Politics
pharyngula | April 28, 2009In an act of political expediency, Arlen Specter has switched parties. This is good, in that it gives the Democrats more clout (especially when Minnesota's senator is finally seated). It's bad in that we don't want ex-Republicans to have more voice in the party. We'll take it, anyway.
The best part of the whole switch, though, is that it is a metric of the problems the conservatives face…no one wants to be seen with them anymore, unless they also happen to be crazy or stupid.
ddobbs | April 28, 2009Apparently the Bush Administration's survey of the legal literature of torture missed something.
From Antemedius:
George W. Bush's Justice Department said subjecting a person to the near drowning of waterboarding was not a crime and didn't even cause pain, but Ronald Reagan's Justice Department thought otherwise, prosecuting a Texas sheriff and three deputies for using the practice to get confessions.
Federal prosecutors secured a 10-year sentence against the sheriff and four years in prison for the deputies. But that 1983 case - which would seem to be directly on point for a legal analysis…
pharyngula | April 28, 2009Allow me to recap. Jerry Coyne set a few people on fire with a post arguing that national science organizations have gone to far in blithely conceding the compatibility of science and religion. He strongly suggests that they stick to complete neutrality on the topic, something they all promise to do, but then ignore what they say to tout a philosophical accommodation that doesn't really exist. He does not argue that they should go the other way and advance an atheistic position (even though we know that that is the only correct stance), but wants them to back off on the misleading happy…
drorzel | April 28, 2009My major "service" activity at work is involvement with the Minerva program, which attempts to blur the line between academic and residential life. I enjoy this because it gives me the opportunity to work closely with students outside a narrow academic context, and I've been very impressed with the creativity and responsibility of the students involved.
Part of the program is also to get faculty involved, and this runs into more problems. The biggest of which is probably a mismatch between the time scales on which students and faculty operate. If you try to get faculty to do something in the…
gregladen | April 27, 2009Did he take a bribe? Did he try to buy a senate seat? Did he misuse campaign funds?
NO! He was trying to save the lives of thousands, make life better for countless people living under the oppressive regime of the Sudanese government. Minnesota Fifth District Congressman Keith Ellison was arrested along with others at the Sudanese Embassy where they were protesting the current situation in Darfur. Details are available here at MN Progressive Project.
Ellison's office has released the following statement regarding Darfur:
Today, I join with my Congressional colleagues and advocates from…
oracknows | April 27, 2009After having been bummed out at the invasion of faith healing and quackery in my hometown newspaper I came to something that bummed me out even more. Most readers here have probably never heard of the Michigan Central Station train depot. Suffice it to say that it is a huge train station that was, in its heyday at least, every bit as impressive as Grand Central Station in New York or Union Station in Chicago. Indeed, it's not for nothing that the Michigan Central Station was likened to "Michigan's Ellis Island," as it was frequently the first thing in Detroit that new arrivals saw, as this…
pharyngula | April 27, 2009The president spoke to the NAS today, and he made some great promises: increases in funding for science and science education, an investment in training new teachers in science and math, a political commitment to get better advising in science untainted by ideology. He specifically promised 3% of the GDP to go to research in science and technology.
Listen to it in an NAS podcast, or read the transcript. It's a good speech, except for the very last line, which was incredibly stupid…but I'll overlook it as a mindless platitude.
grrlscientist | April 27, 2009tags: Save Our Boreal Birds, online petition, birds, conservation, environment
Palm Warbler, Dendroica palmarum.
Image: Jeff Nadler [larger view].
Save the summer homes of Palm Warblers and other North American bird species that breed in Canada's Boreal forests!
The Boreal Songbird Initiative, along with other environmental groups like Bird Studies Canada, Nature Canada, the David Suzuki Foundation, and others created a petition called "Save our Boreal Birds" a little over a year ago. This petition will be sent to the Prime Minister of Canada and many provincial leaders throughout Canada,…
pharyngula | April 27, 2009ERV has just posted the Oklahoma GOP platform, and she's right — any random amble through any piece of it will have you laughing at the audacity of wingnuttia. ERV singled out a piece endorsing the teaching of creationism in the classroom, but this is my favorite, just because they are two goals sitting right next to each other, and the Rethuglicans didn't even notice the contradiction.
4. While the objective study of
philosophy and religion can be
beneficial, public schools should not
be endorsing any specific religion or
philosophy. We believe that students
and teachers should enjoy the…
tqa | April 27, 2009
First, the Quote of the Day:
we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
If you're an American, those fourteen words will hopefully look at least vaguely familiar. They're the closing words of the Declaration of Independence. Those words weren't tacked on to the end of the document as a fancy ending. That was the price that the Declaration's signers were willing to pay. When they signed, there was a very real chance that they would in the end pay that price.
