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The Outrageous Slings and Arrows of James Watson

tags: James Watson, racism, sexism, genetic engineering, seed media group, scienceblogs, Adam Bly James Watson, 1962 Nobel Prize winner for co-discovering the structure of DNA along with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins. Yesterday, Adam Bly, founder, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of Seed Media Group, was interviewed by Carol Goar for an editorial about the Canadian government's dismissal of its national science adviser, Arthur Carty. "Science is driving our global culture unlike ever before," Bly is cited as saying. "Now is not the time to send a signal -- domestically and internationally --…

...And Justice for All?

tags: The Constitution of the United States of America, DNA Evidence, criminal trials, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr, Supreme Court, William G. Osborne, justice, ethics Some days, I am ashamed to be an American. These past two days, I've been astonished and outraged -- and ashamed -- by yesterday's 5-4 Supreme Court decision that prisoners have no constitutional right to DNA testing that might prove their innocence. This decision was inspired by Alaska prison inmate William G. Osborne's petition to be allowed to undergo DNA testing -- at his own expense -- to establish whether he is…

Gordy Slack replies

Yesterday, I ripped into Gordy Slack and the NY Times for bad articles on creationism. Now Slack has responded, and in the interest of fairness, I urge you to look at that comment and browse down to several others he has also made. He's still wrong, and I still find his article incredibly bad. Slack's article is titled "What neo-creationists get right: an evolutionist shares lessons he's learned from the Intelligent Design camp". I chewed him out because nothing in his list is anything that creationists got right — it's a litany of common scientific arguments and complaints — and all he's…

Shocking move from Secretary Sebelius on Plan B

During the George W. Bush Administration, one of the prime examples of politics trumping science was the FDA's refusal to approve the emergency contraceptive Plan B (levonorgestrel) for over-the-counter sale without age restrictions. Now, during the Barack Obama Administration, history seems to be repeating itself. Emergency contraceptives like Plan B can dramatically reduce the risk of an unintended pregnancy if taken within 72 hours after unprotected intercourse, but their efficacy wanes the longer a woman has to wait to take the drug. If a woman has to wait to see a doctor to get a…

Protecting health by eliminating hazards: New APHA policy statements take proactive approach to preventing illness and injury

by Elizabeth Grossman At this year's American Public Health Association (APHA) annual meeting that took place in Denver November 7-11, the APHA's Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety sections proposed new policy statements that recommend proactive strategies for preventing illness and injury by reducing exposure to hazardous chemicals and through design that promotes workplace safety. All five policy statements presented at public hearings on November 7 have now been approved. Two additional policy proposals - one that addresses the public health impact of U.S immigration policy…

Study: U.S. Zika burden could cost billions in medical care, lost productivity

A Zika attack rate of just 1 percent across the six states most at risk for the mosquito-borne disease could result in $1.2 billion in medical costs and lost productivity, a new study finds. That’s more than the $1.1 billion in emergency Zika funding that Congress approved last year after months of delay and which is expected to run out this summer. “One of the troubling things last year was that (Zika funding) was viewed as a cost — every week, there was another delay and more people becoming infected and more chances of birth defects,” study co-author Bruce Y. Lee, an associate professor at…

Hurricanes, again

The kerfuffle over my intemperate denunciation of Chris Mooney refers. Check the comments. As CM observes, "There have now been eight Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes in the past five years (Isabel, Ivan, Emily, Katrina, Rita, Wilma, Dean, Felix); There have been two Atlantic Category 5s so far this year; only three other seasons have had more than one (1960, 1961, 2005); There have been eight Category 5 Atlantic hurricanes so far in the 2000s; no other decade has had so many. The closest runner up is the 1960s with six (Donna, Ethel, Carla, Hattie, Beulah, Camille)." I dislike the way CM is…

A Super-Sized Sister Solar System!

"It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small." -Neil Armstrong Here on our little wet rock in our Solar System, we often remind ourselves what a small world Earth actually is. The farther out in space we reach, the more this appears to be true. Image credit: NASA / Apollo 11, taken by Command module pilot Michael Collins. The Earth is the largest of the four inner, rocky planets in our Solar System, at more than 12,000 km in…

More on Matter vs. Antimatter

Yesterday, I wrote to you about part 5 of The Greatest Story Ever Told, about how the Universe came to have more matter than antimatter in it. And many of you correctly responded that I had given too much detail and not enough explanation. So, I want to try again for all of you. Here's the explanation, starting at the beginning. The Universe inflated first, stretching it flat and making it uniform, both everywhere in space and in all directions equally. Then inflation ended, and all the energy that was making it inflate got dumped into particles and radiation. This part, when inflation ended…

Dark Matter Part III: Dark Matter or Modified Gravity?

Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before. -Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven Gazing out into the dark abyss of the night sky, stars, galaxies, and clusters shine like tiny islands of light against the blackness of deep space. Trillions upon trillions of protons and neutrons fuse together in stars across the Universe, producing all of this light, and decorating the sky above. But, as we learned in part one of this series, the starlight that we see only accounts for 2% of all the matter that gravity tells us…

The LHC, Black Holes and You

Who is correct here? We don't know, you don't know, it is uncharted territory. Would you bet the entire human history and the existence of our solar system on it? I wouldn't. --from a user comment on my old website on the topic of the Large Hadron Collider Back when all the hype and hoopla concerning the LHC startup had people afraid that the Large Hadron Collider would create a black hole that would eat and destroy the Earth, I tried to quell some of these fears. At my old site, I wrote three articles explaining why the Earth was safe, and why -- even if the worst-case scenario came true…

Missouri's Christian State Bill

As I noted the other day, and as many other blogs have discussed, there is a bill in front of the Missouri state legislature with enormous church/state implications. It is House Concurrent Resolution 13 and it reads pretty much like something out of a David Barton pamphlet. I'm going to examine it line by line and point out some of the absurdities and misrepresentations found within it: Whereas, our forefathers of this great nation of the United States recognized a Christian God and used the principles afforded to us by Him as the founding principles of our nation... Both claims found here…

Still Disagreeing with Myers

PZ Myers has posted a follow up to his post on the Muslim caricatures, and while I think he's correct to say that some have caricatured his own position, I still think the uncaricatured position is problematic. Clearly, he is not arguing for Islamic radicalism, nor is he arguing that religion should never be satirized, nor is he arguing that the Danish newspaper should be forbidden from publishing such satire. To suggest otherwise is to argue against a straw man. But at the same time, it's a little difficult to flesh out exactly what his real position is. He clearly has a very distinct…

Once more with D'Souza

That recent D'Souza article is a rich vein of lunacy that I have to tap once more. D'Souza has additional tools to woo conservatives in his toolbox: how about the naturalistic fallacy? But if Christian anxiety is misplaced, conservatives are even further off the mark. That's because Darwin's theory actually supports conservative positions in all kinds of interesting ways. First, Darwin gives a dark and selfish view of human nature, which is why we need a tough foreign policy to deal with bad guys who cannot be talked out of their badness--even if U.N. cocktails are served. In addition, the…

Mimicry

Mimicry is when one species has changed over time via Natural Selection to look like another species. Three commonly defined forms of mimicry are: Batesian mimicry, named after Henry Walter Bates, a 19th century Natural Historian, where one species is poisonous or otherwise dangerous to a predator, and another species takes evolutionary advantage of that by looking like it but not actually being poisonous; Müllerian mimicry, named after Fritz Müller who worked at about the same time as Bates, where two species that are poisonous or otherwise bad for predators evolve to look like each other…

Gilder: still wailing over his spanking

Oh, come on, Boston Globe. They tip-toed around, avoiding naming me or the weblog, but I think everyone here can figure out what they're talking about. Yet even Gilder, seemingly a lightning rod for the socioeconomic controversy of the moment, was blistered by the comments posted on a University of Minnesota biologist's weblog last fall, language so heated Gilder's daughter felt obliged to rush to his defense. Awww. Poor baby. They could have at least mentioned the site url! Here's the article that made George Gilder cry: The Sanctimonious Bombast of George Gilder. It's too bad they didn't…

The Fukushima Alternative

On March 11th, 2011, a large earthquake caused a large tsunami in Japan, and the two historic events wrecked the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The power plant had six boiling water reactors of the kind used around the world in many nuclear power plants. Three of the six reactors suffered a meltdown, and containment structures meant to contain a meltdown were also breached. This is regarded as one of the worst nuclear disasters to ever happen, possibly the worst of all, though comparing major nuclear disasters to each other is hard for a number of reasons. As you know if you are a…

OMFG KILLER FLU WARBLEGARBLE TERRORISM AAAAAAAAAH!!!

