Politics
catdynamics | May 7, 2009NASA 2010 budget request is out.
Not very stimulating, especially for Astrophysics.
NASA still does not have a nominated Administrator, and really does not have a direction, even though key and somewhat irrevocable decisions are imminent, in particular on the retirement of the Shuttle and development of the "Constellation" expendable launch system that has been under development.
Maybe Obama is bit distracted, or something.
Anyway, there is a 2010 NASA requested budget
and it sucks.
Apart from Earth Science, the Science directorate outlook is nicely summarized by the headline in the…
catdynamics | May 7, 2009Honest as the day is long...
Absolutely.
...at least we think so...
in Iceland, on winter's solstice.
grrlscientist | May 7, 2009tags: HR669, pets, exotic animals, invasive species, pet animal trade, pet parrots, Association of Zoos & Aquariums, AZA, politics
Those of you who are following the situation with HR669, the Nonnative Wildlife Invasion Prevention Act [full text : free PDF] know this resolution survived its initial House subcommittee hearing and will be heard again on an as-yet unannounced date. Even though I support the stated purpose of this resolution -- preventing invasive nonnative wildlife from being introduced into the United States -- this bill, as written, will not accomplish that goal. I have…
jrosenhouse | May 6, 2009The subject of evolution has come up twice on recent editions of the MSNBC show Hardball, hosted by Chris Matthews. Our host has just discovered that the Republicans have a problem with science, you see, and has decided to explore this troubling development.
Better late than never, I suppose. The Repubs were virulently anti-science all through the Bush administration, but Matthews didn't seem to care. He might have invited Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science to discuss the issue. But Repubs were in the ascendancy then, meaning that Matthews was inclined to overlook…
evolvingthoughts | May 6, 2009My union is calling a strike next Tuesday. I'm not sure what to do. I don't teach, and have no administrative duties, so should I stop thinking from for 8 hours? I'm not sure the administration would notice...
Rob Skipper at hpb etc. has a series of podcasts from the series of lectures on Darwiniana that were held there recently. They include John Beatty, Roberta Millstein and Ken Waters, all serious folk in philosophy of biology (although Roberta, at least, is not serious all the time). From the sublime to the faintly absurd, you can also see my talk in Lisbon, one of them, anyway, at…
ddobbs | May 6, 2009In a post titled "Dead, Your Majesty," H5N1, Crof ponders why we scramble to deal with swine flu while ignoring other problems ranging from cancer to the 3000 children a day who die of malaria in Africa :
Most of us are comfortably settled in rich industrial countries where problems like TB and AIDS are rarely in the news. Zimbabwe, like our own homeless, is a deplorable problem...but not our problem. We'd prefer to focus, via high-speed internet connections, on a conjectural disaster instead of the many real disasters killing people somewhere else.
If a thousand people died in the US…
razib | May 6, 2009With the whole controversy around Michael Savage being blocked from entering England because of his inflammatory comments I thought I would look at attitudes toward speech. One thing I've noticed is that Americans tend to be less instrumental when it comes to matters of speech; that is, speech is not justified as a means, as opposed to being a basic liberal right. In contrast in most other parts of the world people seem more likely to justify the right to speech as a utility in the service of some other end. This difference results in a variance in the way people approach offensive and…
pharyngula | May 5, 2009Chris Matthews ask Representative Mike Pence a simple question — "Do you believe in evolution?" — and Pence spends 5 minutes squirming avoiding giving an answer. He changes the subject repeatedly, to global warming and stem cells, and tries to pretend that the Republican party doesn't have a serious problem with an anti-science agenda, which he himself is demonstrating.
I have to commend Matthews, too: he bulldogs that question and won't let it go. Let's see more of that from our media, please.
esiegel | May 5, 2009In 1862, an under-manned, under-equipped Mexican army defeated the French at the battle of Puebla on May 5th. Cinco de Mayo, started because of this event, has now become a widespread holiday in the US, where awareness and appreciation of Mexico and Mexican culture are of paramount importance.
So before you go out to Chi-Chi's or On the Border or whatever lousy, tasteless, watered-down margarita-hole you plan on going to, I'd like to share with you something real. This is personal, political, and particularly topical in the current economic crisis: this is about labor issues. Know who this…
oracknows | May 5, 2009Pinch me. I must be dreaming.
