tqa | November 7, 2007
John Wilkins was browsing through the Convention on Biological Diversity's website, and decided to compile a listing of the countries that are not parties to the treaty. I replicated his experiment and came up with something similar. It's not a very long list:
Andorra (Wilkins missed that one)
Brunei
Iraq
Somalia
The Holy See
The United States of America
Most of those countries can be excused for not being parties to the Convention. Iraq and Somalia both have more pressing concerns (although it's worth noting that Afghanistan became a party to the Convention in 2002). Andorra has a long…
tqa | November 6, 2007
In all of the fuss about the imminent confirmation of a man who says he can't judge whether or not strapping someone down and pouring water over them until they think they're drowning is torture, there's an important question that I think we've lost sight of: how on earth did we wind up in this position in the first place?
How is it even possible that we are having discussions about what is and is not technically torture? How is it possible that we are listening to Senators ask a nominee for Attorney General to take a position on whether or not certain "interrogation techniques" are…
tqa | November 2, 2007
It's now the day after the DonorsChoose Challenge, and several things are clear.
First, you people rock. This blog is not one of the highest-readership blogs in the Scienceblogs network. Most months, we're not even in the top half. But there's no way that anyone would guess that looking at the final results of the DonorsChoose challenge. At the end of the challenge, we had collected over $3,300. That was the third highest total among the participating Scienceblogs, and it put us into the top 25 of all participating blogs on the interwebs. Thank you all.
Second, you people rock.…
tqa | November 1, 2007
It's not often that I start a post with an apology (that usually comes later) but I think I have to this time. Dr. Watson, I'm sorry that I've got your name in the same title as Westboro Baptist. As unpleasant as you've been at times, you're not anywhere close to being in the same league as the Phelps infestation. It's just that I've got a pretty good reason for talking about you and the villainous horde in the same post, and splitting up the names in the title didn't read well. I'm pretty sure that I can keep the two of you out of the same sentence in the remainder of the text.
By any…
tqa | October 31, 2007
If you are one of the many people who was trying to contribute to the Scienceblogs.com DonorsChoose challenge today, you should know that there's one person you can blame for the trouble you had accessing the site: right-wing spinmeister and wannabe Presidential candidate Steven Colbert. That's right, folks. Like a typical heartless Conservative, Colbert's not content merely trying to shrink government to a convenient, easy to drown size. No, he's not going to rest until he makes it harder for un-American liberal weenies like you to waste your hard-earned dollars by using them to buy things…
tqa | October 30, 2007
President Bush announced today that he has (finally) named a nominee to replace Jim Nicholson as head of the Veterans administration. His choice, retired Lt. General James Peake, is probably one of the more qualified people that this President has ever nominated to do anything. That's the good news. The bad news is that's not a very high bar to clear.
Seriously, though, Peake certainly has the qualifications to run the VA. He's a West Pointer, he is a combat veteran who served in the infantry and was wounded twice in Vietnam, he's a medical doctor, and he was the Surgeon General of the…
tqa | October 30, 2007
We're now in the last two days of the DonorsChoose Bloggers' Challenge. As things currently stand, this blog is now $88 away from my $2,500 fundraising goal. Unfortunately, we've been more or less stalled for the last couple of weeks, so I'm going to add an incentive to see if we can get over the top.
DonorsChoose has generously committed to give blogs that hit their goals with a 10% bonus that can be used to fund additional projects. I've already contributed some to my own challenge, but if we have met the goal by 10 pm tomorrow night, our family will also contribute 10% of the total…
tqa | October 29, 2007
Here's a quote for you. It's one of the ones that should make you wonder whether you should laugh or cry:
And, doubtless, my going on this whaling voyage, formed part of the grand programme of Providence that was drawn up a long time ago. It came in as a sort of brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances. I take it that this part of the bill must have run something like this:
"Grand Contested Election for the Presidency of the United States.
"WHALING VOYAGE BY ONE ISHMAEL.
"BLOODY BATTLE IN AFFGHANISTAN."
That, if you haven't guessed from the name in the middle line,…
tqa | October 24, 2007
Several days ago, Senator (and longshot Presidential candidate) Christopher Dodd (D-CT) made some news by promising to do whatever he could to block any legislation that would retroactively grant immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with President Bush's warrentless wiretapping program. He started off by placing a hold on the bill - a procedural move that would normally block the legislation from being voted on. After hearing that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to move the bill to the floor despite the hold, Dodd is now promising to go to the floor of the Senate…
tqa | October 22, 2007
Here are a few numbers from the latest Reuters-Zogby poll. See if you can find the one that's not like the others:
Rated President Bush's performance as excellent or good: 25%
Rated Congress' performance as excellent or good: 11%
Said the U.S. is heading in the right direction: 26%
Rated the performance of U.S. foreign policy excellent or good: 18%
Rated the performance of U.S. economic policy excellent or good: 26%
Said they were very or fairly proud of the U.S.: 88%
Those numbers remind me of a bit from Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment:
"...you might not like everything about…
tqa | October 21, 2007
The Skeptical Alchemist tagged me with the Pharyngula Mutating Meme - a series of questions that can change as they get passed from blogger to blogger according to a set of simple rules.
