Politics
gregladen | January 14, 2009What a moron. A lying moron, if you must know.
I love it: "Fair Judge = Norm Coleman Wins"
oracknows | January 13, 2009Last week, I did multiple posts about the death of HIV/AIDS denialist Christine Maggiore of what for all the world looked like an HIV-related pneumonia, the excuses HIV/AIDS denialists made to try to persuade people that it wasn't AIDS, and the attempted coverup of damning posts. In the past, I've also taken a certain comedian by the name of Bill Maher to task for his antivaccine views, germ theory denialism, and embrace of detoxification quackery and conspiracy mongering about big pharma.
I should have known that wasn't all. I should have realized that he would be sympathetic to HIV/AIDS…
gregladen | January 13, 2009Al Franken has, as his his right and duty, filed papers to the court now reviewing Coleman's suit regarding the Minnesota Senate Race.
Eric Kleefeld has an excellent summary of the paper. You can read the papers here, and read Eric's summary here. Oh, and if you want a real laugh, you can read Coleman's suit here.
I'll give you the bottom line. There are the usual hopeful elements in any such filing, which usually have no effect, such as jurisdictional questions and so on. But there are two key elements based on which I would expect a decision by the court to throw out the case. First,…
ddobbs | January 13, 2009Rolling deadlines have kept me from the blogging desk, but I can occupy it long enough now to call out a few items that either haven't received as much coverage as they might have -- or that have gotten several interesting hits.
⢠At Huffpost, Jeanne Lenzer and Shannon Brownlee offer the FDA a three-step program:
Step One: Admit that you are currently powerless over the industry you are supposed to be regulating. You have let Big Pharma take over your life. You have become dependent on drug company money that comes from the Prescription Drug Fee User Act (PDUFA) of 1992, and over the…
oracknows | January 13, 2009About four weeks ago, I wrote what I thought to be an amusing piece about how our blog "buddy" J. B. Handley, antivaccine advocate extraordinaire and now second fiddle in the organization he founded (Generation Rescue) to a Jenny-come-lately former purveyor of Indigo Child woo previously best known for being Playboy Playmate of the Year, a game show hostess on MTV, the star of her own short-lived sitcom, and a gross-out comedienne known for eating her own vomit or sitting in a pool of her own menstrual blood. Unfortunately, along with her A-list boyfriend Jim Carrey, this former D-list star…
oracknows | January 12, 2009In responding to Deepak Chopra's "integrative medicine" nonsense from last week that I "http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/01/the_three_musketeers_of_woo_m…," Derek Lowe proposes the best trial of Qi Gong ever:
"Chronic pain is one of the major sources of worker's compensation claims costs, yet studies show that it is often susceptible to acupuncture and Qi Gong. Herbs usually have far fewer side effects than pharmaceuticals".
Studies show, do they? Is there really a believable study that shows that Qi-freaking-Gong, of all things, is good for chronic pain? Ancient hokum about "energy…
jlynch | January 12, 2009For the second year running, you - yes, YOU, laddie! - have made the BEAST 50 Most Loathsome People in America. A slip from last year’s #9 slot, but an appearance none the less:
43. You
Charges: You think it’s your patriotic duty to spend money you don’t have on crap you don’t need. You think Hillary lost because of sexism, when it’s actually because she’s just a bad liar. You think Iraq is better off now than before we invaded, and don’t understand why they’re so ungrateful. You think Tim Russert was a great journalist. You’re hopping mad about an auto industry bailout that cost a squirt of…
grrlscientist | January 12, 2009tags: Iraq, Iraq for Sale, politics, streaming video
Robert Greenwald, the director of IRAQ FOR SALE, was invited to testify before Congress by Rep. Jim Moran. He prepared four minutes from the documentary to show.
Republicans insisted this video not be shown. [4:37]
oracknows | January 12, 2009The seemingly never-ending quest of advocates of unscientific medicine, the so-called "complementary and alternative medicine" (CAM) movement is to convince policy makers, patients, and physicians that, really and truly, it no longer deserves the qualifier of "alternative," that it is in fact mainstream and even "scientific." That very search for respectability without accountability is the very reason why "alternative" medicine originally morphed into CAM in order to soften the "alternative" label a decade or two ago. Increasingly, however, advocates of such highly implausible medical…
pharyngula | January 12, 2009The Buffalo Beast's 50 most loathsome people of 2008 list is out. Don't worry, the viciousness is bipartisan.
gregladen | January 11, 2009It is a travesty when the lives of young people doing little more than trying to make a point are tossed aside in order to make the likes of federal prosecutors, FBI agents, state investigators, and the occasional mayor and governor feel like they have larger than average dick. Which is pretty much what happened in Saint Paul in relation to the RNC last year. Shame on them.
