Today is another high blogging load kind of day, and like many high blogging load days it coincides nicely with a high workload day, so there's no way I'm going to be able to write about everything cool. So, I'm going to do what I did yesterday - talk about them all really briefly now, and then hit one or two of the best later on.
In the lineup today, we've got some real winners. One of my commenters highlighted a really stupid John McCain op-ed for me. That goes nicely with the White House's continuing demand that Congress stop messing around and bend to the Imperial Will already. The White House provides a nice segue from politics to science - they're screwing around with protection for manatees. Also on the political front, there's more to be said about framing science, the diplomatic messing around with the IPCC report, and how those two concepts relate to each other. All is not gloomy in the world of science today, though, because Jake Young found one of scientific papers that make you really want to read the materials and methods section - a real-time brain imaging study of ejaculation.
It's a sad thing when a guy running for president is less aware of reality. . .
We'll start with the McCain thing. "A Botoh" is one of the conservatives who came to visit when my "President, meet the Constitution" post got some attention. Unlike most of them, this one hasn't left. Today, he suggests that "Bush Haters" go read this article. It's an op-ed, written by John McCain, that suggests that things are going better in Iraq than are currently being reported. I read the article, and it's changed all of my views. I'm going to be a rabid right-wing nutjob now. I better go burn my "Richardson for President" bumper sticker and that "nuke a godless communist gay baby seal for christ" t-shirt that's been kicking around in my dresser for the last decade. Or maybe I'm supposed to take it out and proudly wear it now - I'm not sure.
Hey, schmuck-boy, the dude who wrote that article is running for President. As far as I know, he's the only guy running - and possibly the only guy on the planet - who thinks the problem with the surge is that it's not big enough. This is the same guy who went out for a stroll in Baghdad last week, then held a press conference and claimed that he showed that there are places in that city where Americans can "walk freely" - never mentioning the infantry company and helicopter gunships that they had out to protect his sorry ass. What did you think he was going to say, and why in the world would anyone think that he's a credible, objective source of information here?
. . .than the guy who has the job now.
The President today continued his demands that Congress "get down to the business" of funding the war the way that he wants them to fund it. It's entirely possible that the last ruler to have this much trouble getting a legislature to give him no-strings attached money was Charles I. The big difference in this case is that Charlie was really a king (at least up until the moment that the axe hit), while this one just plays one on TV.
In other entirely unrelated news, it was announced today that the Army is considering extending the tours of four infantry brigades and a combat aviation brigade - quite possibly the one my wife is assigned to - for up to 120 days. My wife will probably return home early - she's going into a training program that the military has problems filling - but a hell of a lot of people I know and like will not be that lucky. The Pentagon also announced that four National Guard brigades - ones that have deployed already once - have been given warning orders for Iraq deployments later this year and early next year.
They're big, they're slow, they get into the way of boats and jetskis, and they're not cute. . .
. . .so why protect them?
The current Buzz here at Scienceblogs is over the discovery that plans are in place within the Interior department to downgrade the status of the Florida manatees from endangered to threatened. This would allow Florida do do things like raise the speed limit for boats in areas where the manatees live. This would make a lot of recreational boaters happy - right up to the moment when their boat comes to an abrupt stop against a half-ton of manatee. Shelley's got a good overview of the situation. All I can add is this: the number of manatees observed in the last census was 2,812. The year before, there were 3,116. Compared to some of the people I work with, I'm not an expert in conservation. Based on the graduate-level training I have had, though, I can tell you that weakening protections for a species when the latest census dropped by ~10% isn't a really good idea. Of course, you probably don't need anything more than common sense and fourth-grade math to figure that one out.
Framing Science: the IPCC edition.
Yesterday, I outlined some of the changes that diplomats made to the latest IPCC working group report. Later today, after I cool off some more, I'm going to talk about why these changes are so disturbing, and how the "framing" concept that's gotten a lot of attention here can be applied in this case. For those who don't want to wait, here's the first draft of the core message that I think we need to focus on:
Politicians are trying to hide the ways that climate change could threaten your life, your health, and your livelihood.
From those jerk-offs to this one:
Jake Young, over at Pure Pedantry, just found one hell of a scientific paper. In this just-published study, researchers report on what real-time brain imaging told them about brain function during orgasm. An earlier study on the same topic suffered from a methodological difficulty - the scanner they were using displayed averages of brain activity over two-minute windows, and the experimental subjects were males. Jake has some interesting comments on these issues, and on the efforts made in this latest study to overcome them.
You know, my wife's been gone for a long time now. I wonder if anyone out this way is going to try to replicate this study. . .
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