Politics
gregladen | August 4, 2009Elwyn Tinklenerg has withdrawn his bid in the race for Michele Bachmann's seat in congress. Tinklenberg had run against Bachmann last time around, and carried out what started as a rather Quixotic race against the then very entrenched Bachmann, but received a great deal of extra funding and support when Bachmann made a name for herself by calling for an investigation for un-American activities of everyone in congress who disagreed with her. But that push, as substantial as it was, came to late in the game, and Bachamann does represent a district consisting primarily of Cave Men and Tray-…
oracknows | August 4, 2009Wow. After I wrote a post last week about the "birthers," cranks who believe that Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii, and therefore is not a natural born U.S. citizen, and therefore is not eligible to be President of the United States. Like all good conspiracy theorist cranks, they trot out all sorts of reasons why all the evidence showing that Barack Obama was born in Hawaii 48 years ago today is invalid or how there is a huge coverup. (Isn't there always in any good conspiracy theory?) Meanwhile, they constantly demand that they be "shown the birth certificate." As if that would shut them…
emjohnson | August 4, 2009In 1996 Cornell astrophysicist and science popularizer Carl Sagan posed the question, "What are conservatives conserving?" It was not something he asked lightly. The question appeared in his final book following a prolonged battle with bone marrow disease. Faced with his own mortality, he wanted to understand the individuals whose actions, whether consciously or not, threatened the lives of so many others. Sagan was a passionate advocate for science but, first and foremost, he was an advocate for humanity itself.
A kindred spirit, someone representing the same passion for science and…
pharyngula | August 4, 2009Once again, we've got an anti-atheist claiming that the opposition to the nomination of Francis Collins to head the NIH is built entirely on the fact that he is a Christian. It's nuts. We spell it out clearly, over and over again, and these people seem incapable of comprehending a basic fact.
Every single one of us that has come forward to voice our unhappiness with the nomination has given an argument that is not based on the simple private fact that a nominee prays or goes to church. Such a position would be insane and impractical; we live in a country that is at least 80% Christian, and…
gregladen | August 3, 2009It turns out that our president is totally African. How cool is that? No wonder he's so much less stupid than the average American (as you know, Westerners tend to be dumbed down quite a bit by their stupid culture).
Well, OK, the second part of what I just said is true, but the first part isn't and, in fact, it isn't really all that funny. The "Birther" phenomenon that just won't seem to go away is a truly insidious, and indeed racist, and stupid.
But what is really scary about this is the following: A majority (just over fifty percent) of Republicans, when confronted with the…
catdynamics | August 3, 2009Interesting things happen when corrupt idiots wielding obsolete laws from colonial times meet modern technology and communication infrastructure...
As you know, Bob, Iceland has been having a bit of a "Banana Republic" moment.
In particular, we were shocked, shocked, to discover that when the conservative Independent Party finally got to implement their dream of massive deregulation, the small number of well connected oligarchs not only managed to loot the treasury, they also indebted the whole country in a classic privatize-the-gains/socialize-the-losses game of moronic risk taking,…
drorzel | August 3, 2009I'm a late addition to a Sunday panel at Worldcon:
Science Blogging - The New Science Journalism?
Touted as a new way of reaching the public, has science blogging matched its initial promise? Has it caused more problems than it solves?
Well? What do you all think?
jrosenhouse | August 1, 2009Meanwhile, the debate over health care reform is playing out according to a familiar script. Armies of conscienceless right-wing attack dogs make stuff up in their attempt to prevent some sensible piece of social reform. Democrats are slow to respond, figuring that no one could possibly be sufficiently naive and gullible to believe the right-wing fictions. Then, sure enough, a significant segment of the American public rises up to prove them wrong.
Here's Ceci Connelly reporting on the phenomenon:
A campaign on conservative talk radio, fueled by President Obama's calls to control…
pharyngula | August 1, 2009I think I'm going to have to order this book, The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll), by Jeff Sharlet, on the basis of this interview. I know, it's Bill Maher, who drives us frothing mad with his inconsistencies, but ignore Maher and just pay attention to the story Sharlet is telling.
grrlscientist | August 1, 2009tags: humor, funny, plastic surgery, ONN, Onion News Network, streaming video
In this hilarious video, Rep. Lynn Merriweather says HR7652 will protect the millions of Americans who just want to appear as young as they feel on the inside, that's all [2:01]
terrasig | July 31, 2009I absolutely guarantee that the President wanted a fine, handcrafted American ale. But I am certain that the conservative press would've jumped this as an "elitist" choice as they did his campaign comments on arugula.
Instead, he chose Bud Light.
The President had a choice to promote the craft-brewing industry in the US - the most noble and patriotic of pursuits shared by our Founding Fathers.
Instead, craft brewers across the country - nay, perhaps the world - let forth a collective "D'oh" upon the announcement of the President's watered-down choice.