I say that because I actually see an article in The Huffington Post in which the blogger, Jacob Dickerman, actually correctly describes why homeopathy is quackery! For instance:
Homeopaths will tell us that water has a memory. That it vibrates in a certain way and thus knows exactly what the homeopath put into it. The thing is, if Hahnemann is somehow right about homeopathy, then it doesn't only fly in the face of all those sciences I listed above (physiology, physics, chemistry, germ theory, hydro-dynamics), it flies in the face of public safety. Because the…
jrosenhouse | May 5, 2009Supreme Court justice David Souter announced his retirement this past week, meaning that Obama's first justice nomination will come sooner than expected. Since there is also a decent chance that he will be appointing successors to Justices Ginsburg and Stevens, it seems Obama has a real chance to put his stamp on the Court.
My criteria for an SC justice are very simple. I want a flaming left-wing twenty-year old. I want a justice who sees an ocean of separation between church and state, who will be strong on defendant's rights, who will be a zealous guardian of privacy rights, and will…
jstemwedel | May 5, 2009By email, following on the heels of my post about the Merck-commissioned, Elsevier-published fake journal Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine, a reader asked whether the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons (JPandS) also counts as a fake journal.
I have the distinct impression that folks around these parts do not hold JPandS in high esteem. However, it seems like there's an important distinction between a fake journal and a bad one.
Kathleen Seidel of the Neurodiversity Weblog wrote a meticulous examination of JPandS and of the professional society, the Association of…
gregladen | May 5, 2009That's "lesbian" as in "a lesbian person" not a lawyer who specializes in "lesbian law," whatever that might be.
Most people think Obama will pick a woman, in part because only one of the nine seated justices is female at present. But it appears that at least one short list is forming up that includes even additional diversity. The list of candidates that has been circulated by the AP includes Kathleen Sullivan, openly gay, who if memory serves would have overlapped with Obama at Harvard Law (he may well have taken classes from her).
Kathleen Sullivan, former dean of Stanford Law School.…
pharyngula | May 5, 2009My prior post on Missouri's bill permitting pharmacists to neglect their responsibilities was incorrect on one point: the bill has not been passed. The bill has only been proposed. It's the usual situation:
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the republicans in the Missouri House of Representatives are, to a member, well and truly insane. Â They offer all manner of idiotic bills and amendments that will never see the light of day, and Emery attaching his bill as an amendment to SB 296, legislation dealing with professional registration, is merely supporting evidence of same.
evolvingthoughts | May 4, 2009The host ISP of Electronic Frontiers Australia has been served a take-down notice for linking to an R-rated "blackbanned" site, itself not in Australia, in a page that was a political comment on the merits (or demerits, rather) of mandatory internet filtering in Australia. I put the entire text of their notice below the fold. This is exactly what we were told would never happen by the minister. It is exactly what everybody who ever thought for ten minutes on the subject knew would happen.
EFA gets link removal notice
Posted by Colin Jacobs | Censorship, Mandatory ISP Filtering | Tuesday 5…
catdynamics | May 4, 2009Obama announced members of the Presidential Council of Advisor's on Science and Technology (PCAST)
via ScienceDebate team
It is an august group.
Physical scientists you might know:
Christopher Chyba - Princeton - astrobiology and arms control
S. James Gates - Maryland - particle theorist
Shirley Ann Jackson - RPI - oh yes!
William Press - Texas - astrophysics and computing
Ahmed Zewail - Caltech - femtosecond laser
Plus a bunch of industry, chem, bio, enviro etc types.
Including someone from Microsoft and someone from Google/Apple... Hmm.
gregladen | May 4, 2009Congressperson Keith Ellison has endorsed Matt Entenza for Governor of Minnesota.
This is of general interest because of the role of the current Minnesota governor on the broader national scene, and of course, it is important to us Minnesotans.
Here's Enteza's web site.
jlynch | May 4, 2009"Biological imperatives trump laws."
Quick ... who said that? Evil Darwinist? Nazi eugenicist? Liberal professor? Nope to all three.
Answer is Orson Scott Card - sci-fi hack, proponent of guiltless genocide, and anti-Darwinist - in a screed against gay marriage. One is left wondering whether rape is OK to Card - after all, spreading your seed is one of those "biological imperatives".
Longer Card:
How long before married people answer the dictators thus: Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy…
pharyngula | May 4, 2009They're dangerous and destructive, and erode the mission of our soldiers — and they also seem to be remarkably stupid. In the latest incident, people in Afghanistan are unhappy with the Christian evangelism that accompanies the US military. I can't blame them.
In one recorded sermon, Lieutenant-Colonel Gary Hensley, the chief of the US military chaplains in Afghanistan, tells soldiers that, as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility "to be witnesses for him".
"The special forces guys - they hunt men basically. We do the same things as Christians, we hunt people for Jesus.…