mikethemadbiologist

I'm working on a post about science communication, so I'll leave you with a juicy excerpt and link to a post by Matt Taibbi where he describes the intersection of crony capitalism and economic inequality (italics mine): Here's the thing: nobody needs me or Bernie Sanders to tell them that it sucks…

I've noted before that the background to the 'culture wars' is that white, male, Christian (often Protestant) is no longer the cultural default setting. Regarding religion: The greatest con theopolitical conservatives ever pulled was getting their religious views defined as the cultural 'default…

...and you'll be surprised who said that. Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki: "U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months [for withdrawal from Iraq]. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes."... "Whoever is thinking…

The new edition of the Skeptics Circle blog carnival is up. Go check it out.

A recent poll breaks down the support for McCain and Obama among Jews by denomination: I can't figure out why there is such a sharp difference. It's not like abortion would be a wedge issue (an aside: Orthodox Jews comprise 7-12% of the population; in this poll, they were 8% of the sample). Age…

...at least in Houston, Texas. With non-automobile transportation options in the news, on of the interesting things is that the actual entire cost of automobile transportation infrastructure--that is, roads, is rarely discussed, while it is almost always raised with mass transit. But, by way of…

Since I've ripped into Olivia Judson before, it's only fair that I note Judson's good suggestion--eliminate the term Darwinism (although we definitely need to keep TEH DARWINSIMZ!!; italics mine): I'd like to abolish the insidious terms Darwinism, Darwinist and Darwinian. They suggest a false…

...I think he's right (don't tell driftglass). From the NY Times: For a time, it seemed as if we were about to use the bright beam of science to illuminate the murky world of human action. Instead, as Turkheimer writes in his chapter in the book, "Wrestling With Behavioral Genetics," science finds…

From the NY Times editorial page comes this explanation of a government healthcare boondoggle (italics mine): Private health plans were promoted in the 1980s and 1990s in the belief that they could reduce costs and improve care through better management. And for a while they did. But policy changes…

I'm not sure what to make of Randy Olson's newest movie, Sizzle. One reason is that the first half of the movie is weak. Much of the humor is well, not funny. Yes, there are a couple funny moments, but it reminds me of those Saturday Night Live skits that are funny for the first thirty seconds…

...seven years later? The bad news--for years, cephalosporin antibiotics (antibiotics derived from penicillin, such as ceftiofur, cephalothalin, cefoxitin, and ceftriaxone) were used 'off-label' (meaning irresponsibly) in agriculture (italics mine): Inspectors found a common antibiotic has been…

...the Crazy Twenty-Sevens. From driftglass: If you replay the video, and listen under Stephanopoulos' interruption, this is point Koppel was trying to get across: "And I think there is just a small but significant fraction of Americans for whom...the truth in this instance is never going to…

Brad DeLong isn't the only one who thinks the Washington Post's reporting stinks: At a lunch of eight people I was at last week--former cabinet secretaries, newspaper executives, deans, et cetera--somebody (not me) asked what learning-about-the-world reason there was to read the Washington Post.…

One of the things I find fascinating about the Weather Channel is that after watching it for a while, you actually start to worry about that cold front moving through some other part of the country. You become quite paranoid about things that won't affect you. Well, I've got an even better way to…

Jonathan Eisen has a paper in PLoS One describing software that he's developed for analyzing 16S rRNA sequence data. Rather than walk through everything, I've decided this post will be different: I'm going to treat this as a manuscript that I'm reviewing (there will be some differences, and it…

More DHS follies. In this case, what we have here is a failure to communicate. From a Californian living near the wildfires (the good folks at skippy don't like capital letters): we've been out of power here since about 7:00 p.m. this evening. we just finally got back up. 140,000 people were hit…

By way of a link from Pam's House Blend to this post, I came across a really good question about funding faith-based initiatives (bold original): Senator Obama, if a religious institution proselytizes with one hand, and receives federal money with the other hand, how can you seriously posit that…

As usual, if you want to know the back story, Bora has the links. What has always steamed me about the for-profit publishers is that they charge so much for something they have very little part in manufacturing. They don't pay the salaries of the those who provide the product--the research and…

I'm surprised that I haven't seen a spate of posts from certain quarters proclaiming that the Lenski-Schlafly dustup is good for creationists. I think the assessment by RationalWiki is right on target: Mr. Schlafly certainly intended that his letters to Prof. Lenski would have the effect of…

...stop rapists over here. Because fighting them over there isn't working out so well. If DHS, which was supposed to protect us from terrorism, can go after intellectual property theft, certainly rape falls under its purview.

I'm approaching the tail end of grant writing season, and I've had to update my CV, put it in NIH format, and so on. It occurred to me while doing this is that there is very little professional incentive to write book chapters, since most (although not all) are not peer-reviewed, and consequently…

By way of Pandagon, we learn that the stimulus check isn't, well, stimulating 'values': An unforeseen and surprising beneficiary of the Economic Stimulus Plan, a plan that George Bush contends will "boost our economy and encourage job creation," has surfaced this week. An independent market-…

When I was taking invertebrate zoology, my teacher remarked that if you got rid of all multicellular organisms, and replaced nematodes (tiny little, multicellular worms) with points of lights, you would see the outline of every multicellular organism on the planet. Since nematodes are everywhere,…

By now you might have heard about the faux outrage at Gen. Wesley Clark's obvious statement that being a POW is not a qualification for the presidency--or a disqualification either. As Maha put it: So a televised wingnut hollered that McCain was being swift-boated by Gen. Clark. Hello? Clark…

There's a really interesting article in last week's NY Times magazine about global warming and the spread of weeds. There was, however, one jarring note, and it had to do with an incorrect definition of natural selection (italics mine): "There's no such thing as natural selection," Ziska confides…

Consider this a public service announcement. The NY Times has a very good op-ed piece explaining how mathematical epidemiology can be used to better understand bee colony collapse. The good news is (right now anyway) that it doesn't look like all of the colonies will die off.

In this truly depressing article about journalists and business people who are having their laptops seized by the Department of Homeland Security (the most Orwellian sounding U.S. government agency EVAH!), I came across this (italics mine): The security value of the program is unclear, critics say…

Who woulda thunk it? It's already well-established that the good souls of the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives had a 'No Jews need apply' policy*. Now it turns out that, like so many bigots, they're also corrupt (italics mine): A former top official in the White House's faith-based office was…

In a very good post about elitism and Republicans, Maha asks: John McCain's recent mangling of Barack Obama's famous "bitter" remark is also illustrative: "We're going to go to the small towns in Pennsylvania and I'm gonna to tell them I don't agree with Senator Obama that they cling to their…

Outsourced to The Sideshow: I think I have to disagree with Digby here when she assures me that Obama is lots better than McCain. I mean, yes, I think Obama is lots better than McCain, if only because it's hard to imagine he'd be worse, but: I'm tired of having to make that assumption. I'm tired…