The original questions were:
1. The best time travel novel in SF/Fantasy is...
2. The best romantic movie in historical fiction is...
3. The best sexy song in rock is...
The Pharyngula mutating genre meme:
There are a set of questions below that are all of the form, "The best [subgenre] [medium] in [genre] is...". Copy the questions, and before answering them, you may modify them in a limited way,…
tqa | October 20, 2007
Google news is currently featuring a comment by Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on the House of Representatives' failed attempt to override President Bush's veto of the SCHIP expansion. The comment reads in part:
"I remain committed to working with my colleagues across the aisle to reauthorize the State Children's Health Insurance Program to protect underprivileged children who currently lack health insurance. However, I cannot support legislation that will expand the welfare state, provide government health care benefits to illegal immigrants, and irresponsibly draw-down the public purse…
tqa | October 17, 2007
James Watson is many things. He's a noted scientist. He is the co-discoverer of the double helix structure of DNA. He runs a major research institute. He's a Nobel Laureate. He's also living proof that you can be a genius and a complete schmuck at the same time.
tqa | October 16, 2007
Our Coach Pitch baseball team just played the first game of the season. We had a very good game; the other team had a slightly better game. Everyone had fun, though, which is the key. A few quick thoughts on baseball and the 5-8 year-old group:
1: Before our next game, I'm going to make a recording of myself yelling "Play your own position!"
2: I'm going to make a recording of "Throw the ball to the pitcher."
3: At practice tomorrow night, we're going to spend most of the time working on the infield routine. The emphasis is going to be on throwing the ball after you catch it, with a…
tqa | October 16, 2007
I am certainly no fan of the Iraq war, but I found it difficult to read the media reports about retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez's recent comments on the war without getting angry. Reading the full text of his remarks took me from anger to outrage. As good as it is to hear an unvarnished, blunt assessment of the situation from someone who, as a former commander of the forces in Iraq, is very familiar with what happens there, I'm left wondering where the hell he was before he gave his little talk.
Let's look at some of what the little pissant had to say:
Since 2003, the politics…
tqa | October 15, 2007
Since today is Blog Action Day, it seems like a good day for a post I've been meaning to write for a while now - what my family is doing to reduce our impact on the environment, and what else we can (and should) add to the mix.
I should probably admit right off the bat that I'm not doing enough to minimize my effect on the environment. I tend to suffer from inertia sometimes, and if something hasn't been made easy for me to do, I tend to not do it. That might not make me all that different from many (most) Americans, but it's still not good. While we were living in Honolulu, we didn't do…
tqa | October 15, 2007
Apparently, Matt Nisbet didn't think that one poorly-reasoned critique of Gore's ability to communicate science was enough for the weekend, because he tossed out another a day later. You might recall that in his first critique, Nisbet claimed that Gore contributes to the partisan divide over climate change. His presentation of the issue is too alarmist, Matt claimed, which makes it easy for Republicans to dismiss the entire message. In this latest post, he claims that Gore has had "limited success" in getting the American public to be more aware of the problem because a lot of people have an…
tqa | October 14, 2007
Late last week, the IRS released figures showing that the income gap in the United States is larger now than at any time since they began tracking that data in 1986, and may be worse now than at any time since the 1920s. The figures, which are based on 2005 tax returns, reveal that the richest 1% of Americans accounted for 21.2% of income, up from about 20.8% in 2000. The bottom 50% of families earned 12.8%, which is a drop from the 13% that they took home in 2000.
When the Wall Street Journal asked President Bush about the widening income gap, he said:
First of all, our society has had…
tqa | October 12, 2007
This week's DonorsChoose update is a short one. We're still doing well here - $2278 has been donated, which puts us well on our way to meeting our goal for the third time. I've added new proposals, again mostly from the Bronx, most of which are looking to fill basic classroom needs. (One request is for a copy machine and toner, because the entire school currently has one machine and no service contract. Another is for play-dough for a kindergarten classroom. A third is another request for pencils, crayons, and markers.)
In related news, Seed Media Group (the parent company of Scienceblogs…
tqa | October 12, 2007
(He didn't do it on purpose, of course.)
According to Bill-O, the world would be a scary, scary, scary place if Edwards is elected president:
Remember, no coerced interrogation, civilian lawyers in courts for captured overseas terrorists, no branding the Iranian guards terrorists, and no phone surveillance without a specific warrant.
That sounds suspiciously like the vision of a world where the President of the United States actually preserves, protects, and defends the Constitution of the United States. And we all know that's the last thing that we can afford, right?
(Hat tips:…