Politics
drorzel | November 3, 2009Over at the Mid-Majority, Kyle Whelliston (formerly of espn.com) has a great essay on the "Sportz" phenomenon:
Sports are great. Actual participation is awesome, but watching other people do sports can still be pretty good too. These days, people can watch sports anytime, anywhere and in whatever state of undress they choose. These are truly the days of miracles and wonders! All thanks to the Sports-Industrial Complex, which brought you mantertainment, lite beer and the Sports Bubble.
When sports became industrialized in the latter part of the 20th Century, the S.I.C. became the conduit…
emjohnson | November 3, 2009Chris Hedges, the American war correspondent who has authored such books as War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, has a new article entitled "Opium, Rape and the American Way" published on the website of RAWA (Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan).
The warlords we champion in Afghanistan are as venal, as opposed to the rights of women and basic democratic freedoms, and as heavily involved in opium trafficking as the Taliban. The moral lines we draw between us and our adversaries are fictional. The uplifting…
illconsidered | November 2, 2009My fellow climate bloggers over at Desmog Blog have notified me and asked me to pass it on to AFTIC readers that there is a very cool new online push by former Vice-President Al Gore and the Alliance for Climate Protection called the "Repower America Wall."
The idea is to have videos from thousands of everyday people - friends, neighbors and colleagues -as well as high-profile leaders from business, faith groups, politicians etc adding their voices to a collective call to action on climate change. These videos will be used as the basis of campaign ads on TV, print, billboards and online.…
oracknows | November 2, 2009...Isis shows us why by calling out the anti-vaccine movement in general and J.B. Handley in particular, for sexist attacks on Amy Wallace, who wrote the excellent article for WIRED about how the anti-vaccine movement endangers public health.
True, I did e-mail her for advice in letting feminist bloggers know about this nastiness, being interested in how so many women in the movement could tolerate such behavior from its male members, but Isis took it from there. (Warning, part of the post may be NSFW.)
Also calling out J.B. Handley and other members of the anti-vaccine movement for their…
jstemwedel | November 2, 2009Abel and Orac and Isis have recently called attention to the flak Amy Wallace had been getting for her recent article in WIRED Magazine, "An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All". The flak Wallace has gotten, as detailed in her Twitter feed (from which Abel constructed a compilation):
I've been called stupid, greedy, a whore, a prostitute, and a "fking lib." I've been called the author of "heinous tripe."
J.B. Handley, the founder of Generation Rescue, the anti-vaccine group that actress Jenny McCarthy helps promote, sent an essay title" "Paul Offit Rapes…
emjohnson | November 2, 2009As Jawaharlal Nehru wrote of his native land but as a stranger in the process of discovery, "India is a geographical and economic entity, a cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by invisible threads." These invisible threads were the spiritual beliefs of the people, the Vedas, the Bhagavad Gita and the Manu Smriti. The sacred Ganges was a symbol of India's life blood, as much for the Indian people as for the British colonialists, that, as Rudyard Kipling described in his story "The Bridge Builders," was a natural force that needed to be conquered if the…
revere | November 1, 2009We are otherwise occupied, but fortunately DemFromCT has a great status report on swine flu up at DailyKos. I suggest you also follow the first link to his piece at The Arena, although reading after his astute observations is not for the faint-of-heart. The politicization of this issue by Republicans is to be expected and typically unfair (not to mention uninformed). As Dem points out, the Bush Administration did a lot of the heavy lifting that made dealing with this much easier and deserves credit for that. We took them to task here for not shoring up a badly deteriorated public health and…
pharyngula | November 1, 2009I'm feeling a bit jealous. A teacher was suspended for assigning a reading from one of those subversive, radical bloggers, and it wasn't me! It was Jonah Lehrer!
