Politics
catdynamics | February 19, 2009Say it is not so:
Brio near bankruptcy
Brio, yes, Brio makes proper toys, out of wood.
Not junky injection molded plastic crap.
Wah.
gregladen | February 19, 2009Well, not really, but she did mention that we are Running Out of Rich People!!!11!!!!
This first bit below is from a few days back is just full of gems. I'm giving you the whole radio interview here. Below, is an annotated version that may be more enjoyable. Either way, shoot up some Valium first.
She gets giddy over Acorn, and at just under nine minutes declares that we are running out of rich people. She also mentions that any Republicans that don't vote as she wishes are not really Republicans. And considering how ICKY she is, it's pretty amazing that she can't pronounce the "ic…
oracknows | February 18, 2009Unfortunately, as we have been dreading for the last four months or so since her relapse was diagnosed, my mother-in-law passed away from breast cancer in hospice. She died peacefully, with my wife and the rest of her family at her side. As you might expect, I do not much feel like blogging, and even if I did my wife needs me more. Because I foresaw this coming, however, I do have a series of "Best of" reposts lined up. If you've been reading less than a year or two, they're new to you. If not, I hope you enjoy them again. I don't know when I'll be back, other than maybe a brief update or two…
revere | February 18, 2009While I like Obama I'm none too fond of some of the people he has around him, especially in the economic area. Larry Summers and his pals (Rubin, Geithner, etc.) helped bring us the current crisis, although it took GWB and the Republican Congress to turn a bad situation into a catastrophe. We threw the Republicans out, and good riddance. But why let the others back in? These remarks are occasioned by a commitment I've made to do a "work in progress" seminar tomorrow morning. My scientific work is progressing nicely but one of the things that isn't yet in progress is preparing for the seminar…
jlynch | February 17, 2009 No sooner than Oklahoma’s SB 320 gets axed than we find out about another “academic freedom”/”strengths and weaknesses” bill. This time it’s Missouri HB 656 introduced on Feb 10th. As NCSE reports, Robert Wayne Cooper (R-District 155), the chief sponsor, has a history of wasting time introducing pro-creationism bills.
So the current state of play for 2009 is:
Mississippi - dead in committee
Oklahoma - dead in committee
New Mexico - in committee
Iowa - in committee
Alabama - in committee.
Missouri - in committee
Texas - at state board
Florida - looks like there's to be a "teach…
sciencepunk | February 17, 2009
A letter appeared in yesterday's Guardian calling on Science Museums to cancel planned 'Israel Day of Science' events in London and Manchester. The letter carried 383 signatories including well-known figures such as Ian Gibson MP and Professor Jim Al-Khalili. Full details below the fold.
There's no doubting that Israel punches well above its weight when it comes to science and technology - website www.isracast.com regularly announces new advances such as impenetrable armour, missile interceptors, and unmanned aerial and ground drones. Each of these is undoubtedly a fantastic innovation…
sheril | February 17, 2009Yesterday, C-SPAN released the Historians Survey of Presidential Leadership. Below are the results based on ten attributes of leadership. [Click here to compare this list with scores from 2000].
I'm interested to find out whether readers agree with these rankings, and if not, who would you move and why?
1. Abraham Lincoln
2. George Washington
3. Franklin D. Roosevelt
4. Theodore Roosevelt
5. Harry S. Truman
6. John F. Kennedy
7. Thomas Jefferson
8. Dwight D. Eisenhower
9. Woodrow Wilson
10. Ronald Reagan
11. Lyndon B. Johnson
12. James K. Polk
13. Andrew Jackson
14. James Monroe
15. Bill…
clock | February 16, 2009
No comment....(can you imagine Bush saying anything like this? Ever? Any Republican?)
j7uy5 | February 16, 2009This is a photo of an embarrassing misattribution. It features a
quote often misattributed to Charles Darwin: It is not the
strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but
rather the one most adaptable to change.
title="Click this link to find out details of the Creative Commons license associated with this image.">
src="http://creativecommons.org/images/public/somerights20.gif"
alt="There is a Creative Commons license attached to this image."
