Politics
gregladen | March 17, 2009Oh, but wait, he wasn't. But Al Franken IS. That's Franken, zero els.
A group promoting United States-Israel ties is raising funds for Norm Coleman with an e-mail that opens by referring to Al Franken by the not-particularly-Jewish-sounding name "Franklin":
We are making an appeal for one of our friends and steadfast supporters of US-Israel relations, Senator Norm Coleman. The election in Minnesota and its recount have been distressing to follow. Coleman won the election. After the recount, Franklin came out slightly ahead, but tragically this recount was filled with many…
grrlscientist | March 17, 2009
Join the protest on 19 March 2009 in your city!
Are you upset about the latest AIG scandal where millions of dollars of the American taxpayers' bailout money were misused to pay special bonuses to their corporate executives -- the very same executives who swindled thousands of their clients and ran the company -- and the world's economy -- into the ground?
Of course, at the same time that 73 AIG executives are receiving bonuses of one million dollars or more, tens of millions of American taxpayers are facing unemployment, crushing debt, and loss of their housing, health insurance, and even…
drorzel | March 17, 2009Over at Unqualified Offerings, Thoreau offers a provocative comment on class and higher education:
Today (OK, yesterday, but I didn't really sleep on the plane, so it's still yesterday, or tomorrow is also today, or something) a friend offered (without necessarily endorsing) the theory that one reason why we try to get everyone to go to college is because it legitimizes a class system: If everybody gets the chance to try college, then their failure to attain economic success must be their own fault.
It's an interesting idea. I'm not sure I agree with it (though I'm not sure I agree with…
tqa | March 17, 2009
As you may know, there's a special election campaign going on in the 20th Congressional District in NY. Jim Tedisco is the Republican candidate for the seat. He's running against a Democrat named Scott Murphy. Initially, Tedisco was considered to be the strong favorite for the seat. The Representative who vacated the seat, Kirsten Gillibrand, is a Democrat, but the district is quite conservative, and Tedisco has much greater name recognition in the area than Murphy.
At the moment, polling suggests that Tedisco's once formidable lead has been cut to four percent. His problem, apparently, is…
pharyngula | March 17, 2009We other Americans, the ones down south in the United States, have been wrestling with this problem for a long time. Sometimes, you just get flaming idiots in charge of important bureaucracies. Sometimes they even get handed the keys to the administration of important scientific institutions. And then they open their mouths and show off how stupid they are, and we poor peons get to sit back and watch the spectacle of money being shoveled into the hands of the incompetent for a while.
Canada has Gary Goodyear, the chiropractor who has been vaulted into the position of minister in charge of…
catdynamics | March 16, 2009the bear went down the cliff
the bear went down the cliff
to find what he could find
to find what he could find
to find what he could find
the bear went down the cliff
to find what he could find
and what do you think he found
and what do you think he found
and what do you think he found
he found another cliff
he found another cliff
he found another cliff
and what do you think he did
the bear went down the cliff
the bear went down the cliff
the bear went down the cliff
to find what he could find
to find what he could find
to find what he could find
the bear went down the cliff
to find what he…
catdynamics | March 16, 2009here is an idle thought:
there was much conjecture back in sep '01 that people with "inside knowledge" had shorted certain stocks likely to be affected by the events of that month and made significant short term gains by subsequent events
the market, of course, paid up, and there have been claims those contracts were looked into
there have also been claims that certain people associated with this disappeared suddenly and unexpectedly from the plane of existence not long afterwards
there were some sudden deaths among not very old mid-east financiers not long after, that does seem clear
so…
razib | March 16, 2009Model Minority? No, Thanks!:
In reality, Indian Americans, much like other immigrants, have diverse experiences and backgrounds. Indian Americans are doctors, engineers and lawyers, as well as small business owners, domestic workers, taxi drivers and convenience store employees. Community members hold a range of immigration statuses and include naturalized citizens and H-1B visaholders, guestworkers and students, undocumented workers and green card holders. Some have access to higher education while others struggle to learn English in a new country. As with all communities, Indian Americans…
drorzel | March 16, 2009EurekAlert offered a press release from the American Physical Society over the weekend that may indicate that someone in the press office has won a round of drinks:
The American Physical Society (APS) is elated that the Senate has approved the FYO9 Omnibus Bill, which will allow scientists to continue cutting-edge research that will lead to innovation, job creation and economic growth for the United States.
"Elated" is not a word I expect to see in a press release. I suspect. Somebody in the press office may just have won a bet.
clock | March 16, 2009July 24, 2008 presentation by Stephen Schneider for the Stanford University Office of Science Outreach's Summer Science Lecture Series.
