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Financial Bubbles

Another day, another sinking stock market. The Dow has officially entered bear territory, which is defined by a drop of 20 percent or more. Many variables are responsible for the financial malaise, from rising gas prices to a weakening job market, but the root cause seems to be the busting of the housing bubble. In retrospect, of course, bubbles are easy to recognize and ridicule. What were all those Wall Street suits thinking when they bought up so much subprime debt? Didn't they realize that the booming real estate market was bound to implode? And yet, such irrational exuberance is a…

#SBFAIL Continues

Yesterday, Bora Zivkovic announced he was leaving ScienceBlogs. This is kinda huge. Bora is as close to a scienceblogging god as any scienceblogger will admit to believing in. He gives every evidence of omnipresence and omniscience about the interplay of science and the internet. He's created many of the ideas that keep the scienceblogging community together, not least the Science Online conferences. And his Sb farewell shows why he's so beloved. He seems to have taken the two weeks since Pepsiblog was announced and decided to go out with a bang. He analyzes what Scienceblogs did well,…

Antony Flew Goes to Heaven

Anthony Horvath is responding to my reviews with some flustery bluster. He's insisting that you must buy his stories in order to have any credibility in questioning them, which is nonsense: I'm giving the gist of his fairy tales, and he could, for instance, clarify and expand on the themes of his story, explain what I've got wrong and where I'm actually seeing the True Christian™ message, but instead he chooses to run away and hide while flogging people to buy his stories. He does throw out a hilarious complaint cloaked in his refusal to address anything I've written, like this: As before, I…

Open Lab Update: Twenty Days Left!

Only twenty days left for submissions! Dig through your archives, through other people's archives and submit! I've already started to contact potential judges for this year's anthology. We're ready to roll! Note: if you have recently moved your blog, please e-mail Bora the corrected URLs for your entries The list is growing fast - check the submissions to date and get inspired to submit something of your own - an essay, a poem, a cartoon or original art. The Submission form is here so you can get started. Under the fold are entries so far. The instructions for submitting are here. You can buy…

Open Lab 2010: Only One Month Left to Submit!

There is only one month left for submissions! Dig through your archives, through other people's archives and submit! I've already started to contact potential reviewers for this year's anthology. We're ready to roll! Note: if you have recently moved your blog, please e-mail Bora the corrected URLs for your entries The list is growing fast - almost FIVE HUNDRED posts have been submitted so far! Check the submissions to date and get inspired to submit something of your own - an essay, a poem, a cartoon or original art. The Submission form is here so you can get started. Under the fold are…

Top US scientists weigh in on Tripoli 6 campaign

As the October 31 date for the resumption of the trial of the Tripoli 6 looms, the world scientific community is weighing in. From the ScienceNow section of the journal Science: U.S. scientists are adding their voices to mounting international pressure on Libya to release six foreign medical workers who could face execution within weeks. A letter published online today by Science--written by virologist Robert Gallo, director of the Institute of Human Virology in Baltimore, Maryland, and co-discoverer of HIV, and signed by 43 other scientists--accuses the Libyan government of using the medics…

Aharon Katzir: 40 years after

We recently witnessed the disagreement over the official memorial for the 11 Israeli athletes killed at the Munich Olympics 40 years ago. Fewer remember the terrorist attack in the Lod airport a few months earlier – in May – in which 24 people lost their lives. One of those was the head of the Weizmann Institute’s Polymer’s Department, Prof. Aharon Katzir. (Somewhat ironically, in light of the later attack, Katzir had just returned from Germany, where he had co-organized a conference with Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen.) Aharon Katzir Aharon Katzir and his brother, Ephraim, who would later…

Reading Diary: Required Reading: The "Very Best" of CronkNews.com

As anyone who's a regular reader of my Friday Fun series will know, I'm a huge fan of The Cronk, that paragon of higher ed satire. In fact, you could call me the grand high poobah of Cronk fandom with the Cronk as the Sultan of Satire! You can see some of my posts here, here and here and even more here. I love the Cronk, you love the Cronk, we all love the Cronk. And now we all have a chance to put our money where our mouths are and kick a little cash towards the hard working gang that entertain and amuse us so regularly. They fine folk who produce the Cronk have published a print book…

