Politics
oracknows | May 12, 2008And I thought, whatever his other faults and whatever my disagreements with his politics,, that Bill Clinton was incredibly smart. Apparently I was wrong:
"You do not want to bring your children into the world where we go on with the number of children who are born with autism tripling every 20 years, and nobody knows why," he said.
Even if the true prevalence of autism is increasing (which is highly debatable), it is not tripling every 20 years--nowhere near it. Again, the apparent increase in prevalence observed over the last two decades can be explained largely by increased awareness and…
gregladen | May 12, 2008In the 1970s and 80s, a number of law suits and other actions began to change the rules for hiring firefighters. There was a moment in the 1980s when a documentary was made (starring the very annoying John Stossel) pieces of which I still use when teaching on Gender. It shows Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, and others arguing in favor of women being firefighters, and others (including, of course, one woman who is already a fire fighter) arguing against. One of the interesting things about the film is the way it is biased against women being fire fighters while at the same time trying really…
drorzel | May 12, 2008Charles Kuffner reports on an "Innocence Summit" in Texas last week, and points to two more reports from Grits for Breakfast that provide more colorful detail. The news story already says most of what needs saying, though:
AUSTIN -- Nine wrongfully convicted men who spent a collective 148 years in Texas prisons met with a select group of prosecutors, judges and police chiefs in the Senate chamber Thursday to urge the state to establish a commission to investigate claims of innocence.
"I'm crying out for mercy today for someone who may still be in prison," said James Curtis Giles, who served…
evolvingthoughts | May 11, 2008
From Wiley:
And while we're on the topic...
I went and watched the sermon in which the famous quotes appeared. And you know what? It surprises me that anyone would think them problematic. America really is engaged in a war of payback, and it is indeed reaping what it sowed (as all empires do when their conquered territories become strong enough to challenge them). And Wright was in fact quoting someone lese, an ambassador, when he said that. Moreover he clearly doesn't think Malcolm X was right about religion, but about his analysis of the role of race in America, and I think that is true…
clock | May 11, 2008Serbs vote for closer ties with Europe in huge turnaround:
Serbs voted for closer ties with Europe instead of isolation for the second time in three months in Sunday's snap parliamentary poll, in a stunning turnaround that negated pre- election surveys. A pro-European coalition led by President Boris Tadic won the most votes, claiming 39 per cent of the ballots cast, overtaking the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party as the largest group in parliament, the private election monitoring agency Cesid said.
Even the best of them all, the LDP, won some seats in the Parliament:
Basing its…
oracknows | May 11, 2008The ignorance and stupidity, they burn:
Why, yes, actually, we did "allow" Nazi Germany to host the Olympics back in 1936. Hitler even presided over some of the ceremonies. The sign is so wrong that at first I wondered whether it was a Photoshop job, but apparently it's legit.
I realize this photo is from around three week ago, but I didn't see it until Ed pointed me to it yesterday. Given my interest in World War II history and the Holocaust, you just knew I couldn't resist it once made aware of it. True, it's not as hilariously dumb as Tony Zirkle, but it does reveal a shocking level of…
gregladen | May 10, 2008Apparently, Obama has taken the super delegate lead. He previously had the popular vote lead. And he had the elected pledged delegate lead. Now he also has the super delegate lead. All together, it seems like he is just plain in the lead.
WASHINGTON - Barack Obama has overtaken Hillary Rodham Clinton in superdelegate endorsements for the first time, according to The Associated Press calculations.
Obama picked up four superdelegate endorsements, including two from the Virgin Islands who had previously endorsed Clinton. The additions erased Clinton's once-imposing lead among the party and…
jlynch | May 10, 2008
Remember Tony Zirkle? He’s the Indiana Republican who cavorted with Hitler-worshippers at the Saddest Birthday Party Ever and claimed that he didn’t "know enough about the group to either favor it or oppose it." Well, May 6th saw his defeat in the Republican primary. But get this, he got 16% of the vote.
Strangely, Zirkle sees his defeat as a victory and steals some rhetoric from the Discovery Institute playbook:
However, with respect to the social issues, when it comes to who was most successful in placing their ideas on the public record, I can claim an incredible victory. I, myself, have…
pharyngula | May 10, 2008Glenn Greenwald depresses me. His latest: Our military has been subverting the media with nicely tailored propaganda. I know, I know, so what else is new…but this is straight from Pentagon memos.