Over the weekend, Newsweek's Joe Meacham published an editorial that managed to miss the…
pharyngula | April 26, 2009
Aren't you looking forward to seeing a tortured corpse adorning cars in your neighborhood?
That hideous plate is one of the options railroaded through the Florida legislature.
Religious specialty plates offered by Sen. Ronda Storms, R-Valrico, and Sen. Gary Siplin, D-Orlando, made it onto a bill Friday even though many members had not seen images of those plates and none was produced for the debate.
Siplin didn't mince words when asked what his "Trinity" plate looks like, saying, "It has a picture of my Lord and savior Jesus Christ." It, along with a "Preserving the Past" plate offered by…
gregladen | April 26, 2009Only 28 percent of Minnesotans think Coleman's current appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court is appropriate. Sixty four percent think he should give up now. Seventy three percent feel that he should not go beyond the State Supreme Court if he loses there. The will of the people has been heard in both the voting booth and the polls.
This will not affect former Senator Norm Coleman's strategies, because the will of the people is of no concern to him. Coleman will continue with the State Supreme Court appeal, and when he loses there (and he will) he will continue on to the US supreme court.…
catdynamics | April 25, 2009Revere links to a
curious Bloomberg News story
"...The first case was seen in Mexico on April 13. The outbreak coincided with the President Barack Obama's trip to Mexico City on April 16. Obama was received at Mexico's anthropology museum in Mexico City by Felipe Solis, a distinguished archeologist who died the following day from symptoms similar to flu, Reforma newspaper reported. The newspaper didn't confirm if Solis had swine flu or not. "
I presume the Secret Service takes sharp notice if someone who meets the President dies the next die from a mystery illness.
I also presume an autopsy…
sa smith | April 25, 2009So, like, last weekend the Oklahoma GOP had their convention in Tulsa.
They put together their party platform.
...
It is batshit insane.
Like... *silence*... like just print this off (pdf), close your eyes, point at a random sentence and read it.
There is a 100% chance that the sentence you point at is batshit insane. 100%.
... *silence*
Heres what they think about science education:
7. We believe that the scientific evidence supporting Intelligent Design and biblical creation should be included in the Oklahoma public school curricula, and if any evolution theory is taught, that both should…
illconsidered | April 25, 2009Okay, so this is way off the general climate topic, but I really got a kick out of this article from Bill Maher published in the LA Times.
If Al Franken can be a senator, why can`t Bill Maher be an LA Times columnist?
Here are a few notable quotables:
The governor of Texas, Rick Perry, is not afraid to say publicly that thinking out loud about Texas seceding from the Union is appropriate considering that ... Obama wants to raise taxes 3% on 5% of the people? I'm not sure exactly what Perry's independent nation would look like, but I'm pretty sure it would be free of taxes and Planned…
pharyngula | April 25, 2009Michele Bachmann gave a science lecture to congress. As you might imagine, this was a grand spectacle of stupidity.
Just a few things that jumped out at me (I'm sure you can find more by listening carefully, but I could not bear to pay too much attention).
She repeats over and over that CO2 is a natural gas. Yes, we know…no one is claiming otherwise. (Also, what would an "unnatural" gas be, anyway?) Nitrogen is also a natural substance, it helps plants grow, and we produce perfectly natural nitrogenous materials from our bodies — so does that mean that we should stop sewer services and…
oracknows | April 25, 2009I just learned yesterday from a link a friend sent me and from Professor Deborah Lipstadt's blog that the team of producers who made The Soloist have optioned the movie rights to Professor Lipstadt's book History on Trial: My Day in Court With a Holocaust Denier, which is the story of the libel suit brought against her by Holocaust denier David Irving in the U.K., a lawsuit that Irving ultimately lost big time.
This is excellent news. Having read her book, as well as Richard Evans' account of the trial, Lying About Hitler: History, Holocaust, and the David Irving Trial, I had always thought…
evolvingthoughts | April 25, 2009Suppose you have a religion and are interested in science. Do you
a. Have to give up your religion
b. Have to abandon your effort to find out about the natural world through science
c. Try to find some accommodation?
Now suppose you are a member of a scientific body, and want to suggest to members of religions that they can be part of the scientific enterprise. What do you do?
a. Tell them they can do so only if they abandon their religion
b. Tell them they cannot be part of the scientific enterprise
c. Tell them that some religions have no apparent problem accommodating science?
According to…
catdynamics | April 24, 2009in honour of Geithner's end of the week press conference
Crimson Permanent Assurance:
The song is at the end of part 2...
palmd | April 24, 2009So, this whole animal rights extremism thing isn't really my thing---I'm not a researcher, and I think the ARA's like ALF and PeTA are all fucking nuts. Still, they're bad, bad nuts, so I have to care. Out in California, they've been threatening researchers and committing senseless acts of violence. That's why you have to visit this LA Times Poll.
For details:
DrugMonkey
PZ