Politics
catdynamics | June 1, 2009Members of the Augustine Commission on Human Space Flight Plans announced.
h/t NASAwatch
and the winners are...
- Norman Augustine (chair), retired chairman and CEO, Lockheed Martin Corp., and former member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush
- Dr. Wanda Austin, president and CEO, The Aerospace Corp.
- Bohdan Bejmuk, chair, Constellation program Standing Review Board, and former manager of the Boeing Space Shuttle and Sea Launch programs
- Dr. Leroy Chiao, former astronaut, former International Space Station…
aardvarchaeology | June 1, 2009Living in a country that hasn't seen war for two centuries, and never having done military service, I'm completely baffled by war rapes and the post-war rapes that have become part of the cultures of certain African countries. Particularly the high incidence of child rape going on e.g. in Liberia and Congo.
The appeal of gambling I sort of understand.
The appeal of drugs and drink I sort of understand.
The appeal of corruption and personal enrichment I sort of understand.
And I sort of understand the strategic military value of demoralising the civilian population by ordering e.g. Japanese…
clock | June 1, 2009About a week ago, Nicholas Kristof wrote an eye-opening op-ed in NYTimes - After Wars, Mass Rapes Persist. In Liberia, and probably in some other places, the end of war does not automatically mean the end of rape:
Of course, children are raped everywhere, but what is happening in Liberia is different. The war seems to have shattered norms and trained some men to think that when they want sex, they need simply to overpower a girl. Or at school, girls sometimes find that to get good grades, they must have sex with their teachers.
The war, and the use of rape as a weapon of war, changes the…
gregladen | June 1, 2009Please read the following vignette of an actual incident.
I am a scientist observing the culture of the Namoyoma people. I am sitting in a shady spot just outside the village, writing up some notes, and I observe a disturbing event. Four men are trying to drag a young woman from the road into the nearby forest, and from what I hear them saying, they intend to rape her. There are also four older women trying to drag the young woman back to the village, and they are yelling that she must go back to her father's house where she will be protected. The battle over this young woman continues…
tsmith | June 1, 2009"I always think someone is following me and wants to rape me. It is better to die." --Darfuri refugee
Sometimes there comes a public health issue that's so big, so overwhelming, so heinous, that you just don't know where to begin discussing it. Nevertheless, the conversation should, and must, happen just the same. Silence may be easier, but speaking out is the only way to demystify the taboos and bring attention to what's going on for those who can't bring attention to it themselves. And maybe, just maybe, bring about some change.
It's no secret that rape happens during wartime.…
tqa | May 31, 2009
As you might have guessed from my earlier post, I was angered and saddened when I learned of the death of Kansas doctor George Tiller earlier today. Dr. Tiller was gunned down while serving as an usher at his church while services were underway. As I mentioned earlier, the suspect arrested in the case - reportedly a 51 year old named Scott Roeder - was apparently an almost stereotypical far-right-wing extremist nutjob, with a long history of radical and potentially violent behavior.
I'm a member of a large Catholic family, and I spent 13 years in Catholic schools. I know many people who…
jstemwedel | May 31, 2009Sunday morning, Dr. George Tiller of Wichita, Kansas, was murdered on his way into the church where he worships. Dr. Tiller was targeted because he was one of the few doctors in the U.S. who performed late-term abortions.
Late-term abortions make up a tiny fraction of the abortions performed in the U.S., and are nearly always done because the fetus has been found to have defect incompatible with life, or has already died, or because the life of the mother is in danger if the pregnancy is not terminated.
For the audacity of offering this vital medical service, Dr. Tiller and his clinic had…
sciencepunk | May 31, 2009
The European Elections are taking place this week, when millions of people will go to the polls to decide how they are represented in Europe. The European Parliament is a stage on which countless battles are played out, influencing aspects of our economy, law, judiciary, technology, environment, trade, culture, immigration, research, education, and many more. However, in the lead up to the elections, European politics have been eclipsed by the furore over our own MPs' expenses. Those who with an appetite for political debate over Europe have been forced to subsist on the amuse-bouches of…
catdynamics | May 29, 2009There has been a lot of blogospheric buzz about the nomination by President Obama of Judge Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.
Her opponents, of course, try to find something about her they can attack, and there have been gratuitous and poorly sourced attacks on her temperament, intelligence and even financial sense.
A major indicator of Judge Sotomayor's intellectual abilities are that she was the co-recipient of the M. Taylor Pyne Prize for the class of '76 at Princeton.
The Pyne Prize is the top academic prize awarded to Princeton undergraduates, and is undeniably a sign of major scholastic…
hrynyshyn | May 29, 2009A coalition of 15 environmental organizations has released a joint statement explaining why they can't get behind the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a.k.a. Waxman-Markey. They complain that it:
sets targets for reducing pollution that are far weaker than science says is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change. The targets are far less ambitious than what is achievable with already existing technology. They are further undermined by massive loopholes that could allow the most polluting industries to avoid real emission reductions until 2027.
