Politics
pharyngula | May 3, 2009And Ema gets very, very snarky. Missouri's legislators have just passed a vague law that says pharmacists don't have to fill prescriptions for things that they don't like, especially nothing that might look sorta like an abortifacient. This is a bad law that removes standards of professional conduct from licensed pharmacies, and further removes all liability from pharmacists who disregard the doctor's prescriptions for their patients. Well, some of their standards. Ema has a plan.
One last thing. I have a question for Rep. Ed Emery, Rep. Cynthia Davis, and all the other Missouri politicians…
evolvingthoughts | May 2, 2009One of the things I don't like about the Darwin Awards is that it presumes the only way to gain one is to remove yourself from the gene pool directly by dying. But that would be a Wallace Award. Darwin knew, as do we, that there are many ways one can avoid contributing to the future gene pool, and it doesn't need to involve not having children. Being totally unfit to walk around without a leash is another, if it's heritable. Down the track, the "stupid gene" will get eliminated too, eventually.
So it's nice to see Michelle Bachmann get a prehumous, not a posthumous Darwin Award.
j7uy5 | May 1, 2009Barry Ritholtz, author of Bailout Nation: How Greed and Easy Money
Corrupted Wall Street and Shook the World Economy, has a
nice, terse, thought-provoking post on his blog: The Big Picture:
href="http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/05/us-vs-europe-who-is-the-welfare-state/">US
vs Europe: Who is the Welfare State?
By Barry Ritholtz - May 1st, 2009, 10:25AM
Today is May Day, and while International Workers' Day (Labour Day in
the UK), means little in the USA, its a big holiday in Europe. Banks
and markets are closed on the continent, (England celebrates on Monday).
Speaking with Mike…
gregladen | May 1, 2009Michele Bachmann wanted to make sure ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now) did not receive any fund related to home foreclosure relief. So she pushed through an amendment in the House Financial Services committee that would disallow funding to any organaztion facing federal indictment for voter fraud.
Because she thinks ACORN is facing such an indictment. Because she has been saying that they are. But they are not. Weren't. And won't.
Her fellow representatives (especially the Dems) must have had fun with this one.
"Oh, righ, Bachmann wants this amendment…
esiegel | May 1, 2009Who is correct here? We don't know, you don't know, it is uncharted territory. Would you bet the entire human history and the existence of our solar system on it?
I wouldn't.
--from a user comment on my old website on the topic of the Large Hadron Collider
Back when all the hype and hoopla concerning the LHC startup had people afraid that the Large Hadron Collider would create a black hole that would eat and destroy the Earth, I tried to quell some of these fears. At my old site, I wrote three articles explaining why the Earth was safe, and why -- even if the worst-case scenario came true…
grrlscientist | May 1, 2009tags: HR669, pets, exotic animals, invasive species, pet animal trade, pet parrots, World Parrot Trust, 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 unnannounced 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 been communicating with…
pharyngula | May 1, 2009I'm stuck in an airport in Cleveland waiting for some flight delays to clear up, but I am feeling cheerful. Don McLeroy is in trouble, and the Texas legislature is considering some revamping of their peculiar system.
The legislative session so far has not been kind to the State Board of Education.
Senate confirmation of Board Chairman Don McLeroy, R-College Station, is dead in the water, the Nominations Committee chairman said Thursday.
The House of Representatives approved a constitutional amendment Monday that would move the investment decisions about the $17.5 billion Permanent School…
gregladen | May 1, 2009US Supreme Court David Souter will retire at the end of the current court term.
Amerians: THIS is why we needed to elect a Democrat to office.
NPR has learned that Supreme Court Justice David Souter is planning to retire at the end of the current court term.
The vacancy will give President Obama his first chance to name a member of the high court and begin to shape its future direction.
NPR
This, of course, makes two things very very important. Listen carefully.
1) Franken has to get to Washington.
2) All other progressive and Democratic Caucus Senators have to be preserved in place and it…
razib | April 30, 2009Unlike many bloggers I'm not too invested in politics, nor do I have a deep knowledge of the topic (though I do have a strong interest in quantitative political science). But I read political pieces in the same way I read sports columns: entertaining analyses which serve as brain candy. Nevertheless, the candy needs to pass a minimal threshold of intellectual palatability. I'm a Celtics fan, and was excited to see their first championship of my adulthood last year, but any sports writer that throws up a column which asserts that the 2007-2008 team was the greatest of all time would be too…
razib | April 30, 2009John Schwenkler points me to Rod Dreher's shock that religious people seem to support torture more than the non-religious:
And get this: the more often you go to church, the more pro-torture you're likely to be!
What on earth are these Christians hearing at church?! Very sad indeed.
