read about our Glorious Progressive Internet Comrades Marching Valiantly...to somewhere.
Posted by Mike at 2:59 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
By now, stories about how poorly returning veterans are being treated hardly qualifies as 'news' because, shamefully, it is so common. But this story from the Washington Post is shocking.
Posted by Mike at 8:53 AM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 17, 2007
Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH) had a great speech on the House floor yesterday.
Posted by Mike at 10:15 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Someone should tell Republican Congresscritter Don Young that if you're going to accuse Democrats of treason and call for their hanging, it would help if your own party does not accept campaign funds from backers of Afghan terrorists.
Posted by Mike at 9:21 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 16, 2007
and William Donohue of the Catholic League says nothing. The Family Research Council is a rightwing faith-tank and advocacy group. And at least one board member and blogger thinks it is also very Protestant.
Posted by Mike at 11:37 AM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 15, 2007
I've blogged before about how, for children under five, it's not the 'sexy' microbes that kill, but instead, the run of the mill ones: the bacteria that cause diarrhea and pneumonia are the culprits. One of the things I have heard a lot of recently regarding antibiotic development (and related therapies) is that we need to focus on 'non-paradigm' and non-model organisms. There's a problem with that approach.
Posted by Mike at 8:38 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There's an interesting interview with Mara Vanderslice about her attempts to integrate 'religious' people into the Democratic party. While I've ripped into Vanderslice before, there's a lot I agree with, particularly the need for Democrats to define their policies in moral terms, not technocratic ones. But then I hit this paragraph.
Posted by Mike at 11:30 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 14, 2007
I know, I know: dog bites man. Anyway, I received this note from a colleague who attended a Seattle screening of Randy Olson's Flock of Dodos.
Posted by Mike at 4:13 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Having been trained as an evolutionary biologist, I've always thought that the medical literature avoids using the word evolution: instead, words like emergence, development, spread, and acquisition are used. In PLos Biology, there's an article that quantifies what I've always suspected.
Posted by Mike at 9:29 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 13, 2007
You would think that the guys who brought you Iran-Contra would, of all people, know that governments and countries often have serious internal divisions. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
Posted by Mike at 12:44 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 12, 2007
Here's some very good news about MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus): U.S. hospitals are beginning to implement their own versions of 'search and destroy' (italics mine):
Posted by Mike at 3:57 PM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 11, 2007
In light of El Jefe Maximo's State of the Union speech, where he discussed Social Security privatization, I've dredged from the archives this very short post about a side of Social Security that is completely ingored in the whole debate.
Posted by Mike at 12:15 PM • 5 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 10, 2007
Category: Evolution
While I'm away, here's a post in the spirit of the "basic concepts in science" thingee that's been floating around ScienceBlogs.
Posted by Mike at 11:09 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 9, 2007
I'm at a meeting in D.C. about antibiotic resistance, so I've left the Blogerator 9000 to fire up this post from the archives about a drug company executive's explanation of how drugs are priced. It's remarkable--and frustrating--that nobody has picked up on the basic message: drug prices are consumer driven, not R&D expenditure driven.
Posted by Mike at 11:56 AM • 4 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 8, 2007
By way of Effect Measure, I came across this Consumer Reports article about bacterial contamination of chicken. The short version: I'm not convinced that the bacterial contamination problem has become worse--keep in mind, I'm not saying that bacterial contamination is not a problem, only that the problem has remained constant in scope.
Posted by Mike at 8:31 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 7, 2007
I hate being right, but I knew the Mighty Conservative Wurlitzer was going to slime Amanda and Shakes. Before I get to a detailed discussion of the NY Times article about the whole blogger kerfuffle, I have a very simple question.
Posted by Mike at 5:55 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
driftglass skewers NY Times columnist David Brooks' claim that young people don't want the politics of polarization.
Posted by Mike at 11:49 AM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 6, 2007
If you think the title is goofy, watch the video:
Posted by Mike at 9:56 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Over at Hullabaloo, Tristero describes this conversation with a respected journalist about the manufactured smear of CBS reporter Lara Logan's coverage of the Haifa Street battle.
Posted by Mike at 11:08 AM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 5, 2007
Never doubt the prognostication of the Mad Biology. A couple of days ago, I wondered if the Mighty Conservative Wurlitzer would unleash its awesome fury against the Edwards campaign bloggers. Turned out I was right.
Posted by Mike at 8:55 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I want to follow up on a point Amanda made in response to my post about the Texas plan to immune all girls against HPV.
Posted by Mike at 11:46 AM • 15 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 4, 2007
Category: Bloggity Blog
There's a Super Bowl to watch, but here are some links anyway. First, the science stuff:
Posted by Mike at 9:59 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
...so we can fight among ourselves here? I don't think the Iraq War was supposed to work that way.
Posted by Mike at 2:09 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
...panda cuteness. In honor of Amanda of Pandagon becoming a famous and financially compensated blogger, I present you this photo montage.
Posted by Mike at 11:31 AM • 9 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 3, 2007
It should tell you just how loony the Christopath right is when a conservative Texas governor gains admission to the Coalition of the Sane (for the time being, anyway). How did Texas governor Rick Perry do it?
Posted by Mike at 2:50 PM • 14 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
There's a very interesting poll about Iraq from The Financial Times. In short, 72% of U.S. troops want the U.S. to leave Iraq within twelve months.
Posted by Mike at 9:53 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 2, 2007
I'm thrilled that two of my favorite bloggers, Amanda of Pandagon and Shakes, are going to be part of the blog campaign for John Edwards. It's about time that they're recognized for their great work. While they, and others, have addressed the issue of what working for the Edwards campaign will mean for their blogs, there's another issue that hasn't been addressed.
Posted by Mike at 3:09 PM • 12 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 1, 2007
Category: Civil Liberties
The right wing furor over vice-presidential daughter Mary Cheney's decision to get pregnant and (hopefully) have a baby with her lesbian partner led Cheney to issue the following statement.
Posted by Mike at 3:39 PM • 6 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
I never knew that Niagra Falls had frozen in 1911 until a friend sent me some photos. Here they are:
Posted by Mike at 3:22 PM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Molly Ivins died this morning at age 62 from her long-running battle with cancer.
Posted by Mike at 9:30 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks