Politics
gregladen | August 27, 2008Ashwin Madia is running for congress in my district. As a Democrat, he'll replace (if elected) a long term Republican who is retiring. I was a delegate for Madia at the local level.
I live in one of those gerrymandered districts. It looks like a giant amoeba attempting to engulf the Twin Cities (the Minneapolis half), and is designed to include both white trashy working class and upper class mini-van suburbs, trending republicans.
The reason for this is that the congressional districts that overlap with the Metropolitan Council area of control get represented on that council. By having…
pharyngula | August 27, 2008The Democratic National Convention is going on in Denver, and I'm really not at all interested in what's going on inside the convention center: it's a bunch of people saying feel-good platitudes to get themselves elected, all studiously avoiding saying anything substantial that might annoy a voter. It's much more interesting to see what's going on outside the convention, where people are trying to make their real opinions heard. That is actually a bit troubling.
The Coalition of Secular Voters protested the interfaith alliance garbage. This demonstration went well, but was largely ignored, of…
gregladen | August 26, 2008With Bill Clinton, Michelle Obama, and a zillion other people looking on, Hillary Clinton made clear her support of Obama, re-articulated key Democratic values (especially focusing on health care, education, human rights, workers rights, and the environment), Eulogized the recently dead, and kicked the ass of John the Joker McCain.
(Note: I do resent and do not support the concept of "god given potential" which was referred to a number of times this evening.)
Clinton explicitly stated support for Obama 11 times, Michelle 2 times, Biden 3 times, and she explicitly kicked McCain in the nuts…
gregladen | August 26, 2008I know women that are older than suffrage. Mind boggling.
Today, Aug. 26, marks the 88th anniversary of the day that the U.S. Constitution was amended to grant women the right to vote. The nonpartisan League of Women Voters, formed when women were first granted the right to vote, will mark this occasion with reflections on how far we have come as well as optimism that this year will bring even more Americans into the democratic process.
"What better day than the anniversary of the 19th amendment, Women's Equality Day, to recognize the progress we have made on voting rights in the past 88…
gregladen | August 26, 2008Hillary speaks tonight. The word on the street is that the Obama people have not seen, and will not seen, this speech. That is actually highly unusual for a convention speech.
Maybe she's going to make one last appeal......
evolvingthoughts | August 25, 2008
Ghana News asks why there's been no Australian-African summits held? Good question.
Conservation Bytes discusses and links to the classic "Biodiversity Hotspot" paper. It's still a disputed notion.
A forthcoming paper in PNAS (heh. You said "pnas") discusses a technical problem with DNA Barcoding. Apparently the assays pick up pseudogenes that are similar enough to the COXII mt genes to register but which have evolved by drift and random mutation so they give a false positive for a "novel" species.
PLoS Biology has a lovely memoir of Francis Crick, who discovered the structure of DNA…
evolvingthoughts | August 25, 2008
A few doors down from my office there's a guy with a ready laugh and a shared love of Macintoshes named Dom Hyde, a philosopher who works on the logic of vagueness among other things. He's also very active in environmental matters, particularly those associated with the D'Aguilar Range, which is a beautiful tall timber forested region just to the northeast of Brisbane, where I live. It also includes the water catchment for Brisbane.
So you might think that when Dom and his friends proposed that this range should be a UNESCO Biosphere, government would fall over itself in protecting this…
gregladen | August 25, 2008
FOX is not a news network. Here, they are being shown the door. These protesters are mostly fairly silly, but here I applaud them.
clock | August 25, 2008It is so nice teaching biology to adults when there are no (obvious) Creationists in the classroom. It does not always happen that way - I have had a couple of cases in the past - but this time it was really nice as I could freely cover all topics deeply within an evolutionary framework (not always seen in my public notes, though, as I try to gauge the class first and then decide how overtly to talk ebout everything in evolutionary terms). It is always a conundrum. If there is a potential resentment of my lectures, I have to thread carefully. I have to remember that I am not trying to…
pharyngula | August 25, 2008An elementary school in Missouri has been allowing the Gideons to distribute bibles to students on their lunch hour. It's crazy stupid, a clear violation of the separation of church and state (not that fundie churches care about that anymore). Fortunately, Americans United is on the ball.
