mikethemadbiologist

(from here) ...we're just distorting the history of 9/11. It will help us get in good with the Bush Administration!

These bad Viagra-related jokes came to me through one of those internet tubes you might have heard about: In pharmacology, all drugs have two names, a trade name and generic name. For example, the trade name of Tylenol also has a generic name of Acetaminophen. Aleve is also called Naproxen. Amoxil…

This is really odd: there just might be a stable population of lionfish off the cost of Long Island. Many moons ago, I used to be a marine ecologist, and I would have never considered the notion that a tropical fish would be able to maintain an overwintering population even in Long Island Sound…

...let us remember what freedom and liberty really are.

Granted, going after Little Lord Pontchartrain for being an idiot is like picking on the slow kid, but the 'leader' of the U.S. just burbled this (by way of The Liberal Avenger): George W. Bush, responding to Katie Couric's question on what the United States has learned from interrogating high-…

Just in case you thought that maybe the U.S. wasn't being run by crazy people, a new book claims that Karl Rove "enlisted a trio of clergymen to exorcise Hillary Rodham Clinton's left-wing spirit when he moved into her West Wing office in 2001." The story is corroborated by Deal Hudson, a former…

This paper on the ecology of vampires in Buffyville is hysterical--in a geeky sort of way. And it's a very good ecology primer too...

Damn. Just watch the ad. That is how you hit back against sliming. Now if only Democratic consultants would do this more often...

...Ph.D. biologist ranks high as nerd:

A very good blogger I stumbled upon, olvlzl, has two great posts about the sorry state of American journalism. From the first post, an attack on the artifice of 'balance': The most important political use of this "balance" comes in the context of news reporting and the parasitic limpets attached…

I just received fellow Scienceblogger Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science. I've already read the first edition. The new edition has a new forward, updates at the end of many chapters, and a revamped conclusion. Hopefully, this weekend, I'll get a chance to read it. For more information…

Or as Lovecraft would have put it: Aaaiii! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Iran R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn! Aaaiii!!!! Fareed Zakaria sums up the silliness of comparing Iran to Nazi Germany: Can everyone please take a deep breath? To review a bit of history: in 1938, Adolf Hitler launched what became a world war…

In a move to outsource and privatize everything in the federal government, ABC has formed a private-public partnership with the Bush Administration to spew Republican propaganda (it's bad enough when the Republicans do it on the taxpayer's dime). John Aravosis writes: Good God, and they're…

Brad DeLong is one of those really smart people who I would never want to be really angry at me when the facts don't support me. Why? Because he writes bits like this: There is a certain horrifying fascination in watching the right wing's minions and useful idiots in the press attempt to attack…

Looking at the comments from a previous post about social security, I wanted to address a couple of other points, and then provide some more evidence about the ridiculousness of the Social Security 'crisis.' First, as I'll discuss below, Social Security will not collapse. There is no serious…

Merry Labor Day! Gut Yontif! Here's a whole bunch of Labor Day links for you: Thomas Frank lays out a new direction for the Democratic Party. ScienceBlog's very own Ed Brayton has a good post on FISA and hypocrisy. Razib has a nice treatment of effective population size Some commentary on Keith…

Over at Pandagon, Pam's aunt had her ancestry traced using mitochondrial DNA ('mtDNA'). The results given to her aunt were that she is: 51% Sub-Saharan Africa (she didn't get any information as to country) 37% European (we have known ancestry in Ireland and England) 12% Native American (likely a…

A recent study demonstrates that treatment failure of P. aeruginosa pneumonia infections due to antibiotic resistance is critical: a resistant infection is four times as likely to kill a patient as a sensitive one. Mortality Rate Is Twice As High In Patients With Pneumonia Caused By Highly…

David Broder has a silly column in the Washington Post where he argues that how unjust it is that people want to dethrone New Hampshire as the second primary state (Brad DeLong and Kevin Drum have nice rebuttals of Broder). Broder's argument is truly ridiculous: what great source of wisdom flows…

Here's what the mayor of Salt Lake City, UT said yesterday. You would think he's one of those Northeast liberal elitist, latte-drinkin' types... Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Jackson: A patriot is a person who loves his or her country. Who among you loves your country so much that you have come here…

A Republican political operative about to give the First Amendment a rectal exam (photo from here) ...well, not exactly. From the BBC comes this heartwarming story of fear of everything Arab (italics mine): Raed Jarrar said security officials warned him his clothing was offensive after he checked…

I came across this interesting poll of the NJ Senate race. It appears that just mentioning the Iraq War hurts Republicans, even popular ones: In the study, half of the respondents were asked questions about President Bush and the war in Iraq before answering questions about the Senate race, and…

There's a reason I've been writing about Confederate racist wannabee and VA senator George Allen so much. He's not an outlier in the Republican Party, but part and parcel of it. Now, there are new revelations about his ties to the white supremacist group, the Council of Conservative Citizens, the…

According to Diana Kerry, who organized U.S. expatriate voters for her brother John's 2004 campaign, 75% of passport-holding Americans vote Democratic.

I'm always astonished how so many people can think that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11, that the sun revolves around the earth, or that intelligent design is a valid theory. Another idiocy that can joined this esteemed list is the belief that Social Security will go bankrupt. Bob Kerrey and…

No, it's not by me, silly! David Dobbs at Smooth Pebbles has a great explanation of why business should be in favor of a national healthcare system. Other than GM and a few smaller companies, business interests are usually against this idea. I think David's post puts the lie to the idea that…

Here's some links for you: The housing crisis, as in people can't afford housing, has hit the 'burbs A security expert explodes the idea that terrorism is a serious threat. Very provocative. A good post about the historical roots of the Holocaust. A stunning and revealing interview with a…

It just gets weirder and weirder with Sen. George "Macaca" Allen (R-VA). It now appears that this wannabee Confederate racist is descended from a distinguished Sephardic Jewish family: Allen's own African heritage casts a different light on the matter. Though Etty Allen seems not to have dwelled…

It's nice to see that the Alabama Democratic Party realized that a lesbian Democrat can be just as irrelevant as a straight Democrat to doings of the Republican controlled Alabama egislature.

The NY Times has an article about how real wages are not keeping pace with productivity increases. Quoth the Grey Lady: With the economy beginning to slow, the current expansion has a chance to become the first sustained period of economic growth since World War II that fails to offer a…