Search Content

Displaying results 201 - 250 of 895

A Labor Day tradition: Sixth annual yearbook on worker health and safety released today

For the sixth year in a row, we present “The Year in U.S. Occupational Health & Safety,” our attempt to document the year’s highs and lows as well as the challenges ahead. Like previous editions, the 2017 yearbook highlights policies, appointments and activities at the federal, state and local levels; outstanding news reporting on workers’ rights, safety and health; and the latest research from public health agencies and worker groups on the ground. Of course, you can’t ignore the giant elephant (no pun intended) in the room in 2017 — a new president and a Republican-controlled Congress…

Life's a riot with JA vs JA

"I am the milkman of human kindness, I will leave an extra pint". But not today; try Dover beach if you want me being nice. In this strange shadowy incestuous world of the blogosphere, it is hard sometimes to remember that there's an outside world, and even otherwise well-informed and intelligent people find the banter somewhat confusing. In this case the offending item is a tweet of mine, and I keep forgetting that Twitter forwards my tweets to fb, where people not in the know may actually read them. And the offending words are: This definitely wins tweet of the month, and quite possibly of…

Scott Adams is a tosser, part 2

Scott Adams is suddenly interested in global warming. Why? It isn't a new issue and he doesn't really have anything new to say about it. I think the answer is that he has become a Trump fanboi and is running cover for Trump; or is still over-obsessed by his own perspicacity; or perhaps it is just a momentary interest. Or like covfefe we may never know. Aanyway, having cartooned it once - and not again, and my patience is now exhausted - he's blogged it a bit, and has finally said something sensible1. Or at least, sensible compared to the rest. And since it is close to one of my hobby horses…

A proportionate response to Trump’s climate plans?

An interesting article by Chris Hope (a climate change policy researcher, PAGE model developer, and faculty member at Cambridge Judge Business School, interested in environment and energy; archive) of - oh dear - Arctic methane ‘time bomb’ could have huge economic costs fame. But never mind that. CH looks at Sarkozy's mooted plans to levy a "carbon tax" on US goods if trump leads the US out of the Paris agreement. Tol, in the comments, correctly points out that France couldn't do this alone: it would have to be EU-wide. Never mind, pretend its a EU wide plan. Tol, in the comments, points out…

Sully is Fiction

Kevin Drum has a short post noting that Trump has taught other Republican politicians how to lie more brazenly. Politicians have never been noted for their honesty, but we are seeing something new this time around. It is very aggravating that Trump simply makes it up as he goes along, while Clinton is the one endlessly on the defensive about her honesty. Relax, this is not going to be another election post. Instead I want to direct your attention to this article, from Slate. Compared to the daily calumnies emanating from our freak-show election, it is extremely small potatoes. And yet…

Who Will Win The Iowa Caucus?

The answer: One Republican and One Democrat/Independent. The Iowa Caucus is pretty much up for grabs in both parties. Over recent days, a clear Trump lead has been erased, and Cruz is now ahead in recent polls. Over roughly the same period, a clear Clinton lead has been erased, and Sanders is now ahead in recent polls. FiveThirtyEight (Nate Silver) is still predicting a Clinton victory for the Dems, but a Cruz victory for the GOPs. The Clinton victory prediction is of high confidence, while the Cruz prediction is not, and Trump is close behind. One way to look at the polls is to track…

Happy Labor Day. Who's Not Doing Their Job?