There has been a 'fun' story going around the scientific and pop-culture media circles for the past couple of months. Apparently, a couple of labs worked together to make a 'bird flu' a 'mammal/people flu', and somehow terrorists are going to use this information to kill everyone on planet earth, and this research must be stopped or kept a secret and buried at the bottom of the ocean in a lead box or something (thats why James Cameron went to the bottom of the ocean, right?). Ugh. *sigh* Where to start-- Okay, there are different kinds of influenza. Bird flu, swine flu, people flu-- Part of…

Donald trump, ha ha ha

Tired of tossers6, I seem to be having a ha ha ha series. And it's time for a two-month review of my brilliantly prescient Trump predictions. Except not really, because it's too early, but I think the failure of his repeal of Obamacare is a good time to take stock, without breaking my resolution to not post too much politics too often2. [Picture: us at The Bridge at Clayhithe7. We were supposed to be going to HoRR but it was cancelled due to bad weather... as you can see.] There are many people going "nya nya" to Trump; here's one in The Atlantic from the Republican viewpoint. Since repeal…

How to Teach Relativity to Your Four-Year Old

SCENE: The library at Chateau Steelypips. DADDY is typing on the computer, while THE PIP plays on the floor. Enter STEELYKID. STEELYKID: I'm already four years old. DADDY: Yes, yes you are. THE PIP: Thbbbbbbbpppt! STEELYKID: How old is The Pip? DADDY: Eleven months. Not quite one year. STEELYKID: When The Pip is four, how old will I be? DADDY: You'll be seven. STEELYKID: And when he's seven, how old will I be? DADDY: You'll be ten. THE PIP: (pulls himself to a standing position) GA BA DA BA Phbbbbt! (falls down) STEELYKID: Daddy, how old are you? DADDY: I'm forty-one. STEELYKID: And when I'm…

Space Chronicles by Neil deGrasse Tyson

I was tremendously disappointed and frustrated by this book. This is largely my own fault, because I went into it expecting it to be something it's not. Had I read the description more carefully, I might not have had such a strong negative reaction (which was exacerbated by some outside stress when I first started reading it, so I put it aside for a few weeks, until I was less mad in general, and more likely to give it a fair reading). I'm actually somewhat hesitant to write this up at all, for a number of reasons, but after thinking it over a bit, I think I have sensible reasons for being…

Energy and Climate Change committee: new inquiry: IPCC 5th Assessment Review

So, da UK Energy and Climate Change committee is having an "inquiry" into IPCC 5th Assessment Review. I'm not sure why. This will be a review of a review, which could itself be reviewed, which will end in endless regress? More likely it will fizzle away into nothing. Myles Allen appears to be suggesting that the ctte are bozos (not in so many words, of course. That would be unparliamentary. Instead, he says things like the thrust of the committee’s questions does raise concerns that the committee has allowed itself to be misled in this regard or As an aside, it seems strange to ask about the…

Sanchez on California Gay Marriage Ruling

Julian Sanchez, the always incisive assistant editor at Reason magazine, has an interesting article about yesterday's California Superior Court ruling that struck down the state's ban on gay marriage as forbidden by that state's constitution. He points out something interesting about the judge's ruling: But perhaps the most interesting part of Judge Kramer's opinion has received surprisingly little attention. Kramer applied the lowest level of judicial scrutiny when he considered whether marriage discrimination was rationally related to any legitimate state purpose. In this, he followed the…

Storm World

Back when I was a youngling, I read a very exciting series of science-fiction novels called The Deathworld Trilogy, by Harry Harrison. The premise was that there was this horrifically fierce planet in the galaxy, with gravity twice Earth-normal, constantly erupting volcanoes, and savage, ravenous beasts that were out to destroy anything that moves. The humans who settled there became heavily muscled with lightning-fast reflexes and a militaristic society that provided some of the best soldiers in the universe. Now that is the setting for old-school science-fiction. The genre isn't dead! I…

Thoughts on the Second Debate

Well, I managed to stay up and watch the whole thing. Here are my thoughts on it: First, it needs to be said that the only thing that matters is how the undecided voters viewed it. The polls are showing a consistent dead heat 3 weeks before the election, with about 10% undecided. Those are the people who will decide the election and the debates will be a big part of making up their minds, for better or worse. In most cases, it won't be the answers given that sways them, it will more likely be just a vague feeling they have about the two candidates that makes them feel more comfortable having…

