j7uy5 | November 14, 2006They are monitoring the content of children's books, that's what.
From the Senate web site of the
href="http://epw.senate.gov/pressitem.cfm?party=rep&id=265811">Environment
and Public Works committee:
New UN Children’s Book Promotes
Global Warming Fears to Kids
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 2006
Nairobi, Kenya – A new United Nations children’s
book promoting fears of catastrophic manmade global warming is being
promoted at the UN Climate Change Conference in Kenya. The book's main
character, a young boy, is featured getting so worried about a coming
manmade climate disaster that he yells…
j7uy5 | November 14, 2006News reports suggest that the new Democratic majority is planning to
try to change the course of US environmental policy:
href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DEMOCRATS_ENVIRONMENT">Democrats
to Stress Environmental Issues
By JOHN HEILPRIN
Nov
14, 2:42 PM EST
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Democrats who will
steer environment issues in the new Congress are polar opposites of
their Republican predecessors, but changing environmental policy is
like turning around an aircraft carrier - it's very slow...
In other news, the USS Intrepid is still stuck in
the mud
in the Hudson…
j7uy5 | November 13, 2006I noticed this a few days ago and meant to comment on it.
Then, I noticed
href="http://scienceblogs.com/drcharles/2006/11/attention_paging_dr_google_1.php#more">Dr.
Charles beat me to it. He even gave some examples
in actual use. If you've already read his, skip the excerpt
and go directly to the few thoughts I've added at the end.
href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/547620">Web-Based
Search Engines Help Diagnose Difficult Cases
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) Nov 10 - Using Google to conduct web-based
searches on the internet can assist in the diagnosis of difficult
cases,…
j7uy5 | November 11, 2006I am not having such a good day, but it is a good day for Michigan.
The Wolverines won in Bloomington, paving the way for for a
big showdown with Ohio State.
More importantly, the jack-o-lantern is off the deer.
This deer has been making headlines for days. Everyone has
been worried about it. Now it will be OK. We think.
href="http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/11/11/deer.pumpkin.ap/index.html">Deer
breaks free of plastic jack-o'-lantern
POSTED: 3:41 p.m. EST, November 11, 2006
CASCADE TOWNSHIP, Michigan (AP) -- A deer whose head was stuck in a
plastic Halloween jack-o'-lantern for…
j7uy5 | November 11, 2006Often political discourse breaks sown, when both sides resort to
platitudes. This is true especially when the debate is
carried out on the basis of deeply-held generalizations. This
is especially true when empirical evidence is not
taken into account.
It often is argued that environmentalism is bad, and environmentalists
are bad, because pro-environment policies are bad for the economy, and
environmentalists are anti-growth, whatever that means.
Environmentalists counter by saying that good policy is made by
weighing the risks and the benefits.
That does not help much, because everyone…
j7uy5 | November 10, 2006A good site to sample world media outlets, and to see what they have to
say about the USA, is
href="http://www.watchingamerica.com/index.shtml">Watching
America.
href="http://www.watchingamerica.com/diewelt000010.shtml">
src="http://blogster.com/host/images/65751436601.jpg" alt=""
align="top" border="0" height="219" hspace="0"
vspace="0" width="279">
Die Welt, Germany
Right-Wing
Extremist Viciousness Punished
I actually don't agree with the anaylsis published in Die Welt
(The World).
They think that the fall of the Republican Party began with the Terri
Schaivo matter. …
j7uy5 | November 9, 2006
href="http://www.allhatnocattle.net/1-13-04_revenge_bush_oneill.htm">
Often I see people who have been admitted to a psychiatric hospital
after hitting
bottom. They have nothing. At first, it seems
difficult to know what to do. The guiding idea, though, is
always the same: you have to establish a foundation. That
means a safe place to stay, food, water, clothing, etc.
(By the way, the photo has nothing to do with psychiatric patients.)
We can spend a lot of time trying to figure out whether to put the
person on Geodon, or Abilify, or whatever. But the fact is,
the foundation…
j7uy5 | November 7, 2006For some reason, I really like this picture. The version here
is reduced in size and quality. NASA Earth Observatory has an
explanation of the photo, along with a better version, and a link to
the original, which is a tad over 6 MB in size.
href="http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3">
Along with the subtle gradation of colors, the photo has nice
contrast and very fine detail.
j7uy5 | November 6, 2006The annual
href="http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/cpi_2006/cpi_table">Corruption
Perceptions Index is out, and the USA placed 20th.
Not too bad, except last year, we were 17th. At
least we did not fall as far as
href="http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/11/7/nation/15937303&sec=nation">Malaysia,
which slipped by 5 spots, to 44th. (I'm not picking on
Malaysia; it's just that their article came out on top in the Google
News listing of articles on the subject.)
It is difficult to know what to make of this. My main point
in posting it is to remind by…
j7uy5 | November 6, 2006
href="http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20061104/cleisure/cleisure1.html">Elevating
trivia over substance
published: Saturday | November 4, 2006
There is a deepening triviality in the conduct of American politics,
which should be a matter of great concern to the citizens of the United
States. In this process, form trumps substance and minor side issues
are often the subject of long and tedious debate while fundamental
matters get shunted to the sidelines. It is a kind of politics that
finds congruence and context in this growing American notion of
'infotainment' and well-suited…
j7uy5 | November 6, 2006The people who support this policy are not only heartless, they are
idiots.