The article was about the prevalence of homosexuality among animals. Apparently the thought that homosexuality might occur naturally, rather than being a purely human sin, does not sit well with certain people. I thought the most objectionable part of the article was Roughgarden's blithe panadaptationism ("Given the pervasive presence of homosexuality throughout the animal kingdom, same-sex partnering must be an adaptive trait that's…
choofnagle | October 31, 2009Consumers who have asked me whether they should give their zip code at the register have been getting bad advice! I was under the misimpression that zip-level data was only being collected for demographic research purposes (to determine where stores should be located, and advertising directed, on a mass scale) and thus said that no harm came from revealing the zip. No longer. Here's a summary of data practices at William Sonoma, according to a recent California case (Pineda v. Williams-Sonoma Stores Inc., Cal. Ct. App., 4th Dist., No. D054355). Giving the zip code allows the store to "…
gregladen | October 30, 2009I would very much like your help in picking out a tee-shirt to wear around town. Let me tell you about the town, and you'll be able to make an appropriate suggestion.
I live in a conservative, working class, quasi-religious city, though my heart is in a nearby radical lefty atheistic edgy cool city. To put a fine point on it, a few blocks from where I sit right now is Michele Bachmann's congressional district, but the congressional district I've mostly lived in while in Minnesota, and to which I hope to move within the next year, is represented by the first African American Muslim member…
emjohnson | October 29, 2009Last night Jon Stewart hosted the Israel/Palestine peace activists Anna Baltzer and Dr. Mustafa Barghouti. The angry response from the Pro-Israel crowd resulted in a backlash against the show for even having the discussion (including the show's first heckler in eleven years).
Baltzer, an American-Jewish author, has put out a public letter asking that people contact The Daily Show thanking them for hosting the discussion as a way to counter the angry response they've received so far.
Last night Dr. Barghouti and I were on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart talking about Palestine.
The show was…
emjohnson | October 28, 2009What happens when a Nobel Peace Prize winner breaks international law in the rules of war? The world may find out as increased attention is being focused on the use of unmanned military drones that are carrying out assassinations of suspected militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Philip Alston, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions, stated today that the Predator drone operations approved by Obama and currently being carried out by the CIA may be a violation of international humanitarian law.
As reported by the BBC, Alston stated in a press conference that:
My…
oracknows | October 28, 2009Not long ago, I wrote a post warning about how funding for non-science-based modalities and, indeed, modalities that are purely religion-based, have found their way into various versions of health care reform bills that are currently wending their way through both houses of Congress. In other words, purveyors of faith healing and purely religious woo are trying to do what purveyors of "alternative" medicine have already done through Senator Tom Harkin, and hijack the health care reform process to codify their preferred unscientific health care modalities as legitimate after science has…
pharyngula | October 28, 2009Every once in a while, this administration gives me a tiny bit of hope. They've just come out against the anti-free speech activities of Islamic nations in the UN.
The Obama administration on Monday came out strongly against efforts by Islamic nations to bar the defamation of religions, saying the moves would restrict free speech.
"Some claim that the best way to protect the freedom of religion is to implement so-called anti-defamation policies that would restrict freedom of expression and the freedom of religion," Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters. "I strongly…
gregladen | October 28, 2009Reporters and bloggers rightfully enjoy feeding off of Michel Bachmann's frequent outrageous remarks, but few have made note of the real problem she poses for the people living in her district.
The word needs to get out in Michele Bachmann's congressional district that she is screwing the people she supposedly represents. Her stated philosophy is to do as little as possible in congress, and she does not believe in the use of Federal Money for ... things. So it should not be a surprise to her constituents that she has been personally responsible for almost no positive action that has helped…
pharyngula | October 27, 2009At least, that's the outcome of a court decision in France, where Scientology was guilty of fraud and got slapped with a few fines, which they'll scrape out of the pockets of their gullible followers.
It's nice, I'm not going to complain, but I'll be more impressed when they apply the same reasoning to the Catholic Church. Why do French authorities still allow that con-game called Lourdes, for instance, to continue?
grrlscientist | October 27, 2009tags: Food, Inc., food industry, factory farming, health, documentary, film, movie trailer, Eric Schlosser, streaming video
This is the official trailer for a 2008 documentary based on Eric Schlosser's research (Fast Food Nation DVD or book). It identifies, describes and details the problems of the food industry, its effects upon our health and provides us -- the consumer -- with strategies for changing the way the food industry operates so farmers can earn a living wage and all of us can enjoy improved health outcomes.
Learn more about this film or purchase the DVD.