Yesterday, I took the kids to the doctor for their school physicals. I wouldn't normally subject you to an account of the day-to-day minutia of my personal life, but given the current debate about how we should handle health care in the United States, the details might be of interest. We arrived - without an appointment - at a medical facility that we had not been to before. We did not have medical records with us, and the only paperwork of any kind that we had brought were the forms that needed to be filled out to enroll the kids in sports programs. When we checked in, the only thing I…
"Decisions are made by those who show up." Around the country, right-wing activists, backed by well-funded groups working for the insurance industry, are showing up at the town hall events that Congresscritters are having in their districts during the recess. They're showing up and making their position known very clearly - in at least some cases at the expense of anyone else who wants to hear actual discussion about the issue. The GOP leadership is happier than they've been for the last two election cycles. Over at Talking Points Memo, Josh Marshall almost asks the right question:…
One of my occasional readers just forwarded me the following email. A quick google search reveals that the same story has been making the rounds of the wingnuttier segments of the intertubes overfew months. (By the way, nutbars, the word you're looking for is "gaff", not "gaft". UNBELIEVABLE PRESIDENT??? THIS HAS GOT TO BE THE MOST OUTRAGEOUS STATEMENT EVER MADE BY A PUBLIC OFFICIAL, LET ALONE BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. THIS GUY IS OUR "COMMANDER IN CHIEF". HE IS A DISGRACE! HERE IS HIS RESPONSE WHEN HE BACKED OFF FROM HIS DECISION TO LET THE MILITARY PAY FOR THEIR WAR…
It's been a very long month or so. Family matters of various sorts have kept me running around through most of the Eastern Seaboard for the last several weeks. Fortunately, things have finally started to settle down. We've got pretty much everything unpacked in our new digs in family housing at Ft. Rucker, Alabama. It's the first time - at least to my knowledge - that I've lived somewhere named after a Confederate, but I'm drawing some comfort from the knowledge that at least one very well-known liberal spent some time living here. Over the next few days, I'll start catching up on…
I just saw a shuttle launch! I haven't been this excited since Christmas Eve, 1985! I would have mentioned I was going to the launch ahead of time here, but things happened kinda quick. Here's a condensed version of events: As you might expect, there's extensive medical support at shuttle launches. One of the layers of support falls more or less into the "let's really, really, really hope we don't need these guys" category - medical personnel who support a rescue operation, if one is needed. Many of the doctors who work those standbys are military personnel, because the job description…
âIt is not right to mold marriage to fit the desires of a few, against the wishes of so many, and to ignore the important role of marriage.â Senator John Ensign (R-NV)13 July, 2004
NASA called off today's planned launch of the shuttle Endeavour earlier this morning when a hydrogen leak was discovered near the Ground Umbilical Carrier Plate. The GUCP was also the location of the leak that shut down Saturday's launch attempt, so it appears that the repairs made to that system over the last few days did not quite have the desired effect. According to NASA's website, the launch has been rescheduled for 11 July, at 7:39 pm EDT.
For those of you who are wondering where I've been, we're currently in the middle of our third family move in the last 25 months. We're starting to get good at it, but it still takes a while. Since I've got a few minutes to spare this morning - and I'm fed up with boxes and tape - I thought I'd share a few of the tips I've picked up. Given how often academics move, I'd guess that some of you have your own hard-learned moving tips. Feel free to share them in the comments. U-Haul Rocks: Seriously. Yes, sometimes Budget is cheaper, but unless you're getting a 10' truck U-Haul has something…
On June 5th, 1989, the world got to see exactly what courage is. One man, in a white shirt and dark pants, carrying shopping bags, faced down a company of tanks. The whole world saw the images of his simple courage. His name and his fate remain a mystery - all that is known about his entire life is what he did for a few brief minutes on one terrible day. A Facebook page has been created to celebrate the legacy of the Tank Man. Please take a few minutes to help demonstrate how important those moments were by becoming a fan.
James Kirchick has an op-ed up in today's Wall Street Journal that addresses the reaction to the murder of Dr. George Tiller. Or so he might want to believe. In actuality, Kirchick is responding to the portion of the reaction that he wants to see, and not to the range of opinion that is out there. There is no appreciable number of people in this country, religious Christians or otherwise, who support the murder of abortion doctors. The same cannot be said of Muslims who support suicide bombings in the name of their religion. Not only has Kirchick clearly missed the moral munchkins…
PETA is continuing their ever-successful quest to prove that mind-numbing insensitivity and flaming stupidity are not restricted to any particular portion of the political spectrum. This time, they're using the murder of Dr. George Tiller as the hook for a new set of pro-Vegetarian billboards in Wichita.