A stealthy library scout, armed with a lead pipe

The authors over at In the Library with the Lead Pipe have posted about my recent manifesto on Stealth Librarianship. There's some pretty healthy debate, agreement, disagreement, qualification, additions and subtractions going on there, so please do check it out: Lead Pipe Debates the Stealth Librarianship Manifesto. Some excerpts: What Dupuis fails to mention here is that many academic librarians MUST publish in traditional, peer-reviewed library publications while striving to attain tenure. I am not personally in a tenure-track position, so I have the liberty of not fretting over where I…

No more Citizens Anonymous

Being private isn't the same as being anonymous according to the Bush administration. So what does privacy mean, according to Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence? Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguard people's private communications and financial information. [snip] "Our job now is to engage in a productive debate, which focuses on privacy as a component of appropriate levels of security and public safety," Kerr said. "I think all of us have to really take stock of what we already are willing to give up, in terms of…

"Why Do You Blog Meme"

I got tagged with a meme by Greg who is trying to track the branching tree of this meme, so go check his post out (especially let him know if you do one of your own). He is also instructing us that the post is supposed to be full of links.... I love blog memes, and I have done many of them, most of which in one way or another reveal "why I blog": Academic Blog Meme, Beautiful Bird Meme, Random Quotes Meme, Silly Blog Meme, Four Meme, Hanukah meme, Zero Meme, Dirty Thirty Meme, Thinking Blogger Meme, States Meme, Obscure-But-Good-Movies Meme, Four Jobs Meme, The Blogging Blog Meme, Year in…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Why do people assault those who are trying to help them (or their family members)? Alcohol, drugs, and dementia are among the causes, and the result is that health care workers and social workers face a high risk of on-the-job injury. The Edmonton Journal reports that nearly 20 percent of the Workers Compensation Board of Alberta claims are for violence aimed at health care workers (thanks to Tasha for the link). At The Doctorâs Office online WSJ column, Dr. Benjamin Brewer reports that a study at a large Florida hospital found 74% of the nurses reported being physically assaulted during…

Alligators vs melons: the final battle

For millenia, a battle has raged between alligators and water melons. Who will win? Well, the answer's obvious: one has a bite force of over 15,000 Newtons, and the other one's a water melon. Yes, the alligator vs water melon craze has gone mainstream, as testified by its appearance on Sky News... though, god help them, they managed to mistake an alligator for a crocodile. Hopeless. Anyway... It's gratifying and amusing to see an alligator destroy a water melon with such devastating ease [for more information, see the accompanying text at youtube]. But there are a few other things of interest…

Lindau - I have arrived

I have arrived. The trip was OK. Terminal 2 at RDU rocks - I was there far too early (due to trip-excites) and spent 3 hours online on my iPhone. At Heathrow, wifi is pay-only, and I could not detect any at the Zurich airport. There is no AT&T signal to be picked up at Heathrow, Zurich or Lindau, so I am not using the iPhone at all. The wifi at the hotel is decent (a little slower than at home) and they say that it is much better at the conference center. For some reason, AA switched airplane types. I was looking forward to sleeping 7 hours on the B777 (it is never completely full so I…

ScienceOnline09 - workshops

Most sessions (see the Program) at ScienceOnline09 are supposed to be highly interactive - in the spirit of an Unconference, based on the idea that: The sum of the expertise of the people in the audience is greater than the sum of expertise of the people on stage. But, there will be a few exceptions. First, there will be several quick demos on Sunday morning. But also, four of the sessions are meant to be more in a workshop mode, where we expect that the people on stage will actually have greater expertise than people in the audience and that the reason people will choose to attend these…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Neanderthals Speak Again After 30,000 Years: Dr. Robert McCarthy, an assistant professor of anthropology in the Dorothy F. Schmidt College of Arts and Letters at Florida Atlantic University, has reconstructed vocal tracts that simulate the sound of the Neanderthal voice. Slowly-developing Primates Definitely Not Dim-witted: Some primates have evolved big brains because their extra brainpower helps them live and reproduce longer, an advantage that outweighs the demands of extra years of growth and development they spend reaching adulthood, anthropologists from Duke University and the…

Science Debate 2008 - my Question #5: Food

To keep the conversation about the Science Debate 2008 going, I decided to post, one per day, my ideas for potential questions to be asked at such a debate. The questions are far too long, though, consisting more of my musings than real questions that can be asked on TV (or radio or online, wherever this may end up happening). I want you to: - correct my factual errors - call me on my BS - tell me why the particular question is counterproductive or just a bad idea to ask - if you think the question is good, help me reduce the question from ~500 to ~20 words or so. Here is the fifth one, so…

Science Debate 2008 - my Question #4: Who has Scientific Authority?