Laborers generally do their jobs, because if they don't they get fired. But there are entire professions where people are not doing their jobs and the rest of us suffer. Jacob Wetterling was abducted and murdered two and a half decades ago. The guy who did it was known to the cops then, and he had done things like this before, and those thinks were known about. There are all kinds of reasons they should have busted him even before Jacob was murdered, but they weren't doing their job. Turns out that when you look across the country and across decades, you can find FAR more examples of cops…

Trump, Perry, Energy, Climate, #Sad

Two items I know you'll want to check out. The ‘intellectual’ debate Rick Perry says he wants is already over Last week, Energy Secretary Rick Perry told CNBC he considers his skepticism towards climate data to be a sign of a “wise, intellectually engaged person.” Yesterday, at a press briefing at the White House – it’s apparently supposed to be “Energy Week” – Perry used similar phrasing, calling for “an intellectual conversation” on global warming. Four myths journalists should watch out for during Trump’s “Energy Week” The White House has declared this to be "Energy Week" and is pushing…

Trump Tweet Eight Year Old Script Browser Plugin from the Daily Show

Just a pointer to this fantastic, big league idea to convert Trump's tweets into eight year old script.

The Norms of Society and Presidential Executive Orders UPDATE

A brief update: This morning, Senate Republicans set aside the rules that say that both parties must be present, with at least one member, for a committee vote to advance a Presidential nominee for a cabinet appointment. In other words, as outlined below, our system is based not only on enforceable laws but also on rules that only work if everyone involves agrees to not be the bully on the playground who ignores the rules. The Republicans are the bully on the playground. The system requires honest actor playing by agreed on rules. So, without the honest actor, you get this. This fits…

Next up on the Trump crazy train: A man who thinks that a "Yelp for drugs" will do a better job than the FDA

One of the most important, if not the most important, officials in the federal government responsible for applying science-based medicine to the regulation of medicine is the FDA Commissioner. As you might imagine, particularly after his having met with antivaccinationists like Andrew Wakefield and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., I am concerned, and I think I have good reason to be, about Donald Trump's plans for the FDA. After all, consider the people who have been under consideration for the post thus far (that we know of). First, there was Jim O'Neill, a flunky of Silicon Valley venture capitalist…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At ProPublica, Michael Grabell investigates how U.S. companies take advantage of immigrant workers, focusing on Case Farms poultry plants, which former OSHA chief David Michaels once described as “an outrageously dangerous place to work.” He reports that Case Farms built its business by recruiting some of the world’s most vulnerable immigrants, who often end up working in the kind of dangerous and abusive conditions that few Americans would put up with. Grabell chronicles the history of Case Farms and how it first began recruiting refugees from Guatemala who were fleeing a brutal civil war in…

Spread the word: Affordable Care Act enrollment open until Jan. 31

We’re just a humble little public health blog. But we can still do our part. If you or someone you know need help getting health insurance coverage before next week’s enrollment deadline on Jan. 31, here are some good resources. First, why do this? Because this week, the Trump administration abruptly canceled advertising and outreach scheduled to run during this final week of Affordable Care Act enrollment. Apparently, he even pulled ads that were already paid for. But, you can still enroll. According to Paul Demko at Politico: (The Trump administration) is also halting all media outreach…

Myron Ebell and Wikipedia

In Myron Ebell, Evil Arch Climate Uber Villain I touched on his wiki entry which is as of now rather better. Naturally, I'd like to claim to have been the impetus for all that but I rather doubt it. A largeish blob of critical stuff got ripped out but it soon went back. More interestingly, someone tried to supply my "{{cn}}" for "In 2001, Ebell stated his belief that global warming is a hoax perpetrated by the [[European Union]] and the rest of the world to harm America's economy", although in the process they felt obliged to change it to "Ebell has stated his belief that global warming is a…

Bernie Sanders on the Anti-Clinton Protests

Bernie does not want his people to disrupt speeches. He's OK with outside protests. He wants to do everything he can to stop Trump.

Donald Trump gets his comeuppance on vaccines and autism...

...and he gets it right here. If only someone with some sanity could actually sit down with Trump, as portrayed in the post above.

