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On the importance of luck

That paper that proposed that most cancers were due to bad luck, that is, that they were a consequence of biological factors that could not be controlled, has been surprisingly controversial. I thought it was a fairly unsurprising paper that confirmed what we already suspected, but wow, the furious pushback has been something to behold. Today, though, a couple of MDs have responded to the paper and reinforce what I said. Steven Novella thinks the general logic is sound. This is an interesting study and it will be interesting to look at replications and other methods, if they are available, of…

Supreme Court Leaves Medical Marijuana Out in the Cold

From the archives: (19 January 2006) Which of the following does not belong? (a) abortion (b) medical marijuana (c) physician-assisted suicide Although all three are contentious and litigious medical issues, the answer seems to be choice (b), medical marijuana, according to the U.S. Supreme Court. On January 17, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Gonzales v. Oregon that the U.S. Attorney General did not have the authority to criminalize the prescription of lethal doses of drugs, currently allowed under Oregon's Death with Dignity Act, originally approved in 1994. The act, approved again in a…

PsychBytes: First Names, Vegetables, and Baseball

PsychBytes is an experiment: three recent findings in psychology, each explained in three paragraphs or less. Generally, these are papers that I wouldn't have otherwise covered in this blog. Please share your thoughts on this model in the comments. What works, and what doesn't? Would you like more PsychBytes in the future? What's In A Name? People who settle down and build a life in the frontier tend to be more individualistic, even if they started out with more interdependent values. Some features of the frontier life that would be attractive to an independent person are low population…

Robot Lizard Push-ups

Have you ever been walking through the forest and thought to yourself, "Damn, its loud here...it's really, really hard to hear anything anybody else is saying"? Well, maybe that's what prompted Terry J. Ord and Judy A. Stamps, respectively from Harvard and UC Davis to investigate lizard exercise routines. You ask: What do lizard calisthenics and communication have in common? Patience, grasshopper. Dinosaurs also might have survived if they weren't eaten by giant snakes. A noisy environment makes it particularly challenging for animals to detect communication signals from far away. In this…

The Myth of the Meritocracy

I don't know if it was intended for me, but somebody printed out and stacked with my airline reservations a scan of a letter by Smith & Smith (from Arlington, Virginia), from the 2006 issue of Physics Today (letters to the editor). The scan also included a number of penned comments written by a highly cynical and annoyed person commenting on the letter. The letter is objecting to an earlier article about the "pipeline problem" in physics, where at higher and higher levels, women represent a smaller and smaller fraction of physicists. The conclusion of their letter reads: Once society…

An ironic death

Two weeks ago Julia and I took the road from the cabin to Longville and back and noticed that they had put up a new sign at each end of the curvy, hilly treacherous part, where you drive dangerously high above bogs and wooded kettles with no guard rail and there is one blind curve after another. Of treacherous roads I've been on, I'd say this bit of rural highway ranks about ... 10 thousandth, but I've driven thousands of kilometers in the Congo, so the comparison is not really fair. Anyway, the signs are large like the kind that might announce the entrance to a national forest or the…

Your Friday Dose of Woo on Sunday: Apparently the FDA doesn't get the "VIBE"

In the nearly two years of its existence, I have strived to feature only the finest and most outrageous woo that I can find. It's mostly been medical quackery but sometimes it's other topics as well. Oddly enough, the vast majority of the woo featured nearly every week never attracts the attention of any regulatory bodies. Given the hilariously, extravagantly pseudscientific or spiritual claims made to support some of these devices, it's hard to image how so many of them never attract the loving attention of the Food and Drug Administration or the counterpart of the FDA in other countries in…

Chapter 10: On the geological succession of organic beings

We left Darwin in a troubled frame of mind. The fossil record seemed to offer little support to his theory (then again, it offered little support to any other theory). By the time we reach the end of chapter 10, 'On the geological succession of organic beings', he's feeling far more chipper: "[A]ll the chief laws of palaeontology plainly proclaim, as it seems to me, that species have been produced by ordinary generation: old forms having been supplanted by new and improved forms of life, produced by the laws of variation still acting round us, and preserved by Natural Selection." What…

