Politics
clock | August 18, 2008Try this search but click on "Sorted by date with duplicates included":
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Hat-tip to Anonymoses (also see Kevin Z)
clock | August 18, 2008Fairness Doctrine Panic hits FCC, spreads through blogosphere:
The Fairness Doctrine will come up again and again over the next few years--mostly invoked by Republicans. Barack Obama says he opposes the Fairness Doctrine. But expect everything that he asks of broadcasters and the Internet to get called the Fairness Doctrine anyway. You can also expect conservatives to see the Doctrine in any telecom proposal that sounds too regulatory: requiring a minimum of local radio fare, restrictions on product placement, caps on how much junk food advertisers can hawk to children on digital TV, etc. All…
gregladen | August 18, 2008
Democratic Senatorial candidate Kay Hagan has cut the lead of her incumbent Republican opponent, Elizabeth Dole, from 12 to 5 points, according to the latest Survey USA poll.
If you are in North Carolina it is time to get working on this, if you are not already. Need more Democratic senators.
pharyngula | August 18, 2008Although I was actually in Guayaquil the day before brave heroes despoiled another cracker&hellip:
In response to criticisms by the nation's Catholic bishops regarding pro-abortion and anti-family language in Ecuador's new proposed Constitution, a group of people entered a chapel in Guayaquil, grabbed the Eucharistic host that was exposed for adoration, tore it apart, spat on it, and stepped on it, according to ACI Prensa.
…I was actually a thousand kilometers away on the island of Santa Cruz when the action went down. Clenched fist salute, anyway!
Note that the quote is from the crazy…
pharyngula | August 18, 2008All sensible people want to get rid of the shrill kook and raging homophobe Sally Kern from the Oklahoma government — and she has some competition in the coming election. Get out there and party with Ron Marlett at the end of this month, and raise a little money for his campaign!
From Ron Marlett, Democratic candidate
to remove Sally Kern from the public payroll
Dear Friends,
I wanted to let you all know of the "Rock Your Freedom" concert and rally we have scheduled for Saturday, August 30th from noon to whenever the last band hits its last power chord. It will be held at Eldon Lyon Park…
pharyngula | August 18, 2008I've been gone for 11 days now, and I'm not having a happy re-entry. Trying to get out of Quito this morning was a nightmare — we were up at 3:30am to catch a 4:00am shuttle to the airport for a 6:30am flight, and in order to leave Ecuador they make you stand in line for over 2 hours. Do the math, and you'll note that we barely made it. Then our destination was Miami. There's some storm on the way here, the airport is packed with people trying to flee, and our flight is not until 8:30pm…so we're just stuck in an airport concourse all day, hoping our flight will get us out of here tonight.
I…
drorzel | August 18, 2008Via Alex, WNYC's Radiolab podcast features a wonderful commencement address by Robert Krulwich to the Caltech class of 2008, making the case for the importance of telling stories about science to the general public.
This fits in wonderfully with what I said last week about science popularization. He comes at it from a different angle (and make an explicit connection to the evolution/ creationism debate, which I was avoiding), but it's the same basic argument.
And, as a bonus, he has a good NPR voice, suitable for helping get a slightly fussy infant to go to sleep...
jlynch | August 17, 2008Juan Cole on the world Bush made:
The problem with international law for a superpower is that it is a constraint on overweening ambition. Its virtue is that it constrains the aggressive ambitions of others. Bush gutted it because he thought the United States would not need it anytime soon. But Russia is now demonstrating that the Bush doctrine can just as easily be the Putin doctrine. And that leaves America less secure in a world of vigilante powers that spout rhetoric about high ideals to justify their unchecked military interventions. It is the world that Bush has helped build.
gregladen | August 17, 2008The Olympics in Beijing (pronounce) are of course being boycotted by this blog. Not only because they are in China, and China is annoying, but also because they are the Olympics, and the Olympics are Annoying. In particular, tie IOC (International Olympic Committee) is annoying.
The IOC is owned by the networks that are making piles of money on the Olympics, and the networks are using the IOC as a front to make sure nothing gets out of Beijing and on to places such as YouTube. So the world's amateur sports are owned by NBC, not the world. Of course, this is not working very well.
