tqa | October 12, 2007
As you are undoubtedly aware, this year's Nobel Peace Prize is being split between the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and Al Gore, in recognition of "their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change."
Like almost everybody else here at Scienceblogs, I think this is absolutely fantastic. Gore has worked his butt off over the last few years. He's been tireless in his efforts to focus attention on climate change, and he's made a real difference. The…
tqa | October 11, 2007
It looks like Nancy Pelosi might be getting just a wee bit frustrated with the Democratic base. It also looks like she's got a lack of understanding of the proper relationship between politicians and the people that sorely needs correcting. At a recent press lunch sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor, she said this:
Activists who want to target congressional Democrats for lack of action on the war are misguided, the speaker argued. "I think it is a waste of time for them to go after Democratic members. They ought to just persuade Republican members who are representing areas that are…
tqa | October 9, 2007
A little after 7 am on 27 November, 2004, Lt. Colonel Michael McMahon and Chief Warrant Officer Travis Grogan boarded a small twin-engine airplane in Bagram, Afghanistan. The plane, which also had a cargo of 400 pounds of mortar illumination rounds, was operated by Presidential Airways, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Blackwater USA. Grogan was an experienced pilot assigned to the 3rd Squadron of the 4th Cavalry Regiment (the 3/4 Cav). McMahon was the 3/4ths commanding officer. At around 7:30, the plane stopped on the taxiway and a third passenger, 21-year old Specialist Harley Miller…
tqa | October 8, 2007
According to the LA Times, the family of an Iraqi guard killed by a Blackwater employee on Christmas Eve has not yet received any compensation for the man's death. The reason? The office of Iraq's Vice President, which employed the dead guard, doesn't think that Blackwater is offering enough compensation. They're right.
For those of you who aren't familiar with the incident, here's a quick review: off-duty and apparently intoxicated Blackwater employee gets into "confrontation" with on-duty security guard for Iraq's vice president. Blackwater employee shoots guard 3 times, killing him.…
tqa | October 8, 2007
One of the alleged facts that President Bush loves to point at when he's trying to justify his veto of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP) expansion is that the new bill would have allowed New York to enroll children from families making up to 400% of the federal poverty level. For a family of four, that works out to an annual income of about $83,000. The President and his staff appear to find $83,000 to be a very impressive number. It's certainly one that they talk about a heck of a lot - as far as I can tell, everyone from the White House who has said anything about the…
tqa | October 5, 2007
Last week, I had a picture of a live spider for you to identify. Most of the guesses came quickly, and were absolutely correct - the spider in the picture was a Spiny-Backed Orbweaver. This week's arthropod might be a little more challenging.
The picture below features a pinned museum specimen, and was taken through a light microscope at about 40x magnification. The edge of a quarter appears in the photo for scale. The species in question is unique to the island of Hawaii, and is found on the wetter slopes of the younger volcanoes.
Good luck. I'll post either the answer (if someone…
tqa | October 5, 2007
I've spent part of this morning doing some fairly serious research on health insurance in the United States, and who doesn't have it. My curiosity on the subject was stirred up by a couple of things: after looking at a lot of DonorsChoose proposals from schools with high poverty rates, poverty is on my mind; and the President's veto of the Children's Health Insurance Program expansion got me thinking about what it actually means to be poor in this country, and what (if any) relationship the official poverty threshold has to actually being able to afford to provide for your family.
I was…
tqa | October 4, 2007
Earlier today, I raised the goal for my DonorsChoose challenge from $1588 to $2000. More of you donated, and within just a couple of hours we pulled to within $0.35 of the $2K mark. I've upped the goal by another $500. Since two of the proposals that I added earlier today are now fully funded, I'm adding one more. I was going to wait, but this one's a true heartbreaker - well beyond depressing. This proposal comes from P.S. 62 in the Bronx:
We have been instructed to cover up all of our blackboards which are old and ruined. As a result, I have to teach all of my lessons on chart paper that…
tqa | October 4, 2007
The response to my DonorsChoose challenge continues to be outstanding. Earlier today, we passed the $1,588 that I had set as my initial goal for the drive. Since there are still 27 days left in the challenge, I went back and increased the target to $2,000. If more of the projects are fully funded, I'll go back and add more to the challenge.
When I do add more proposals, I'm going to stick to the criteria that I used earlier today - schools with 85% or more of the students receiving free lunch, and proposals requesting very basic supplies. If you would prefer to fund proposals with a…
tqa | October 4, 2007
I can't begin to thank the people who have donated to the DonorsChoose campaign enough. As of today - four days into the campaign - we've raised $1045. That's more than was contributed during all of last year's 15-day campaign. That's absolutely fantastic.
