Politics
tqa | May 26, 2009
It's being widely reported that President Obama will announce his pick to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter within the next hour. According to the reports, Obama has chosen Sonya Sotomayor for the job. Sotomayor was appointed to the Federal bench by George H.W. Bush in 1991, and was elevated to the 2nd Circuit by Bill Clinton in 1998.
We'll undoubtedly be hearing quite a bit more about Sotomayor in the coming days (if not hours). Jonathan Turley is not particularly excited about the pick, pointing out that Sotomayor is likely to be more controversial than some of the…
oracknows | May 26, 2009One of the claims of the anti-vaccine movement that most irks me is that their actions do not risk harm to anyone other than their own unvaccinated children. Given that vaccination against many infectious diseases also depends on the concept of herd immunity to provide protection to members of the population who either cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons, are too young to be vaccinated, or who belong to the minority who do not develop adequate immunity to vaccination, such claims are patently false. However, another frequently stated belief is that vaccines are ineffective, that they are…
oracknows | May 25, 2009I've been writing a lot about the case of Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old boy with Hodgkin's lymphoma who underwent one course of chemotherapy and then decided he wanted to pursue "alternative therapy" based on fear of chemotherapy and the faux Native American religion that his mother had taken up with. Ultimately, after a judge ordered Daniel's parents to make sure that Daniel received the chemotherapy and radiation therapy he needed, Daniel and his mother Colleen went on the lam last week and were last thought to be heading for Mexico and almost certain death.
That is, until sanity prevailed…
pharyngula | May 25, 2009A good column by James Carroll in the Boston Globe criticizes the absurd piety being peddled in the military, especially the discovery of Iraq war briefings laced with militant Christianity. He lists 7 reasons why it is a bad idea that the military has become wrapped up in religious jingo.
Single-minded religious zealotry bedevils critical thinking, and not just about religion. Military and political thinking suffers when the righteousness of born-again faith leads to self-righteousness. Critical thinking includes a self-criticism of which the "saved" know little.
Military proselytizers…
razib | May 25, 2009Andrew Gelman has a post up titled Difficulties in trying to understand the views of others, responding to a Robin Hanson taxonomy outline the motivations of liberals, conservatives and libertarians. Gelman is skeptical of Hanson's glosses of each group.
The human ability to engage in Meta-Representation is one of the hallmarks of our species. We can analyze abstract ideas, take the positions of others, examine counter-factuals and what-if's. In terms of core competencies our Theory of Mind is a sharp knife, we are unparalleled at modeling social relations contingent upon the mental states of…
catdynamics | May 24, 2009North Korea is claiming a second, successful, nuclear device test.
Coincident with a shallow medium magnitude earthquake in the test region.
Earthquake is magnitude 4.7 or so on the Richter scale (Swiss are estimating 5.1).
Very shallow, consistent with surface origin, 380 km north east of Pyongyang, close to the Chinese border.
The North Korean's previous nuclear test was a fizzle, but this one is several times stronger and shallow enough there doesn't seem to have been any attempt to hide it.
So, probably few kiloton equivalent yield, depending on the local geology and where exactly they…
gregladen | May 24, 2009You have noticed, no doubt, that the latest and most common banner ads on Scienceblogs are for Americanchemistry.com, a blogospheric entity representing a handful of Chemistry special interest organizations. ("Without chemicals, life itself would be impossible." and all that.) Which is fine, who cares? But what I want to draw your attention to is the ubiquitous use of the imagery of first responders in those ads. The message is obvious: Without chemicals, first responding itself would be impossible" which equals "Without the American Chemistry Industry, Osama bin Laden will eat your next…
aardvarchaeology | May 24, 2009A headline caught my eye: "Archaeology in the Struggle for Jerusalem". As usual when archaeology is used for political ends, it is actually subservient to written history in this case.
In the Bustan neighbourhood of the Silwan precinct in East Jerusalem, the municipality of Jerusalem has ordered 88 buildings torn down. Most are inhabited by Palestinians, most were built without a permit, most can be expected to sit on top of interesting archaeology. But not just any cool anonymous Prehistoric stuff for us nerds: the municipality wants to make an national archaeological park of the area to…
sa smith | May 23, 2009If you were a True Christian, how would you spend $10,000?
True Christians like to talk about how much Jesus liked kids. OK has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the country, maybe contribute to that in some way? Hey, maybe donate it to an organization that helps victims of child abuse, considering what the Catholic Church does to children. Hell if I were a True Protestant Id totally do that to give The Finger to the Mary-worshipers!