Sandefur on Lincoln and the Confederacy

Reacting to my post yesterday about Lincoln suspending habeas corpus and trying to arrest Chief Justice Roger Taney, Timothy Sandefur writes: Still, I can't help but wonder why there's always so much talk about Lincoln's or the Union's violations of civil rights during wartime. (Often examples are given which were not done on Lincoln's orders or even with his permission, but by generals in the field, whose orders were sometimes overruled by Lincoln.) You rarely see an article talking about how the Confederacy violated people's rights to dissent and so forth. Why is that? Now, perhaps it…

Euler's Solution to the Basel Problem

I'm in the mood for some math today, so here's an amusing little proof I recently showed to my History of Mathematics class. We shall derive the formula \[ \frac{\pi^2}{6}=1+\frac{1}{4}+\frac{1}{9}+\frac{1}{16}+\frac{1}{25}+\dots \] Note that the denominators of the fractions on the right are all perfect squares. The problem of evaluating the sum on the right has a pedigree going back to the 1600s, when various mathematicians, including the famed Bernoullis, tried unsuccessfully to solve it. It was Leonhard Euler who polished it off at the age of 28 in 1735, thereby announcing himself as…

HIV-1, HIV Denial, and boxing: Round 2

So I was just alerted by a reader that the Montreal Gazette just published a rebuttal to the HIV Denial POS they published a few days ago. Dr. Norbert Gilmore takes an angle I like: Practicality. We deal with it all the time with wooers-- its easy for HIV Deniers or Creationists or anti-vaxers to say something stupid, but its infinitely more time consuming for scientists to respond to the falsehoods. An easy short-cut for us is practicality. I use it when dealing with Creationists, specifically. "Fine. Lets grant the premise that everything scientists say about evolution is a lie. Why does…

Egnor on Paleoneurology

So far I haven't been participating in the anti-Egnor festivities. For those who don't know, Michael Egnor is a medical doctor who lately has become the flavor of the month over at the Discovery Institute's Blog. They get very excited, you see, when someone with actual credentials can be found to parrot their talking points. In Egnor's case he's harping the meme that doctors don't need to know anything about evolution. Since I know next to nothing about medical practice I've been content to allow bloggers more qualified than I explain the numerous ways in which Egnor is confused. For a…

Pre-Tenure and Post-Hoc

I had a couple of conversations at DAMOP last week about career issues, and I just want to note that I will never get used to the idea that I'm a respected elder anything, whose advice would be valued. I basically feel like I lucked into my whole career, so I hesitate to advise others as to what they should do. But then, there's a huge element of luck in any tenure-track career, given the tiny ratio of jobs to candidates. One thing that came up was, of course, the question of how it is I run a blog, which connects to the larger question of work-life balance. One of the people I spoke to…

This is All Dawkins's Fault!

My friends, there are certian times in your life when you are simply forced by events to reevaluate everything you believe and hold dear. For me, now is such a time. I have argued at length that the aggressive tone of the anti-religion books by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens does not hurt the cause of promoting good science education. That position is no longer tenable, in light of events coming out of Sedalia, Missouri: The shirts, which were designed to promote the band's fall program, are light gray and feature an image of a monkey progressing through stages and…

Baggini on Atheism

Via P.Z. Myers I came across this article by Julian Baggini. Baggini is the editor of The Philosopher's Magazine and the author of Atheism: A Very Short Introduction. The essay is rather weird. It begins with the standard brain-dead boiler-plate about how Dawkins et al are just too darn mean in their attacks against religion: When I threw off my Christianity, I did not throw out my Bible, I just learned to read it properly. Intelligent atheism rejects what is false in religion, but should retain an interest in what is true about it. I don't think many of my fellow atheists would disagree…

Roller Coaster Pregnancy

Thanks again to all the people who left congratulations and well-wishes on last week's ultrasound picture post. The positive thoughts are much appreciated, especially since it's been a bit of a roller-coaster here in Chateau Steelypips. As you can guess from the fact that the ultrasound looks fairly baby-ish, we've known about this for quite a while-- that's an 18-week ultrasound, and we told our parents about the pregnancy at Christmas. Things took a somewhat unpleasant turn in early January, though-- all appears to be well now, but there were a couple of really unpleasant weeks in there. In…