As of now, all four of the projects that I picked have been fully funded, but we haven't hit the goal yet. (Either someone donated to one of the projects through this campaign without receiving credit, or someone donated to one of the projects independently of the campaign.) At this point, we're still about $550 short of my goal for the…
tqa | October 3, 2007
There are times when I wish I was a right-wing hack. If I was, I could let the title of this post stand just as it is, and attack the President for his lack of support for military families. It is true, after all. He did just veto such an act. In fact, he did it twice! Our President, a man who uses the military as a backdrop for a photo op at least once a month, just vetoed both "The Support for Injured Servicemembers Act" and "The Military Family Job Protection Act."
If I was one of the many cogs in the Right-Wing Noise Machine, I would be able to take those facts - those incontrovertibly…
tqa | October 2, 2007
Several Democrats in the House of Representatives unveiled a revolutionary plan today that would radically change the way we are paying for the war in Iraq. Their shocking plan has been strongly condemned by Republicans around the country, and the Democratic leadership has responded - in classic fashion - by hiding under their desks and praying for it to go away. Their radical solution? We should do what we did during World War II and Vietnam, and add a surtax to the normal income tax to cover the (financial) costs.
Republicans were quick to attack the very concept of not making our…
tqa | October 2, 2007
For those of you who haven't looked over at the sidebar, the DonorsChoose campaign is off to a start that far exceeded my wildest expectations. Yesterday, five donors kicked in an outstanding $687.06. That's more in one day than I had targeted for the entire drive last year, and enough to bring us more than 40% of the way to the total. To everyone who's donated so far, thank you very much.
Some of the other blogs at scienceblogs are offering incentives to donors. I'm trying to think of something, and promise that I'll get some sort of idea up in the next day or two. There are also some…
tqa | October 1, 2007
DonorsChoose is a fantastic organization. Individual teachers submit proposals for things they'd like to do in their classroom, but can't afford to do. People can go to DonorsChoose, pick projects that they like, and donate money directly to those projects. You truly know where your money is going to go, and you can see what a big difference even a small donation can make.
Last year, we had a major Scienceblogs funding drive for DonorsChoose. Our readers - you - were absolutely fantastic. In just 15 days, we managed to raise more than 23,000 dollars - not counting the 10,000 dollars in…
tqa | September 30, 2007
It's hard to believe, but there was once a time when I had some respect - even admiration - for John McCain. Now, all I have is pity. The guy sold his soul to the Christian Right, but they haven't paid up. So what does he do? He tries to get them to take the last pitiful shreds of his intellectual integrity, too. He just did an interview with Beliefnet, and tried his best to make sure that he said all of the things that they wanted to hear. I just hope - more for his sake than anyone else's - that he doesn't actually believe them himself.
Beliefnet questions are in bold; McCain's drivel is…
tqa | September 29, 2007
Those tricky Culture Warriors - they've gone and launched the latest assault in the War on Christmas early this year, denying the Evil Secularist Conspiracy the chance to properly prepare for battle. They didn't wait until Thanksgiving this year, or even until Halloween. They're in the stores and fighting now:
tqa | September 29, 2007
A couple of weeks ago, I started making some changes to the blog. I had hoped to get all of them done that weekend, but the weather interfered with that plan. (It was nice; I went swimming.) This weekend, it's pouring rain out, so I've managed to get a little bit done. If you look at the sidebar, you'll see that the old categories have disappeared, and new ones have taken their place. As of this minute, I've only gone back and assigned new categories to a handful of posts, so only a few categories are currently live. The number will increase over the next few hours, as I continue to go back…
tqa | September 29, 2007
A couple of weeks ago, I posted two ridiculous quotes that are found in the Bob Jones textbook that's involved in the California Creationism lawsuit. I'm still wading through these texts and Behe's report explaining why it's really a very good book for high school students to use to learn biology. It's a slow process, and a painful one, but I've found another couple of outstanding quotes to share with you.
This time, I'm including three different types of quote. There are a couple where the authors say things have absolutely nothing to do with science of any kind (and are totally out to…
tqa | September 28, 2007
A couple of weeks ago, I posted some pictures of some large spiders and asked for help in identifying one of them. Jerry Cates of Bugs In The News got back to me quite quickly, and identified the mystery spider as Nephila clavipes - the same species as the other ones shown in that post.
I took some more spider pictures this week. I've identified the species. Can you? The pictures are below the fold, along with some information about the size and where it was spotted. I'll post my identification on Monday.
The spider in these two pictures was a little less than an inch long (approx 3/4"-7…
tqa | September 27, 2007
Today's New York Times has a story up on the upcoming Ben Stein "documentary" on the alleged persecution that ID proponents face in the academic world. The NYT article quotes a number of scientists who were interviewed for the movie (including Scienceblogs own PZ Myers) as saying that they were told that the interview was going to be for an entirely different movie.
Bill Dembski posted something about the article, with a brief comment of his own:
I can't say I feel sorry for these atheistic scientists in agreeing to interview for EXPELLED: NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED. When the BBC…