I recommend we develop a core group from within our media analyst list of those that we can count on to carry our water. They become part of a "hot list" of those that we immediately make calls to or put on an email distro list before we contact or respond to media on hot issues. We can also do more proactive engagement with this list and give them tips on what stories to focus on and give them heads…
terrasig | May 10, 2008Effective science communication and science advocacy in the public arena has been much discussed in the science blogosphere. But is ranting on science and medical blogs the most effective way to promote science, especially in the United States?
I've had some discussions with other scientists, including blog colleague PhysioProf, who submit that the best way for scientists to advocate for science policy is to become politicians themselves. To this end, I read with great interest this morning of an AP story written last night by Seth Borenstein, "A Crash Course in True Political Science":…
gregladen | May 10, 2008How should public school administrators react to students who sit through the pledge of allegiance in the US? This issue came up recently in a small town in western Minnesota, where kids were suspended and possibly humiliated because they failed to stand (in once case entirely by accident) for the pledge.
There is now an on line poll being run by the Star Tribune in Minneapolis asking your opinion on this issue. Here.
Hat Tip: Stephanie Z
j7uy5 | May 10, 2008There is an interesting article put out by Associated Press, authored
by Seth Borenstein. Mr. Bornstein suggests that scientists
are increasingly expressing an interest in running for office.
The involvement of scientists in politics is not new. Think
of Ben
Franklin. But many have been involved from the
sidelines. Franklin, for example, did not hold an elected
position until the end of his life. (He was President of the
Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania 1785-88.)
From the
href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080509/ap_on_sc/campaigning_scientists;_ylt=…
oracknows | May 9, 2008...or so sayeth, well...YOU ARE DUMB. Bryan may be a little late in piling on, but better late than never.
Zirkle, as you may recall, was the hapless candidate for the Republican nomination to run for a Congressional seat in northwest Indiana who accepted an invitation to speak at a celebration of Hitler's 119th birthday by the American Nazi Party--excuse me, the American National Socialist Workers' Party--as I joked about a couple of weeks ago. Apparently, though, I didn't give Zirkle all the credit he is due. I just made fun of his cluelessness about giving a speech on Hitler's birthday…
gregladen | May 9, 2008NCSE Press Release:
House Bill 923 was among the hundreds of bills that died in the Alabama legislature "because they did not pass in the house where they were introduced," the Associated Press (May 7, 2008) reports. The latest in a string of "academic freedom" bills aimed at undermining the teaching of evolution in Alabama, HB 923 purported to protect the right of teachers in the state's public schools (including both K-12 and colleges and universities) to "present scientific information pertaining to the full range of scientific views in any curricula or course of learning," especially with…
gregladen | May 9, 2008Dilworth Minnesota is not far from Fargo. On Thursday, three eighth graders in this small town have been suspended from school because they sat down during the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.
School rules at Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton Junior High requires that students stand during the pledge, but does not require that they recite it. The school's principle is hiding behind the usual "this is a privacy issue" smoke screen and is not commenting on this disciplinary action.
The students committed this act of sitting down while Principle Houglum was observing the class. She told them to…
jlynch | May 9, 2008Not looking good for the cdesign proponentsists and their attempts to weaken science education by proposing "academic freedom" bills. First Florida. Now Alabama.
clock | May 9, 2008Our governor agrees. At least in the print version of this article which has a somehwat different title: "Easley supports college for aliens". I wonder why they changed it for the Web version - is the editorial position that having green or purple skin disqualifies one from higher education?
gregladen | May 9, 2008The first deliver of aid from the UN World Food Programme was stolen by officials from the Burma military Junta. As a result, the shipment of aid into the country by the UN has stopped.
This is as earlier reports indicating that the death toll would surpass 100,000 are starting to look realistic, if not optimistic. Yesterday, a BBC reporter, under cover, was taken on a tour of the peninsula, where he and his crew filmed rice fields with a thin scatter of corpses. Tradition in this region dictates that the dead are cremated, but local monks claim that there is not enough firewood to cremate…
gregladen | May 8, 2008
Moooo
... turn your volume up for this one, it is quiet and you want to hear every word of this astounding performance: