Politics
bcohen | February 26, 2009"The [Environmental Justice (EJ)] movement," writes Gwen Ottinger, "was galvanized in the early 1980s by the observation that toxic chemicals and other environmental hazards are concentrated in communities of color. EJ activists, many of them veterans of the civil rights movement, began to argue that social equality demanded an end to this 'environmental racism.' Currently, however, it is not equality but health that dominates grassroots activists' campaigns against chemical contamination."
Ottinger is a fellow at the Chemical Heritage Foundation's (CHF) Center for Contemporary History and…
pharyngula | February 25, 2009Is there some new requirement in the Republican party that potential candidates for the presidency must be against basic science? Bobby Jindal gave a rebuttal to one of Obama's recent speeches, and what does he do? Criticizes the investment of "$140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring.' Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C." Heck, this isn't even any of that abstract, difficult-to-understand stuff — it's work that directly helps people.
"I was kind of taken aback by the way volcanic monitoring was…
gregladen | February 25, 2009So Ana IM's me, and I can tell through the text that she was almost out of breath with excitement or fear or something. But then I remembered shes been observing the Minnesota Senate court challenge. Turns out something rather interesting happened. Luckily, TPM has it covered:
Norm Coleman's lawyers just had a very awkward moment in court, in their attempt to prove that absentee ballots were double-counted -- it turns out they've failed to share evidence with the Franken camp, involving a key witness.
The Coleman camp called Pamela Howell, a Republican election worker in Minneapolis, who…
gregladen | February 25, 2009When will the madness end? When the Republicans dry up and blow away, of course.
In the Republican response to Obama's State of the Union 2.0 address, by Bobby Jindal, governer of Louisiana, we heard this:
"Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.,"
The reason why volcanoes have been picked out of some speech writer's anal sphincter zone is because they erupt and they wanted the metaphor. Or because Jindal believes he has no volcanoes in his state (but he would be wrong) or because of some other rhetorical reason…
drorzel | February 25, 2009Now that we have a President who is smart, articulate, and has the best interests of the country in mind, I feel compelled to actually watch his major speeches, like last night's not-really-the-State-of-the-Union address.
It's a small price to pay for having a President who speaks to the nation as if we were rational adults, but it does cut into my ability to do other things.
Anyway, consider this an Open Thread for commentary about the speech, in the unlikely event that you don't feel you have any other place to talk about it.
catdynamics | February 24, 2009CR has a fascinating video from KCET on "trashout"
the poingancy and waste that comes from foreclosure and peoples' inability to cope
video is here
the waste, the trashing of furniture and equipment and items is horrendous,
but the cost in labour of slowing down and sorting through the stuff, and partitioning it and storing it and making sure it is safe and clean is prohibitive
there might be crowdsourcing solutions to this, but the liability issues probably preclude any formal or informal organized scavenging - if nothing else, if they put out a note for people to come help themselves,…
clock | February 24, 2009Genetic Manipulation of Pest Species: Ecological and Social Challenges:
In the past 10 years major advances have been made in our ability to build transgenic pest strains that are conditionally sterile, harbor selfish genetic elements, and express anti-pathogen genes. Strategies are being developed that involve release into the environment of transgenic pest strains with such characteristics. These releases could provide more environmentally benign pest management and save endangered species, but steps must be taken to insure that this is the case and that there are no significant health or…
sheril | February 24, 2009
The United States faces enormous challenges in a troubled climate, but I think we just witnessed President Barack Obama officially usher in a new golden age for American politics.
oracknows | February 24, 2009I realize that PZ seems to have all the fun when it comes to entertaining e-mails from cranks, but that doesn't mean I don't sometimes get my share of such amusement. For example, yesterday, waiting for me in the morning in my e-mail in box was this delightful gem:
From: jockdoubleday@hotmail.com
Subject: the dark force behind the global crisis
Date: February 23, 2009 12:29:07 AM GMT-05:00
To: jockdoubleday@hotmail.com
To friends of life on Earth,
There is a dark force working to undermine all ecosystems on Earth.
This force is a trans-century cult that calls itself the Illuminati -- because…
tqa | February 24, 2009
Tonight, President Obama is going to address a joint session of Congress. It's the same time of year that the State of the Union Address is given. It's the same format. It's expected that he will cover the same kind of topics that you see in the State of the Union. There's even going to be a speech in response from the opposing party - just like the State of the Union. But tonight's speech is not a State of the Union Address.
At least if you live in the United States. Internationally, the speech is at least occasionally being billed as The State of the Union. So what's the deal?…
catdynamics | February 24, 2009is the Light of an Oncoming Train
classic
haven't had gratuitous youtube blogging for a while
Pugh! Pugh!
Barney, McGrew!
Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub!
pharyngula | February 24, 2009Do I really need to see these old reminders that some of our politicians are idiots? Here's a quote from Governor Mark Sanford of South* Carolina:
Well I think that it's just, and science is more and more documenting this, is that there are real "chinks" in the armor of evolution being the only way we came about. The idea of there being a, you know, a little mud hole and two mosquitoes get together and the next thing you know you have a human being... is completely at odds with, you know, one of the laws of thermodynamics which is the law of, of ... in essence, destruction.
I know, it's the…
catdynamics | February 23, 2009ipsos custodes?
The guardians of the finances, to be specific.
I infer, reading on the Net, that US Treasury Secretary Geithner has not got round to nominating under and assistant secretaries for the various Treasury Offices.
So, they are either vacant, or staffed by holdovers from the previous administration.
Awkward that.
They might want to do something about that, rather fast.
I hear, from a friend of a friend who has a cousin whose brother-in-law knows this girl who...
anyway, apparently US Treasury officials had it suggested to them that too much of the modern banking system and its…
catdynamics | February 23, 2009apparently citigroup is pushing for a deal whereby the US government's current preferred stock holding in the company would be converted to common stock
the catch is that for about $45 billion in preferred stock the US would get less than 50% of the company, to avoid the stigma nationalization the appearance of pre-privatization, which is puzzling, since the total capital value of the company is only about $10 billion
current shareholders would lose 90% or more of their current depleted holding, but the capitalization of the company would be boosted by almost a factor of ten - a comparable…
jstemwedel | February 23, 2009Over at The White Coat Underground, PalMD looks at the ways in which delivering good health care to deaf patients depends on providing good interpreters -- and notices the difficulty of making this happen:
How do we approach this as a society?
Item 1: Deaf people have special needs with regards to interactions with the health care system.
Item 2: The government mandates that proper interpreters be provided for doctor visits.
Item 3: Neither patients nor doctors can afford to provide this service.
Now don't go telling me that "all you rich doctors can afford to get the interpreter"---we most…
laelaps | February 22, 2009
It would be fair to say that, until a week ago, I knew virtually nothing about J.B.S. Haldane. I knew he was a British biologist who helped form the subdiscipline of population genetics, but that was about it. Then, unexpectedly, Oxford University Press sent me a copy of What I Require From Life: Writings on Science and Life From J.B.S. Haldane.
What I Require From Life is neither an autobiography nor a comprehensive compilation of Haldane's writings. Instead it is a motley collection of Haldane's short essays written for the communist newspaper The Daily Worker (1937-1950) and pieces he…
drorzel | February 22, 2009This week's Science Saturday on bloggingheads.tv features Carl Zimmer and Phil "Bad Astronomy" Plait:
It's a wide-ranging conversation, covering topics in astronomy, why people believe crazy things, how the Internet can help, and the death of newspapers and their eventual replacement by blogs. Plait is really energetic (he spends a couple of minutes talking over Zimmer without even noticing), making it a livelier-than-usual conversation.
I'm not sure I agree with him about newspapers, though. What he rattles off is more or less the standard triumphalist-blogger line-- newspapers are too slow…
catdynamics | February 19, 2009I think I am having flashbacks
youtube, To The Rescue!
This was important mood music at a tender age...
late night parties with cider and harsh red wine in North Oxford.