mikethemadbiologist

Today is Blog For Choice Day. So I thought I would write about why I'm for legal and safe abortion. It's rather simple: because the alternative is illegal and unsafe abortions. As long as women can get pregnant, some will not want to be pregnant. I trust their judgment that most of the time,…

A few days ago, I posted about the conservative dogpile over at the Weather Channel because one of their bloggers had some very scathing comments about global warming denialists. I found this post by a self-described "literature guy" which makes two very good points. First, he makes a very good…

Here are some weekend links for you. First, the science: The WHO gets some things right: measles. Mark's post on the World's Evilist Programming Language makes me laugh. Revere discusses a case of Tamiflu-resistant H5N1 influenza. The view of global warming from Mount Thor. Kent Hovind is going…

This is from a speech given by Adam Werbach, former head of the Sierra Club. It's an interesting speech, and worth thinking about, but this quote about funders cracks me up (italics mine): On a blustery day in New York City two years ago, I sat across the table at a noodle shop from Peter Teague,…

...but I saw Al Gore speak last night, and he's not going to run for president. He did, however, have a lot of interesting things to say. -role of television -need to incorporate internet differently into schools -overemphasis on liberal arts education (tension) -slammed Bush and global warming…

A few weeks ago, climatologist and Weather Channel blogger Heidi Cullen suggested that: I'd like to take that suggestion a step further. If a meteorologist has an AMS Seal of Approval, which is used to confer legitimacy to TV meteorologists, then meteorologists have a responsibility to truly…

One of the weird things about the internets is that one's fifteen minutes of fame get compressed even further into about fifteen seconds. When Bora's compilation of the best science blogging of 2006 first came out, everyone blogged about it...over a twelve hour time span. So I'm going to try to…

There's an article in the New Scientist about researchers who are using dichloroacetate ('DCA') to treat many different cancers. According to the article, here's what DCA does: Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells…

In the developed world, shigellosis, a diahrreal disease caused by the bacterial species Shigella, typically isn't considered dangerous, even though it makes about 450,000 ill in the U.S. To shorten the length of illness and to reduce potential infection of other people, antibiotics are typically…

...over at The Voltage Gate (who's partying like it's 1779). Yours truly has a post there, but you should check out all of the scientific goodness.

It would appear that seven U.S. attorneys, some of whom are in the middle of investigating Republicans, have been sacked and replaced by Republican political appointees. Thanks to the Patriot Act, these appointees, regardless of their qualifications, don't have to be confirmed by the Senate (does…

There's an interesting article about the norovirus outbreak in Boston (it also seems to be nationwide). At this point, over half a percent of all the residents of Boston have gone to the emergency room due to this virus--which means even more have been sick. First, as always, wash your damn hands…

I grew up in Virginia, and unlike transplant George "Macacawitz" Allen, I've never been pollyanish about Virginians' attitudes on race and religion. But what VA Republican State Delegate Frank Hargrove said in a recent interview was shocking (italics mine): There were furious denunciations in the…

I'm a little under the weather, so I thought this would be a good time to talk about the 'basic concepts' idea floating around ScienceBlogs. These would be short posts that provide basic background in science for those who might not always be familiar with some of the things bandied around these…

You'll hear a lot today about Martin Luther King and race. But what you won't hear nearly as much about, particularly from conservatives, is his views on economic justice. I think that his views on race were inseparable from his economic views which were based on a universal call for justice and…

Here are some links for you. First, SCIENCE: Liberals accept evolution more than conservatives: just in case, here are some stats for you. John Lynch reacts to some Discovery Institute distortions. The NRC smacks around the Bush administration's new effort "to paralyze any new regulations by…

The frustration of the soldiers in Afghanistan must have just 'surged'. Why? Because, as part of the Bush-McCain surge, soldiers in Afghanistan will be withdrawn and sent to Iraq just in time for a Taliban offensive: A US Army battalion fighting in a critical area of eastern Afghanistan is due to…

So those who oppose global warming are using the same strategy as the creationists: teach the 'controversy.' This week in Federal Way schools, it got a lot more inconvenient to show one of the top-grossing documentaries in U.S. history, the global-warming alert "An Inconvenient Truth." After a…

The most common hospital-acquired infections in intensive care units are ventilator-associated pneumonias ('VAP'), which have mortality rates between 20-50 percent. The more quickly the appropriate antibiotic can be given to the patient, the more likely the patient is to survive. Researchers in…

By way of Litbrit at Shakespeare's Sister, I came across a Greg Palast article about possible motivations for a troop increase in Iraq. Palast writes (bold in original; italics mine): Here's my question: Who asked the waiter to deliver this dish? Who asked for the 21,000 soldiers? We know the US…

Right-wing dorkball* Michael Ledeen has discovered why Iraq has not gone exactly as planned: Note that an increase in embeds doesn't necessarily require an increase in overall troop strength. We've got lots of soldiers sitting on megabases all over Iraq. They should be out and about, some of them…

Massachusetts is trying to tackle the problem of hospital-acquired ('nosocomial') infections by adding $1 million dollars in funding to track and monitor hospital compliance with infection control measures. As I've discussed before, nosocomial infections are a huge problem, and may account for…

Today, the Boston landmark Ritz-Carlton Hotel on Arlington Street is no longer: it has become the Taj Hotel. I first found out about this when I attended a Back Bay Architechtural Commission hearing in December about some development plans in my neighborhood. (For anyone who cares, the ugly…

...you know the wheels have come completely off. Said Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson: You talk about the hostile enemy, obviously being Iraq, but hostile enemies right here on the home front. Yesterday Senator Ted Kennedy, proposing that any kind of a troop surge should mean there should be…

Let there be no doubt, Bush still has tremendous potential to foul things up (and make lots of people dead). But Little Lord Pontchartrain just cried uncle: In a concession to the Senate's new Democratic majority, President Bush won't rename four controversial federal appeals court nominees whose…

Over at DailyKos, Darksyde comments on the motivations of the Kansas creationists (italics mine): It's easy to get lost in the scientific or religious discussion, but this isn't about evolution or science or even religion. It's just another right-wing funded attack on behalf of the mega-rich,…

White House spokesvermin Tony Snow yesterday just propelled us a little bit further down the path of either tyranny or impeachment: "You know, Congress has the power of the purse," Snow said, then added: "The President has the ability to exercise his own authority if he thinks Congress has voted…

Mike responds to a post I wrote that questioned Speaker Pelosi's call to increase the military by 30,000 troops. I agree that given the way the force and its responsibilities (more about those below) are currently structured, the troop rotation schedule is near the breaking point. However, I still…

Suppose you were a very large media corporation, and you found out that some of your radio subsidiaries were espousing specific acts of violence toward other people (last I checked, that's called terrorism). You would: 1) Fire the offending parties. 2) Offer some mealymouth bullshit explanation ("…

Did you vote for that? I didn't. It's great that Pelosi said on national television that Bush won't be receiving a blank check. But it's another part of the interview that bothers me. From Crooks and Liars (italics mine): PELOSI: I'm saying two things. We will always support the troops who are…