John notes:
There are plenty of data showing that Christians' attitudes toward abortion, contraception, and the rest don't differ very significantly from those of the rest of society; the real factor, of course, lies in political affiliations, and I have little doubt that most of the relevant findings can be…
jrosenhouse | April 30, 2009Keith Olbermann delivered a nice smackdown of empty-headed Minnesota representative Michelle Bachmann on last night's Countdown:
The bronze to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann. We're all laughing at her historical gaffe yesterday about Jimmy Carter and swine flu. It turned out she topped herself on the floor of the House.
The Carter gaffe first, “I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under a Democrat President Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama. I just think it is an interesting coincidence.”
Yes, the swine outbreak…
tqa | April 30, 2009
I was planning to take a couple of days off, but five or six people have emailed me the link to this quote, and it's far too good not to feature:
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
jstemwedel | April 30, 2009In an earlier post, I pointed you toward the preliminary report (PDF here) issued by the Minnesota Pandemic Ethics Project this January. This report sets out a plan for the state of Minnesota to ration vital resources in the event of a severe influenza pandemic.
Now, a rationing plan devised by an ethics project is striving for fairness. Rationed resources are those scarce enough that there isn't enough to go around to everyone who might want or need them. If someone will be left out, what's a fair way to decide who?
Let's have a look at the rationing strategies discussed in the draft…
oracknows | April 30, 2009I apologize to my readers.
I apologize for continually blogging about the pseudoscience at The Huffington Post. Of late, it seems that I can't go more than a day or two without some new atrocity against science being tossed out from Arianna's happy home for antivaccinationists and quacks. Be it antivaccine lunacy, Deepak Chopra's "quantum" woo, or the latest quack stylings of Kim Evans, no woo is too woo-ey, no quackery too quacky, no pseudoscience too far out for HuffPo. In any case, HuffPo is a lot like blogging about the antivaccine movement. As I've characterized it again and again, it's…
catdynamics | April 29, 2009World Health Organization raised the influenza pandemic alert to level 5.
Phase 5 Pandemic (Click to embiggen)
Phase 5 is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.
WHO director's statement
" Based on assessment of all available information, and following several expert…
catdynamics | April 29, 2009so what would a mild swine flu pandemic cost?
we get out the envelope...
best case is about 1% hit to GDP this year
so far on the swine 'flu we know:
it is a new type A influenze variant
probably essentially no one has immunity to it
it seems to spread rapidly and easily and be past where it can be contained
it might fizzle due to summer coming, or spread global in the next 2-6 weeks
it might come back next winter, possibly more virulent, or not
the fatality ratio, so far, does not seem any worse than "regular 'flu" - under 1%, and probably consistent with few percent of the seriously sick…
ddobbs | April 29, 2009Amid my flu frenzy I missed Vaughn Bell's excellent consideration of CIA psychology through the declassified memos:
I've been reading the recently released CIA memos on the interrogation of 'war on terror' detainees. The memos make clear that the psychological impact of the process is the most important aim of interrogation, from the moment the detainee is captured through the various phases of interrogation.
Although disturbing, they're interesting for what they reveal about the CIA's psychologists and their approach to interrogation.
As Vaughn notes,
A couple of the memos note that the…
jstemwedel | April 28, 2009In my last post, I looked at some of the ethical considerations an individual might make during a flu epidemic. My focus was squarely on the individual's decisions: whether to stay in bed or seek medical care, whether to seek aid from others, etc. This is the kind of everyday ethics that crops up for most of us as we try to get through our days.
If you're someone who is responsible for keeping health care infrastructure or other state resources in good working order, however, the ethical landscape of a major flu epidemic looks quite different.
On January 30, 2009, the Minnesota Pandemic…
oracknows | April 28, 2009No one brings home the stupid the way Michelle Bachmann does:
I find it interesting that it was back in the 1970s that the swine flu broke out then under another Democrat president Jimmy Carter. And I'm not blaming this on President Obama, I just think it's an interesting coincidence.
In just the same way that Kim Evans apparently doesn't know that there was no such thing as a flu vaccine during the 1918 pandemic, Michelle Bachman apparently doesn't know that the swine flu scare of 1976 occurred when Gerald Ford was President. In case Bachmann doesn't remember, Gerald Ford was a Republican.…
drorzel | April 28, 2009So, the President gave some sort of speech to a bunch of smart people yesterday (video, transcript), and hearts are a-flutter all over the science blogosphere, as President Obama promises great things for science:
We double the budget of key agencies, including the National Science Foundation, a primary source of funding for academic research, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which supports a wide range of pursuits - from improving health information technology to measuring carbon pollution, from testing "smart grid" designs to developing advanced manufacturing…