tqa | April 3, 2007Update - I've written a second post on this topic in response to the President's speech at Fort Irwin earlier today.
Mr. President, meet the Constitution. Constitution, I'd like to introduce you to President George W. Bush. It's been a long six years since Mr. Bush took office, and it's high time the two of you got to know each other - especially with that whole oathy-type thing. It's probably going to be easier to do all that "preserve, protect, and defend" thing if you have some sort of vague sense of what it is you are defending.
This overdue introduction is particularly necessary today…
tqa | April 3, 2007
Senator (and Presidential candidate) John McCain toured parts of Baghdad the other day. He wasn't alone, of course. He had a few friends with him. Senator Lindsey Graham was there, too. So were Representatives Mike Pence and Rick Renzi. Oh, yeah, and they had some security with them, too - judging by descriptions, at least a full rifle company's worth of ground security, not to mention the air support.
The purpose of their visit? A demonstration that it is safe to walk the streets in parts of Baghdad. Seriously. No, this really isn't a late April Fool's gag. After the Congresscritters…
tqa | April 2, 2007
Another gem from the West Wing - this time from the season finale from Season 3:
TOBY: He's at the Yankee game right now?
SAM: Local news covered it. He said this was how ordinary Americans got their entertainment.
TOBY: I've been to 441 baseball games in Yankee Stadium. There's not a singleperson there who's ordinary.
tqa | April 2, 2007
The Supreme Court of the United States has, in a 5-4 decision (pdf), just ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency's decision not to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the clean air act was, "arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise not in accordance with law."
The decision does not require the EPA to begin regulating greenhouse gasses, but it does send the case back for further considerations, and it does tell the EPA that none of the justifications that it attempted to use to avoid regulating CO2 is a legitimate basis for refusal. The ruling clearly has massive implications in…
tqa | April 1, 2007
Me: "It's about a DVD"
Child #1: "What gender is it."
Me: "I wasn't aware that DVD's have a gender."
Child #1: "The gender. You know, is it comedy, or drama, or action?"
tqa | March 30, 2007
Via Pharyngula, I just learned what Catholic League president Bill Donohue is pissed about today - a life-size sculpture of Jesus made out of milk chocolate that is going on display in New York next week. According to Donohue, the sculpture is, "hate speech." In the same press release, Donohue also said, "All those involved are lucky that angry Christians don't react the way extremist Muslims do when they're offended--otherwise they may have more than their heads cut off." It's clear that this particular sculpture has aggravated Donohue to the point where he is incapable of reasonable and…
tqa | March 29, 2007
As I mentioned earlier, there's a really interesting paper on mammal evolution in the latest issue of the journal Nature. The authors of the paper compiled a really fantastic sampling of molecular data that included data from about 99% of all currently known extant mammals. The data was then used to conduct an analysis that was by far the most comprehensive look at the molecular evolution of mammals ever undertaken. The researchers concluded, based on this analysis, that mammals diversified a lot earlier then was previously believed - so much so, in fact, that it seems to cast some doubt on…
tqa | March 29, 2007
It's one of the curses of blogging - there's no way to control when good stories to blog about pop up. It would be great if we could regulate the flow in some way, and get the stories to show up at nice, regular intervals. Give me one good story a day, and one really good story every second or third day, and I'm a happy blogger. It would be so nice if life worked that way.
Anyway . . .
Today, there are way too many good stories to write about. We've got (in no particular order) mammal evolution in the news, a philosopher questioning the usefulness of lab courses, a good reminder of why…
tqa | March 28, 2007
According to widespread media (and blog) reports, the Bush administration is about to release a set of administrative rules changes that would "gut" the Endangered Species Act. Actually, "gut" really isn't descriptive enough to do justice to what they are getting geared up for. They are getting set to completely eviscerate the act. Basically, their plan is to take the thing, slit it up the middle, dump all the internal organs onto the ground and jump up and down on them. Then they're going to stuff the carcass of the Endangered Species Act with straw, and drag it around with them in a…
tqa | March 28, 2007
It's been a few days since I've posted anything here, so I just wanted to toss a quick post up to let everyone know I'm still alive, and haven't abandoned the blog. I had a tooth abscess pop up on me last week, and it didn't get resolved until Monday. For some reason, I had a hard time working up the concentration needed to write well while I was taking painkillers. That's over and done with now, so real blogging will return to this space shortly.
tqa | March 22, 2007
At yesterday's Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works hearing, Senator James Inhofe challenged Gore to sign a "Personal Energy Ethics Pledge." Inhofe's antics are nothing new - the man's been opposed to a reality based reality for years now, and he's pulled plenty of media stunts to highlight his claims about global warming. One more, even one that involves the former Vice President, is hardly newsworthy. In this case, though, the stunt that he pulled is such a classic example of the "no right answer question" that it's worth taking a look at.