Trump’s budget is a disaster for public health: ‘If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu’

When you ask public health advocates about President Trump’s recent budget proposal, you typically get a bewildered pause. Public health people don’t like to exaggerate — they follow the science, they stay calm, they face off against dangerous threats on a regular basis. Exaggerating doesn’t help contain diseases, it only makes it harder. So it’s concerning when you hear words like this about Trump’s budget: “devastating,” “not serious,” “ludicrous,” “unfathomable.” Released in late May, Trump’s fiscal year 2018 federal budget proposal calls for cutting the budget at the Centers for Disease…

How do we resist the rising tide of antiscience and pseudoscience?

The impetus for the creation of this blog, lo these 12+ years ago, was growing alarm at the rising tide of pseudoscience then, such as quackery, antivaccine misinformation, creationism, Holocaust denial, and many other forms of attacks on science, history, and reality itself. I had cut my teeth on deconstructing such antiscience and pseudoscience on Usenet, that vast, unfiltered, poorly organized mass of discussion forums that had been big in the 1990s but were dying by 12 years ago, having turned into a mass of spam, trolls, and incoherence. So I wanted to do my little part (and I'm under no…

Myers: Irma, Trump, Climate Change

Ya don't know, you just don't know. Note: I'm pretty sure that at the time Trump made those remarks, the Coast Guard was still hunkered down.

Hypothesis: Trump does not hurt his fellow Republicans in elections, and most Democrats don't care.

Everybody is all upset about Trump and his Republicans, but in truth, that seems to matter little. Here in Minnesota we had a local house district open, there was a special election, and the Democrats didn't even try to win it, apparently. So they lost it. It was probably winnable. Same with GA-06. This is one of four seats opening up because of Trump appointments. Will the Democrats try to win these seats? Of course not. The Democratic Party does not seem to care that the Republicans are in charge, and will not fight them vigorously. The official word from the DCCC is "... we have to…

Science Questions for the Candidates

ScienceDebate.org is an organization that, for years now, has been pushing to get the candidates running for President of the United States to engage in a debate over science policy, just as they debate foreign policy, or economic policy, etc. And, ScienceDebate.org has had some success. Some of the candidates, at the primary level, have engaged in such a debate, and at the national level, some of the candidates have contributed written answers to citizen-generated questions about science policy. And now, they've done it again. The four main candidates (two actual main candidates and two…

#TheFirstMonday Movement: How to stop Trump right now

Secretary Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. The way the current Electoral College works, Trump won the Electoral Vote. However, from the point of view of Federal Law, he didn't win anything yet. The Electors who gather in each state, with each state's Secretary of State, to vote on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December are not bound by Federal rule to vote for Trump. They could cast their vote for Clinton. Those organizing protests may want to consider having some of those protests at the Secretary of State's office, with the idea of having a very large protest on the…

The Art of the Deal

The Art of the Deal isn't just a book by Donald Trump any more. It is American fiscal and foreign policy. We haven't even started yet, and we've started. This is embarassing.

Botanical Wednesday: Signs of the end times

In honor of the nomination of Donald Trump, the corpse flowers are blooming all across the country. It's actually a blessing; the stench of rotting flesh obscures the reek of the putrescence rising from the Republican party.

Hitler, Assad, Trump, Spicer, Godwin, Sarin, Zyklon B, Chemical Weapon, Termites

Why Hitler is Different Hitler is not entirely different from Pol Pot, Stalin, and the other mass killers. He is not entirely different from other fascists. But there is a short list of people, with Hitler on that list, who have this characteristic: They were so bad that we can not and should not compare their badness to each other outside of certain limited academic contexts, and they were so bad that any comparison made between them and their works to anyone not on that list, or to their works, threatens to devalue their badness. We can not devalue the evil of Hitler or his kind.…

Worth reading: "Sabotage, speed and secrecy"

Because there’s so much at stake as the Senate considers the American Health Care Act, here are some important articles on healthcare legislation: Andy Slavitt in the Washington Post: The Senate’s three tools on health care: Sabotage, speed and secrecy Dylan Scott at Vox: Senate Republicans are closer to repealing Obamacare than you think Elena Marks in the Houston Chronicle: The American Health Care Act: a civic and moral failure Vann R. Newkirk II in The Atlantic: How the American Health Care Act Would Affect Mental-Health Coverage Emma Sandoe at her personal blog: How the HIV outbreak in…

