Fucking Morons
mikethemadbiologist | August 28, 2011First, on Saturday, around noon, I observed this on Commonwealth Avenue:
Because it's not like it's going to rain for the next 24 hours or anything.
Second, we are once again reminded how poorly the Boylston Street Apple store fits with the Boston environment:
Although they're protected against rocket propelled grenades too! (sorta).
Anyway, everything is still working for now (even the wireless, though I have emergency back up intertoobz too!).
mikethemadbiologist | August 11, 2011I've been remiss in my Robert Samuelson (no relation to the economist who shared the same last name) stupidity watch--the Tea Party Fort Sumter people really bring the crazy. But the idiot who inspired me to create the Samuelson unit is still fighting his long, glorious war against the elderly and the sick:
...Samuelson tells readers:
"some elderly live hand-to-mouth; many more are comfortable, and some are wealthy. The Kaiser Family Foundation reports the following for Medicare beneficiaries in 2010: 25 percent had savings and retirement accounts averaging $207,000 or more."
Let's see, we…
mikethemadbiologist | August 1, 2011There are a lot of progressives whom Stalinists would have called useful idiots. I present to you Greg Sargent:
Could Obama have adopted a far more aggressive posture while negotiations were going on? Absolutely. But the simple fact of entering into talks inevitably reinforced the sense that Obama and Dems were not prepared to allow default -- no matter what -- reinforcing a set of dynamics that were stacked against them. Was that avoidable?
...It may simply be that the dynamics of the situation were insumountable: Obama and Dems were not prepared to let the country default no matter what.…
mikethemadbiologist | July 17, 2011The NY Times has a story about the rise in the use of 'bath salts' as recreational drugs. Bath salts have caused some users to have hideous psychological effects, including long-term paranoia, as well as dangerous reactions (spikes in body temperature and kidney failure). What are bath salts? Well:
Bath salts contain manmade chemicals like mephedrone and methylenedioxypyrovalerone, or MDPV, also known as substituted cathinones. Both drugs are related to khat, an organic stimulant found in Arab and East African countries that is illegal in the United States.
But this bit at the end of the…
mikethemadbiologist | July 10, 2011Or something. A while ago, in "Michele Bachmann, Light Bulb Vigilantes, and the Dim Bulbs of the Tea Party", I described the fear that the psychiatric wing of the Republican Party (and its dominant wing) has towards more energy efficient light bulbs. This is what appears to drive that fear:
On her way out, Dee Hogan of Nashua told me she would gladly vote for Bachmann. "I don't appreciate that your next-door neighbor is going to start yelling at me, telling me to shut my lights off when they have that shut-your-lights-off thingee. I don't want people in my face, telling me what to do."
I…
mikethemadbiologist | June 16, 2011By way of Atrios, we come across this hideous display of victim blaming:
Many of the tragedies mentioned about spring from what I see as a naïve faith in the power of the modern sexual revolution. Women today are technically free to do all sorts of things that were forbidden to their grandmothers, which is all well and good. But in practice, rape and the notion of sexual conquest persist for the same reason that warfare persists: because the human animal-- especially the male animal-- craves drama as much as food, shelter and clothing. Conquering an unwilling sex partner is about as much…
mikethemadbiologist | June 12, 2011Nope. There must be something in the water in the mens' bathroom in the House of Representatives:
Congressman Bill Young (R-FL), the second ranking Republican on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, is in Italy this week on a congressional delegation. A funny thing happened to the female Foreign Service Officer who organized Young's entire trip, and was supposed to travel with him to two Italian cities (in addition to Rome). The "control officer," as her job is called, got removed from her job handling the congressman's trip. Why? Because, my source tells me, his wife doesn't permit…
mikethemadbiologist | June 7, 2011By now, you might have heard that politicovangelist possible presidential candidate Sarah Palin has been burbling inanities about Paul Revere, including this doozy:
He [Revere] who warned the British that they weren't going to be taking away our arms, by ringing those bells, and making sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be secure and we were going to be free.
She then doubled down on her idiocy. Amanda Marcotte puts this into context:
But I think it helps to understand that, for right-wing populists, this thing we call "…
mikethemadbiologist | May 25, 2011Every so often, a creationist will start babbling about "information theory", and thereby defaming a perfectly legitimate line of research. While I'm at the airport, waiting for my flight back from ASM2011, here's something from the archives, "Creationists, "Biological Information", and Cyber-Vitalism" about that topic:
In response to us foul-mouthed evolutionists, Casey Luskin asks, "Yet for all their numbers and name-calling, not a single one has answered Egnor's question: How does [sic] Darwinian mechanisms produce new biological information?" I've never liked the whole "biological…
mikethemadbiologist | May 15, 2011A while ago, I discussed how dogs have evolved to live with humans: being around humans is part of their environment, and they have undergone specific adaptations to live in that--our--environment. At this point, their 'natural' environment should contain people. Which brings me to this funny comment by Amanda Marcotte in response to the language police editors of the Journal of Animal Ethics (italics mine):
...this is the stupidest shit I've ever read. Also, self-contradictory---you can't say "animal", but you can say "companion animal"? As I joked on Twitter, I'm all for retiring the…
mikethemadbiologist | May 14, 2011Last week, a story about a burning North Carolina wildlife refuge that forced the evacuation of an entire town (said town was spared thankfully) came over the transom. What struck me was this little bit:
Meanwhile, single-engine tanker aircraft and helicopters dropped water on the fire. Federal incident management teams and volunteer firefighters from across the region were providing manpower.