Eventually it had to come out in the trials for alleged crimes at the Republican National Convention(RNC) that the so called "anarchists" of the RNC Welcoming Committee were being influenced by provocateurs. Basically…
gregladen | January 11, 2009.... via his court challenge of the recount that places Al Franken ahead are assessed by Eric Kleefeld:
The complaint ignores the existence of counter-evidence, employs one maneuver when it is self-benefiting and opposes the same maneuver when it goes against them, attacks not just the recount but votes that were counted for Franken all along, and overall throws everything against the wall to see what sticks.
Which is what I've been saying all along.
Have a look at Eric's point by point analysis.
oracknows | January 10, 2009I don't watch Private Practice. I didn't like Grey's Anatomy, which, every time I caught part of it, struck me as the cheesiest sort of medical soap opera, a General Hospital transplanted to prime time. Given that Private Practice is a spinoff of Grey's Anatomy, I never saw any reason whatsoever to watch. However, on Thursday night an episode aired that royally pissed off the antivaccine contingent, and that has to be a good thing. The episode, Contamination, featured a storyline in which an unvaccinated child shows up in the emergency room with the measles. The parents are antivaccine and…
clock | January 9, 2009Like we did with the Tripoli Six....
From Declan Butler, reproduced here in its entirety, as it is important:
Iran has summarily tried two of the nation's HIV researchers with communicating with an "enemy government," in a half-day trial that started and ended on 31 December in Tehran's Revolutionary Court. There will be no further court hearings, and a verdict is expected within days.
The brothers, Arash and Kamiar Alaei, who have achieved international acclaim for their progressive HIV-prevention programme, have been held in Tehran's notorious Evin prison since their arrest last June (see…
tlambert | January 9, 2009The identity of the person who hoaxed Keith Windschuttle has been revealed. Katherine Wilson had left many clues and several people figured that she was the hoaxer.
Meanwhile, Keith Windschuttle continues to deny that he was hoaxed, because:
A real hoax, like that of Alan Sokal and Ern Malley, is designed to expose editors who are pretentious, ignorant or at least over-enthusiastic about certain subjects.
Windschuttle says that the article was "only 10 to 15 per cent invented", and apparently this is not a high enough percentage to expose him as ignorant. He digs the hole a little deeper…
jstemwedel | January 9, 2009You know what makes an already scary world a lot scarier? When a government decides it's a crime for disease researchers to do their job.
From Declan Butler:
Iran has summarily tried two of the nation's HIV researchers with communicating with an "enemy government," in a half-day trial that started and ended on 31 December in Tehran's Revolutionary Court. There will be no further court hearings, and a verdict is expected within days.
The brothers, Arash and Kamiar Alaei, who have achieved international acclaim for their progressive HIV-prevention programme, have been held in Tehran's…
clock | January 9, 2009This is your weekend reading - lots of it, some fascinating, some enraging, but perhaps if enough people are aware and scream loudly enough, something can be done:
Assistance Monkeys, Ducks, Parrots, Pigs and Ducks ... Should the law protect them?
More Follow Up on NYT Story About Assistance Creatures
More Assistance Creature Follow Up - The History of Service Monkeys, Plus Monkey Waiters
Newsflash! DOJ ADA Changes Leaked -- All Animals Set to Be Banned Except Dogs
DoJ's Rationale Behind Banning Non-Canine Service Animals
DOJ's Proposal and Rationale for Allowing Psychiatric Service Animals (…
pharyngula | January 9, 2009I was startled to see that John McCain hasn't been retired to the WaxWorks Museum of Irrelevant Political Figures yet — he's still making speeches. Could somebody tell him that he'll never, ever have a shot at the presidency again?
Anyway the subject of his speech was to sneer at fruit fly research again, and mock lobster research. What's with the hatin' on invertebrates, Mr McCain?
At least we don't have to care what he says anymore: he is officially nobody, a washed-up politician who let himself get upstaged by his airhead running mate.