To keep the conversation about the Science Debate 2008 going, I decided to post, one per day, my ideas for potential questions to be asked at such a debate. The questions are far too long, though, consisting more of my musings than real questions that can be asked on TV (or radio or online, wherever this may end up happening). I want you to: - correct my factual errors - call me on my BS - tell me why the particular question is counterproductive or just a bad idea to ask - if you think the question is good, help me reduce the question from ~500 to ~20 words or so. Here is the fourth one, so…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Bats Play A Major Role In Plant Protection: If you get a chance to sip some shade-grown Mexican organic coffee, please pause a moment to thank the bats that helped make it possible. At Mexican organic coffee plantations, where pesticides are banned, bats and birds work night and day to control insect pests that might otherwise munch the crop. Animals Are 'Stuck In Time' With Little Idea Of Past Or Future, Study Suggests: Dog owners, who have noticed that their four-legged friend seem equally delighted to see them after five minutes away as five hours, may wonder if animals can tell when time…

Update, and question about computer problems

You may have noticed very sparse blogging last couple of days - just the pre-scheduled Clock Quotes... Well, I have some laptop problems (Dell PC with WinXP, only FF as browser). The first inklings of problems showed up right after the AAAS meeting last month. I have been dutifully cleaning with Symantec, Spyware Doctor, SUPERantispyware and Spybot Search&Destroy almost daily since then. My Malwarebytes does not work - after uninstalling it, I get an error when trying to reinstall. Ad-Aware does not let me start (says I am a wrong user for it). WTF? The problem is this - Google sites…

ResearchBlogging Awards 2010

I was in Boston last two days, and mostly offline, so the news of the announcements of ResearchBlogging.org Awards found me on Twitter, on my iPhone during a brief break of the PRI/BBC/Nova/Sigma Xi/WGBH/The World meeting. Thus, apart from a couple of quick retweets, I did not have the opportunity until now to take a better look and to say something about it. You can see the news at the Seed site and download the official press release. And listening to the podcast about the awards AND opening the envelopes with winners's names is great fun. Then, take some time to go through the list of all…

Occupational Health News Roundup

Celeste wrote last week about how the Charleston Gazette's Ken Ward Jr. broke the story of how a previously unpublished report sent to Congress by the Mine Safety and Health Administration two weeks before the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster warned about serious enforcement lapses, including incomplete inspections and inadequate enforcement actions. In addition to that story, another of Ward's Charleston Gazette articles last week highlighted another MSHA issue related to that mine disaster, which killed 29 miners at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch Mine in Montcoal, West Virginia: U.S. Mine…

Day 4: at last, tabs 8

Our first proper "late" row, since we're now proud mebers of division 2. Time at the start to say hello to Amelie before being rudely interrupted by the 4 minute gun. I was busily trying to plaster up my hand having torn a callus off and... oooohhh, it did hurt a bit. Meanwhile, back at the rowing. Tabs 7 were sandwich boat, but we knew we were faster than them, and anyway they were tired after rowing over; they faded away after about 20 strokes. So our aim was tabs 8, who we chased unsuccessfuly on the first night. But we knew that ahead of them was St Ives, who they had failed to catch the…

Thrusters in Space

Bart: Go, Dad, go! Lisa: How doth the hero, strong and brave, a celestial path to the heavens paved! (The family stares at her.) Lisa (dejected): Go, Dad, go. -The Simpsons Last week, I got a question from one of my online friends, cmgraves. His question was straightforward: How do thrusters work in space? On Earth, when we want to speed up, slow down, change our direction, or to change our motion in general, we always have something to push against. This is true whether you're a runner and have the ground to push against, or a turbofan engine with the air to push against. But in the…

Gay Marriage = Civil War? Frightening

I came across this blog while following links and all I can say is "wow". Ironically, it has the fluffy name "Sunny Days in Heaven" while its author seems to be advocating a civil war to stop the advance of civil rights for homosexuals. In a post yesterday on this blog, the author is discussing a National Review Online article that criticized right wing radio talk show host Dennis Prager for comparing the battle over same sex marriage with the battle against Islamic terrorism because both are vital for "the survival of civilization". Jonah Goldberg, writing on the NRO blog, took Prager to…