The absence of the state-owned CL 215 "Super Scooper" amphibious aircraft has hampered efforts to contain the blaze, Crews said.
So why is there no SOOPAH SCOOPAH? Guess:
The firefighting craft has…
mikethemadbiologist | May 7, 2011http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/04/cost-vaccine-refusal/
Before I get to the cost of a measles outbreak, I think Seth Mnookin sets the appropriate frame of reference:
I don't know anyone in the world who likes needles or likes watching needles pierce their child's skin. However, the fact that something is scary does not convey a license to blithely deny reality -- which is why I find the actions of parents who have simply decided for themselves that vaccines and dangerous and at the same refuse to acknowledge the potential repercussions of not vaccinating on those around them to be…
mikethemadbiologist | May 4, 2011So I was pleasantly surprised to read about this strong pro-union move by the Rockefeller Republican Obama Administration--it's definitely not par for the course:
In what may be the strongest signal yet of the new pro-labor orientation of the National Labor Relations Board under President Obama, the agency filed a complaint Wednesday seeking to force Boeing to bring an airplane production line back to its unionized facilities in Washington State instead of moving the work to a nonunion plant in South Carolina.
In its complaint, the labor board said that Boeing's decision to transfer a second…
mikethemadbiologist | May 3, 2011Jon Walker argues that worrying about how to keep Social Security 'solvent' for 75 years is silly. After all, predicting the future 75 years out is difficult. Something like this might happen:
Epidemics caused by drug-resistant bacteria in 2020 could kill a disproportionally large number of seniors.
Or:
By around 2060, the exponential growth in computing power could result in humanity reaching the technological singularity giving us almost god-like powers to control ourselves and our environments to an extent that is unimaginable.
Walker is being facetious, but I also think there's a more…
mikethemadbiologist | April 30, 2011In looking through the comments of Chris Mooney's recent post on vaccination denialism, I found this comment, which inevitably shows up in one form or another (italics mine; errors original):
i grew up in the 1960s when less than a half dozen vaccines were required for infant protection spread out over the first few years of life. outside of a rubella outbreak, i recall no advrese effects on our infant populace, neither in mortality, serious disease contraction, nor mental disfunction.
today there are well over 2 dozem vaccines required, sometimes given 6-8 at one time, spread out over 18…
mikethemadbiologist | April 25, 2011Given the fundamental problems that New York City's 'proficiency growth' evaluations of teachers have, it's absolutely unclear why Massachusetts, which leads the nation according to the gold-standard NAEP, would want to adopt them (we'll return to this point later). Yet the contagion of stupidity that is educational 'reform' knows no bounds:
The proposed regulations would reward teachers and administrators whose students show more than a year's worth of growth in proficiency under the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System and on other exams, while educators whose students…
mikethemadbiologist | April 10, 2011David Plouffe, Obama's spokesman, responds to critics of Obama's capitulation to the Republicans:
"I would ask Robert Reich and others to actually consume the details of this," Mr. Plouffe said in an interview on Saturday. "There are some in our country who simply believe spending cuts are not required to help the economy. The president has made it very clear that we cannot stay on this fiscal trajectory."
Actually, many people in our country simply think cutting government spending with one of out seven Americans out of work or working too few hours is batshit lunacy. We've been through…
mikethemadbiologist | April 10, 2011Yes, it's good that Planned Parenthood was defunded--I support Planned Parenthood. But the Democrats were routed on the economics. Right now, with U3 unemployment still near nine percent, and under- and unemployment essentially unbudged, we need more spending, not less (remember, government deficits mean an increase in private savings--in this case, unemployed people would get jobs and accumulate some savings or pay down debts). We also need these programs because they do useful stuff.
The House is controlled by batshitloonitarians, but the Senate Democrats and the Obama Administration,…
mikethemadbiologist | April 1, 2011...hopefully, they won't murder anyone. Speaking of Research has documented the anti-medical research threats by an organization known as Negotiation Is Over (italics mine; no direct link to terrorist organizations on this blog):
Students also need to understand that making the wrong choice will result in a lifetime of grief. Aspiring scientists envision curing cancer at the Mayo Clinic. We need to impart a new vision: car bombs, 24/7 security cameras, embarrassing home demonstrations, threats, injuries, and fear. And, of course, these students need to realize that any personal risk they are…
mikethemadbiologist | March 24, 2011By way of Roy Edroso, we unfortunately come across this Washington Times gay-hating screed that masquerades as religious-based love. So ordinarily I would give it a pass, except for this idiotic doosy:
And what about the Creator of the Universe? It is God's moral code that has undergirded Western society for more than 3,500 years.
Actually, the Big Fella is probably doing just fine. But it's that 3,500 years that's pretty fucking stupid.
I know my people get around, but until 2,000 years ago, we lived in the Levant, also known as the Middle East. Not the Middle West. East. Christianity…