Politics
pharyngula | June 9, 2009The US 10th Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that display of ten commandments monuments violates the establishment clause. Well, yeah. When the first commandment is basically "No way but JHWH!", it should be basically impossible to argue otherwise. Although it is fun to watch the crazy people twist themselves to argue that Moses was a secular dude.
Speaking of twisted, ex-Judge Ray Moore is running for Alabama governor in 2010. If you enjoy the occasional video of squirrelly wingnuts denouncing all that is evil in the world, he's got several there. I like the one where he announces that he…
drorzel | June 8, 2009Somebody recently asked me whether I had figured out who Female Science Professor is. I truthfully replied that I haven't even tried.
That was the first thing that came to mind when some jerk from the National Review revealed the identity of "Publius", kicking off another round of discussion about the etiquette of revealing identities that bloggers have chosen to conceal. This one probably won't be any more revealing than the previous go-rounds.
It's worth a tiny bit of effort, though, to fight for correct language in this case. Lots of people, most of them right-wingers, will be referring to…
razib | June 8, 2009It looks like the PirateParty will gain 1 seat in the EU parliament. This means Christian Engström will have a job and income. He's been spending the last 3 years as an activist living off his savings.
sciencepunk | June 7, 2009Amid the carnage surrounding Gordon Brown's cabinet reshuffle, science has lost its footing and looks like it may end up as simply another tool for business and enterprise (read: grants redirected to profitable areas of research). Over at the Lay Scientist, Martin Robbins has a fairly thorough round up of the changes, and what they might mean:
From the reshuffle that took place yesterday, one piece of news has slipped out under the radar. DIUS, the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills currently responsible for the UK science funding councils, is apparently being disbanded just…
pharyngula | June 7, 2009One of those right-wing circle-jerks has been going on in Virginia, and the wingnuts are vying to see who can be holiest — it looks like a contest between Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee. It's boring, except, I think, for the revelation about the nature of God.
Huckabee was not to be outdone in the use of hyperbole. The former Republican presidential candidate called the United States a "blessed" nation whose victory against the British in the Revolutionary War was "a miracle from God's hand," indeed the same type of miracle that defeated the legalization of gay marriage in California.
Since…
jrosenhouse | June 6, 2009Encouraging news from Newt Gingrich:
Two leading voices of the Republican Party's evangelical wing visited Rock Church on Friday for a forum aimed at recapturing some of the movement's political momentum.
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich and former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee urged Christians to get involved in politics to preserve the presence of religion in American life.
“I think this is one of the most critical moments in American history,” Gingrich said. “We are living in a period where we are surrounded by paganism.”
There are worse things to be surrounded by.…
gregladen | June 4, 2009Legal experts are largely undivided in the opinion that Norm Coleman's Minnesota Supreme Court bid to overturn a lower judicial panel's decisions regarding the vote count in the Minnesota Senate race is senseless and has no chance whatsoever of winning.
This opinion was widely held prior to the presentation of arguments by Coleman, but now, with some real face time in the high court behind us, in which we see the arguments for real, and see the reaction by the judges, it is confirmed and certain that Coleman's fate is sealed.
But what is not known at this time is the fate of Governor Pawlenty…
denialism | June 4, 2009We're starting to hear about how Obama intends to implement healthcare in this country.
President Barack Obama says he's open to requiring all Americans to buy health insurance, as long as the plan provides a "hardship waiver" to exempt poor people from having to pay.
Obama opposed such an individual mandate during his campaign, but Congress increasingly is moving to embrace the idea.
In providing the first real details on how he wants to reshape the nation's health care system, the president urged Congress on Wednesday toward a sweeping overhaul that would allow Americans to buy into a…
oracknows | June 4, 2009
Back in May many of us in the skeptical blogosphere were alarmed to learn of what British law blogger Jack of Kent termed "an astonishingly illiberal ruling" by Sir David Eady against science writer Simon Singh. Eady was the judge presiding over another bit of legal thuggery by practitioners whose feelings were hurt when Simon Singh called them out in print for their 'promotion of chiropractic to treat all sorts of conditions for which it is utterly useless, referring to the British Chiropractic Association as promoting "bogus" remedies. When I wrote about this case nearly a month ago, I…
jstemwedel | June 4, 2009Twenty years ago this spring, after finishing my last round of final exams as a college student, I was enjoying a civilized custom called "senior week," a break of approximately seven days in length between finals and commencement. The campus had largely cleared of students who were not seniors, and suddenly we had time to relax and enjoy our beautiful campus before it was time to move on and become adults (or some close approximation).