Queer Theory of Ancient Gods

Very timely with the discovery of the Kaga foil-figure model, my buddy Ing-Marie Back Danielsson has published her PhD thesis in archaeology, Masking Moments. The transitions of bodies and beings in Late Iron Age Scandinavia (available on-line). There's a picture of a foil-figure or other late-1st Millennium human representation on almost every page. The viva is on Thursday Friday 20 April in Stockholm, and the opponent none other than that enfant terrible of the British Neolithic, Julian Thomas. Reading his fine 1991 book Rethinking the Neolithic, I remember wondering if there is anything…

Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

Let me say these things, because they are important. Bora was wrong. Scientific American was wrong. Ofek was wrong, Wrong, WRONG. If you follow science blogs beyond this one, you have no doubt run across the gigantic debacle that erupted this past weekend; if not the first few paragraphs of this Slate piece give a reasonably compact summary. The shorter short form is: an editor at a blog network called Danielle Lee a whore (which was wrong), she wrote a blog post about it (emphatically not wrong), and the responses to that splattered a gigantic festering mess of Wrong all over everything. So…

Links for 2010-02-03

Researchers use infrared cameras to determine taste quality of Japanese beef "Imagine going into a local supermarket or butchery, pulling out your cell phone and using its camera to instantly check for the best piece of meat on display. That is one of the applications that some in Japan hope could become possible one day from scientific research into using infrared cameras to grade the taste of high-quality beef."f (tags: optics food science physics biology Japan news) I don't know what this has to do with eBooks, but I'll blog it anyway § Unqualified Offerings "The Defense Secretary and…

Photoelectric Follies

I spent most of yesterday helping out with an on-campus workshop for high school teachers and students. Seven high school physics teachers and seventeen high school students spent the day doing a half-dozen experiments to measure various physical constants. I was in charge of having them measure Plack's constant using the photoelectric effect. The actual measurement (made using a PASCO apparatus) takes about fifteen minutes, so I gave each group a quick explanation of the history: Einstein proposed the particle model of light as an explanation for the photoelectric effect in 1905, and nobody…

Joint Annual Meeting, Day 1

I'm liveblogging the Joint Annual Meeting of the HRD directorate programs, and although the internez is spotty, I will update as we can. We began the morning with a keynote by Dr. Wanda Ward, Assistant Director for the Directorate for Education and Human Resources at NSF. The first half of her talk was largely about the different programs in HRD (Human Resources Division) and elsewhere that speak to (a new acronym to me:) BP, or "broadening participation." A few items of note: [Follow along at the JAM twitterfeed here. So far it looks like I'm the only one twittering... can it be so?] She…

Blue Steel Hero

No, it's not a song by Foreigner - these are the names of two products "promoted and sold over the Internet for the treatment of erectile dysfunction (ED) and for sexual enhancement." In yet another instance of a trend that would be comical if not so serious, the US FDA has announced that "Blue Steel" and "Hero" supplements contain chemical relatives of sildenafil, the active constituent of the prescription medication Viagra. "Because these products are labeled as 'all natural dietary supplements,' consumers may assume that they are harmless and pose no health risk," said Janet Woodcock, M.…

"China Needs an Ecologized Social Democratic System"

China, the new great polluters. With their tremendous industrialization comes tremendous pollution. But what is the relationship between their shifting political system and the possibilities for a more ecologically sensible pattern of development (assuming that phrase is internally logical, "ecologically sensible pattern of development")? Here is an interview from last Fall with Dale Wen, Chinese Native, Cal Tech PhD, and author of China Copes with Globalization: a Mixed Review, published by the International Forum on Globalization. The interview touches on GMOs, western lifestyles in…

Moses was high as a kite

And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. (Exodus 3:2) Moses was high when he saw that bush. Or so speculates Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem: High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week. Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny…

PBS Test Pilots Wired Magazine Program Along With Two Other New Science Shows

Throughout January, PBS has been test piloting three science programs on channels across the country and via streaming video online at their Web site. According to PBS mag Current, one pilot is a spin-off of Wired magazine, another a "Science Investigators" version of PBS' popular "History Investigators" series, and the third a futurist "22nd Century" program. In combination with these pilots, PBS rolled out focus group and national survey project to monitor responses among the "innovative and inclined" segment of their audience. Doing this type of "real time" research as part of the…

