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
September 27, 2007
When I was a post-doc, I once advised a student who definitely needed some remedial language skills help (since then, said student has gone on to be a very successful doctor--I take no credit for the student's success, but I just want to note that this student was very bright). What I learned is…
September 26, 2007
In a great post over at Pandagon about a lesbian mother who confronted the rightwing ninnies at the Family Impact Summit, I came across this link to a good column by a former employee of the American Family Association (italics mine):
It is not coincidental that the road to Hell is paved with the…
September 26, 2007
In response to this blast from the past about Kuhnian scientific revolutions, SteveG has an interesting discussion about the inadequacy of Popperian falsification for understanding paradigm shifts, or to use Imre Lakantos' phrase "research programme" (italics mine):
Imre Lakatos was a student of…
September 25, 2007
And there's still a long way to go.
(poster by Norman Rockwell)
September 25, 2007
If "Gathering of Eagles" needs a new emblem, this one is currently available
At the recent anti-war protest in Washington D.C., a pro-war group known as "Gathering of Eagles" assaulted Carlos Arredondo, a father of a Marine killed in Iraq:
Carlos Arredondo, 47 year old father of two sons, arrived…
September 24, 2007
From the archives comes this post about the ridiculous attraction to 'breaking paradigms':
Every so often, intelligent design flares up like a really bad pimple. If you're a biologist, you're always torn between ignoring it or responding to the same old statements of belief that you or someone else…
September 23, 2007
Because it's never too late to have lots of surgetastic goodness. From Rising Hegemon:
NPR actually does its job:
Sometime around February 2004, a top military official in Iraq estimated that there were about 15,000 total insurgents. About a year later, U.S. military leaders in Iraq announced that…
September 23, 2007
...in the of ideas--one war I'll gladly get behind. If you want to see the original poster and you're in the Boston area, you can at the Boston Public Library at Copley Square:
September 22, 2007
A follow up to yesterday's blast from the past:
Ever since Majikthise, Pandagon, and Alternet linked to my post about Yglesias, my sitemeter hit-counter thingee has blown a gasket (and, Majikthise, um, thanks for the very kind words, but low expectations are much easier to live with...). Anyway, it…
September 21, 2007
Let no one say I won't call out liberals when they're idiots about evolution. From the archives:
About a week about Matt Yglesias had a post about evolution where he wrote (italics mine):
Last but not least, nothing whatsoever of practical importance hinges on whether or not life on earth…
September 20, 2007
...most good science reporters like science. Most political reporters don't like governance.
One of the important things about going to scientific conferences for scientists is 'catching up.' While part of that is genuine social interaction with friends (when else are you going to see friends…
September 19, 2007
Or maybe not? Should doctors be salaried workers? From Political Animal:
UNKIND CUTS?....Last month Blue Cross put physician reimbursement cuts into effect in California and doctors were predictably outraged. "I don't know how anybody can afford to stay in practice and accept Blue Cross rates,"…
September 17, 2007
This is why elections have consequences: the Democrats have decided to increase the funding for college schloarships...by decreasing the tax subsidies to college loan sharkslenders. From the NY Times:
Congress gave final approval to a broad overhaul of federal student loan programs Friday,…
September 14, 2007
...by scientists, not journalists. From Genomicron:
A primary tenet of journalism is that it present a balanced view of the story and not make any subjective judgments. The fact that the scientific community has semi-objective methods for determining the reliability of claims (such as peer review…
September 13, 2007
Genomicron has a great satirical post about how to write a bad science story. It's worth a read. So, I ask you, readers, which of these ten journalistic 'sins' is the worst:
http://genomicron.blogspot.com/2007/09/anatomy-of-bad-science-story.html
1. Choose your subject matter to be as amenable to…
September 12, 2007
Over at Open Left, Chris Bowers describes what he calls counter-intuitive polling on Iraq. Basically, people are less likely to say that want to leave Iraq the worse they think the situation is. But this isn't surprising or counter-intuitive at all: it's called guilt.
At the start of the Iraq…
September 12, 2007
In case you missed it, there was a very interesting article in the NY Times about philanthropy. ScienceBlogling Jonah has some thoughts on the matter:
http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2007/09/tax_deductions_and_science.php
I think it's pretty tough to defend tax deductions for cultural organizations…
September 11, 2007
Today is the day I'm leaving for vacation, so I'll be trapped in an airport lounge watching Very Serious People make Very Serious Pronouncements about the Surgetacular Surge. Anyway, I have some thoughts about the statistics of the surge here.
Thanks to the ScienceBlogs Blogerator 9000, I'll still…
September 11, 2007
For me, the most visceral images of that day weren't from NYC, but from DC. I remember seeing the footage of ambulances lined up, waiting to get into Arlington Hospital--a hospital I not only drove by regularly, but have been in multiple times.
When I returned to DC three days later (by train,…
September 10, 2007
This quote from Fred Kaplan's Slate article has left me gobsmacked:
At the same time, nearly all politicians, including most Democrats, have come out against a total withdrawal and have recognized that we will have some military presence in Iraq for a long time to come.
Hold that thought, because I…
September 9, 2007
It's super surgetastic, surgegasmic (surgical?) Surging Sunday. Here are some links for you. Science first:
If you have had MRSA, please take this survey. If you know someone else who has, please forward the link.
Imagine if we could wipe out the AIDS/HIV epidemic, and we did nothing. You don'…
September 9, 2007
Over at Hullabaloo, Tristero is confused by Michael Gordon's claim that the surge has lowered the violence in Iraq:
What I'd like to know, instead, is whether the conclusions he draws in the paragraph quoted are reasonable ones based upon the evidence he presents. Likewise, I'm aware of the "…
September 8, 2007
...attack Iran. Bartcop describes his correspondence with a U.S. naval officer (via maha--thanks...; italics mine):
I have a friend who is an LSO on a carrier attack group that is planning and staging a strike group deployment into the Gulf of Hormuz. (LSO: Landing Signal Officer- she directs…
September 7, 2007
We don't know if the virus is the causal agent, but a recent Science paper used a metagenomics approach to find that bees from colonies that have collapsed are infected with a virus (and it's the same virus in different colonies). Essentially, the researchers ground up bees, sequenced the whole…
September 7, 2007
...he is us. Over at Open Left, Chris Bowers relates the results of some polling. Democratic voters were asked the following question:
Now I'm going to read you a list of people, organizations. For each person or organization, please tell me which of the following four choices comes closest to…
September 6, 2007
General Petraeus is bringing new meaning to the phrase 'head count':
Intelligence analysts computing aggregate levels of violence against civilians for the NIE puzzled over how the military designated attacks as combat, sectarian or criminal, according to one senior intelligence official in…
September 6, 2007
"More vomit! Damn it, I need more vomit!"
Actually, before I get to this post about people who believe in demonic possession, I have a very simple question. If you believe in demons, isn't that almost akin to worshiping them? After all, we do refer to believers as God-fearing people. Anyway, I…
September 5, 2007
125 taxa. This analysis is never going to end (stupid GTR models):
I'm getting annoyed....
Update: It took five days to run this thing. And, yes, that was after using ModelTest.
By the way, if you have no idea what I'm talking about, here's a post (without technical jargon) on likelihood and…
September 5, 2007
...then please take this survey (it's anonymous). The survey designers are trying to understand more about about the concerns of people affected by MRSA. The survey should take about 25 minutes to complete. You can take the survey here. If you know someone who has had a MRSA infection, please…