Ninnies
mikethemadbiologist | May 31, 2009Friends, this is compassionate conservatism we can believe in:
Heh.
mikethemadbiologist | January 31, 2009A while ago, I mentioned that I like the idea of keeping Sheila Bair on because she didn't panic like a ninny, unlike most of the other Bushies--who panicked like ninnies about everything. Gary Kamiya says it better:
The miasma of repressed fear that has hung over America for so long will not dissipate overnight. Right-wing pundits are shrieking that we must keep torturing to keep America safe, and claiming that if Guantánamo detainees are moved into ordinary prisons, America's cities will be the targets of terrorist attacks. These boogeymen have been effective for years, and they will not…
mikethemadbiologist | January 21, 2009While most people have focused on the torture part (how could you not with CNN's cutaway to Bush), I responded the most to this section:
We remain a young nation, but in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea, passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand…
mikethemadbiologist | August 17, 2008In a very interesting NY Times magazine article about wastewater treatment (no, really, it is worth reading), I came across this passage:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/magazine/10wastewater-t.html?_r=1&ref…
And then there are those whose first, and final, reaction is "yuck."
"Why the hell do we have to drink our own sewage?" asks Muriel Watson, a retired schoolteacher who sat on a California water-reuse task force and founded the Revolting Grandmas to fight potable reuse. She toured the Orange County plant but came away unsatisfied. "It's not the sun and the sky and a roaring river…
mikethemadbiologist | February 21, 2008According to Boston's The Weekly Dig, Massachusetts is casting about for a new state seal. The current one definitely needs improvement:
It's one of the oldest symbols in the US. That may be part of the problem; many think it's outdated. On Wednesday, the Committee on Tourism, Arts and Cultural Development considers a bill to change the Massachusetts seal and motto.
The bill would establish a 13-member committee to determine whether the symbols "accurately reflect and embody the historic and contemporary commitments of the Commonwealth."
It's also offensive to Native Americans. So here's my…
mikethemadbiologist | January 16, 2008According to the NY Times' John Tierney, post-Sept. 11th fear of terrorism might be detrimental to one's health:
But worrying about terrorism could be taking a toll on the hearts of millions of Americans. The evidence, published last week in the Archives of General Psychiatry, comes from researchers who began tracking the health of a representative sample of more than 2,700 Americans before September 2001. After the attacks of Sept. 11, the scientists monitored people's fears of terrorism over the next several years and found that the most fearful people were three to five times more likely…
mikethemadbiologist | October 31, 2007I have a week off, so I've been going to the gym in the morning later than usual. I'm still recovering from the near-lobotomization of morning radio, so I wasn't prepared for a report on the "superbug" on Fox's The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet--think of it as a cheap knockoff of Regis and Kelly. Since the sound wasn't turned on for the television, I should have just left it alone, but no, I had to check out the video on the interwubs when I came home.
First, anyone who says that evolutionary biologists suck at communicating should watch this bozo. It's a classic example of how not to…
mikethemadbiologist | October 1, 2007It appears that Logan airport security overreacted a little. From skippy:
star simpson, who sounds like the cartoon character host of the view, was the mit student who was arrested at logan airport last week for wearing a "hoax device," which airport police thought was a bomb, but was really just geek computer art.
....so, because most people in charge nowadays are luddites when it comes to science and technology, suddenly the rest of us have to keep our heads down and minds firmly ensconsed in the 19th century as well? (make that the 16th century...there were actual machines at work in the…
mikethemadbiologist | July 15, 2007John Nichols, in an interview with Bill Moyers, clarifies a very important--and misunderstood--point about impeachment (italics mine):
JOHN NICHOLS: Bill Moyers, you are making a mistake. You are making a mistake that too many people make.
BILL MOYERS: Yes.
JOHN NICHOLS: You are seeing impeachment as a constitutional crisis. Impeachment is the cure for a constitutional crisis. Don't mistake the medicine for the disease. When you have a constitutional crisis, the founders are very clear. They said there is a way to deal with this. We don't have to have a war. We don't have to raise an army and…
mikethemadbiologist | July 6, 2007Over at Hullabaloo, I found this great list of suggested slogans for congressional Democrats:
Congressional Democrats:
"We'd stand up for you, but it didn't focus group well."