Sol Snyder on Finding God in the Brain

The first 2008 issue of New England Journal of Medicine came yesterday in the snailmail box and I read the following story with such great interest that I nearly walked into a tree. Bear with me but the news lately has taken me on a neuroscience streak without my having specific professional expertise in the area. The famed Johns Hopkins neuroscientist, Solomon H. Snyder, MD, DSc, has a commentary entitled, "Seeking God in the Brain - Efforts to Localize Higher Brain Function" (currently available as free full text). The commentary was very loosely directed at a study elsewhere in the issue…

Snake proteins have gone through massive evolutionary redesign

The era of genetic sequencing has revealed as much about the ties that bind us to other animals as the differences that set us apart. Often, comparing the genomes of different species shows that large changes in body size, shape and form are not mirrored by similar changes at a genetic level. New adaptations typically come about through small changes that redeploy existing genes to different ends, rather than raw innovation. Snakes are an exception. A new study by Todd Castoe and Zhi Jiang at the University of Colorado has shown that the lifestyle of serpents is so unique that some…

The Theory of Theory

I recently learned about a great blog by S.C. Kavassalis of the University of Toronto called The Language of Bad Physics. She discusses, among other things, the way language is used in physics. She's got an interesting piece on the use of the word "theory". This is always a hot area of discussion, but in physics it has particular resonance because so many non-physicists like to come up with their own "theories" about how nature might work. I put "theory" in scare quotes not because amateurs can't make contributions to physics - they can and do - but because there's a heck of a lot of cranks…

Physics in Star Trek

I've never been much of a Star Trek fan. But given the subculture of nerdery in which I've been proud to spend much of my life, I've managed to pick up a fairly tremendous amount of the lore by osmosis. I've seen a pretty good percentage of the original series as well as the two good films (II and VI) and though I actively dislike The Next Generation I can appreciate the fact of its cultural significance. And so it was with some interest that I saw a preview photo a number of months ago: Blarg, thought I, Kirk looks like a obnoxious frat boy and Spock's hair somehow manages to evoke Jim…

Can geoengineering reverse "irreversible" climate change?

So a fair degree of warming is inevitable, eh? That's the conclusion of a PNAS paper making the rounds this week. (I wrote about it yesterday.) But just how "irreversible" are the coming changes? As Arthur C. Clarke said, "When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." The answer can be found in the same PNAS paper, in which the authors qualify their outlook for the next millennium by noting that "we do not consider geo-engineering measures that might be able to remove gases already in the atmosphere or to introduce active cooling to counteract warming." In one of…

Return of the Howlers

Apologies for the long radio silence. Travelling and the obligatory pre-travelling frenzy shut down the blogging assembly line for a couple weeks. Having wrapped up my west-coast jaunt (thanks to the great crowd that came out for the CSPAN taping at Stanford), I can write a bit about some of the new science that has caught my eye. Crouching on top on the pile are howler monkeys. Howlers have become frequent visitors to the Loom, much to my surprise. For some reason they've recently started to have a lot to say about evolution--particularly, as odd as it may seem, about the evolution of our…

Ted Koppell & Co. on Why Obama's Faith Based Strategy Makes a Lot of Sense

On Sunday, Discovery Channel's Ted Koppell returned to his old network home to appear on ABC News This Week. Koppell was on the round table panel in part to promote his fascinating new five part series "The Republic of Capitalism," which airs starting Wed. night at 10pm EST. Also appearing on the panel were Mark Halperin of "Time" magazine, Jonathan Capehart of 'The Washington Post" and Michelle Cottle of 'The New Republic." Among the topics discussed was Barack Obama's faith-based strategy, specifically his announcement last week that he would continue to support federal funding for social…

WaPo spouts some hooey about sex differences

Conventional wisdom + bigger microphone = excellent journalism! High fives all-around for Charlotte Allen who repackages conventional wisdom about sex differences to a degree rarely attained by print journalists. My favorite part: Depressing as it is, several of the supposed misogynist myths about female inferiority have been proven true. Women really are worse drivers than men, for example. A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men's 5.1, even though men…

NYTimes on Evo-Devo

The NYTimes has a excellent summary of the progress in the study of evolution of development (evo-devo). Scientists have been surprised to discover over the years that a relatively small number of closely-related genes control the body plan of animal species, even when those species' body plans differ dramatically. Apparently these same genes are being applied in diverse ways to organize very different body plans. An example of one of the genes that organizes development is BMP4: What Dr. Tabin and colleagues found, when looking at the range of beak shapes and sizes across different finch…