Criticizing statistical methods for mediation analysis

Brendan Nyhan passes along an article by Don Green, Shang Ha, and John Bullock, entitled "Enough Already about 'Black Box' Experiments: Studying Mediation Is More Difficult than Most Scholars Suppose," which begins: The question of how causal effects are transmitted is fascinating and inevitably arises whenever experiments are presented. Social scientists cannot be faulted for taking a lively interest in "mediation," the process by which causal influences are transmitted. However, social scientists frequently underestimate the difficulty of establishing causal pathways in a rigorous empirical…

The wit and wisdom of G'Kar

Since the death of Andreas Katsulas, I've been thinking just how many great lines he had as G'Kar in the series and how well he delivered them. Here, culled from the web, is but a sampling of some of them. Some are very serious; some are humorous, but all are quintessential G'Kar. I can't think of a better tribute: G'Quon wrote, "There is a greater darkness than the one we fight. It is the darkness of the soul that has lost its way. The war we fight is not against powers and principalities; it is against chaos and despair. Greater than the death of flesh is the death of hope, the death of…

A counterpoint to Jenny McCarthy's autism narrative

There was a time when I used to blog about Jenny McCarthy a lot. The reason, of course, is that a few years ago, beginning in around 2007, she seized the title of face of the antivaccine movement in America through her "advocacy" for her son Evan, whom she described as having been made autistic by the MMR vaccine. She even described his diagnosis thusly to Oprah Winfrey in 2007: Right before his MMR shot, I said to the doctor, I have a very bad feeling about this shot. This is the autism shot, isn’t it? And he said, “No, that is ridiculous. It is a mother’s desperate attempt to blame…

"Common sense" that isn't

"Common sense" is not so common. Actually, that's not exactly right. What I meant was that what most people think of as "common sense" has little or nothing to do with what science concludes. Evidence talks, "common sense" walks. I saw a fantastic example to illustrate this point on a certain blog that I've found nearly as useful as a target topic to blog about as the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism (AoA). I'm referring, of course, to The Thinking Moms' Revolution (TMR), an antivaccine crank blog almost as cranky as (and sometimes even more cranky than) AoA., and the post that drew my…

CAM practitioners versus preventive medicine

If there's one claim that practitioners of "holistic" medicine frequently make, it's that "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) or "integrative medicine" or whatever the term du jour for the combining of quackery with science-based medicine is these days is allegedly so much better than "conventional" or "allopathic" medicine (or whatever disparaging term "holistic practitioners" prefer) at preventing disease and keeping people healthy. The claim is a load of fetid nonsense, of course, but it sounds convincing on the surface. After all, CAM practitioners have been disturbingly…

Sexual Selection, "Social Selection," and some not-so-hot science

The latest issue of Seed Magazine - the print product brought to you by the same folks who bring you us - has an article about Dr. Joan Roughgarden's work. The main topic of the article is Roughgarden's opinions on sexual selection - she thinks that it is entirely wrong, and that she has come up with a better alternative in the form of something she calls "social selection." PZ Myers took a solid whack at the article earlier this week, and I usually wouldn't waste my time trying to improve on his article - especially when I agree with him. This time, though, I wasn't thrilled with his tone.…

Science is not dead

People keep sending me this link to an article by Jonah Lehrer in the New Yorker: The Decline Effect and the Scientific Method, which has the subheadings of "The Truth Wears Off" and "Is there something wrong with the scientific method?" Some of my correspondents sound rather distraught, like they're concerned that science is breaking down and collapsing; a few, creationists mainly, are crowing over it and telling me they knew we couldn't know anything all along (but then, how did they know…no, let's not dive down that rabbit hole). I read it. I was unimpressed with the overselling of the…

On Wisconsin!

I'm a card-carrying member of the Wisconsin Alumni Association, and as such receive the glossy production, On Wisconsin, quarterly. Usually, the mag offers light reading and occasional updates on faculty, staff and fellow former classmates. However, an article published in the Summer 2006 volume, Putting Faith in Science (in pdf format) resulted in a flurry of letters from alumni to the editor in the Fall 2006 issue. Dismayingly, quite a few supported Intelligent Design. Granted, these are just a few creatio-cranks out of a large number of alums, but still, these were an embarrassing…

Unfortunately, he'll fit right in

The other day I picked up the September issue of Running Times and noted an item concerning the ACLI Capital Challenge. The Capital Challenge is a three mile road race open to teams representing the three branches of the federal government and the media. The proceeds benefit the District of Columbia Special Olympics. This year they raised a record $16,800. My reaction to this is two-fold. First, I think it's great that senators, congressmen, judges, etc. can get together and raise money for a worthy charity. Second, I am amazed at the miniscule amount they raised when compared to the sums…