All of which is true. There's a…
catdynamics | May 28, 2009NASA is due to name the 10 panel members of the Augustine panel on human spaceflight and NASA goals, possibly today.
The Orlando Sentinel thinks it knows who most of the members are.
The Write Stuff blog at the Orlando Sentinel names 8 names they claim to know will be on the panel.
Chris Chyba (astrobio/policy - Princeton)
Sally Ride (astronaut UC)
Lester Lyles (USAF ex-general - NASA advisory cmt)
Edward Crawley - (MIT engineer - earth obs.)
Bo Bejmuk (Boeing/Sea Launch)
Jeff Greason (Rotary/XCOR)
Wanda Austin (CEO Aerospace Corps)
Wow.
I'm glad to see Bejmuk and Greason on the list.…
j7uy5 | May 28, 2009Last night I heard a snippet of an interview with some Senator, who
expressed fear that the Supreme Court candidate, Sonia Sotomayor, would
let her feelings interfere with her judgment. Evidently, this
was based upon Obama's characterization of Ms. Sotomayor as "emphatic."
Although I can't recall who the Senator was, these sentiments
are captured in
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/us/politics/29memo.html">
the following:
Mr. Hatch, a longtime Judiciary Committee member,
said he would focus on whether the judge is committed to deciding cases
based on the law, not "personal…
ejohnson | May 28, 2009
When considering how best to reform the health care system in the US, a good place to start is to look at systems of both universal and private or employer-subsidized coverage around the globe. Starting this week, ScienceBlogger Mark Hoofnagle will do exactly that on denialism blog, beginning with Australia's two-tiered system--called Medicare--of nationwide basic coverage by the government with incentivized, more premium health care available to those at higher incomes. Mark then moved to Europe, investigating the health care systems of The Netherlands, Germany, and France. Where will he…
oracknows | May 28, 2009Today is a very good day indeed.
I say that because Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin's lymphoma who ran away with his mother to avoid having to undergo chemotherapy ordered by a judge, who had found that his parents were engaging in medical neglect in not getting him effective treatment, and returned on Monday, will begin his course of chemotherapy today. I'm very happy to hear that Daniel and his parents have decided to stop fighting:
After Daniel and his mother returned to Minnesota this week, both his parents told a judge they will let Daniel undergo chemotherapy because…
drorzel | May 27, 2009A thousand curses on Kevin Drum for making me read some idiocy from the National Review's attempts to find things wrong with Sonia Sotomayor:
Deferring to people's own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English (which is why the president stopped doing it after the first time at his press conference), unlike my correspondent's simple preference for a monophthong over a diphthong, and insisting on an unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn't be…
pharyngula | May 27, 2009In all the news about Obama's choice of an appointment to the Supreme Court, there's another possibility looming:
Francis Collins, the geneticist who led the Human Genome Project, is close to taking over the top spot at the National Institutes of Health, according to areport by Bloomberg News.
Collins, who was the director of the NIH's National Human Genome Research Institute from 1993 to 2008, is in the final stages of being screened by the administration of US President Barack Obama, an unnamed source told Bloomberg.
Elias Zerhouni, Collins' would-be predecessor, voiced his approval for…
grrlscientist | May 27, 2009tags: HSUS, Humane Society of the United States, Animal Rights, terrorism, animal shelters, streaming video
This video shows you a little information about the Humane Society of the United States or H$U$ -- is a tax-free corporation that supports terrorist organizations while pretending to the public that they raise funds to provide shelter to homeless animals. Terrorist? What can I possibly mean? Watch this video and find out ... [2:27]
clock | May 26, 2009An article that is likely to make the rounds of the science/medical blogosphere (and get the anti-vaccer trolls out of the woodwork):
Researchers long ago rejected the theory that vaccines cause autism, yet many parents don't believe them. Can scientists bridge the gap between evidence and doubt?
Writes Liza Gross in the latest Feature article in PLoS Biology: A Broken Trust: Lessons from the Vaccine-Autism Wars:
Until the summer of 2005, Sharon Kaufman had never paid much attention to the shifting theories blaming vaccines for a surge in reported cases of autism. Kaufman, a medical…
sa smith | May 26, 2009*PUKE*
Francis 'I dont need no stinkin evidence' Collins might be the next head of the NIH:
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) will likely bring on geneticist Francis Collins, leader of the Human Genome Project, as its new director, Bloomberg News reported on Saturday.
...
"NIH is a huge enterprise, and I think Francis has very good experience with getting the best out of a huge enterprise from what he did in the genome project," David Baltimore, who won the 1975 Nobel Prize in medicine, told Bloomberg earlier this year. "He's also very well liked in Congress."
Well, that should tell…
pharyngula | May 26, 2009Obama's new nominee to the Supreme Court has already made the right wing apoplectic, so she must be a good choice…and what little I've been able to read so far (I'll look deeper into it tonight when the university releases its clutches on my time) she sounds like a good choice.