Touch influences social judgements and decisions

APPLYING for a job? The weight of the clipboard to which your CV is attached may influence your chances of getting it. Negotiating a deal? Sitting in a hard chair may lead you to drive a harder bargain. Those are two of the surprising conclusions of a study published in today's issue of Science, which shows that the physical properties of objects we touch can unconsciously influence our first impressions of other people and the decisions we make about them. Josh Ackerman of the Sloan School of Management at MIT, and psychologists Chris Nocera and John Bargh of Harvard and Yale Universities,…

Pesticide-induced dysfunction of dopaminergic neurons

Shelley mentioned a study last week that suggested more and more young people are getting Parkinson's Disease, and she wondered whether there was any utility in blaming our industrialized society based on the fact that certain compounds we produce can induce Parkinsonian symptoms. Let's start by giving a brief overview of the systems involved before we attempt to answer that question. The substantia nigra contains a collection of dopaminergic neurons that project to the striatum. Integrity of this pathway is essential for normal motor function, although this nigrostriatal system is capable…

Nonspatial, nonmotoric functions of the parietal lobe

Much has been written about the nonspatial functions of the parietal lobe, but these nonspatial functions are rarely evaluated as to whether they are also nonmotoric or reflect some covert form of spatial attention. Establishing whether the parietal lobe has truly nonmotoric and nonspatial functions is essential for understanding why parietal cortex appears to be involved in so many different tasks. Here I've attempted to evaluate whether the parietal lobe truly has nonspatial, and perhaps also nonmotoric functions by reviewing the relevant literature... Magnitude processing - the size…

Obama Refuses to Sign International Ban on Landmines

What do the following countries have in common? Bahrain, Burma, China, Iran, Libya, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan If your answer is that they're some of the most corrupt, authoritarian nations in the world you'd be correct. If you associated them with significant human rights abuses, you would also be spot on. If you learned that they also reject the international convention that bans landmines, chances are you would not be surprised. Joining them, however, is none other than the United States. In a recent press conference, State…

The humble index

I'd like to start our tour of book and library information-management techniques with a glance at the humble back-of-book index. I started the USDA's excellent indexing course back in the day, and while it became clear fairly quickly that I do not have the chops to be a good indexer and so I never finished the course, I surely learned to respect those who do have indexing chops. It's not an easy job. Go find a book with an index and flip through it. Seriously, go ahead. I'll wait. Just bask in the lovely indentedness and order of it all. Now answer me a question: Should Google be calling that…

The Bonding Brain

Primate sociality is linked to brain networks for pair bonds. Social conservatives are fond of linking morality with monogamy and will be quick to condemn the moral crimes of adulterous felatio while ignoring the moral crimes of cutting social programs for poor mothers. However, in a bizarre twist, research suggests that morality and monogamy are closely intertwined, though it's doubtful many conservatives will champion the reasons why. In the journal Science Robin Dunbar revisits the question with a unique perspective as to why some species (including humans) succeed so well as members of…

Exploring Oahu: Camping Kouli'ou'ou

The Kuli'ou'ou ridge trail is one of my favorites on Oahu. It's a 2.5 mile trek that ascends roughly 1700 ft to the top of the Ko'olau mountains which cut eastern Oahu in half. I've done this hike a number of times, and each time I'm amazed by the stunning views. So, of course, when we learned that camping permits were available for this ridge and its surrounding trail system, Barry and I simply couldn't resist. We decided to take it easy on ourselves the first night. I stepped on the trail with 30 lbs of gear strapped to my back, so I was in no hurry to the top. About 1/2 way up, there is a…

Partisan, yes. Hack, no.

Representative Dave Weldon (R-FL) recently issued a press release that has been getting a little bit of play at a couple of blogs on the political right. In the press release, Weldon accuses Democrats of taking money from NASA to fund other projects, including AIDS relief for Africa: "The raid on NASA's budget has begun in earnest. The cuts announced today by House Democrat leaders, if approved by Congress, would be nearly $400 million less than NASA's current budget," said Weldon. "Clearly, the new Democrat leadership in the House isn't interested in space exploration. Their omnibus proposal…