A whale that couldn't breathe for 34 years

During my first visits to the American Museum of Natural History in New York the only thing that impressed me more than the skeletons of the dinosaurs was the sculpture of the blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus), posed in a dive above the Hall of Ocean Life. I had seen pictures of blue whales in books and eagle-eye views of them in documentaries, but the sheer size of the cetacean astounded me (especially because I was still so small!). No trip to the museum is complete without at least peeking into the recently refurbished Milstein Hall of Ocean Life to see the whale, but what most people don…

How high does a bullet go?

You know I like the Mythbusters, right? Well, I have been meaning to look at the shooting bullets in the air myth for quite some time. Now is that time. If you didn't catch that particular episode, the MythBusters wanted to see how dangerous it was to shoot a bullet straight up in the air. I am not going to shoot any guns, or even drop bullets - that is for the MythBusters. What I will do instead is make a numerical calculation of the motion of a bullet shot into the air. Here is what Adam said about the bullets: A .30-06 cartridge will go 10,000 feet high and take 58 seconds to come…

The Achievement Gap and The Brain

There's a thorough article in the Times Magazine on the persistence of the "achievment gap" in public education. The conclusion of the article is rather simple: the "achievment gap" persists due to a series of entrenched inequalities, but very good schools (and I mean very good) can actually compensate for a lot of these disadvantages. The problem, of course, is creating very good schools. So read the whole article, if you're interested in why only 13 percent of black eighth-grade students are "proficient" in reading. I was most interested in the parts of the article that dealt with the…

Basics: Collisions (Interactions between two objects)

Pre Reqs: momentum principle, forces,energy, vectors Really, there is not much new here. This is an introduction to objects that interact. To describe this, I will need to pull several different ideas together (that you have probably already looked at). Let me start with a simple case. Suppose I have two objects, maybe they are two asteroids in space. I will call them asteroid A and B: In this situation, the two objects have different momentums but one interaction between them. Notice that the gravitational force on asteroid A is the same magnitude but opposite direction as the force…

An unpaleontological lament for lost molecules and shattered cells and the cruelty of time

Sometimes, I really hate fossils. I hate them with the passion of a spurned lover, one who is consumed with desire but knows that he will never, ever be satisfied. They drive me mad. Right now we're at a point in our technology where we can take a small sample from a living organism and break it down into amazing detail — we can extract every gene, throw them into a computer, and compare them with every other gene that has been similarly sampled. We can look for the scars of evolution, we can analyze and figure out where on the tree of life this cell resides, we can even figure out what…

High Stakes Innovation

This oil spill sure is getting depressing. We've become extremely talented at hiding away the ill effects of our consumption decisions. We don't see the inhumane chicken farms behind our chicken McNuggets, or the Chinese factories that produce our shoes, or the offshore oil rigs that extract our oil from the center of the earth. The end result is that, when we're finally forced to confront the ugliness that makes our civilized life possible, we're shocked and appalled. My cheap ground beef comes from that feedlot? My gas station depends on that infrastructure? The danger of this lifestyle is…

Texas science standards: Disco. plays fast and loose

Texas is gearing up to revise their state science standards. This is a big deal, because the standards Texas sets determine how textbooks are written not just for the Texas market, but for the rest of the nation. The fight over science standards now is a prelude to an imminent and much bigger fight over textbook adoptions. And the Texas Board of Education is currently run by creationist Don McLeroy, who runs a bloc of 7 of the 15 board members, a bloc which often draws in enough swing votes to allow bad policy to be pushed through. The panels of experts selected to put together the new…

Getting ideas from Donald Trump? (An oldie from the vault.)

