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
June 23, 2009
I'm wary of criticizing Paul Krugman. I'm a firm believer in the DeLong Rules of Krugman, which can be paraphrased very simply:
Don't disagree with Paul Krugman.
Re-read rule #1, you fucking moron.
Nonetheless, I think Krugman, in an otherwise excellent column, misstates the motivations behind…
June 22, 2009
Because everyone else is finding out what their cyborg name is:
Get Your Cyborg Name
I like it!
June 22, 2009
...they live in Massachusetts. Most of us have read the "ZOMG!! AMERICAN KIDZ DON'T KNOW TEH MATHZ!" stories. But a recent study (pdf), found by way of Matthew Yglesias, points out that some states in the U.S. actually do better than most countries (and then there's Mississippi, Alabama, and…
June 21, 2009
What's so frustrating about the healthcare debate is that even though 76% of Americans want a public option, this is somehow deemed politically unviable. Never mind that the Republicans were crushed at every level electorally and that President Obama has a 63% approval rating. Even this tepid…
June 21, 2009
What was Italy thinking? And, for that matter, NIH? From Science:
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) is gearing up to begin a review of about 1,000 biomedical research grant applications for the Italian government, an experimental collaboration that comes at an inconvenient time for the…
June 20, 2009
I've posted many times about how the theopolitical right and movement conservatives use words as weapons. They are not supposed to be taken at face value, but rather are meant to manipulate others. A good, although old, example is "evolution is just a theory." Any professional creationist who…
June 19, 2009
If you support a public option for healthcare reform, there's a campaign going on right now to get senators to commit in writing to whether or not they support a public option (Chris Bowers has more details). You should also write your president--I've heard rumors that, even though a huge majority…
June 19, 2009
Recently, I described how absurd it is to get excited over the second derivative when it comes to unemployment. A decrease in the rate at which unemployment is increasing is hardly good news (it beats the alternative, but "green shoots", this is not). Now, we're hearing similar noises about…
June 18, 2009
Merry Thursday! Here are some good links for you:
How do scientists become cranks and doctors quacks?
Microbe Wakes Up After 120,000 Years (and what sleepyhead looks like)
What's 100,000 or so deaths "to retain political and professional credibility"?
Media: Why supporting the Iraq War was the…
June 18, 2009
A few weeks ago, there was a minor ruckus about a post that claimed that the shutdown of Chrysler dealerships was biased to protect dealers who supported Clinton's campaign. At the time, I ignored it, figuring it was just another case of Conservative Clinton Derangement Syndrome (BILL CLINTON'S…
June 17, 2009
Sadly, I think it's the latter. As many others have remarked on a variety of issues, one of the most pernicious effects of the right wing has been to mainstream crazy and hateful positions. In terms of gay rights, as has been the case with many other issues, this has reduced the debate to two…
June 16, 2009
...and the Mad Biologist told you so. A while back, I looked at median incomes and median housing prices and concluded that housing prices had to drop twenty to forty percent from their highs. I also thought that, given the ARM recasts due in 2010 and that too many in the U.S. are already over…
June 15, 2009
A few months ago, Dday started to sound the alarm about "burrowing" by Bush administration appointees:
This is about getting civil service protections for hardcore conservative loyalists. In past transitions, this has been done to protect new rules or regulations that the outgoing President would…
June 15, 2009
Recently, Newsweek published an article by Sharon Begley that claimed that the conflict between high-profile publication and quick release of medically-important data has led to delays in medical advancements (ScienceBlogling Orac takes down her particular example). But Begley is confusing a…
June 14, 2009
I don't have much to add to John Aravosis' take on the recent Obama Administration about its recent defense of the Defense of Marriage Act, except to note one thing:
When the basic theory of the case is nearly identical* to those arguments used to defend the outlawing of interracial marriage, you…
June 14, 2009
Oops, there's been another GOP bigot eruption. This time, it's Michelle Obama who has been called an ape:
A state Republican activist has admitted to and apologized for calling a gorilla that escaped from the Riverbanks Zoo Friday an "ancestor" of First Lady Michelle Obama....