It's easy, as Nicholas Kristof points out, to think and talk about international affairs in abstract terms. Most of us are living comfortable lives in comfortable countries. We have the luxury of being able to afford to think about things that are happening beyond our own borders, even when they're unlikely to affect us directly. We can talk and think about what's happened or what is happening in Bosnia, in Darfur, in Cambodia, in the Sudan. We can think and talk about things we can do to make things better in those places, and sometimes we can carry through with our plans. It's not as…
As you might have guessed from my earlier post, I was angered and saddened when I learned of the death of Kansas doctor George Tiller earlier today. Dr. Tiller was gunned down while serving as an usher at his church while services were underway. As I mentioned earlier, the suspect arrested in the case - reportedly a 51 year old named Scott Roeder - was apparently an almost stereotypical far-right-wing extremist nutjob, with a long history of radical and potentially violent behavior. I'm a member of a large Catholic family, and I spent 13 years in Catholic schools. I know many people who…
Wichita NBC affiliate KSHB-TV is reporting that the suspect being held in the assassination of Dr. George Tiller is a man named Scott Roeder. Posters in the forums at the DemocraticUnderground have identified at least one posting at Operation Rescue's website (currently down, link to Google cache here) that's written by a Scott Roeder and refers to Dr. Tiller. There is also information that indicates that a suspected Freeman named Scott Roeder was arrested in Topeka in 1996 for parole violations related to his having bomb making materials in his car trunk. At that time, he was identified…
...and very well may not ever do again: tell you that I actually enjoyed reading a post on the Discovery Institute's blog. I haven't commented on the whole Ida the fossil hoopla before now, but, like a good chunk of the science blogging community, I think calling the whole thing overblown is a serious understatement. Over at the Discovery Institute's media complaints blog, Richard Sternberg has a post up. And, damn it, I think it's actually not a bad bit of blogging at all.
I'm not sure how I missed it when it first appeared, but it seems that a few days ago one of the other bloggers on this network - Greg Laden - wrote a post that discussed some of the advertising that you may have noticed here recently. I just noticed and read the post, and I honestly wish I hadn't. I'm not entirely sure what point Greg was trying to make with his post, but in his efforts to reach the point he said some things that are amazingly..... I don't know, I'm honestly at a loss for an appropriate word here. Greg manages to more or less start off on the wrong foot. Most of the ads…
Today's quote is from Ralph Waldo Emerson; the picture was taken at the Linnean Society last summer. But these young scholars who invade our hills,Bold as the engineer who fells the wood,And travelling often in the cut he makes,Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not,And all their botany is Latin names. BlightRalph Waldo Emerson Herbarium specimen collected by, and from the personal collection of, Carl von Linné.Photographed at the Linnean Society of London, 29 August 2008
It's being widely reported that President Obama will announce his pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter within the next hour. According to the reports, Obama has chosen Sonya Sotomayor for the job. Sotomayor was appointed to the Federal bench by George H.W. Bush in 1991, and was elevated to the 2nd Circuit by Bill Clinton in 1998. We'll undoubtedly be hearing quite a bit more about Sotomayor in the coming days (if not hours). Jonathan Turley is not particularly excited about the pick, pointing out that Sotomayor is likely to be more controversial than some of the…
Just to give those of you who might care a heads-up, my blogging is likely to become somewhat sporadic over the next two-to-three months, mostly due to family commitments. We're moving again in early July. This time, it's a relatively short move - Pensacola to the Dothan, AL area, but there's still that whole pack, load, unpack thing to deal with. We're also going to a wedding (my brother's) in mid-June, and may be following that up with a trip to the Kennedy Space Center (my wife's got some business there in late June). I'll blog as opportunities arise, but there's no way to know how often…
Like my friend Henry, I'm overweight and trying not to be. He is, I think, a couple of "stone" heavier than I am. (Whatever the hell that means - you'd think that dealing in pounds and kilograms alone would be confusing enough for the British, but apparently there's no such thing as excessive conversion confusion in the UK. But I digress.) Anyway, I'm currently 40 or so pounds past where I should be. My personal weight loss "plan" (for lack of a better word) is not very diet-focused at the moment. I'm losing weight right now through the simple process of burning more calories than I…