Politics
pharyngula | November 18, 2008The Democrats are giving Joe Lieberman everything he wants, and this is symptomatic of the party: they stand for nothing but the status quo and internal accommodation. "Bipartisanship" is a dirty word when one of the two sides is a discredited, corrupt mob of wannabe theocrats and greedy thugs, but the Democratic leadership simply rolls over and acts as if they are doing a great thing by flushing progressive principles down the toilet.
Glenn Greenwald lambastes the illusion of partisan bickering. We've been ruled by one party of idiots and another of fawning puppy dogs, and I'm getting a…
hrynyshyn | November 18, 2008So much has changed in the last few weeks that I'm only now beginning to get a handle on things. I'm still processing and unsure about so much that I'm going to do something that I have resisted doing since joining the blogosphere three and half years ago. I'm going to share some personal thoughts about who I am and where I call home.
First, there's the issue of my relationship to government.
I was born a Canadian and except for 22 months in the late 1980s, spent my life in Canada, before moving to western North Carolina in the spring of 2005. As a Canadian, I grew up assuming that Canada was…
choofnagle | November 18, 2008So you operate a toy company and along the way, you probably offshored your production to China to save money. And now that Americans have awakened to the obvious problems with your business plan, you want to still sell your toys to the public without testing them for lead.
Your options: 1) sell your inventory before February 10, 2009, when the new lead regulations come into effect; 2) do nothing and just risk it; and/or 3) lobby to make the standards non-retroactive.
Dear readers, would you be surprised if our friends who cut corners by offshoring to China would choose option 3? Melanie…
tqa | November 17, 2008
...or at least I should be.
I'm a white man, on the low side of the 30-44 age bracket, with very strong military ties. I'm not a movement conservative, but I don't consider myself to be a movement progressive or liberal either. I don't think government is always the problem, but I also don't think it's always the solution. I fall into the 44% of voters who classify themselves as moderates. Overall, I think my profile more closely matches that of a Republican voter than a Democratic one.
I usually, but not always, wind up voting for the Democrat.
If you're a Republican, and you want my…
clock | November 17, 2008The geriatric leaders of the government of Italy are making fools of themselves by trying to regulate bloggers, i.e., get them to register with the government, pay taxes, be liable for what they write, etc.:
The law's impact would turn all bloggers in Italy into potential outlaws. This could be great for their traffic, I realise, but hell on the business aspirations of an Italian web start-up, not to mention any tech company that wants to sell its blog-publishing software in Italy, or open a social network here. In addition to driving out potential tech jobs, the stifling of free speech also…
pharyngula | November 17, 2008I've never thought of Australia as a particularly strait-laced place — rather the opposite, actually — so why have they elected a government that wants to do something as stupid as putting an internet filter in place for the whole nation? They claim that they're out to block child pornography, the usual entry-level excuse to impose censorship, but then they also announce that they will filter "other unwanted content", which means…what? Watch out, Australia, this is the first step towards allowing the government to control all of your information.
One opposition tactic that might work is to…
j7uy5 | November 17, 2008Razib already did the
href="http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2008/11/fear_of_a_black_president_miss.php">definitive
post of voting trends in the South,
looking especially at the influence of skin color.
Now, we see there is a peculiar correlation: those areas that had the
highest cotton production before the Civil War are the areas in which
Obama did especially well.
In the map below, each black dot represents 2,000 bales of cotton
produced in 1860. The counties shown in blue had a majority
of voters who voted for Obama; red for McCain. The darkness
of the hue indicates the strength of…
evolvingthoughts | November 16, 2008
We had a little storm here yesterday. It left my brother's flat wet inside and out, destroying their mattresses, and giving my motorcycle a jet blast clean. It's clean for the first time since I bought it four years ago. I was, not to put too fine a point on it, very scared. Two minutes before I arrived at my brother's place, I was on the road on my bike. Then this happened. Hailstones the size of a small orange, winds up to 130km/h (and I am sure that was what I saw when I took this pic), tree branches down and water just pouring into the flat.
Anyway, that to one side, here are some…
clock | November 16, 2008There is quite a lot of chatter around the intertubes about changes in the communication environment that happened between the last and this election and how those changes may be affecting the way the new White House communicates to people as well as how the new White House will receive communications from the people.
A lot of people are impatient - they want to see everything in place right this moment. Easy, guys! The inauguration is on January 20th. Until that time, Bush is the President and the Obama communications folks have time to think through, design and implement communication…
aardvarchaeology | November 15, 2008Here's a grim thought about the environment.
