Politics
clock | May 8, 2008Legislature wants polar bear study:
The state Legislature is looking to hire a few good polar bear scientists. The conclusions have already been agreed upon -- researchers just have to fill in the science part.
That's how little Johnny Alaska lawmakers think science works, I guess...
j7uy5 | May 8, 2008One thing about hospitals, is that they
href="http://www.energybulletin.net/43514.html">use an awful
lot of
electricity. We already know about some of the
challenges
that will occur in health care in the post-peak-oil era; I wrote about
that in
href="http://scienceblogs.com/corpuscallosum/2007/10/peak_oil_and_health_care_chall.php">October
2007.
...Petroleum scarcity will affect the health system
in at least 4 ways:
through effects on medical supplies and equipment, transportation,
energy generation, and food production...
One way this will affect medical care is that it will…
gregladen | May 7, 2008It is obvious in the United States that we need to replace the executive with a Democrat and add a few senators in the mix, in order to undo 8 years of Republican policy and replace it with four to 8 years of Democratic policy. This is because Democratic policy is better. Not great, just better. Also, Republican policy has a few elements that are truly evil, far more nefarious than anything the democrats have to offer. For instance, we really don't want to have a supreme court staffed entirely by yahoos. We are almost there now. Let's please not go all the way.
But in the mean time, it…
terrasig | May 7, 2008We're not a political blog here but I certainly care about politics as it relates to national science policy and social justice.
Last night, North Carolina's Jim Neal lost in his bid to fight against Sen Elizabeth Dole for her seat in the US Senate. Pam Spaulding at Pam's House Blend has all the details from last night's gathering at the campaign's election hub, including video of Neal's concession speech. However, he and his supporters have everything to be proud about and I wish Mr Neal all the very best in deciding next how he will continue his service to the community.
Many of us who…
pharyngula | May 7, 2008And it's actually enforced? Two teachers have been fired for refusing to take an oath…an oath that was put in place during the McCarthy witch hunts. Apparently they just left it on the books, but now it's a hook that can be used to eject troublemakers.
You know, like those rabble-rousing, dangerous Quakers.
The most incredibly ironic thing about this whole controversy is that non-citizens are not required to sign it. Says Marianne Kearney-Brown, one of the fired teachers, "The way it's laid out, a noncitizen member of Al Qaeda could work for the university, but not a citizen Quaker."
That's…
razib | May 6, 2008Last fall I argued that the relatively light death toll of hurricane Sidr was due to improvements in the institutional framework of the Bangladeshi polity. More recently, I suggested that Burma's social & economic deficits vis-a-vis Bangladesh were due to negative government action. Now Chris Mooney has an article up on the reverberations of hurricane Nargis. Here's what caught my attention:
Hurricanes have been dramatically active in the North Indian region in the past year, just as they were in the Atlantic region in 2004 and 2005. There is quite a body of scientific research now…
oracknows | May 6, 2008Too bad this woman forgot a cardinal rule about making signs boosting English as the official language of the U.S.:
Sorry, I saw this picture and just couldn't resist...
Hat tip, though, to Orcinus, who reminded me of this other example of a protester who could use a little remedial English:
Now why on earth would he be so mean to poor Larry and his family? I may not always agree with him (an understatement), but Larry's a smart guy. Besides, Canada is not our enemy.
Note to self: The next time I call someone anything derogatory, make sure to spell the derogatory term correctly.
gregladen | May 6, 2008Obama has not only won North Carolina, but he has apparently TROUNCED Clinton. The Clinton Campaign put a great deal of effort into North Carolina in an effort to take the state (and thus truly throw Obama's viability into question) or at least make it close. It looks like it is not close. Not even close to close.
It does not matter who wins in Indiana, because it will be close. If by some chance Obama happens to take that state as well, you can expect Clinton to suspend her campaign within a day or two. Either way, the slow and steady flow of Super Delegates to Obama will continue and…
grrlscientist | May 6, 2008A friend sent me this story about medical breakthroughs enjoyed in other countries. I thought you would also enjoy reading about this since, of course, American comes out on top!
According to an Israeli doctor; "Medicine in my country is so advanced that we can take a kidney out of one man, put it in another, and have him looking for work in six weeks."