In its brief, AU asserts that the U.S. Supreme Court has held that school district promotion of religion puts pressure on nonbelievers or dissenters and is unconstitutional.
"In the cafeteria, students who choose to take Bibles and those who choose not to will be visible to much, if not all, of the student…
pharyngula | August 25, 2008But if you want to do a little something to tweak the noses of the Religious Right, the American Patriarchy Association has called for a letter writing campaign. It seems that Hallmark Greeting Cards are peddling a line of gay-friendly cards, which irks poor little Donald Wildmon something fierce. I don't know why. Maybe it's because they're cute, stylish, and witty, but at the same time he's afraid to mail a coming-out card to his Mom?
Anyway, Wildmon is asking his flock to send negative letters to Hallmark. How about taking a moment to send the very best to thank Hallmark for being non-…
terrasig | August 25, 2008Get me in my 1977 Chevy pickup with KBCO blasting from the radio, head up for a trail run at the Dakota Ridge Red Rocks Trail near the I-70 geologic cutout (the hypoxia makes the colors seem even more intense), then back to town to the Wynkoop Brewing Company for a few pints of Railyard Ale and fish and chips.
That's where I'd be right now instead of inside the Pepsi Center or at Tent State University (although outside is always better than inside in Colorado).
I'm trying to dig some science out of this week's Democratic National Convention being held in Denver this week, other than ranting…
j7uy5 | August 25, 2008
href="http://www.blackboxvoting.org/">Black Box Voting
has sent out emails, suggesting that technologically-astute persons
consider signing up for temporary tech support jobs, to provide support
for the election process. Oddly, the
message is not on the front page of their website, but
href="http://dantheserene.livejournal.com/392715.html">someone
else already posted it. Sounds like a good idea, if
you have the time.Perhaps the more
widely-applicable suggestion, though, is to make extra sure that your
voter registration still is active, and double-check your voting
location. That…
razib | August 24, 2008Pew has a nice survey up right now, A Closer Look at the Parties in 2008. Here are three questions, and the Republican - Democrat difference on the responses:
Do you think the US made the right or wrong decision in using military force against Iraq?, a 50 point difference on both "yes" and "no." I'll let you guess the signs!
Do you think abortion should be...
Legal in all cases -13 difference
Legal in most cases -10 difference
Illegal in most cases +19 difference
Illegal in all cases +6 difference
Books that contain dangerous ideas should be banned from public school libraries
Agree +4…
oracknows | August 24, 2008You may recall that on Friday afternoon, I posted a bit of a rant about how a certain liberal blogger named Matt Stoller had disparagingly and contemptuously referred to Presidential Candidate John McCain as a "crazy, cancer-ridden dishonest madman." It turns out that Mr. Stoller was displeased by my much-justified rebuke. His response is an example of the most studiously, intentionally obtuse avoidance of answering what my real criticism was, including an elaborately constructed straw man, some quote mining, and one really dumb additional statement that reveals Mr. Stoller to be far more…
clock | August 24, 2008A wide range of opinions:
Melissa McEwan: Biden and Shocker: Women Less Enthusiastic Than Men About Biden
Melissa McEwan: Obama's small change
Jesse Taylor: Obama/Biden
Ezra Klein: Winning the argument
Joe Trippi: Stay Loose Joe, Stay Loose
See the comment thread on the Intersection: Obama Picks Joe Biden and also It's 3AM And Joe Biden's Giving Foriegn Policy Advice To Barack Obama
John Lynch: Obama, Biden & the Progressive Future
Ed Brayton: Thoughts on Biden as VP
Greg Laden: Obama will Pick Biden as VP on Saturday. and Obama Picks VP Running Mate
Josh Rosenau: Bidenmania
Pam Spaulding…