Hey, it's May already! Could that explain why things are crazy-busy here? There will be new content soon, once I've plowed through some more grading and exam-writing and curricular trouble-shooting. In the meantime, since I copped to enjoying reality TV more than I should (in that ABC meme, under "Not going to cop to"), I thought I'd share a May post from the earlier incarnation of this blog, a post in which I muse on what "The Apprentice" (a show, as of this season, I no longer watch ... we've grown apart) might teach us about how to improve the scientific community. Yes, it's utterly daft…

In which people cannot read

Ophelia and Larry are upset. In particular, they are upset that Chad Orzel and I thought it was OK to have a panel about how scientists reconcile their religious faith and their scientific work but not to include panelists who reject the panel's premise. This was the point that Chad and I were raising, at least, but it is not quite clear that Ophelia and Larry realize what we were saying. Thus, Larry writes: Chad Orzel at Uncertain Principles [Extremists Aren't Interesting] and Josh Rosenau at Thoughts from Kansas [Talking Sense] take the same position. Non-accommodationist atheists shouldn…

Towards a unified theory of douchebags

Not a joke: How are the heads of the Catholic Church and Massey Energy similar? Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI, is in trouble. Increasing evidence is emerging that he quashed internal investigations and discipline of priests accused, and even convicted, of pedophilia. This is very bad. Every new revelation about then-Cardinal Ratzinger's actions have had him closer and closer to the circle of people stating directly that the Church should not defrock abusive priests. The most recent documents including his signature underneath the argument (written in Latin) that a priest should…

Absent fathers and "bad" teens; its in the genes?

Being raised in a single-parent household, especially when a woman is head of household, puts you at higher risk for all sorts of negative personal outcomes, right? If that data is all you know, yes. But as they say, correlation does not equal causation. But the assumptions of causation come out in the responses of people to these social statistics; conservatives often want to maintain stability in the home, put the father there because the father is critical. Many liberals will focus on the economic outcomes of single motherhood, and argue that buffering the family against fiscal stress…

Genetics of human pigmentation

Richard Sturm in Human Molecular Genetics has a really good review of the current state of pigmentation genetics, with a human centric focus: The genetic basis underlying normal variation in the pigmentary traits of skin, hair and eye colour has been the subject of intense research directed at understanding the diversity seen both between and within human populations. A combination of approaches have been used including comparative genomics of candidate genes and the identification of regions of the human genome under positive selection, together with genome-wide and specific allele…

Response to Rusty on the "Testable Creation Model"

Rusty Lopez of the New Covenant blog has stated that his latest response to me regarding the "testable creation model" that he advocates will be his last. I thank him for an engaging dialogue on these issues, and regret that he chooses not to continue the conversation. He says he does not have the time, and I take him at his word. These kinds of posts can indeed, as he says, become very complex and time consuming, as this one already has. In my case, I think it's worth the time and effort, both to stimulate one's own mind and perhaps educate others. So presuming that he chooses not to…

Tet Zoo 5th birthday extravaganza, part II

Welcome to part II of my musings on the 2010 blogging year. You'll need to have read the first part to make sense of it. The article you're reading now is extraordinarily long and I'd normally break up a piece of this length into two, three or even more separate articles. This year I want to get the birthday stuff out of the way as quickly as possible, however, so bear with me. Hey, you don't HAVE to read any of it. And so, off we go... One of the bigger Tet Zoo-relevant issues of the year was the publication in September of Tetrapod Zoology Book One (Naish 2010a). Already I've seen several…

Marc Morano Wins Prestigious Award

And by "Prestigious" I mean .... well, see for yourself in this story from Media Matters for America (Reposted with permission): Climate Change Misinformer Of The Year: Marc Morano ClimateDepot.com founder Marc Morano has been called "the Matt Drudge of climate denial," the "king of the skeptics," and "a central cell of the climate-denial machine," and he revels in these descriptions. Although he has no scientific expertise, he is adamant that manmade global warming is a "con job" based on "subprime science." Morano gained prominence working for two of the most vocal climate deniers in the U.…

Emergency acupuncture!

Many are the bizarre, dubious, and downright crappy acupuncture studies that I’ve deconstructed over the years. Just type “acupuncture” into the search box of this blog, and you’ll soon see. (If that pulls up too many results, try typing “acupuncture” and “study” or “acupuncture” and “clinical trial” in the search box.) I’m not the only one, either. For instance, my good bud Mark Crislip did his usual excellent and highly sarcastic job of deconstructing the frequent claim by acupuncture apologists that acupuncture “works” by releasing endorphins. So when I first saw an even more bizarre…

Friday Random Ten, July 31

Russian Circles, "Youngblood": post rock, in the Mogwai style. Very nice stuff. Not the most exciting PR band around, but good. The Flower Kings, "World Without a Heart": typical FK. Since I pretty much worship the ground that Roine Stolte walks on, you can guess what I think of this. Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, "Transit": would you believe sort-of progressive big-band jazz? That's pretty much how I'd describe this. Big band jazz is not my usual cup of tea, but this is damned impressive, and a good solid listen. Definitely very cool stuff. Naftule's Dream, "Yid in Seattle":…

Inflation Conversions - What's 1972£10,000 worth today?