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/washington/03medicaid.html?ei=5090&en=12f703522d8d3a89&ex=1320210000&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1162703532-so0p8YsoJEPd7rc82J6fjg">
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/washington/03medicaid.html?ei=5090&en=12f703522d8d3a89&ex=1320210000&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1162703532-so0p8YsoJEPd7rc82J6fjg">Medicaid
Wants Citizenship Proof for Infant Care
By ROBERT PEAR
Published:…
j7uy5 | November 5, 2006Finally, a product to bring much-deserved recognition to an
out-of-the-way place: Intel has announced their "enthusiast"
motherboard for high-performance computing: the
href="http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/d975xbx/index.htm">D975XBX,
nicknamed the
"Bad Axe."
Just get a load a'the
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_sink">heat
sinks on that baby! Granted, it's not the
most pragmatic piece of hardware on the planet, but it'll make your
lan-party buddies green with envy.
The product's namesake is a little town in Michigan's thumb.
Hardly anybodies been there,…
j7uy5 | November 5, 2006I've long been a fan of
href="http://www.lrc.rpi.edu/programs/solidstate/SSLWhat.htm">LED
lighting, thinking that it holds a
href="http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16135&z=318&p=1&ch=nanotech">lot
of promise for reducing electricity demands. Early
on in the development of light emitting diodes, it became apparent that
they produced a lot of light and not a lot of heat per watt of energy
used. There have been two persistent problems, though. One
problem is that the light from LEDs comes out in
only one color.
The second problem is the cost.
The…
j7uy5 | November 5, 2006It turns out the military
href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_WAR_GAMES?SITE=1010WINS&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT">ran
war games in 1999, trying to anticipate what might happen if
we invaded Iraq. First of all, they anticipated that 400,000
troops would be needed. Then, they concluded that even with
that many troops, serious problems could be anticipated.
Problems like what we are seeing now.
Why would the Clinton administration undertake such an exercise?
I wonder if
href="http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqclintonletter.htm">this
letter from PNAC to…
j7uy5 | November 4, 2006Perhaps this gets tiresome for ScienceBlogs readers, but here is yet
another example of the
href="http://www.waronscience.com/home.php" rel="tag">Republican
War on Science, this time in regard to
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_Change"> Climate
Change.
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/01/AR2006110103269.html">
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/01/AR2006110103269.html">IGs
Probe Allegations On Global Warming Data
Scientists Say Findings Were Suppressed
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post…
j7uy5 | November 4, 2006In 2004, the Bush Administration
href="http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/07/bush-admin-may-be-responsible-for.html">blew
a Pakistani intelligence operation by revealing sensitive
intelligence information. In 2005, there was the Libby-Plame
Leak. Earlier in 2006, the Bush Administration
href="http://corpus-callosum.blogspot.com/2006/04/leaker-in-chief-reduxoffered-without.html">blew
Operation Tiramisu, putting Israeli intelligence operatives
at risk.
By then, the phrase "
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/04/07/BL2006040700544.html"
rel="tag">…
j7uy5 | November 4, 2006The BBC reports
on a study that shows that computers with flat keyboards could reduce
the transfer of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.
A hospital has developed a computer keyboard which it
says could cut cases of the MRSA superbug by 10%.
Research shows as many as 25% of keyboards carry MRSA - one of a number
of hospital-acquired infections which kill 5,000 people each year in
the UK.
That is wonderful. Now we just need flat doorknobs, flat
inkpens, and flat toilets.
j7uy5 | November 3, 2006This is another one of those studies that shows pretty much what you
would expect. There are some surprises, though:
href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/EmergencyMedicine/EmergencyMedicine/tb/4434">Night-Shift
Nap Awakens ER Residents and Nurses
By Judith Groch, Senior Writer, MedPage Today
November 03, 2006
STANFORD, Calif., Nov. 3 -- Allowed a 40-minute nap midway through
12-hour night shifts, emergency room residents and nurses responded
with more vigilance and vigor, found researchers here.
Nevertheless, the randomized study that compared nappers
with
non-nappers working the…
j7uy5 | November 2, 2006Two former US Surgeons General have announced that the United States
has unacceptable levels of
title="sexually transmitted diseases">STDs
and that abstinence-only education has not helped.
Note that the Presidents "
href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/infocus/achievement/chap14.html">Record
of Achievement" boasts:
A new abstinence initiative will double
the funding for abstinence-only education;
develop model abstinence-only education curricula; review all Federal
programming for youth addressing teen pregnancy prevention, family
planning, and STD and HIV/AIDS prevention, to ensure…
j7uy5 | November 2, 2006 It's discouraging
seeing so many people go so wrong
all at once. It makes you question the idea that each of us has
unlimited potential for good.
Who
said that? And what was the subject?
The
quote comes from an editorial by
href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garrison_Keillor" rel="tag">Garrison
Keillor, host of "
href="http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/" rel="tag">A
Prairie Home Companion." He was brought up a member
of the Plymouth
Brethren, but went through a Lutheran phase, and now is an
Episcopalian. None of that is pertinent, at the moment, but I
thought it was…