Mad rantings about politics, evolution, and microbiology. Comment policy: say what you want, but back it up with an email address. I don't like anonymous trolls.
mikethemadbiologist
Posts by this author
January 22, 2007
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,…
January 22, 2007
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…
January 21, 2007
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…
January 21, 2007
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,…
January 20, 2007
...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…
January 19, 2007
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…
January 19, 2007
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…
January 18, 2007
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…
January 18, 2007
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…
January 18, 2007
...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.
January 17, 2007
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…
January 17, 2007
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…
January 16, 2007
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…
January 16, 2007
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…
January 15, 2007
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…
January 14, 2007
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…
January 14, 2007
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…
January 14, 2007
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…
January 13, 2007
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…
January 12, 2007
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…
January 11, 2007
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…
January 11, 2007
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…
January 11, 2007
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…
January 10, 2007
...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…
January 10, 2007
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…
January 10, 2007
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,…
January 10, 2007
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…
January 9, 2007
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…
January 8, 2007
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 ("…
January 8, 2007
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…