Fucking Morons
mikethemadbiologist | September 25, 2007
If "Gathering of Eagles" needs a new emblem, this one is currently available
At the recent anti-war protest in Washington D.C., a pro-war group known as "Gathering of Eagles" assaulted Carlos Arredondo, a father of a Marine killed in Iraq:
Carlos Arredondo, 47 year old father of two sons, arrived in the nation's capitol on Monday, 09/10/07 to share a memorial he has made to honor for his eldest son, Alex. Carlos has visited thirty of the United States with the traveling memorial to his son Alexander. Lcpl. Alexander S. Arredondo, USMC was killed on 08/25/04. He was 20 years and 20 days old.…
mikethemadbiologist | September 8, 2007...attack Iran. Bartcop describes his correspondence with a U.S. naval officer (via maha--thanks...; italics mine):
I have a friend who is an LSO on a carrier attack group that is planning and staging a strike group deployment into the Gulf of Hormuz. (LSO: Landing Signal Officer- she directs carrier aircraft while landing) She told me we are going to attack Iran. She said that all the Air Operation Planning and Asset Tasking are finished. That means that all the targets have been chosen, prioritized, and tasked to specific aircraft, bases, carriers, missile cruisers and so forth....
Always…
mikethemadbiologist | September 7, 2007...he is us. Over at Open Left, Chris Bowers relates the results of some polling. Democratic voters were asked the following question:
Now I'm going to read you a list of people, organizations. For each person or organization, please tell me which of the following four choices comes closest to what you think their view is on what the U.S. should do in Iraq?
The respondents had four choices:
1. Make no cutbacks in U.S. troops in Iraq.
2. Leave a substantial number of troops in Iraq, but have them concentrate on training Iraqis and targeting Al Qaeda leaders in Iraq.
3. Start withdrawing…
mikethemadbiologist | September 6, 2007
"More vomit! Damn it, I need more vomit!"
Actually, before I get to this post about people who believe in demonic possession, I have a very simple question. If you believe in demons, isn't that almost akin to worshiping them? After all, we do refer to believers as God-fearing people. Anyway, I've been meaning to post this description of the casting out of demons from Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting With Jesus (italics mine; "Brother Mike" refers to the author's brother):
After the worship service, I approach Brother Mike about exorcism: "I gotta ask you, Brother Mike," I said, "do you cast…
mikethemadbiologist | August 25, 2007ScienceBlogling Tara of Aetiology has co-authored a PLoS Biology article about HIV denialism and the internets. Go read it. The HIV denialists are clogging up the internet tubes...
mikethemadbiologist | August 24, 2007This post by ScienceBlogling revere about the horrendous human cost of influenza is getting some serious exposure. This gives me an excuse to mention something I haven't in a long time:
Stop worrying about avian influenza. Get serious about 'ordinary' influenza.
Why? Last year, 'ordinary' influenza killed roughly 36,000 U.S. residents. That's about equal to breast cancer which kills 40,000 annually. Before the polio vaccine, the polio virus killed 3,000 people annually, and, even if you adjust for population increases, that number would be roughly 9,000 in today's terms. HIV/AIDS kills…
mikethemadbiologist | August 22, 2007The Anti-Defamation League reversed its previous position that held the genocide of Armenians wasn't genocide yesterday. Sort of, anyway:
The national office of the Anti-Defamation League reversed its long-held position today and acknowledged the Armenian genocide of 1915, saying in a statement that the mass killings of that era at the hands of the Ottoman Turks "were indeed tantamount to genocide."
However, the statement reaffirms the national ADL's belief that the legislation pending in Congress to recognize the genocide is "a counterproductive diversion."
From the ADL statement, the non-…
mikethemadbiologist | August 22, 2007You might have heard of Family Security Matters, a rightwing faith-tank that has been embarrassed by one of their members, Philip Atkinson. He embarased them so thoroughly that FSM has purged all reference to him from its website (more about that, later). So what was the offending passage, given that FSM's stable of commentators is, well, rather unstable? Here's Atkinson, in a column titled "Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy":
When faced with the possible threat that the Iraqis might be amassing terrible weapons that could be used to slay millions of citizens of Western Civilization,…
mikethemadbiologist | August 21, 2007
Bob Somerby noticed something during the most recent Democratic presidential debate (and it's so hard to keep track of them all):
But we were especially struck by a decision made during the Democratic debate. Omigod! A real discussion had broken out about the way to exit Iraq! It was by far the most intelligent discussion we've seen in any debate this year; the hopefuls were even beginning to question each other about their respective views. But our press corps flees intelligent discourse as bats avoid exposure to light. Abruptly, George Stephanopoulos brought the discussion to a halt so…
mikethemadbiologist | August 20, 2007Josh Marshall describes his correspondence with a journalism professor who bashed blogs this weekend in The LA Times. Marshall writes:
There's certainly no end of blog pontificating fueled by puffed-up self-assertion rather than facts. But Skube's piece reads with a vagueness that suggests he has less than a passing familiarity with the topic at issue....
