Politics
oracknows | August 5, 2008Yesterday, there was a press release announcing the "Vaccinate Your Baby" campaign being promoted by the American Academy of Pediatrics and Every Child by Two. This morning in New York, there will be a press conference to unveil the initiative, described thusly:
Every Child By Two (ECBT) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) are launching a new campaign with actor Amanda Peet to urge parents to immunize their babies from vaccine-preventable diseases. This new initiative will address misinformation about vaccines that causes confusion among parents and puts children at risk. These myths…
evolvingthoughts | August 4, 2008
I get a lot of Google alerts about various things, including species concepts, obviously. I have noticed a pattern: media from the so-called "developed" or "first world" almost never put much in the way of actual facts or knowledge in their reports, concerned, I guess, that it will scare the consumers away. But the developing nations, in this case Bangladesh, will do so. They seem to value knowledge and science. Wonder why?
Here's a piece "The Importance of biodiversity", from The New Nation, a Bangladeshi independent newspaper:
Wetland ecosystems (swamps, marshes, etc.) absorb and…
clock | August 4, 2008Thomas Frank, the author of the popular book What's the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, has a new book out - The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule - which sounds even better. He was the guest on NPR's Fresh Air tonight (listen to the podcast - it's worth your time) and I have to say I agree with him 100%.
Heck, I wrote about this many times before, and especially focused in this post and this one - conservatism is antithetical to Free Market.
As conservatives tend to do, they say one thing and think the opposite (you know, black is white, up is down,…
clock | August 4, 2008Obligatory readings of the day:
FNB Politics
Contradictions don't phase us, as we outgrew thinking long ago
clock | August 4, 2008Michael Shermer - Toward a Type 1 civilization. Ignore the nutty libertarianism - read only this sentence:
Globalism that includes worldwide wireless Internet access, with all knowledge digitized and available to everyone.
clock | August 4, 2008
From, via:
Did you know that some six million eligible voters live abroad? Amazing the stuff you learn at Frameshop. And it's all free.
So...now that I shared that with you, here's what you can do for me in return: Post this video everywhere! I mean absolutely everywhere. It's a snappy video created specifically to circle the globe via the world wide interweb--a viral get-out-the-Democrats-abroad-vote for every Dem living outside of the U.S. of A.
Post it everywhere, post it now. Help spread the word.
Special bonus: once you post it a few places, feel free to say that you and Gwyneth…
illconsidered | August 4, 2008Roger comes down on Junkscience for a refreshing change, usually prefering to disguise himself and mingle with the sceptics. Of course, if you read him carefully, he is not one, he just plays one on "the internets". It is all about personal positioning in a very public debate.
Roger posts about Steve Milloy, who has written a letter to the U.S. government's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) trying to stop certain corporations from "making potentially false and misleading statements pertaining to global warming and other environmental issues".
Of course, the statements he calls out…
tqa | August 4, 2008
There have been a number of indications that the Associated Press isn't being as neutral in the election as we would expect from a major media outlet. At an event in April, two Associated Press employees gave McCain a box of donuts and a cup of coffee - both prepared to his tastes - while the Chairman of the AP asked Obama a question about Afghanistan, where "Obama bin Laden is still at large". Concerns have been raised regarding AP campaign coverage of Iraq and health care, among other issues. The hypothesis that there might be a solid pro-McCain bias at the AP has received additional…
drorzel | August 4, 2008Last weekend's post, The Innumeracy of Intellectuals, has been lightly edited and re-printed at Inside Higher Ed, where it should be read by a larger audience of humanities types. They allow comments, so it will be interesting to see what gets said about it there.
I may have some additional comments on the issue later, but it's a little hard to focus while going crazy waiting for FutureBaby.
(There's also a tiny chance that this will be noticed by some of my colleagues, which could be interesting. I know that some of them read the Chronicle of Higher Education religiously, but I'm less…
clock | August 3, 2008Today I talked to a low-information voter who always voted Democratic, but it wavering right now, thinks "McCain is kinda cute" and "McCain is likely to pick a moderate for VP" and "if Obama picks Hillary for VP, he'll have me". Arrrgh!