There has been much ado about President…
oracknows | July 31, 2009One of the advantages of having been a blogger for nearly five years is that you gain a sense of perspective after having written about various issues over and over for a long time. True, the disadvantage is that it sometimes becomes difficult to think of something new to say about longstanding issues. Even so, it's still quite useful, every so often, to take a look back over a longstanding issue of interest to the blog (more like a festering sore that keeps getting worse), and a new article in Salon.com gives me a perfect excuse to do just that. The topic has been a frequent topic on this…
emjohnson | July 30, 2009
Artist Ricardo Cortes has a beautiful exhibition of his work in the current edition of Vanity Fair entitled Sketches of the Drug Czars. In his series he points out the steps that have led our country through the most expensive (and least effective) domestic policy in history.
Starting with the Harrison Narcotics Act of 1914, Cortes describes the first federal restrictions on "medicines-gone-wild" such as morphine and cocaine (sorry Coca Cola) followed by the criminalization of marijuana in 1937, coincidentally taking place just a few years after the prohibition of alcohol was being…
catdynamics | July 30, 2009As you may know, Landsbanki, one of the three former Icelandic commercial banks, left a few billion euros in uninsured deposits lying around, when it collapsed in ignomy.
Mostly in the UK and Netherlands.
The Dutch are getting irate about this...
For perspective, shortly after Landsbanki was privatized, in 2003, as I recall, I closed my account there in 2004 - I had had that account for about 30 years, and closing it was a significant inconvenience.
Y'all should have done as I did.
Anyway, through the gross incompetence of the Icelandic National Bank and various regulators, Iceland…
catdynamics | July 29, 2009apparently the 2010 department of defense appropriations bill is moving in congress, and someone wants to amend it, there should be a vote, I think.
Rep. Flake (R-Az) has offered 553 amendments to the bill
#1 Would prohibit funding for Enhanced Navy Shore Readiness Integration.
...
#556 Would prohibit funding for the MacDill Air Force Base Online Technology Program.
or, en bloc...
553. Flake, Jeff (AZ) #595 Would prohibit funding for various earmarked projects in the bill.
(yeah, I noticed the numbers don't add up, maybe some in the #300s were withdraw...)
Anyway, this is a serious…
pharyngula | July 29, 2009Sam Harris wrote an op-ed criticizing Francis Collins' nomination to head the NIH titled "Science is in the details". Now Ken Miller has written a short letter in reply, and I think he would have done well to have heeded that title.
Dr. Collins's sin, despite credentials Mr. Harris calls "impeccable," is that he is a Christian. Mr. Harris is not alone in holding this view. A leading science blogger, also attacking Dr. Collins, demonstrated his own commitment to reasoned dialogue by calling the scientist a "clown" and a "flaming idjit." When reason has such defenders, Heaven help us.
No, that…
oracknows | July 29, 2009A while back, I wrote about the grievous miscarriage of justice that occurred to Simon Singh in the form of a ruling against him in the libel suit brought against him by the British Chiropractic Association. Suffice it to say, that the BCA is using the U.K.'s exceedingly plaintiff-friendly libel laws to silence legitimate criticism of the dubious practices of its members. This resulted in a campaign from the British pro-science organization Sense About Science to Keep Libel Laws Out of Science.
Now, I learn that, true to Internet tradition, the attempt to suppress information or punish…
grrlscientist | July 29, 2009tags: TEDTalks, politics, society, Why Societies Collapse, Jared Diamond, streaming video
Why do societies fail? In this video, Jared Diamond uses lessons from the Norse of Iron Age Greenland, deforested Easter Island and present-day Montana to talk about the signs that collapse is near, and how -- if we see it in time -- we can prevent it [22:42]
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.
emjohnson | July 28, 2009From Democracy Now:
Newly declassified documents reveal that an active member of Students for a Democratic Society and Port Militarization Resistance in Washington state was actually an informant for the US military. The man everyone knew as "John Jacob" was in fact John Towery, a member of the Force Protection Service at Fort Lewis. The military's role in the spying raises questions about possibly illegal activity. The Posse Comitatus law bars the use of the armed forces for law enforcement inside the United States.
This took place just an hour from where I live in Seattle. According to…
grrlscientist | July 28, 2009
Who: Josh Rosenau, policy analyst at the National Center for Science Education
What: free public presentation, "Adventures in the Defense of Evolution: From Kansas to Turkey to New York"
Where: SLC Conference Center, 352 7th avenue (between 29th and 30th streets), 16th floor.
When: 700pm, Tuesday, 4 August
"That's not a problem here, right?," New Yorkers ask when they hear what Josh Rosenau does for a living. Rosenau is a policy analyst at the National Center for Science Education, where he defends the teaching of evolution against creationism. He and his colleagues have tracked attacks on…