style="border: medium none ;" align="left" border="0" height="31"
width="88">photo by
href="http://www.flickr.com/…
oracknows | February 15, 2009What's an advocate of evidence- and science-based medicine to think about the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, better known by its abbrevation NCCAM? As I've pointed out before, I used to be somewhat of a supporter of NCCAM. I really did, back when I was more naïve and idealistic. Indeed, as I mentioned before, when I first read Wally Sampson's article Why NCCAM should be defunded, I thought it a bit too strident and even rather close-minded. At the time, I thought that the best way to separate the wheat from the chaff was to apply the scientific method to the…
clock | February 15, 2009Being quite busy lately, I accumulated a lot of links to stuff I wanted to comment on but never found time. Well, it does not appear I will find time any time soon, so here are the links for you to comment on anyway (just because I link to them does not mean I agree with them - in some cases quite the opposite):
In Defense of Secrecy :
Given the pervasive secrecy of the Bush-Cheney administration, and the sorry consequences of that disposition, President Barack Obama's early emphasis on openness in government seems almost inevitable. One of the first official communications issued by the new…
gregladen | February 14, 2009In his bid to Take The Senate No Matter What, Norm Coleman has been trying to get a very large number of previously rejected absentee ballots counted. Most of these ballots were not counted because they were truly borked. Folks, remember this: If you are going to vote absentee, keep in mind the fact that an envelope with a vote in it showing up at city hall is looked at only as a possible vote. It would be so easy to produce fraudulent votes (and goodness knows there are enough Republicans around to carry out such nefarious acts) that the rules have to be pretty strict. My recommendation…
gregladen | February 14, 2009Christos Greek Restaurant is one of three well-known Greek restaurants in Minneapolis. The other two are It's Greek to Me and Gardens of Salonica. Which one you like may be a matter of cultural survival.
It turns out that Greek restaurants in Minneapolis are to the citizens of this area what operating systems and political candidates are to computer users and activists. You've got one you love, and the rest suck. Although I've lived here long enough to be mistaken at times for a native, this particular form of Greek love/hate is not one I've assimilated. I've been to all three of these…
clock | February 14, 2009Republicans: Spare Me Your Newfound 'Fiscal Responsibility':
At his press conference on Monday, President Barack Obama had to remind Mara Liasson of Fox News and NPR that it was the Republicans who doubled the national debt over the past eight years and it's a little strange to be hearing lectures from them now about how to be fiscally responsible. That interchange was my favorite part of the press conference. A savvy inside-the-Beltway reporter of Ms. Liasson's caliber shouldn't have to be reminded that George W. Bush and the Republican Congress were among the most fiscally reckless…
pharyngula | February 14, 2009One of my favorite meetings is the annual Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology meetings. One of my favorite cities to visit is New Orleans, Louisiana. The two pleasures will not be coinciding at any time in the near future because of the ineptitude and inanity of Louisiana's legislature and governor, Bobby Jindal. Here's the press release from the LA Science Coalition:
National Scientific Society to Boycott Louisiana over LA Science Education Act
The first tangible results of the Louisiana legislature's passage and Gov. Bobby Jindal's signing of the 2008 Louisiana Science Education…
clock | February 14, 2009How religion generates social conservatism:
You could make a reasonable case that pencils have a purpose, but pencil shavings just exist. But what about elephants? Religious people and children are, of course, more likely than non-religious adults to say that animals exist for a purpose. But what about men and women? Black people and whites? Rich and poor? Arab and Jew? Do these exist for a purpose? And is it possible for one to become another? Gil Diesdendruck and Lital Haber of Bar-Ilan University in Israel decided to find out what children think.
clock | February 14, 2009I was listening to NPR in the car yesterday when David Brooks came on and started blathering in his usual vein, revealing with every word his love for the establishment in Washington and his disdain for the proles, and pushing Broderism with all his might. So I was very pleased to see Glenn Greenwald dissect him in great detail in his latest post - David Brooks reveals the mentality of the Beltway journalist:
Here we see the full expression of one of the most predominant attributes of the contemporary Beltway journalist: because they are integral members of the Washington establishment,…
aardvarchaeology | February 14, 2009Imagine that you're ten years old, you've got a cageful of gerbils and your weekly allowance is just big enough to feed five of them. If one of the females pops out a brood of pups, you're in trouble. You can either try to weedle a bigger allowance out of your parents, try to give gerbils away, starve the gerbils... or start killing gerbil pups.
Now, at more than six billion people in our worldwide gerbil cage, we've pretty much got the same choices, only we can't give people away -- but we can control the number of pups born. And we need to. Because within the next century, our global…