Longtime SCGOP…
June 13, 2009
So asks Dave Neiwert (italics mine):
If your answer is yes, then stop this cowardly half-assed screwing around. You speak the language of war and honor; but the honor code of the warriors you pretend to revere demands that you declare your intentions. If you really believe that the only way to get…
June 12, 2009
It's never made much sense to me why the pathogenic bacteria Salmonella and Shigella (which is really E. coli) have lost the ability to use lactose (milk sugar). In Shigella, we know that when we restore some lost functions through genetic manipulation (e.g., cadaverine production), they actually…
June 11, 2009
Since I got in late last night from a microbiome-palooza, I'm outsourcing today's post to Bill Moyers, who discusses the (repeated) downfall of single-payer healthcare:
June 10, 2009
I've been meaning to get to a really interesting article titled "Killing niche competitors by remote-control bacteriophage induction." So, let's talk about your nose.
Two species that are found in the human nose are Staphylococcus aureus (methicillin resistant strains are called MRSA) and…
June 9, 2009
Economist Brad DeLong is thinking about writing President Obama a letter suggesting the following:
â¢That it is past time for you to seek from the Congress for authority to guarantee the debt of states that, in response to the current recession, (a) seek to conduct their own state-level fiscal…
June 8, 2009
Here are some links for you, while I'm away doing microbiomey stuff. Science:
What Is Jerry Coyne's Complaint?
NHGRI Unveils Wide-Ranging Recommendations Regarding Sequencing Initiatives
Slime Molds
Other:
How mainstream are "pro-life" extremists?
JUST BE NORMAL AGAIN
The Political Process Has…
June 8, 2009
Should any data, not just genomic data, be held hostage by the grant award process?
Hunh? Let me back up...
By way of ScienceBlogling Daniel MacArthur, I came across this excellent post by David Dooling about, among other things, how different genome centers, based on size, have different…
June 7, 2009
I realize that the typical format for blogging is to find something that pisses you off and then rant about it, but I actually like the recent workshop report by NHGRI, "The Future of DNA Sequencing at the National Human Genome Research Institute." (pdf file) While I'll have more to say about the…
June 7, 2009
Unnamed "economists" appear to claiming a light at the end of the economic tunnel because the U.S. economy 'only' lost 345,000 jobs last month, and the increase in unemployment is slowing.
We have been reduced to cheering on the second derivative.
For those of you whose math is rusty, the first…
June 6, 2009
Abortion isn't the lesser of two evils--it is a just and good thing. So says Reverend Katherine Ragsdale:
Let's be very clear about this: when a woman finds herself pregnant due to violence and chooses an abortion, it is the violence that is the tragedy; the abortion is a blessing.
When a woman…
June 5, 2009
Here's some stuff to read over the weekend:
Gender gap in maths driven by social factors, not biological differences
No gender bias identified in peer-review of grant applications
Operation Rescue
KIDS WERE HAVING SEX IN THE STAIRCASES, BUTT-NAKED-CAUGHT-ON-CAMERA SEX
Blue Cross' response to the…
June 5, 2009
Even I am speechless over this. You know those terrorists captured a couple of weeks ago in NYC? It appears that at least one of them was motivated by trying to pay for a brother's liver transplant:
"My insurance wasn't good enough," said Lord McWilliams, 20, who has a deadly liver disease.
His…
June 4, 2009
Recently, I wrote about how bioterrorism seems to freak people out needlessly. A Man With a Ph.D. makes some other good points:
Biological terrorism is scary because it is easy to imagine doomsday while few really understand the difficulty of working with any sort of pathogen. Or even simple…
June 3, 2009
...ok, I'll stop. But 99 E. coli commensal genomes will be sequenced. And that's really cool.
I'm always wary of counting chickens before they hatch, but I'm fairly certain at least 99 E. coli genomes will be sequenced (NIAID will continue funding, and more than fifty are already in various…