True Christians also like to talk about how Jesus commands them to help the homeless and downtrodden. The homeless that wander the streets of…
catdynamics | May 23, 2009Obama has nominated Charles Bolden for NASA Administrator and Lori Garver as Deputy Administrator
h/t NASAwatch and kos
oracknows | May 23, 2009About a year ago in Wisconsin, an 11-year-old girl named Madeleine Neumann died of diabetic ketoacidosis thanks of the irrational religious beliefs of her parents, who prayed for her but did not take her to a physician even as Madeleine became weaker and more ill, her deterioration leading to a most unpleasant death. Highly unusual in such cases, the DA actually prosecuted the parents for second-degree reckless homicide. Given the unjustifiably privileged position irrational religious justifications for doing horrible things have in our society, I was even more shocked that this case went to…
illconsidered | May 23, 2009By the by, I have another post up on The Energy Grid called The Blame Game.
This week's question is one of finding fault. What brought us to the current confluence of crises? Was it a failure of the political, or the technological?
Unlike the beltway pundits and the political scoundrels they defend, who use the phrase "blame game" to mockingly to retreat from accepting responsibility for, well anything, I don't think blame is just a game. Insanity is sometimes defined as trying the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Well, if you never bother to revisit your…
pharyngula | May 22, 2009I suppose it's only a surprise that it took them this long, but Liberty University has shut down the college Democrats. They were able to put up with the existence of a few very conservative Democrats for a whole 6 months before pulling the plug.
Liberty University has revoked its recognition of the campus Democratic Party club, saying "we are unable to lend support to a club whose parent organization stands against the moral principles held by" the university.
"It kind of happened out of nowhere," said Brian Diaz, president of LU's student Democratic Party organization, which LU formally…
denialism | May 22, 2009A dishonest campaign has started against healthcare reform in this country and the first shot has come from Conservatives for Patients Rights (CPR), a group purporting to show that patients in universal health systems suffer from government interference in health care. To bolster their argument, they have a pile of anecdotes from people around the world who have suffered at the hands of evil government-run systems. The problem, of course, is that anecdotes are not data, it is impossible to determine the veracity or reasonableness of these claims, and there is no way, ethically or…
grrlscientist | May 21, 2009tags: NYC Life, NYPL, public services, public education, public libraries
If you are broke and unemployed in any city of this nation, including NYC, you would have very few free public resources at your disposal to help you find work because of the massive budget cuts that have been made to this nation's public libraries and other public resources. I find this situation outrageous.
I have a special request to make of you: if you read this blog, please write a letter to Mayor Bloomberg, asking him NOT to cut NYC's public library services and to maintain six day per week service! Even if…
jstemwedel | May 21, 2009You may have heard that the Obama administration has proposed new rules for federal funding of embryonic stem cell (ESC) research. (The proposed rules are available in draft form through the end of the public comment period; the NIH expects to finalize the rules in July).
While researchers are enthusiastic at the prospect under this administration of more funding for ESC research, not everyone is happy about the details of the proposed rules. Indeed, in a recent article in Cell Stem Cell [1], Patrick L. Taylor argues that there is something fundamentally misguided about the way the new…
grrlscientist | May 21, 2009tags: NYC Life, NYPL, public services, public education, public libraries
If you are broke and unemployed in any city of this nation, including NYC, you would have very few free public resources at your disposal to help you find work because of the massive budget cuts that have been made to this nation's public libraries and other public resources. I find this situation outrageous.
I have a special request to make of you: if you read this blog, please write a letter to Mayor Bloomberg, asking him NOT to cut NYC's public library services and to maintain six day per week service! Even if…
pontiff | May 21, 2009A letter
Dear My Senator,
Thank you very much for being one of the 90 senators who voted for Amendment 1133 to H.R. 2346. I have long felt, as I'm sure you do, that keeping terrorists out of my own backyard is of vital importance to the security of our Great nation (not to mention to the security of my dog, who also uses my backyard. And I say this even though my backyard has lots of weeds and I could use some help cleaning it up.) It is, I'm sure you'll agree, completely and totally wrong to attempt to deal with these people by giving them the same sort of justice that we Americans enjoy…
tqa | May 21, 2009
Education Secretary Arne Duncan testified for the first time in front of the House Education and Labor Committee yesterday, on the topic of the President's education plan. Duncan was the only witness for the hearing, and his testimony covered the broad spectrum of federal involvement in education. (As someone with a Bachelor's degree who is moving toward a secondary education career, I was particularly happy to hear discussion about the need for more of a focus on non-traditional routes toward teacher certification.)
One area that received a great deal of attention (and which will receive…
razib | May 21, 2009California, a Broke State, Reels as Voters Rebuff Leaders:
Direct democracy has once again upended California -- enough so that the state may finally consider another way by overhauling its Constitution for the first time in 130 years.
The problem is simple. Voters approve services through ballot measures, and reject taxes which might result in revenues to pay for those services, through simple majorities. Fair enough. But the legislature needs a 2/3 vote for tax & budget related actions. So the problem here is that the stupid electorate is complemented by a paralyzed legislature.
In the…