Fucking Morons
mikethemadbiologist | September 27, 2006And one of my favorite liberal wonks was wearing glasses while doing so. That has to hurt. Seriously, Waldman did a brilliant thing: he shifted the discussion onto his terms. Instead of the storyline being "liberals are mean to Bill O'Loofa O'Reilly", it became "why can't conservatives respond to criticism in any other way than crying 'Smear'"? Nicely done.
(link here)
A completely unrelated aside: Our Benevolent Seed Overlords want a picture of the Mad Biologist for their own nefarious purposes. So I ask you: what do you think a Mad Biologist would look like? Click here to offer your…
mikethemadbiologist | September 26, 2006What should be the cover story of a major news magazine: the resurgence of the Taliban, or a biography of photographer Annie Leibowitz? Well, if you're the powers that be at Newsweek, you decide that the resurgence of the Taliban is more important, except for U.S. readers. We get Leibowitz.
Gutless.
A completely unrelated aside: Our Benevolent Seed Overlords want a picture of the Mad Biologist for their own nefarious purposes. So I ask you: what do you think a Mad Biologist would look like? Click here to offer your opinions.
mikethemadbiologist | September 25, 2006Most microbiologists, you know, the experts , are not very thrilled with the emphasis being placed on bioterrorism. Inspired by Tara's post on the Bioshield initiative, I'm reposting this from the old site.
This week, leading microbiologists are sending an open letter to NIH stating that the politically-based emphasis on bioterrorism is starving other areas of research. For some time now, I've thought that we've been too concerned with bioterrorism, particularly when good ol' influenza regularly kills 32,000 37,000 people per year (that's one World Trade Center per month for those of you…
mikethemadbiologist | September 21, 2006Ed Brayton describes the support of intelligent design creationism by the Republican candidate for governor of Michigan. Says the hopeful candidate:
I would like to see the ideas of intelligent design -- that many scientists are now suggesting is a very viable alternative theory -- that that theory and others that would be considered credible would expose our students to more ideas, not less.
If by "credible", he means utterly unsubstantiated and without a single testable hypothesis, then, yes, intelligent design creationism is "credible."
Moron.
mikethemadbiologist | September 21, 2006 In the November general election, South Dakota will have a referendum that could overturn its law that bans abortions, even where the woman has been raped, is the victim of incest, would suffer long-term medical problems, or would be unable to have future children. The first of the political ads are running, so I thought this post would be appropriate (and certainly in the style my readers have come to expect....). From the archives:
Well, that got your attention, didn't it?
Of course, I realize that it's utterly inappropriate to introduce religion into the abortion debate.
(Thankfully,…
mikethemadbiologist | September 21, 2006You might have heard of the group at Princeton which demonstrated how easy it is to crack the Diebold electronic voting machines. They have released a video that shows just how easy it is to conduct electoral fraud. Very chilling. The video (YouTube link below) has to be seen to be believed.
mikethemadbiologist | September 20, 2006We Jews have a secret: if you wave pork in front of us, we running away screeching. Contact with our skin causes anaphylactic shock. In fact, pork works better on us than silver does on vampires. Of course, I'm kidding when I say this. But I'm not kidding when I say that Sen. George "Macaca" Allen (R-VA) is still an asshole. From Salon:
"I still had a ham sandwich for lunch. And my mother made great pork chops." -- Virginia Sen. George Allen, explaining how news that his grandfather was Jewish is "just an interesting nuance to my background."
What a putz.
mikethemadbiologist | September 19, 2006Let me state something very clearly: I do not want a U.S. city (or any other city for that matter) wiped out by a nuclear bomb. Having said that, we the hawks among us have lost all sense of historical perspective when it comes to Iran. When you compare the Cold War to what ever it is that we have going on with Iran, it's obvious that the existential threat of Iran isn't even in the same league:
1) Had only a fraction of the nuclear arsenals on either side been unleashed, human civilization would probably come to a screeching halt (to think, no internets!).
2) Leaving aside the nutjobs on…
mikethemadbiologist | September 19, 2006...but it also has blogs, posts, and threads. Al Franken explains this to Lanny Davis.
mikethemadbiologist | September 19, 2006Democratic Senator Barack Obama has released a new book. In it, he attempts to be the Democratic Party's next Joe Lieberman. This is a bad thing. From the Chicago Sun-Times:
"We Democrats are just, well, confused," Obama writes. He goes on. "Mainly, though, the Democratic Party has become the party of reaction. In reaction to a war that is ill-conceived, we appear suspicious of all military action.
