mikethemadbiologist

...at least some of the time. While there has been much gnashing of teeth and wailing about the political press' recent socializing with John McCain (and appropriately so), let's not forget that this is hardly the first time the press has knelt before power instead of confronting it. Rewind to…

KIDDING. But if you're in Boston March 24, feel free to drop by the Boston Skeptics first EVAH! meeting and hear me speak. But while we're on the subject of religion, I think you should check out this excellent post by ScienceBlogling Razib: To conclude, my general suspicion of the New Atheists…

It took them long enough, but the Democrats finally are making parliamentary maneuvers work for them, not against them. Regarding FISA, they've boxed the Republicans into a corner where Republicans would have to affirmatively argue that granting telecoms retroactive immunity would be a good idea--…

The NY Times has a hysterical op-ed piece about the Really Terrible Orchestra, which is "an inclusive orchestra for those who really want to play, but who cannot do so very well. Or cannot do so at all, in some cases." It's brilliant.

In keeping with the Broken Pipeline theme (see ScienceBloglings Greg, Coturnix, and Drug Monkey), this letter to Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) from the Coalition for the Life Sciences about his efforts to shift more funding to the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and the Small Business Technology…

As I watch the Democratic primary lurch closely towards self-destruction, I keep asking myself why are so many Democrats projecting their fantasies onto two candidates whose feet are definitely made of clay? Granted, this has been going on since the start of the silly season (italics added): ...…

No, that's accurate: The first national study of four common sexually transmitted diseases among girls and young women has found that one in four are infected with at least one of the diseases, federal health officials reported Tuesday. Nearly half the African-Americans in the study of teenagers…

Things look better on the FISA front: the Democrats, in an uncharacteristic fit of intelligence, agreed to compromise by attaching provisions that allow telecommunications companies to present evidence to a FISA court that they did not break the law even if the president classifies the information…

I've written before about CTX-M-15 beta-lactamases which make bacteria resistant to most cephalosporin antibiotics--those antibiotics that begin with cef- (or ceph-) or end with -cillin. I've also discussed the role of clonal spread in the rise of antibiotic resistance: most (but obviously not…

Defense spending increases faster than inflation, while discretionary spending--including biomedical science--has the pie 'grow smaller.' From the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities, here's what has happened to domestic discretionary spending as a percentage of program costs: It's also been…

Over at evolgen, ScienceBlogling RPM discusses a paper that describes a new barcoding technique for plants. It struck me while reading his post that barcoding has two very different meanings, even though both techniques are used in genomics--and often, at the same time. One meaning of barcoding,…

I've already covered the War on Beer, but now, pizza is taking it the chops too. Have they no decency? From the Back Bay Sun: The changing economy is not only affecting the housing market and the prices at the pump - it's also taking a bite out of local pizza makers' profits. The rising costs of…

ScienceBlogling Mike Dunford reminds us that Michael Egnor's creationist stupidity, like Camus' plague, never disappears, but only wanes. Egnor has unleashed his formidable stupidity on the concepts of artificial and natural selection. So many fucking morons, so little Mad Biologist.…

And in a Republican stronghold no less: Twenty minutes after unofficially becoming the Fox Valley's newest congressman-elect, Democrat Bill Foster surprised the raucous crowd at Long Island Sound Banquets in Aurora when he entered from a rear door. Seconds later, chants of "Foster, Foster" clearly…

I'm not a fan of charter schools: they typically 'cherry pick' the best students, and then claim spectacular results (if they can do so at all), while paying teachers less and expected them to work even harder. However, here's one charter school trying something that I hope works--paying teachers…

By way of ScienceBlogling Joseph, we learn of yet another way the collapse of the housing market will increase your state and local taxes (or require cuts in services). When investors stopped buying certain municipal bonds, the interest rates on the bonds skyrocketed--that is, it will cost cities…

...it ultimately leads the Mad Biologist to a very irreverent, but accurate, description of the scientific method. Someone I know recently had said someone's car rear-ended. For reasons not worth going into*, said someone used The Google, and discovered that the person who ran into said someone…

By way of the Burned Over District, we find out that there is a global hopps shortage: A worldwide shortage of a key beer ingredient, hops, is causing beer prices to spike, beer batches to be delayed, and talk of your favorite pale ales being forced to (gulp) mellow out. Already, in Charlotte,…

There's not much to add in terms of rebutting intelligent design creationist Jonathan Wells' latest misappropriation of science that Larry Moran, Orac, and Ian Musgrave didn't already write. But Wells' latest screed demonstrates just how pathetically low intelligent design creationism has sunk…

...if he weren't a fucking moron. One of the books that has gone missing in all of the criticisms of Jonah Goldberg's ridiculous Democrat-bashing screed Liberal Fascism is Wolfgang's Schivelbusch's Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-…

Rebecca of Skepchick.org is putting together a monthly lecture series in Boston, aka Boston Skeptics, and I've been asked to speak on March 24 (hopefully, I won't kill the damn thing off). So, if you were at a meeting of Boston Skeptics, and had to listen to me rant for around forty minutes (give…

'Minimalist' conservative and Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts apparently believes that one's obligation to pay monetary damages after damaging the environment should be, well, minimal: ...the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on how much money ExxonMobil should be forced to pay as damages for…

I haven't checked yet today, but, on Democratic sites, no doubt, there will be all sorts of "BREAKING" and "UPDATE!!" posts about yesterday's primaries. But there's one story that will probably get lost in all of the primary madness, and it should concern Democrats and anyone else concerned with…

Yes, this is O157:H7, not ExPEC. Bully for you. One thing regarding popular accounts of antibiotic resistance I've noticed is that there is an overemphasis on the evolution of resistance, and an underemphasis on the spread of resistant bacteria. While the evolution of resistance is important,…

I've written before about how the Collapse of the Jenga of Shit (aka the 'subprime' loan crisis) has raised the price of borrowing money--which is paid for with higher state and local taxes--due to the collapse of bond insurers and a liquidity crisis in municipal bonds. Now your property and sales…

...other, larger bloggers. At least, that's what my site statistics tell me. I suppose my original response to a Bayblab post about the moral perfidy of ScienceBloggers wasn't serious enough, although, in light of the revelations that the Bayblab post was an experiment (in what, I'm not exactly…

In the most recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, there is a perspective piece by Sara Rosenbaum that bluntly describes how the Bush Administration's opposition to S-CHIP (the State Children's Health Insurance Program) is based on ideology and not economic cost (italics mine): Why…

I'll have a post tomorrow about the Republican opposition to S-CHIP, a federally-funded health insurance program. While writing the post, a question occurred to me: Why is private health insurance not called corporate health insurance? Private health insurance connotes an image of a small mom-and-…

Stephen Budiansky's The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox is a powerful and detailed examination of the widely-supported terrorism in the post-Civil War South. Because Budiansky cites a lot of primary literature, such as newspaper editorials, legal testimony, and published memoirs, the horror…

Mayor Michael Bloomberg of NYC wrote an op-ed a few days ago about the need for bipartisanship. Here's a taste: More of the same won't do, on the economy or any other issue. We need innovative ideas, bold action and courageous leadership. That's not just empty rhetoric, and the idea that we have…