There is no way of life for humans on Earth that is ecologically sustainable for a global population of more than a billion. Our per capita environmental footprint doesn't really matter at this stage.
If we retain our current population and return to a Palaeolithic lifestyle, we're still fucked in the not-too-long run. If we quit having so many children and get back down to a global population in the hundreds of millions, it won't matter any more how each of us splurges and consumes.
You don't need to recycle milk cartons. What you really need to…
gregladen | November 15, 2008 The priest at St. Mary's Catholic Church in downtown Greenville has told parishioners that those who voted for Barack Obama placed themselves under divine judgment because of his stance on abortion and shouldn't receive Holy Communion until they've done penance.
The Rev. Jay Scott Newman told The Greenville News on Wednesday that church teaching doesn't allow him to refuse Holy Communion to anyone based on political choices, but that he'll continue to deliver the church's strong teaching on the "intrinsic and grave evil of abortion" as a hidden form of murder.
source
So, anyone from the IRS…
razib | November 14, 2008In the latest bloggingheads.tv Conn Carroll and Bill Scher have an argument where they brandish dueling public survey results to make the case that the public is to the Left or the Right. How can they do this without totally fabricating their data? Because the average human being is not very smart, ergo, they aren't consistent. If you want a slim little volume which collects all the survey data confirming this hypothesis, just read The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies. Americans are conservative because they want smaller government and lower taxes, and…
gregladen | November 14, 2008... which should not be a huge surprise. Here are a few quotes from the recently published ... then hastily removed ... column of Cynthia Dunbar, who is a member of the Texas State Board of Education. Yes, she's one of the creationists:
Can we truly even imagine an America under an Obama Administration? I sincerely believe that an Obama Administration would ultimately mean one thing...the end of America as we know her.... [some babbling about Obama not really being a citizen] ...
I perceive it [terrorist attack on U.S. soil in first six months of Obama Presidency] will be a planned effort…
razib | November 14, 2008Yesterday I implored the country not to save Detroit. Today Daniel Gross argues that Detroit's Big Three Are a National Disgrace: But we still need to save them. This is the only part which I think is on point:
But General Motors wouldn't be a typical bankruptcy. GM's management argues that the very act of filing for bankruptcy eliminates the possibility of recovery since people would be reluctant to purchase expensive, long-lived assets (cars and trucks) from a bankrupt entity. And because of GM's size and the place it occupies in the supply chain, the company's failure would likely…
gregladen | November 14, 2008"I may not have won your vote," Obama said, "but I hear your voices, need your help, and I will be your president, too."
But the promise meant little to leaders of the religious right, who are undaunted by the Democrats' gains in the White House and in Congress.
"I knew, moments after the election results came in, that I was now part of the resistance movement," says Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America.
npr
Sore losers.
oracknows | November 14, 2008I realize that I made perhaps the biggest splash I've made on this blog in a very, very long time when I wrote about the news reports and rumors that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was being seriously considered for a high ranking post in the new Obama Administration. Fortunately, this is not yet another post about RFK, Jr. There's only so much antivaccinationist and pseudoscientific lunacy I can take. Unfortunately, however, it's another touch of woo associated with the new administration. Even though I don't think it means much, chiropractors seem to be interpreting it as a nod of support:
I am…
clock | November 13, 2008An e-mail from the Orange County (NC) Democratic Party:
The exciting and historic 2008 election stirred our souls and mobilized millions, but how did it happen? And what does it mean for electoral politics going forward? Bring your questions and your friends to a public forum presented by the Orange County Democratic Party and the Orange County Democratic Women:
The Historic 2008 Election: Analysis and Reflections
Hodding Carter III, University Professor of Leadership and Public Policy, UNC-CH
Rob Christensen, Reporter and columnist, The News and Observer
Ferrel Guillory, Director, Program on…
gregladen | November 13, 2008You all remember the PZ Myers vs. Chuck Norris meme. Well, Chuck Norris just wrote a letter to Barack Obama which makes me think we need a Chuck Norris vs. Barack Obama meme. First, the letter from Chuck to Barack (which I have because I was cc'ed, of course...)
Dear President-elect Obama:
First, congratulations on your victory. The historical magnitude of your presidential win is nothing short of stupendous and a colossal fulfillment of the American dream (an achievement embedded long ago in the equality clauses of the Declaration of Independence).
It's likely no big surprise that I don't…