OLPC

So Intel has pulled out. Well, fuck them. If you own Intel stocks and have no idea of what I am talking about, then screw your apathetic greedy self too. Here's what got me all riled up: businessweek article where the author has got it totally backwards. Not only is this [OLPC] profoundly anti-teacher, it also misinterprets experience learning. Children learn language by interacting with their family. Almost all learning takes place in a teaching context. Yes, of course, there is learning by the individual alone, but most "learning" takes place in a context of a guide, a coach, be it parent…

Fiddler crabs - more than just cute to look at

I know everyone is going to jump at once to talk about this mind-blowing research by some of the greatest scientists that have ever been associated with ecology, and I hate just writing about papers that everyone will talk about anyhow, but I decided I still had to comment on this paper. It may very well be the most important paper of the year, even more influential and ground-breaking than Ida (though I wouldn't mention that to her directly). Of course, I'm talking about the newest paper published in Marine Biology's "Online First", Fiddler crab burrowing affects growth and production of…

Galileo. Patronage. Dinosaurs.

Mario Biagioli, a historian of science at Harvard, wrote a book a dozen or so years ago called Galileo, Courtier. It's a study of the context of patronage, courtly virtue, and shifting credibility between philosophers and mathematicians in and around the time of Galileo's trial. Great book, fascinating to read, lots to say about it. But my point of interest right now is in the idea and practice of scientific patronage. Biagioli says in his epilogue that his story of Galileo helps highlight the shift in scientific patronage from earlier princely forms to later institutional ones, and that…

Antidepressant-Suicide Risk Update

This controversy has been evolving for the past three years.  Perhaps at this point it is no longer newsworthy.  But often, after a topic fades from the radar of the MSM, there are new findings. The journal, Psychological Medicine, has published a study about the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in persons treated with an antidepressant ( href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluoxetine" rel="tag">fluoxetine) for conditions other than depression.   href="http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=1219444">Evaluating suicide-related…

Why I don't believe in gods

The New Statesman has an article that asked a lot of atheist luminaries and some lesser glowworms like yours truly to explain why they don't believe in gods. I don't think it's available online (I have a copy, though, and posted it outside my office door, so stop on by if you want to read it), but there is a discussion on the New Statesman blog. There are a whole bunch of entertaining short entries in the full article, but I'll just post mine — I gave them two reasons that I don't believe in gods. 1. The process. I am accustomed to the idea that truth claims ought to be justified with some…

Leaker-In-Chief Flubs Again

In 2004, the Bush Administration href="http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/07/bush-admin-may-be-responsible-for.html">blew a Pakistani intelligence operation by revealing sensitive intelligence information.  In 2005, there was the Libby-Plame Leak.  Earlier in 2006, the Bush Administration href="http://corpus-callosum.blogspot.com/2006/04/leaker-in-chief-reduxoffered-without.html">blew Operation Tiramisu, putting Israeli intelligence operatives at risk. By then, the phrase " href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/04/07/BL2006040700544.html" rel="tag">…

Deadlines rapidly approaching for two blog carnivals of note (plus a way to help raise money for an award without knowing where your wallet is).

First about those carnivals: *The deadline for submission to the second installment of the Diversity in Science carnival is midnight (EST) tonight. It's being hosted at Thus Spake Zuska and this month's topic is "Women Achievers in STEM - Past and Present." I myself am trying to get a post up before the deadline. If you get in under the wire, or have already written a post that you think fits the theme, submit it here. *The deadline for submission to the April installment of Scientiae, the women in science, engineering, technology, and math carnival, is March 29. The Candid Engineer is…

To the barricades in defence of Big Genetics

Over at Gene Expression, p-ter has a post up defending the "big genetics" approach, noting that large-scale hypothesis-free genetics studies have consistently yielded important results for follow-up detailed fine-scale studies. It's a sound argument. I've argued in the past that many of the fears expressed about Big Genetics are overblown: Will Big Genetics eventually swallow the entire field, as some critics of the Human Genome Project argued towards the end of the last millennium? I'd argue that this is unlikely, and that in fact the Big Genetics approach carries within it the seeds of…

Psychology Is Not Intuitive. k?