Here's Inhofe's "Personal Energy…
tqa | March 21, 2007
By this point, the name Michael Egnor should be familiar to readers of this blog - but if you need a reminder, he's the neurosurgeon who recently signed on to the staff of the Discovery Institute's Media Complaints blog. Over the last week or two, Egnor has been trying to convince people that evolution is really not important in any way to medicine.
His last attempt, before today, came less than a week ago, with this spectacular piece of inane argumentation. I responded to the arguments that he made, Orac responded to the arguments he made, Afarensis responded to the arguments he made,…
tqa | March 21, 2007
I've been kind of quiet the last couple of days - I've been dealing with an exam and a dental issue - so I didn't get into the whole Michael Egnor (aka The DI's Pet Neurosurgeon) linkfest. I agree with Bora, though. It would be good if anyone who wants to Google him is able to quickly find out exactly how skilled he is at making bad anti-evolution arguments. My contribution there can be found below the fold.
In addition, I'd also like to join Orac and Afarensis in reminding Dr. Egnor that there are specific challenges waiting for him, and that he hasn't responded to mine, either.
Michael…
tqa | March 17, 2007
Dr. Michael Egnor is, once again, trying to explain why evolution isn't important to medicine. This time he's responding to Mark Chu-Carroll's post on Tautology. In his latest post, Egnor continues to challenge the conventional wisdom that an understanding of evolution in general and natural selection in particular is essential to understanding and dealing with the phenomenon of bacterial resistance to antibiotics.
Here's his latest statement along those lines:
Mark, your dad's illness didn't happen because his doctor didn't know enough about random mutation and natural selection. Our…
tqa | March 17, 2007
This post was originally written on 9 September 2005, and was posted over at the old place. It's relevant to a post that will be appearing shortly, so I'm moving it over here for convenience. I haven't edited the original in any way.
From a story in today's WaPo, I learned that Bayer has withdrawn it's poultry anitbiotic Baytril from the market. This marks the end of a five-year battle with the FDA over the drug.
The FDA first proposed withdrawing Baytril in October of 2000, due to concerns regarding the development of antibiotic resistance. From a 2001 FDA Consumer Magazine article:…
tqa | March 16, 2007
Neurosurgeon and recent addition to the Discovery Institute's Media Complaints Division blog Dr. Michael Egnor is at it again. He's responded to Burt's latest response to his prior response to Burt's earlier response to his - you get the drift. Burt's been doing a great job of responding to Egnor, and I don't want to step on his toes, but Egnor says a couple of things this time that I think would benefit from the perspective of someone who is studying evolutionary biology.
First, though, I'd like to address this delightful bit of less-than-honest rhetoric:
In addition, a common Darwinist…
tqa | March 15, 2007
After a great deal of thought, I decided that a large part of the discussion that had taken place in the comments thread of my post on pedophiles and the First Amendment had gone well beyond what I am personally comfortable with having on my blog. I closed the comments section of that post and removed several of the comments.
The comments thread of this post is available to those who want to scold me for shutting down and restricting comments on an article that was about First Amendment rights.
tqa | March 15, 2007
New Scienceblogger Rob Knop has written a couple of posts explaining his own religious views and raising one of those questions that usually manages to get people worked up here: are science and spirituality compatible? That's a question that I've found myself thinking about more than usual lately, and with mixed feelings. I'm still not sure exactly where I stand on the whole religion thing, and I don't think I could describe my own views even at gunpoint. But I am comfortable saying this much: for at least some definitions of "spirituality," science and spirituality are compatible.
I…
tqa | March 14, 2007
When I put up my post the other day responding to a Salon article accusing Army doctors of inappropriately changing physical profiles to deploy more people, there were some things that I didn't make clear enough. I did not address mental health at all, and my discussion of the physical standards was very limited - I addressed only the accusations involving doctors altering profiles to make soldiers fit the standard for deployment. I did not address the questions about whether the physical standards for deployment have been lowered. Both of these issues have come up since then - the question…