In the…
grrlscientist | August 17, 2008tags: book review, economic insecurity, politics, social programs, insurance, poverty, employment, education, housing
What ever happened to the American Dream? Well, if you are like me, you will admit that your pursuit of the American Dream is like chasing after a mythical horse that disappeared out the barn door literally decades ago. For example, even though I did everything right -- staying out of trouble, staying out of debt, avoiding all chemical and behavioral addictions, postponing pleasure by working hard and sacrificing so I could earn a top-notch education doing something I love and…
sa smith | August 16, 2008You all remember ScienceDebate2008? You all remember how all the idiots running for President turned it down? They were 'too busy' or 'washing their hair' or something?
Amazingly, both Obama and Johnny found the time to participate in this crap-fest:
The Rev. Rick Warren, author of the best-seller "The Purpose-Driven Life," will spend an hour interviewing each candidate at his 20,000-member Saddleback mega-church in Southern California.
Oh yeah, turn down the request of the most brilliant minds on this planet and every major science organization, but accept the opportunity to be questioned…
jlynch | August 15, 2008Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain attended an economic forum in Aspen Thursday where he chastised Congress for going on recess "while people are paying $3.75 a gallon for gas." (source)
This from a man that has missed 407 votes (63.8%) during the current Congress, including one to "increase the supply and lower the cost of petroleum by temporarily suspending the acquisition of petroleum for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve" (S 2284). He's been "on recess" for the majority of his term. (In fairness, of course, Obama has missed 45.5%, though the 20% difference is notable…
neurophilosophy | August 15, 2008You may have read elsewhere that publishing giant Reed Elsevier has been caught copying Mike Dunford's content without permission (and copyrighting it as their own!), which is extremely hypocritical from a company that opposes the open access movement and makes huge profits from restricting access to scientific data.
I''m not going to discuss the matter any further - others have already said plenty about it - but I thought that now would be an appropriate time to post this opinion piece I wrote back in March 2002. It was originally published in Al-Ahram Weekly, the English-language edition of…
pzminion | August 15, 2008MAJeff here, getting all gay and stuff. It's been a pretty big year for LGBT folks in the U.S. A couple weeks ago, the state in which I live repealed a law enacted during the height of anti-miscegination activity, and is now allowing same-sex couples from anywhere to marry here. Prior to that, California joined us in offering full equality to same-sex couples. That victory may be short-lived, though. There is an effort underway to take away the right to marry. Folks here can help out by contributing to Equality California who are leading the NO ON 8 campaign.
I had to chuckle the other…
grrlscientist | August 14, 2008Don't you just hate it when you find out that one of your very good friends waits until the Olympics have started before invading a poverty-striken country that just happens to be sitting on top of a couple oil pipelines, while killing thousands of innocent people?
This is especially inconvenient when this invasion occurs while your top foreign policy advisor and Russian expert finally is forced to interrupt her precious vacation.
"This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia where Russia can threaten a neighbor, occupy a capital, overthrow a government and get away with it," declared…
evolvingthoughts | August 14, 2008The heir apparent to some minor European royal family has again demonstrated his lack of knowledge and trust in scientific matters. The Prince, who has previously said that he talks to plants and consults gurus, apparently failed to talk to any actual, you know, scientists who might clear up a few confusions he has. Of course the environmental extremists have leapt all over it.
He has now said this in the august paper of record in Britain, the Daily Telegraph:
The mass development of genetically modified crops risks causing the world's worst environmental disaster, The Prince of Wales has…
evolvingthoughts | August 13, 2008
As I sit here, dying slowly and loudly from a dose of gastro and probably 'flu (Australian male: we don't do sick well), trying to distract myself from the efforts of my lower intestines to escape to Jamaica, I came across a name I recall all too well from my 1970s: Francis Schaeffer. Well, actually his son, also known as Francis (Frank) Schaeffer.
Schaeffer pére was a leading evangelical "intellectual" whose ideas and work in large part helped organise what came to be the religious right in the US, although he lived in Switzerland. He is responsible for getting across to the American…