Congressional Democrats:
"We'd stand up for you, but they'd call us bad names."
Congressional Democrats:
"If we won't stand up to Bush, what makes you think we'd ever stand up for you?"
Congressional Democrats:
"If we won't stand up for the Constitution, what makes you think we'd ever stand up for you?"
Congressional Democrats:
"Sure we're cowards, but you don't have any other choice."
Congressional Democrats:
"We…
mikethemadbiologist | July 3, 2007...and are you in any way, shape, or form surprised? Has anything in the last six years suggested to anyone in the Coalition of the Sane that the Bush/Cheney Administration has any sense of shame or propriety? Of course not.
It should be clear that this administration will do anything and everything it can get away with. Bush now appears to have 'accepted' his 28% approval ratings, and won't try to do anything to raise them.
The group that I'm truly disappointed in is the Democrats. They still seem to think that if they point out El Jefe Maximo's outrageous and illegal behavior that the…
mikethemadbiologist | May 26, 2007I go away for a meeting, and Congress goes and holds a vote about the Iraq War. Like some, I'm disgusted by the outcome, but I think many are blaming the wrong people. To paraphrase Pogo, the enemy is us. Or least part of us.
I'm not referring to the Mouth Breathing wing of the Republican Party (which is currently ascendant). One does not negotiate or convince authoritarians: empathy and abstraction are not their strong suit. The mindless Uruk-Hai will always oppose any thing deemed as 'surrender'--until their leaders point their lizard brains at something else.
No, the group I'm…
mikethemadbiologist | May 14, 2007Well, that isn't what Ezra Klein titled his post about blogospheric venom, but he should have. Klein writes (italics mine):
...part of the problem with blogospheric civility is that bloggers aren't addressing their posts to folks like Hiatt. They're writing for an imagined audience composed mainly of liberals who are shut-out of Washington Post editorial meetings but appalled by what emerges from them. The tone such an audience demands is not terrifically genteel. That said, these posts get back to -- or are sought out by -- their ostensible targets, who confuse a critique written for them…
mikethemadbiologist | May 5, 2007I'm working my through Lewis Lapham's Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration. Here's what he has to say about the culture wars:
So many saviors of the republic were raising the alarm of culture war in the middle eighties that I now can't remember whether it was Bob Bartley writing in the Wall Street Journal or William Bennett speaking from his podium at the National Endowment for the Humanities who said that at Yale University the students were wallowing in the joys of sex, drugs, and Karl Marx, disporting themselves on the New Haven green in the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 20, 2007
This is only 'petting' so it's OK
...Senator and Republican presidential candidate John "Snuggles" McCain do it? For that matter, evangelicals do it--even before getting married. This makes McCain's support for abstinence-only sex education even more ridiculous. But let's talk more about sex, baby.
What's always struck as ludicrous is that, as one study indicates, almost no one is a virgin when they get married. I don't think I know any married couple who were virginal on their wedding night because they were living together before they got hitched. Maybe they were sleeping with one…
mikethemadbiologist | January 2, 2007So Michael Fumento has issued a challenge to put 'odds' on avian influenza, thinking that somehow I've stated that an avian influenza pandemic is likely (he's also accused me, a scientist, of being "anti-scientist" and "alarmist"). Well, I'm not putting odds down because I've never said that a pandemic is likely. Then again, one should hardly be surprised when a professional conservative completely distorts what one says.
In fact, in the post, I wrote:
We can argue about public health priorities (avian flu isn't my top priority personally).
One would think that was clear, but I made the…
mikethemadbiologist | October 31, 2006Because if I had been born in 1969, I would be 36 years old, and the Bush administration's new abstinence program which is now targeting people up to 29 years old would ignore me. Said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that supports sex education:
They've stepped over the line of common sense. To be preaching abstinence when 90% of people are having sex is in essence to lose touch with reality. It's an ideological campaign. It has nothing to do with public health.
Maybe the Republicans are just trying to drum up business for their…
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.