Then a German doctor remarked; "That is nothing, we can take a lung out of one person, put it in another, and have him looking for work in four weeks."
A Russian doctor replied; "In my country, medicine is so advanced that we can take half a…
clock | May 6, 2008I am about to go to vote. You can watch the NC results here.
Update: Pam is liveblogging the election. If you have experiences from the polling places around NC today, post them in her comments.
pharyngula | May 6, 2008Loving was the woman who, with her husband, was tried in the 1960s for the crime of interracial marriage; their victory before the Supreme Court led to the striking down of laws banning racially mixed marriages across the country. Here's part of her account:
Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the "crime" of marrying the wrong kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed. The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared: "…
jlynch | May 5, 2008Over at TfK, Josh more-or-less reads my mind about the rank stupidity of McCain and Clinton calling for a suspension of the gas tax:
This is stupid, because it won’t actually cut prices (the price of a good like gasoline is dominated by how much customers are willing to pay, and fiddling with the tax won’t change demand, just how much money oil companies get and how much goes to the government). It’s also stupid because it will starve the government of funds it uses to maintain roads, and infrastructure maintenance is always good, and is especially important as a form of counter-cyclical…
drorzel | May 5, 2008Jake Young points to a Bloggingheads conversation between Dan Drezner and Megan McArdle about, among other things, whether academics are bitter and why. This mostly comes out of a post Megan wrote (link is a leap of faith-- the site is down as I type this), and serves as a lead-in to a discussion of John Yoo.
I found this somewhat annoying, for a couple of reasons, chief among them that I just don't like videoblogging very much. I could read a transcript of this conversation in about a fifth of the time that it takes to watch it, and that would also enable me to quote it accurately. As it is…
oracknows | May 5, 2008That's the message that Ben Stein has been pushing lately, namely not just the hated "Darwinism" but science itself inevitably leads to political philosophies such as Nazi-ism and Stalinism (but especially Nazi-ism, given its emphasis on racial hygiene and eugenics), including the mass murder that resulted from them. As a result, Stein has been correctly and deservedly excoriated not just by science bloggers, but even by fellow conservatives such as Instapundit, who characterized Stein as "totally having lost it," and John Derbyshire, who correctly characterized Stein's lies as a blood libel…
pharyngula | May 5, 2008"The National Government will regard it as its first and foremost duty to revive in the nation the spirit of unity and cooperation. It will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built. It regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life" ('My New Order', Adolf Hitler, Proclamation of the German Nation at Berlin, February 1, 1933)
Funny…those words could be taken straight from just about any American religious right web site in 2008, and they'd fit right in.
j7uy5 | May 5, 2008The urge to fisk is an omnipresent danger for all bloggers.
Usually I am strong. Usually I resist.
But this essay on World Net Daily got my fisking neurons all
in a twitter. It's by David Kupelian, and it's a World Net
Daily Exclusive! (Because no one else would print it.)
href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=63093">
href="http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=63093">How
Hillary will lead America into hell
Posted: May 02, 2008
As November's election nears, some otherwise
right-thinking conservatives and Christians, unhappy with GOP…
evolvingthoughts | May 4, 2008
The federal Australian government of Kevin Rudd has done its first act of pure bastardry. As I noted before, the PM thinks that marriage is reserved for heterosexuals only. He can think that. He can think that marriage ought only be performed between fertile postpubescents who are of the same race and income bracket for all I care. What he cannot do, is impose this view on the community in the face of pretty well overwhelming opposition by ordinary Australians. But this is what he - like his predecessor the unlamented John Howard - is doing. Because he (not his party, not the populace, he)…
pharyngula | May 4, 2008
Why do they waste their time with these idiots? Barack Obama has been struggling against the guilt-by-association of having been a regular member of a lunatic's church, this odious little ignorant rat-bag named Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Yet at the same time, McCain joyfully accepts endorsements from John Hagee and Rod Parsley…and if Wright is a rat-bag, those two are festering, reeking mountains of putrefying rat-shit. Does the media give a damn? No. They're also white members of the televangelical racket, and ever since the anti-semitic backwoods babbler Billy Graham was canonized for…
jlynch | May 3, 2008
"Multiple world champion Oscar De La Hoya registered a unanimous decision victory over fellow American Steve Forbes in a non-title bout on Saturday."
Huh?