Sad to be an American, grieving for Mother Earth and her people

The text came in from my husband: "Canada is going to be getting warmer all the time." That was his way of telling me today's news that President Trump is pulling out of the historic, global climate change agreement.  It makes me sad and brings to mind the words of Pope Francis in his encyclical letter "On Care for Our Common Home": "Reducing greenhouse gases requires honesty, courage and responsibility, above all on the part of those countries which are more powerful and pollute the most." Leadership "...is manifest when, in difficult times, we uphold high principles and think of the long-…

Reading the Special Election Tea Leaves

There are special elections all the time, mostly at the state level. The news is full of the Moore vs. Strange race, which isn't just strange because Strange is in it. You all know about that. But what you may not know about is the interesting victory, also yesterday, of Kari Lerner in New Hampshire. New Hampshire politics are above-average complex at the state level, so I won't dwell on context. But this is a New Hampshire state house race in a district normally held by Republicans. Lerner is a centrist Democrat. She won 39 votes, and a third party candidate, a Libertarian, won by 41. So…

Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges

Or, The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government3. From Tacitus, Annals. I wanted to say something about the Trump victory over Hillary2. I find that writing down what I actually want to say is difficult, because my thoughts are not entirely clear on the matter. But - searching for a latin proverb about the weather, since today's Fours Head looks to be rather damp1 - I ran across this, which whilst not covering in breadth everything that needs to be said, does I think have depth. Coming soon: what Hayek and Hobbes have to say on Brexit, and funny quotes from the Times. Notes 1…

Donald Trump on Sesame Street

As I've pointed out before, New Yorkers have been dealing with Donald Trump for a very long time. Chris Hayes, on All In, came up with some great examples, the last one of which is ... well, just watch:

Reading Around Trump Induced Depression

This is not a time to be distracted, to turn away from politics, to eschew activism. In fact, if you are an American Citizen, you have to look back at your life and recognize that you screwed up, in two ways. First, whatever time you spent agitating and activating and acting out, turns out, was not enough. You needed to spend something like 10% more time on that. Second, whatever decisions you made as to exactly what sort of activism you would do on a given day were likely flawed. Instead of yammering about Bernie after the primary you should have been going after Trump. At the beginning of…

This is what racism looks like

Trigger warning: This post contains several images of racist or similar messages found through history and throughout the world, including a handul from the US over the last few weeks. These are provided as documentation to go along with the text of this blog post and to inform the reader of the nature of these messages. Most of the images are from mainstream media and are regarded as genuine. If you feel any are not, indicate so in the comments if you like. An antisemitic graffiti in Lithuania. I am a scientist who studies race and racism and related topics. This includes the critique…

Trump’s Plan to Eliminate NASA Climate Research Is Ill-Informed and Dangerous?

Ah, excellent. I was looking for a post to hang my musings off, and Phil Plait's rant is a splendid peg. Not only that, but via fb I find this charming astronomer fox in Discarding Images; it is clear that the stars have aligned so I'll proceed. PP is not just sad but outraged that In an interview with the Guardian, Bob Walker, a senior Trump adviser, said that Trump will eliminate NASA’s Earth science research. This is the mission directorate of NASA that, among other important issues, studies climate change and so on. And if you read the Graun's headline Trump to scrap Nasa climate…

Changing the racist mind after Trump

Question: How do we wipe out racism by making racists not be so racist? Answer: We don't. We do something else that actually works. The expanding Trump-fueled conversation about racism It has been absolutely fascinating to observe myriad conversations reacting to the Trump electoral win. All the usual suspects are engaged, but also, many others who had previously been little involved, or not at all involved, in the national political conversation, are saying things. And along with this has come a certain amount of method or concern questioning. I won't call it trolling because only some…

