tqa | August 15, 2007
Right now, I'm sitting under one of the outer rain bands associated with newly-formed Tropical Storm Erin. We're seeing a moderately heavy thunderstorm right now. The rain's coming down fast and heavy. There's a lot of lightning right now, with thunder that's loud enough to set off the occasional car alarm and close enough to send my thunderphobic dog off to the dubious shelter of the bathtub. Under the circumstances, it seems like a pretty good time to talk about getting prepared for a storm.
This really should go without saying, but while this might be a very good time for me to write…
tqa | August 15, 2007
Deadeye Dick Cheney, talking about why we shouldn't invade Iraq:
That was back in 1994. It's sad how right - and prophetic - he was ten years before the big screw-up started.
tqa | August 12, 2007
There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again.
George W. Bush
17 September, 2002
It seems like just yesterday that AT&T was telling us that their decision to silence Pearl Jam's critique of President Bush during their webcast of the Lollapalooza concert was an "unfortunate mistake" that shouldn't have happened and wouldn't happen again. Hopefully, it won't. But based on the past behavior of AT&T, I'm not making any large bets on that.
That's because it…
tqa | August 9, 2007
There are a lot of news articles out today that feature some just-published research on early human research. The research itself - a paper in the journal Nature by a team of scientists including the mother-daughter combinationon of Meave and Louise Leakey- features two partial skulls found east of Lake Turkana in Kenya. One of the fossils, a cranial dome that's been identified as belonging to a young Homo erectus, has been dated at about 1.55 million years old. The other, a partial upper jaw from Homo habilis, is about 100,000 years younger (1.44 million years old). This shows that the two…
tqa | August 8, 2007
Today, while at the Johnson Space Center, I accidentally heard a very disturbing conversation. A young boy, probably five or six years old, was asking his mother about the moon. She proceeded to explain to him how the moon got here. It was created by God, she told him, on the fourth day.
It was created on the fourth day. After the plants, but before the animals. That's what she told this poor child, as he stood there next to a football-field-sized rocket, looking at a beautiful 10-foot diameter picture of the moon that was hanging on the wall right in front of the Saturn V. The moon was…
tqa | August 8, 2007
Today, Mitt "I Like To Veto, Veto" Romney outdid himself in the "things candidates say" category of hysterical stupidity. After Mitt called for a "surge of support" for the war in Iraq at an Iowa campaign stop today, he took some questions. One of the questioners asked him why none of his five sons served in the military. His answer:
"The good news is, we have a volunteer Army and that's the way we're going to keep it. My sons are adults. They've chosen not to serve in the military in active duty and I respect their decision in that regard.
That's a good answer - or at least as close to…
tqa | August 7, 2007
Jason Rosenhouse thinks that PZ, Ed Brayton, Revere, and I have reached a "strange conclusion" about the recent Democratic cave-in on wiretapping. It doesn't make sense, at least to him, that we'd blame the Democrats, given that 80% of the Democrats in Congress didn't vote for the wiretapping bill. (That figure doesn't appear to include the substantial number of legislators - particularly in the Senate - who lacked the courage to vote on this measure at all, but I get Jason's basic point.) Given that why are we mad at the whole party?
Mostly, it's because the party leadership really did…
tqa | August 7, 2007
In the news today, we've got two more examples of inappropriate behavior conducted by Evangelical Christians in the military. Both of the stories are very scary, for different reasons.
The first story comes courtesy of Ed Brayton. He reports that a handful of junior enlisted soldiers attempted to hold a meeting of atheist and freethinker soldiers on a forward operating base (FOB) in Iraq. Although they took the appropriate steps required to obtain official permission to hold the meeting, things did not go smoothly. First, vandals kept ripping down their flyers, then their meeting was…
tqa | August 6, 2007
Citizens of the great state of Texas, where I now live, are very proud of their state. Proud enough, in fact, that they've got their very own state pledge of allegiance. We found out about this a few months back while we were researching schools, because every morning all public schoolchildren in Texas pledge allegiance to the United States Flag, then pledge allegiance to the Texas flag, then sit for a moment of silence. We looked up the Texas pledge, and decided that it seemed to be innocuous enough:
Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one and indivisible.
The idea…
tqa | August 6, 2007
John Lilyea of "This Ain't Hell" just left a comment on yesterday's post about political speech in uniform. He brings up a couple of points that I'd like to address in some detail. First, here's Lilyea's comment in full:
Funny, you picked the one quote I made in jest and nailed it to your cross.