I've been getting a ton of questions about an article from the Independent about a guy named Bertie Smalls. Bertie was a british thief who died quite recently, who was famous for testifying against his organized crime employers back in the 1970s. The question concerns one claim in the article. Bertie was paid £10,000 for his part in a robbery in 1972. The article alleges that £10,000 in 1972 is equivalent to £200,000 today. Lots of people think that that looks fishy, and have been sending me mail asking if that makes any sense. Full disclosure. I'm not an economist - I've never studied…

I Wonder What Our Benevolent Seed Overlords Think of This?

The FTC has released a report calling for the end of net neutrality (FTC's pdf report here*). What does that mean? Well: The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to abandon net neutrality and allow telecoms companies to charge websites for access. The FTC said in a report that, despite popular support for net neutrality, it was minded to let the market sort out the issue. This means that the organisation will not stand in the way of companies using differential pricing to make sure that some websites can be viewed more quickly than others. The report also counsels against net…

Maybe All That Blogging Has an Effect After All?

Things are kind of hectic, but I stumbled across this interesting post by Chris Colvin, an NBC news writer, about blogging: Now to the news media.. the Mainstream Media.. as it has become known, and an object lesson in how the blogosphere is changing the way the MSM operates. (And I say this at the risk of sounding hopelessly naive to the many people who think the "corporate media" exists to push a political agenda-- if that's true, I'm either too stupid or too low on the food chain to be able to actually demonstrate it.) Anyway. Salon's Glenn Greenwald has engaged in a fairly brutal…

Influenza: What If We Had a Sept. 11th Every Month and Nobody Cared?

I've been called out by Michael Fumento regarding a post about avian influenza. While I'm putting that together, I thought it would be a good opportunity to revisit some previous posts about influenza. From the old site: A think tank in Australia released a report claiming that an influenza pandemic might kill over 140 million people. So, after spending most of my professional career examining the evolution of infectious disease, I think...I don't have any idea if a pandemic influenza strain will evolve. Ultimately, we're trying to anticipate a unique historically contingent event:…

A Letter to a Conservative About Stem Cells

This is a modified post from the old digs, moved over here to the new site. Stem cell research has always been a very personal issue for me: a close family relative is a type I diabetic (this is an autoimmune form of diabetes caused by the body's destruction of the pancreatic cells that produce insulin, and is not related to diet). Over the years, I have watched this relative, despite her best efforts, suffer various side effects, ranging from heart disease (despite no family history and an excellent diet) to a detached retina (another common side effect of type I diabetes). And in one way,…

Mike Konczal Doesn't Understand Movement Conservatives

Mike Konczal is disappointed in the behavior of one of the members of the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission ('FCIC'), Peter Wallison, movement conservative and member of the rightwing faith tank, the American Enterprise Institute. Like many conservatives, Wallison blames the housing crisis on efforts to provide African-Americans with loans, even though, as Konczal explains, that's simply not true. Here's what the FCIC was charged to do: First off, let's remember what this document is. The FCIC report was designed to be our age's Pecora Commission, a collection and investigation of…

Unlike Many Progressives Kevin Drum Avoids the Obama Category Error

Matthew Yglesias wonders why Obama didn't push for a debt ceiling increase when he had the chance last year: It didn't happen. Obama said he trusted John Boehner. Harry Reid said he didn't want the debt limit to be raised by the 111th Congress because he wanted to force the incoming 112th Congress to take ownership over it. The results of these decisions have been a disaster. What's more, not only was the disaster predictable but even once it was visibly on the horizon the White House bungled it. There was a brief opportunity for the President to dig in his heels and simply refuse to…

Why Should Publishers Organize Science?