Future Farms Will Be Run By Robots

I have a love-hate relationship with farmers. I have a great deal of respect for the enterprise and for those who dedicate their lives to it. But, I also become annoyed at the culture in which modern American farming embeds itself. And, I don't feel a lot of reticence talking openly about that. Having done plenty of farming myself, I don't feel the need that so many others do to be extra nice to farmers out of lack of understanding. I know when the farmers complain about too little or too much rain, they are studiously ignoring the fact that if it is harder to plant or harvest, they make out…

Grim trend in fatal injuries to U.S. coal miners

The first six months of the Trump administration has been particularly deadly for coal miners. Nine workers at U.S. coal mines have been fatally injured in the first six months of 2017. Five of the nine deaths occurred in West Virginia. In all of 2016, eight workers were killed on the job at U.S. coal mines. Some might want to attribute the increased number of coal mine deaths to President Trump's anti-regulatory agenda and more business friendly policies particularly for the coal industry. I don't know that to be the case. As far as I know, there are not any Trump officials micromanaging the…

Clinton-Trump Gap in Key States

As you know, there is interest in doing a recount for the presidential balloting in three key states. The chance that a recount in these three states would change Trump's win (290 to 232 electoral votes) is small. But, it is possible that a recount could demonstrate irregularities that should be addressed. Also, there is the possibility again small, of so-called "faithless electors" giving Trump a pass. If something like that happens, from Clinton's perspective, it would be nice if even one of these states flipped (most likely Wisconsin). So, to keep track of the numbers, here are the…

The Hammer of God

No, this is not a religious reference to Houston or even Trump. This is, however, a notice that the sci fi classic by Arthur Clarke, The Hammer of God , is suddenly, and I assume temporarily, available for two bucks in Kindle version. Just thought you'd want to know.

On the Eve of GOP Debate, Only Two Candidates Matter

There will be a third GOP debate on Wednesday night. If you don't have the right cable or satellite subscription, apparently, you are not welcome to attend. (Correct me if I'm wrong, in the comments section below.) But who cares, really? It will be a low information event. The debate will be split into two parts, lower and higher ranking candidates separately, but the debate involving the higher ranking candidates will include more of them, and only two have anything close to poll numbers that matter. Not that polls are everything, but if you are a candidate that has failed to break 10%…

The Electoral Map: Clinton Vs. Trump

Above is my latest electoral college projection. This uses the technique previously described. However, instead of using RCP averages for all polled states and then using extreme (non-tossup) states to develop the regression model, this method uses only polling from states with one or more recent poll, and only with good polls. these poll numbers are then "predicted" by black/hispanic/white/Voted_Romney numbers, and that generates a model, based on just over 20 states, designed to predict all the states. As expected, the r-squared value is much lower using this method, but this method does…

The Onion Sums Up the Trump Campaign

This is perfect: The latest polls are out, and just as I predicted, I'm leading the Republican presidential race by a wide margin. You might be wondering how that could be. After all, it's hardly been a month since I entered the field and I've already alienated America’s largest immigrant population, seen dozens of my high-profile business deals implode one after the other, and publicly insulted a national hero’s military service, all while not offering a single viable policy idea. But none of that matters at all, and my candidacy continues to surge forward, because none of you—not a single…

Occupational Health News Roundup

At the Atlantic Monthly, Alana Semuels interviews David Weil, who served as administrator of the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division under President Obama, on his time at DOL and the future of labor under Trump. On Obama’s effect, Weil told Semuels: Semuels: What specifically changed in the Department of Labor under Obama? Weil: One of the things Obama did from the beginning was to fight hard to get resources for his enforcement agencies. He came in and the number of investigators in the Wage and Hour Division was barely 700 nationally—and it is responsible for 7.3 million workplaces…

Holocaust denial from the White House on International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Most of my regular readers probably haven't been following this blog long enough to know it, but early in its history this blog was more of a general skeptical blog. True, it always had a heavy emphasis on medical science and pseudoscience, but I also used to write about evolution and other topics from a skeptic perspective. Back then, dating back to the very earliest days after I discovered blogging, Holocaust denial was a frequent topic on this blog because it was a big interest of mine. It still is, even though I haven't had much opportunity to write about it over the last few years. It…

Why is antivaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. meeting with government health and science officials months after meeting with President Trump?