One of those afternoons during senior week, I was out on the deck on the roof of my dorm, sunbathing (because 21-year-olds care not about incremental…
pharyngula | June 3, 2009Sometimes, it just takes a little sharp humor to clarify our current situation.
Well, to understand the Sonia Sotomayor fracas you have to realize that the timespace confundulum has actually fractured into two frozen moments, one having to do with the sudden appearance of emotional, abrasive Latinas and their strange cuisine amid the eating clubs of Princeton, and the other having to do with ungrateful women of color getting named to positions where they can dole out their reverse-racist versions of "justice." Yes, that's right, it's always 1972 and it's always 1993--and at the same time.
I…
jrosenhouse | June 3, 2009Another little blogfracas has erupted on the subject of accommodtaionism between science and religion. Chris Mooney, channeling Barbara Forrest, reiterated the standard complaints against those of us who argue that science and religion generally, and evolution and Christianity in particular, are not compatible. The specific target of his ire was Jerry Coyne's recent, largely negative review of the current accommodationist books by Ken Miller and Karl Giberson. Coyne has replied in some detail to Mooney. Mooney has now posted two partial replies to Coyne here and here, and has promised…
pharyngula | June 3, 2009One more joins the ranks of states on the side of goodness: the New Hampshire legislature has passed the last few bills needed to legalize gay marrriage in that state. Unfortunately, part of the compromise is a set of exemptions for religious organizations, who won't need to do the right thing. Just remember, no one can point to the atheists and claim they tried to hinder civil rights here…we didn't ask for the privilege to discriminate.
(via Digital Cuttlefish, who naturally has a poem to go with it)
drorzel | June 3, 2009For reasons that don't really matter, I learned yesterday that there is a marathon in Antarctica:
On December 12th, 2009, the fifth Antarctic Ice Marathon will take place at 80 Degrees South, just a few hundred miles from the South Pole at the foot of the Ellsworth Mountains. This race presents a truly formidable and genuine Antarctic challenge with underfoot conditions comprising snow and ice throughout, an average windchill temperature of -20C, and the possibility of strong Katabatic winds to contend with. Furthermore, the event takes place at an altitude of 3,000 feet.
That's one of the…
grrlscientist | June 3, 2009tags: Humane Society of the United States, HSUS, H$U$, cloning food, terrorism, animals, pets, false advertising, streaming video
I have followed this video as it has been removed from YouTube and been suppressed several times due to legal bullying by the activist and terrorist organization, the Humane Society of the United States (H$U$). This investigative report, which appeared a couple weeks ago on WSB TV [channel 2 in Atlanta], reveals that H$U$ uses misinformation to trick the public into thinking they are donating funds to build local shelters for homeless pets, and to help rescue pets…
jstemwedel | June 2, 2009Yesterday, in my first post about the Silence is the Enemy campaign, I wrote:
Addressing rape directly. From the point of view of ethics, you'd think this would be a very short discussion. It is wrong to commit sexual violence. It is wrong to act out your frustration or your sense of entitlement or your need to feel that there is something in your life that is within your control on the body of another human being. It is wrong to treat a woman or a child (or another man) as less than fully human.
Anyone who would argue otherwise could only be a moral monster. Or thoroughly steeped in a…
hrynyshyn | June 2, 2009It's hard for me to ignore a headline like this: "Climate deal uncertainty clouds carbon market -- survey." According to a Reuters story, a poll of companies around the world with an interest in trading permits to emit greenhouse gases finds that "over half of respondents expect a major climate pact to be postponed until further meetings in 2010." The Greenhouse Gas Market Sentiment survey was released by the International Emissions Trading Association just before today's opening of the latest round of negotiations leading up to December's Copenhagen conference, at which we'll see if a…
oracknows | June 1, 2009These days, I don't often participate in mass bloggings about various topics, at least not as much as I used to. I can't say if it's laziness or being jaded after having blogged on nearly a daily basis for over four years now, or an ornery tendency to want to go my own way these days. Whatever the cause, I'm making an exception today because I've been asked by Sheril Kirshenbaum, who writes:
Today begins a very important initiative called Silence Is The Enemy to help a generation of young women half a world away.Why? Because they are our sisters and children-the victims of sexual abuse who…
palmd | June 1, 2009I don't even know how to write about this. I drives me toward silence, which is the wrong direction. Sheril Kirshenbaum at The Intersection says it better than I ever could. She reaches out with her own personal tale of sexual assault. Imagine her story, but millions of times over---women, girls, infants; some raped, some raped and murdered, many raped and mutilated; many infected with HIV, and too afraid to seek treatment. Just this year, the UNHCR reported that fewer than half of Liberian women who are diagnosed with HIV seek out care. The stigma of HIV is thought to be much higher in…