I found this post titled "What scientists really want from digital publishing", and, after reading it, I'm pretty certain this scientist doesn't want what's offered. Before I get to the details, here's what computer scientst Philip Bourne offers: "as a scientist I want an interaction with a publisher that does not begin when the scientific process ends but begins at the beginning of the scientific process itself" I actually want to do away with publishers--I see them as a necessary evil, including the Open Access ones. What I really want is to be able to communicate to other scientists (and…

Genetic stochasticity & environments

So I near the end of my survey of chapter 5 of Evolutionary Genetics: Concepts & Case Studies.1 Today, we address environmental variation, but I think sometimes the end is the beginning, so I quote: Random environment models have many technical aspects...that make them difficult to analyze. As a result, they have ben largely ignored in population genetics. This is unfortunate as it is clear that environments do change and that adaptive evolution is driven by these changes. The last sentence made me think, "No shit sherlock." This is a pretty deep indictment of population genetics,…

I am an unbeliever...in overdominance

RPM pointed me to this new paper, Major Histocompatibility Complex Heterozygosity Reduces Fitness in Experimentally Infected Mice: ...Our results show that MHC effects are not masked on an outbred genetic background, and that MHC heterozygosity provides no immunological benefits when resistance is recessive, and can actually reduce fitness. These findings challenge the HA hypothesis and emphasize the need for studies on wild, genetically diverse species. MHC are a group of loci which are critical in the adaptive immune systems of "higher" organisms. They are also among the most polymorphic…

Why Palin Used the Phrase "Blood Libel": The Theopolitical Right Believes They Are the New and Improved Jews

If you haven't heard by now, Sarah Palin compared criticism of her to "blood libel", the disgusting medieval falsehood that Jews used Christian blood in religious rituals. While some have chalked this up to paranoia, I don't think that's correct (besides, Palin's paranoia stems from the bursting of her narcissistic bubble). Because there's an increasingly tendency among fundamentalists to view themselves as Jews. Now, this might sound odd, since they seem to have some difficulties with the Judeo part of Judeo-Christian. But they do see themselves as new and improved Jews. Some…

Israel's 'America Problem'....

...or more accurately, Israel's 'self-appointed leadership of the American Jewish community' problem. From Jeffrey Goldberg (italics mine): I am not wishing that the next president be hostile to Israel, God forbid. But what Israel needs is an American president who not only helps defend it against the existential threat posed by Iran and Islamic fundamentalism, but helps it to come to grips with the existential threat from within. A pro-Israel president today would be one who prods the Jewish state--publicly, continuously and vociferously--to create conditions on the West Bank that would…

Poor science standard in Minnesota

Our state science standards are being patched up right now, and while they're mostly just fine, one sneaky provision is still on the books. "The student will be able to explain how scientific and technological innovations as well as new evidence can challenge portions of or entire accepted theories and models including but not limited to cell theory, atomic theory, theory of evolution, plate tectonic theory, germ theory of disease and big bang theory." It's the old 'teach the controversy' argument. While it seems innocuous, and we actually should teach kids how to address established…

Transportation: The Hidden Cost of Housing

The Washington Post covered an interesting study by the Chicago-based nonprofit Center for Neighborhood Technology. Basically, to determine the cost of housing, the authors included the costs of transportation along with the cost of housing. Some findings: ...the combined cost of a home that requires a longer commute by car might exceed that of a more expensive home within walking distance of transit. "The farther you get out, the cost of transportation can double," said Scott Bernstein, president of CNT. "Somewhere between eight and 12 miles out from the center . . . housing costs dropped…

A Short Review of Nan Mooney's (Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents

Over the last few elections cycles, we've heard about the importance of various demographic groups: Bubbas, soccer moms, NASCAR dads, hockey moms, and so on. But Nan Mooney's (Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents: The Decline of the Professional Middle Class describes one demographic sector that has largely been ignored. Maybe it's because they* aren't 'real Americans', or perhaps they don't have a catchy nickname. Mooney's book describes the economic problems facing college-educated professionals, including teachers, social workers, and, yes, scientists (contrary to popular belief, most…

Saturday Sermon: Race and Republican Economics

Regular readers know I've been beating this drum since the inception of this blog, but the Krugman says it well: The fault, however, lies not in Republicans' stars but in themselves. Forty years ago the G.O.P. decided, in effect, to make itself the party of racial backlash. And everything that has happened in recent years, from the choice of Mr. Bush as the party's champion, to the Bush administration's pervasive incompetence, to the party's shrinking base, is a consequence of that decision. If the Bush administration became a byword for policy bungles, for government by the unqualified, well…