What is science? Fundamentally, science is a process of hypothesis-testing. Scientists observe phenomena, propose hypotheses to explain or account for some observed phenomenon, and design experiments to test those hypotheses. Then those or other scientists attempt to replicate the findings. In other words, science is performed in the following manner: 1. Define the question 2. Gather information and resources (observe) 3. Form hypothesis 4. Perform experiment and collect data 5. Analyze data 6. Interpret data and draw conclusions that serve as a starting point for new…

How to Turn $10 into $5,000 in Less Than One Month!

It is a feeling of unbelievable joy. We have all felt it, at one time or another. For me, it is at its most palpable in a concert or a sports event with tens of thousands of fans. Initially, everyone is milling about, chatting, texting, a thousand unconnected specks. Then there's a moment capturing everyone's attention - a touchdown, a band jamming with pure, raw energy - and, in an instant, everything changes. Those specks converge into a single, connected, joyous crowd. Differences, stress, arguments, angst, worries fade away. Social media has figured out how to harness this ineffable…

Death vs. Taxes During a Storm

Yesterday in Minnesota, 546 vehicles drove off the road and 461 vehicles crashed into something (often, another vehicle) due to storm conditions. In one of those incidents, a person died. In neighboring Wisconsin, there were over 400 crashes and two dead. If this was a disease epidemic over the same time period, it would be way worse than the H1N1 flu or the cholera epidemic currently hitting Haiti. Yes, yes, I get that this is a temporary short term phenomenon, but if we put all the stormy weather end to end in time it would be an event of a week or two duration (depending on the year).…

Baffling and ominous

Who needs expertise and knowledge? In the bold new world of the Teabagger Republicans, all you need is a sense of privilege and outrage, and you too are qualified to do rocket science and brain surgery…or, at least, to complain about rocket science and brain surgery. Here's the latest brilliant idea from a Republican congressman: the National Science Foundation provides easy access to their database of grant awards online, so let's sic a mob of uninformed, resentful, anti-science gomers loose on the field of already extensively vetted (by qualified people!) awards and have them seek out…

Digging up the dirt on Singer

The dirt, in this case, is that he was once fairly sensible. In particular, he edited two books published by D Reidel:Global effects of environmental pollution, 1970, which was the proceedings of a Symposium, organised by the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held in Dallas, Texas, December, 1968. ISBN 90-2777-0151-2 if you're interested; shelf-mark 334.2.c.95.254 south front 3, if you're in the UL. And The Changing Global Environment, 1975 (£55, paperback! Whew, the hardcover has a RRP of £100, but amazon offers it for £101 and is proud of the fact. Odd). ISBN…

Birds in the News 161

tags: Birds in the News, BirdNews, ornithology, birds, avian, newsletter Gray-crowned Rosy-Finch, Leucosticte tephrocotis, photographed at Meadows Campground, Hart's Pass, in the Okanagan of Washington State. Image: Lee Rentz, 19 October 2008. Birds in Science The unusually intact fossilized skull of a giant, bony-toothed seabird that lived up to 10 million years ago was found on Peru's arid southern coast, researchers said. The fossil is the best-preserved cranium ever found of a pelagornithid, a family of large seabirds believed to have gone extinct some 3 million years ago, said…

Irrationality and the False Morality of the Mortgage Contract

With Big Shitpile rolling on, there's been a lot of discussion about the ethics of defaulting on a home mortgage. Several people have commented on the hypocrisy of denigrating homeowners for doing the same thing that businesses do, without any moral qualms, so I won't say any more about that here. What I do find odd is the inappropriate personalization of who holds housing loans. This is a typical attitude: Tom Sobelman, whose family of four lives across the street from Ms. Richey, at 3127 Club Rancho Drive, sees mortgages as a moral as well as financial obligation. He's still paying the…

Ron Paul nuttiness on swine flu

For somebody so out to lunch on so many issues there is something undeniably likable about Ron Paul. As congressthings, he and Dennis Kucinich (there's an odd couple) had the clearest and best positions on the Iraq debacle. And as a principled libertarian (there seem to be some big chinks in Paul's libertarian armor -- like reproductive choice -- but his passion is undeniable), there is something admirable about him. It almost makes you forget his principles are self-centered, wrong-headed and inhumane. Little gnome-like figures aren't supposed to be that unfeeling toward others. Anti-science…