"In reaction to those who proclaim the market can cure all ills, we resist efforts to use market principles to tackle pressing problems. In reaction to religious overreach, we equate tolerance…
mikethemadbiologist | September 16, 2006After reading this Washington Post article about the Iraq War reconstruction effort, I've stumbled across the epitaph of the Bush Administration:
Bush Administration appoints political cronies and ideological wackjobs to important positions. Said appointees pandimensionally clusterfuck everything sideways. People suffer and die due to avoidable ineptitude.
Let's document the idiocies.
Jim O'Beirne was the gatekeeper for hiring in the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). Because most of these jobs were classified as temporary, provisional jobs, they were exempt from the federal…
mikethemadbiologist | September 16, 2006Ann Althouse, law professor and asshole extraordinaire, has decreed that Standing Straight Up with Breasts is whorish. Jessica Valenti from Feministing had a meeting with Bill Clinton and other bloggers--here's the photo. I bring this up because women can't be the only ones who decry this age-old smear tactic of calling women whores when all else fails, including the legitimacy of your arguments. We men have to decry this too.
In a related vein, I once explained to someone that Jews can't be the only ones who decry anti-Semitism: of course, we're going to oppose it--it's what people who…
mikethemadbiologist | September 15, 2006From Kristine at Amused Muse:
People are always pointing at scientists and screaming, "Why don't you find a cure for cancer?" Well, now that scientists finally have, loopy-loo fundies deny the treatment for their daughters! Screw them. Not only should this vaccination be required for all young girls, any parent who seriously thinks that this "encourages immorality" should have his or her children taken away. They aren't fit to be parents.
Pregnancy as punishment, cancer as coercion. Welcome to Bush's America.
mikethemadbiologist | September 14, 2006With all the Neville Chamberlain talk flying around, the neocons are right about one thing: there has been too much appeasement. Appeasement of Bush, that is. tristero writes about the rattling of sabers--and nukes--at Iran (boldface mine):
As for Iran, let me explain: YOU may think it's highly unlikely - the famous 1% probability, as a commenter mentioned - that Bush won't use nukes and is setting us up for conventional warfare. That is because you are sane and sensible. But the Bush administration thinks it's very likely. Hersh is alarmingly clear that there was close to a mutiny at…
mikethemadbiologist | September 13, 2006Granted, I've supported Paul Waldman's thesis that politics revolves around a personal narrative and not logical discussions of policy analysis is the right way to view things--depressing as that is. But after reading this post by Kos, I'm thoroughly discouraged. Kos writes:
The key is to find that negative value, and base the entire campaign to define the opponent around it. Then, every single issue that arises can be neatly slotted into that value, reinforcing it in the media and the voters' minds.
I think he might be right, but how the hell did we as a people get so collectively stupid…
mikethemadbiologist | September 11, 2006...I think? I received this email from a friend:
Hey Mike,
Are you aware that you are the #1 webpage that comes up when you Google "Christopath"?
Well, I am now (and it's this post that does it).
Nobody tell driftglass...
mikethemadbiologist | September 10, 2006
(from here)
...we're just distorting the history of 9/11. It will help us get in good with the Bush Administration!
mikethemadbiologist | September 8, 2006
Granted, going after Little Lord Pontchartrain for being an idiot is like picking on the slow kid, but the 'leader' of the U.S. just burbled this (by way of The Liberal Avenger):
George W. Bush, responding to Katie Couric's question on what the United States has learned from interrogating high-value terrorism suspects:
"Well, for example -- there's a -- we -- we uncovered a -- a potential anthrax attack on the United States. Or the fact that -- Khalid Sheik Mohammed had got somebody to -- to line up people to fly airlines, to -- to crash airlines on, I think, the West Coast or somewhere in…
mikethemadbiologist | September 8, 2006Just in case you thought that maybe the U.S. wasn't being run by crazy people, a new book claims that Karl Rove "enlisted a trio of clergymen to exorcise Hillary Rodham Clinton's left-wing spirit when he moved into her West Wing office in 2001." The story is corroborated by Deal Hudson, a former Fordham University professor and Republican political operative.
Sen. Hillary Clinton summed up the reaction that any person who is not completely fucking insane would have, saying, "I'm speechless." It's hard to make a politician speechless. It's even harder to make the Mad Biologist so...
My…
mikethemadbiologist | September 6, 2006I just received fellow Scienceblogger Chris Mooney's The Republican War on Science. I've already read the first edition. The new edition has a new forward, updates at the end of many chapters, and a revamped conclusion. Hopefully, this weekend, I'll get a chance to read it. For more information about the book, you can go the website.