Poor Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. He went from admired environmental activist to reviled antivaccine campaigner so quickly. It began when he outed himself in 2005 with his infamous conspiracy mongering screed about thimerosal in Salon.com and Rolling Stone. Basically, RFK Jr. is a member of what we used to call the mercury militia, a branch of the antivaccine movement that believes, more than anything else, that it is the mercury-containing preservative thimerosal that used to be in several childhood vaccines until 2002 drove an "epidemic" of autism. He's still a member, too, having recently…

So, what the heck did Trump do with Taiwan?

He started the process of stealing your democracy. Why? How? Have a look: I will hold the electors who put his name in the ballot box as equally responsible. Oh, and by the way, he also did this: Donald Trump Picks GOP Oil Industry Ally, Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, to Lead EPA

Revolving door from chemical industry to EPA: No way to boost public confidence

The Environmental Defense Fund’s (EDF) Richard Denison, PhD tipped me onto news that the chemical industry’s chief trade association now has one of its own in a key EPA office. Nancy Beck, PhD began work on Monday as second in command of EPA’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention. Immediately prior to her appointment, Dr. Beck was with the American Chemistry Council (ACC) in the position of Senior Director of Regulatory Science Policy. Prior to that she worked in the White House's regulatory czar's office during parts of the G.W. Bush's and Obama's administrations. President…

The Great March Storm of 2017 (updated)

The Key for the above graphic: Donald Trump's FEMA is not ready for this storm. The entire federal government is understaffed, and there are funding problems, and this applies to FEMA as well. So, if you are anywhere in the area to be affected by this storm (the weather channel calls it Stella, I call it Trump's Storm One because it is the first big storm on his watch) you need to know that the usual help is not necessarily going to be available. Maybe we should call it the Ides of March Storm. A very large area will probably get a very large amount of snow. Keep up with your local NWS…

Electoral College Prediction: Trump 241 vs. Clinton 297

I've got a new set of electoral college predictions. I'm using the same method as before, but with these differences: a) I had to use less than ideal polls (c rating, a few that overlapped with days prior to POTUS debate III) on the last run, this time no such polls are used; and b) there are some new polls added in this time. The difference is interesting, and somewhat concerning (compare to this result). For example, in this run, Arizona, Virginia, and New Hampshire go for Trump. Most people think of that as unlikely. Personally, I don't see Virginia doing that. New Hampshire is…

Upcoming D v R challenges

There has been a trickle of state or federal level races pitting Democrat against Republican, which potentially serve as a barometer for how politics will actually play out on the ground over the next 18 months or so under the Trump Regime. In my view, these races have shown two things. 1) Republicans beat Democrats even when all the available evidence strongly suggests that the Republican Party shouldn't even be allowed to exist by any logical analysis of democracy and free society, and the Republicans continue to try as hard as they can to hurt the largest number of people. 2) Democrats…

The year in stoats: 2016

A vintage year, for which the title must be Oh, and we were Gone / Kings of Oblivion. Something for everyone. Here, after review, is what catches on my mind. But first, my favourite mountain picture of the year. Other reviews of the year: ATTP; me in 2015. Not a review of the year: Eleven Years Of Blogging by Martin Rundkvis. * Jan: Science advances one funeral at a time discussed the unlamented death of Robert Carter, somewhat ironically preceded by WATN 2015. * Feb: CSIRO: science as a public good because of some recent echoes; I'll probably blog those separately. And The Greatest Liberty…