Now, whether we do any quality reporting at TPM is a matter of opinion. And everyone is entitled to theirs. So against my better judgment, I sent Skube an email telling him that I found it hard to believe he was very familiar with TPM if he…
mikethemadbiologist | August 18, 2007The regional director of the Anti-Defamation League was recently fired by the national organization because he called what the Turks did to the Armenians in 1918 genocide. Three points:
1) The existence of genocide should never be a politically conditional observation.
2) Stop worrying about the Israeli government*. Israel and Turkey are more than capable of managing their affairs. Do the right thing.
3) "Never again" should mean more than just not allowing German Nazis to kill Jews.
Shame on the ADL.
*Again, before the Likudniks get their panties in a twist, there are Israeli army…
mikethemadbiologist | August 18, 2007I've discussed before how the misdiagnosis of viral infections, typically respiratory illnesses, leads to massive improper use of antibiotics. It's a problem in the UK too. From ScripNews (subscription only):
Antibiotics are prescribed to treat up to 80% of cases of sore throat, otitis media, upper respiratory tract infections and sinusitis in England and Wales, even though official guidance advises against this, a study published in the Journal of Antimicrobial Chemotherapy has revealed.
The study was undertaken on behalf of the specialist advisory committee on antimicrobial resistance (…
mikethemadbiologist | August 15, 2007One of the things that's hammered into your head as a baby scientist is the importance of running controls. Typically, you run a positive control--a 'gamed' experiment where you know what the outcome should be and which tells you that the experiment is working--and a negative control which should not give any results at all (e.g., a PCR reaction without any DNA) to make sure there's no contamination or other spurious results. It's always puzzled me why people don't like to run controls because if you don't do the controls, you'll have to redo the experiment, which is a lot more work than if…
mikethemadbiologist | August 10, 2007Because they don't know the rules. I was stunned to read about this admission by Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman (italics mine):
Towards the end of the meeting, Dorothy Reik, President of Progressive Democrats of the Santa Monica Mountains, urged Waxman to use the "inherent contempt" power of Congress to bring criminal charges against Bush and Cheney and their aides, hold a hearing in Congress on those charges, and then hand down the punishment, prison time. Reik expressed frustration with the refusal of Bush administration officials to testify before congressional committees, despite the fact…
mikethemadbiologist | August 8, 2007I don't mean to make this into an anti-Ignatieff blog, but there are two more great posts about his idiocy: one by ScienceBlogling and "embarrased" Canadian James Hrynyshyn, the other by David Rees.
ScienceBlogling James writes:
There real reason why so many academics, from the hard sciences and the social field, opposed the war is it was a stupid idea, one that could only serve to strengthen the enemies of democracy and reason. It's the same thing when it comes to scientific issues like climate change, or evolution or stem cells, or abstinence-only sex education. The Bush administration isn'…
mikethemadbiologist | August 7, 2007Maybe the crazy people are out to get me after I exposed Giuliani's Mistress of Woo. One of the interesting things about working at a health-oriented non-profit is that you occasionally receive letters and emails from people who feel the overwhelming need to convince you of their Overarching Pangalactic Theory of Everything. Here's one recent missive from Visionary Positive Art, called "Open to Question"--as far as I can tell, it's about the Virgin Birth:
Is the Virgin Mary the answer to salvation? Can a virgin have a child without having intercourse?
Many years ago, a newspaper published…
mikethemadbiologist | August 7, 2007Apparently, I'm not the only one who thought that Ignatieff's self-analysis was idiotic. Brad DeLong writes that Ignatieff wasn't acting like an academic (italics mine):
I think Ignatieff has it wrong when he contrasts realistic politicans with academic visionaries. The academics I know and respect labor under three ethical prime directives:
Learn as much as possible about the issue.
Fairly present all points of view that have significant support.
Always remember that the world is a complex and surprising place, and that our theories, models, and data are limited: the map is not the…
mikethemadbiologist | August 6, 2007For the political articles only, I swear. What I can't figure out is how
a writer for Esquire can see through all the bullsht that the supposedly Very Serious People can't. Here's what was the most trechant part for me (italics mine):
On May 15, Mike Huckabee, a greasy Rotarian gasbag from Arkansas, made a funny. Speaking at a debate with the other Republican presidential contenders, Huckabee said of the Congress that it had "spent money like John Edwards at a beauty shop." This nasty little bit solicited gales of laughter from the studio audience and almost unalloyed approval from the…
mikethemadbiologist | August 6, 2007Former Iraq War supporter Michael Ignatieff wrote a mea culpa of sorts in the NY Times magazine this Sunday. Since that's more than most former war supporters have done, he should get some credit for that. But two things were really troubling about the article.
First, Ignatieff viewed Iraq as another policy debate:
The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once said that the trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true. Politicians live by ideas just as much as professional thinkers do, but they can't afford the luxury of…