Professor Schneider discusses the local, regional, and international actions that are already beginning to address global warming and describe other actions that could be taken, if there were political will to substantially reduce the magnitude of the risks.
The Stanford Summer Science Lecture Series is a set of informal lectures about cutting edge research from four of Stanford's most esteemed professors.
razib | March 15, 2009Dumb article, Nobody's Model Minority, in response to Jason Richwine's Indian Americans: The New Model Minority (H/T Steve), makes a pretty obvious error:
He presses on anyway, attributing Indian Americans' overall "success" in the U.S. to three factors: culture, education (that is, an "obsessive emphasis on academic achievement") and most significantly, IQ. This success is defined by the number of Indian Americans with college degrees (69 percent), their median head of household annual salary ($83,000), and their representation in high-paying fields like medicine and information technology.…
catdynamics | March 15, 2009AIG released its counterparty list
AIG Moving Forward - list of counterparties and amounts.
So all this was really just to save Goldman Sachs...
They got $12.9 billion from the "Maiden Lane" funds the US set up to launder channel funds rapidly to vulnerable financial institutions.
'course Barclays, Deutsche Bank and Societe General also got a bunch of cash along with the other usual suspects.
It is mildly curious that some of the lists are sorted by amount paid out, and some are not.
Mildly obfuscates the information to those glancing at it.
Information Processing has some more interesting…
clock | March 15, 2009Dave Winer called up Jay Rosen and interviewed him about the potential of twitter-like platforms to become a news/journalistic medium. Listen to the podcast here. Join the discussion here.
Related: What does twitter mean for breaking news stories?
On Thursday morning (US Pacific Time), March 12, 2009, a piece of debris came close enough the International Space Station to require the astronauts to take refuge in the Soyez module, just in case there was a collision. In the end, the debris passed by without incident.
I experienced this event almost entirely through twitter. This essay is to…
jlynch | March 15, 2009Texas House Bill 4224 (introduced yesterday) attempts to introduce "strengths and weaknesses" language, despite opposition from scientists and educators. More over at NCSE.
catdynamics | March 14, 2009the Greater Munchkin asked me today why kids can't vote
I did my usual blather and then, thinking I was being clever asked her what she would do, if a politician said he'd give her as much free candy as she wanted
she thought for a minute and then said she would not vote for him, because he was a liar?
ok, said I, why do you say that?
because, she said patiently, as if talking to someone slightly retarded,
"there's not that much money in the world?
ddobbs | March 14, 2009
My story in the April 2009 Scientific American story, "The Post-Traumatic Stress Trap", just went online. Here's the opening:
In 2006, soon after returning from military service in Ramadi, Iraq, during the bloodiest
period of the war, Captain Matt Stevens of the Vermont National Guard began to have a problem with PTSD, or post-traumatic stress disorder. Stevens's problem was not that he had PTSD. It was that he began to have doubts about PTSD: the condition was real enough, but as a diagnosis he saw it being wildly, even dangerously, overextended.
[snip]
"Clinicians aren't separating the…
jlynch | March 14, 2009Mike Dunford has linked to a CAP poll for measuring political ideology. What can I say, I'm procrastinating, so I answered the questions and scored 344 out of 400. That makes me a god-damned baby-eating liberal pinko scumbag "extremely progressive." Below is the mean score by group:
I have yet to read the CAP report on American political opinion but here's a link none-the-less.
tqa | March 14, 2009
The Center For American Progress recently released the results of a political positions survey. They asked respondents to rate their level of agreement with 40 questions on a scale of 0-10, with 0 at the 'disagree' end of the spectrum. They converted each person's responses into a numerical value (that they call a 'composite ideology measure') between 0 and 400.
They've also put the online version of the survey up on their website. I came in as "extremely progressive" (although I still swear I'm a moderate), with a score of 315/400. If you take the survey, I'd be very interested to hear…
jlynch | March 13, 2009Over at PT, Hector Avalos is reporting that the deadline has passed for the DI-inspired "Evolution Academic Freedom Act” (HF 183) to move out of committee in Iowa. This one is now officially dead. Thus the scorecard so far looks like:
Mississippi - dead in committee
Oklahoma - dead in committee
Iowa - dead in committee
New Mexico - in committee
Alabama - in committee
Missouri - in committee
Florida - in committee
Texas - at state board
This brings the tally for 2009 to three dead out of eight. Frankly I can't imagine the DI is terribly happy about this.
gregladen | March 13, 2009Somebody's site on the internet is borked and it needs your help!
Hat tip to MN Progressive for identifying this problem.
Go help out Dusty Trice.