My responses:
"He is worse than Bush. All Bush wanted was to have fun, go to parties and be able to say 'Hey guys, guess what - I am the President!' McCain is an unhinged, diabolical, sexist, violent nutcase"
If you want to stay in Iraq for 100 years, vote McCain:
If you want to bomb Iran, vote McCain:
If you want a guy prone to senior moments, vote…
jlynch | August 3, 2008(This review was supposed to appear in Isis in 2001 but for some reason never did. It appears here for the first time.)
Most students of the history of science are familiar with the effect that Lysenko's application of his political beliefs to scientific research had on genetic research and the economy of the USSR in the middle of this century. Equally well known is the supposed influence of Stephen Jay Gould's Marxism on his theorizing, and works such as Levins and Lewontin's The Dialectical Biologist. In the work under review, thirteen contributors from Europe and the United States attempt…
gregladen | August 3, 2008 All Franken chatting with supporters at a home in Coon Rapids. "Why?" you may ask, "Why would a guy running for the United States Senate ... in which you represent one state ... have a fifty state strategy?" Good question. Franken discussed his Fifty State Strategy with supporters at a recent fund raiser at a home in Coon Rapids. Amanda, Julia and I dropped in, and were able to hear Franken's current thinking on a number of issues. He discussed Norm Coleman, the economy, the war, America's place in the world, and cracked exactly one Saturday Night Live joke. And, we had an…
clock | August 2, 2008McCain: The original political celebrity:
It's a striking line of attack for McCain, who's accepted without complaint the "celebrity" epithet from journalists for four decades.
"John's been a celebrity ever since he was shot down," former McCain strategist John Weaver told The Atlantic earlier this week, "whatever that means."
Who does he think he is to portray Obama as a celebrity in a negative way? Oh, the hypocrisy! But he is on his way out (not just due to age, but also due to his despicable behavior over the past several years), and he is peeved that he is not on the top any more. Sorry…
clock | August 2, 2008Melissa nails it, as always: McCain blows the dog whistle. Obligatory reading of the day.
clock | August 2, 2008White denial: Obama, race and America's selective memory by Hal Crowther:
A lot of Americans are like German tourists, who never harmed or perhaps even met a Jew, and are amazed to find a chilly reception in Tel Aviv. Though Jim Crow was considerably more recent than Adolf Hitler, lapel-pin patriots and insulated media hypocrites experience acute shock--or feign it--when they hear the heated rhetoric of black pride and empowerment from people like Rev. Jeremiah Wright. I'm still shaking my head over a Wright-bashing column by Time magazine columnist Joe Klein, invoking "liberal masochism" and…
pharyngula | August 2, 2008As someone who takes his laptop everywhere, this is chilling news about the ongoing erosion of our rights:
Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.
Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS…
clock | August 1, 2008Just like last year, this year again, the Union of Concerned Scientists is running a contest - go and pick the best cartoon that depicts the way US government is interfering with science. You can place your vote here.
sb admin | August 1, 2008I'm so angry I can barely type coherently. I have very strong feelings about abortion, but I believe it is possible to respectfully disagree about the ethical issues involved. I have an obstetrics colleague who does not perform abortions, but refers patients needing this service to others. That's the ethical way for a doctor to oppose abortion---don't do it, don't prosteletize, refer out. My personal feeling is a woman has the right to control her body and all that dwells within, but I can see why others would disagree.
All that being said, if you chose a profession that will, by its…
tsmith | August 1, 2008Real life work has once again stepped in, so I won't have the Helicobacter posts up until next week. However, in the meantime, a big story has broken regarding the 2001 anthrax attacks--a potential suspect, and his suicide before he could be arrested. Will we ever actually get to the bottom of this? More discussion below...
A bit of a primer on the anthrax attacks, as it's been awhile since they were in the news. Recall that just after the chaos of 9/11 in 2001, envelopes containing anthrax were sent to a number of news organizations and senators, resulting in 22 cases of anthrax and 5…