Now, answer me this - is the YearlyKos a political event or is it a blogger convention (as it was billed)?
Did the sergeant make a political statement, or was he just asking for a little clarification?
Did he bring discredit to the uniform, or did Solz just discredit himself as a non-partisan actor…
tqa | August 5, 2007
So far, there hasn't been a lot of good news for the US Military in recently published scientific papers this month. A few days ago, there was the JAMA paper that looked at the increase in child abuse and neglect that happens at home while a parent is deployed. Now, there's a paper in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) that reports on the mental health effects of multiple and prolonged deployments.
Here are some of the findings reported in this paper:
⢠Those deployed for more than 13 months were significantly more likely to report problems at home both during and after their last…
tqa | August 5, 2007
Right wing blogs of various types are beating drums on behalf of an as-yet-unidentified US Army soldier who got into a bit of a confrontation with the moderator at a YearlyKos panel discussion. The soldier was a sergeant in uniform; the moderator was (or is, I'm not sure which) a reserve officer. The moderator took exception to the soldier appearing in uniform, and the right is spinning this as a soldier getting "shouted down" at Kos.
Right now, there are two videos of the incident. Neither paints a complete picture of the scene. In the official video, the soldier's comments are almost…
tqa | August 4, 2007
From Paul Kane's column in today's WaPo:
Throughout the spring newly empowered Democrats watched their approval ratings plummet, with a liberal base upset at their inability to stop the Iraq war and independents complaining that not enough meaningful legislation was being passed.
Gee, I guess that makes me an independent member of the liberal base, then, because I'm pissed as hell at them for both reasons. They didn't do enough on Iraq, and I do not for one second accept the weak-assed argument that they couldn't. That's just plain bull. Yes, the President vetoed their measure. Yes, they…
tqa | August 4, 2007
Denyse O'Leary notes some of the differences between creationists and Intelligent Design proponents:
Then the creationists in turn help the ID theorists by making clear what creationism is and what it is not. Creationism is about the BIBLE, see? It's not about intelligent design theories like Behe's* Edge of Evolution or Dembski's design inference.
It's extremely uncommon for me to find myself in agreement with Denyse on anything (and it's not a comfortable feeling), but in this case I do think she's got a good point. Creationism is certainly explicitly based on the Bible, and…
tqa | August 3, 2007
Only in New York could something like this happen:
A man in a Revolutionary War-era submarine was cited by the U.S. Coast Guard for drifting into a security zone, and for unsafe sailing in New York's East River near the Queen Mary 2 luxury liner, the Coast Guard and New York City Police Department said Friday.
The man in the replica vessel was identified as 35-year-old Philip "Duke" Riley of Brooklyn, N.Y., according to Coast Guard spokesman Petty Officer Seth Johnson.
It just doesn't get any better.
tqa | August 3, 2007
Today's dose of accidental humor comes (like most, these days) from our Commander-In-Chief. Today, while meeting with his counterterrorism team, he said:
We take a clear-eyed view of the world. The people on this team, assembled in this building see the world the way it is, not the way we hope it is.
tqa | August 1, 2007
Retired army General Barry McCaffrey testified before the House Armed Services Committee yesterday:
No one is actually at war except the Armed Forces, their US civilian contractors, and the CIA. There is only rhetoric and posturing from the rest of our government and the national legislature. Where is the shared sacrifice of 300 million Americans in the wealthiest nation in history? Where is the tax supplement to pay for a $12 billion a month war? Where are the political leaders calling publicly for America's parents and teachers to send their sons and daughters to fight "the long war on…
tqa | August 1, 2007
There's a paper in today's edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association that examines the impact of combat deployments on child abuse and neglect. The authors, lead by Deborah Gibbs of RTI International, found that the overall rate of abuse and neglect increased by more than 40% when a parent was deployed in support of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That result might not be very surprising, but it is alarming.
Once you get beyond the general finding, there are a lot of very interesting results in this paper. The increase in the rate of mistreatment is not even…
tqa | July 31, 2007
Rudy Giuliani just announced his health care plan. It's not a winner. Of course, Rudy being Rudy, he couldn't just announce what his ideas are without any preparation. First, he had to warm up by spending a day or two imitating a wingnut talk radio host and calling the Democratic candidates "socialists" and who belong to a "party of losers" and are all "heading for France" (or, alternatively, "Cuba"). He also said that it's "unrealistic" to expect a system where "everyone is taken care of from cradle to grave."
The core of the Rudy plan is really nothing new. From the looks of things, he…