Politics
drorzel | April 27, 2008Over at Shifting Baselines, Randy Olson posts a comment suggesting how to combat anti-science movies like Expelled:
You want to know how to start -- why doesn't somebody run a film festival for pro-evolution films? THAT is how you reach out to tap into new voices, new blood, new perspectives. THAT is what is desperately needed. Efforts to fan the fires of creativity and innovation. THAT was how I got started as a filmmaker -- winning awards at the New England Film and Video Festival while I was still a professor. That festival, and others, drew me into the world of filmmaking. But right now,…
oracknows | April 26, 2008Yesterday, I wrote about what I thought to be a fairly amusing story. It was the story of one hapless candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress in a district in northwest Indiana whose excuses for giving a talk to the American National Socialist Workers Party's Chicago celebration of Adolf Hitler's 119th birthday last weekend can only be characterized as what in LOL Cat lingo one would call "EPIC FAIL" (he claimed he didn't think people there were of a "Nazi mindset"). I've also written more than I now wish I had about the inherent dishonesty of Ben Stein's claim in the movie…
evolvingthoughts | April 26, 2008
I have an uncanny ability to offend those who I shouldn't be offending, with bad jokes. In a recent post I put in a Tom Lehrer video where he mocks sociology. Having had philosophy mocked by my friends and contacts over the years (you study what? Your navel?), I guess I am a bit inured to such things. But I forgot that in this case there is a double whammy: philosophers have spent a lot of time mocking sociology, especially in the context of science. So below the fold, I put a comment made by respected sociologist of science, Eli Gerson, which he put in the comments of that post, and which…
jlynch | April 26, 2008I ran across this story covering Jeremy Hall’s case (PZ comments) and just want to quote the following:
[Hall’s atheism] eventually came out in Iraq in 2007, when he was in a firefight. Hall was a gunner on a Humvee, which took several bullets in its protective shield. Afterward, his commander asked whether he believed in God, Hall said.
"I said, ’No, but I believe in Plexiglas,’" Hall said.
Give that boy a promotion. In a firefight it is most definitely preferable to believe in Plexiglass over God.
pharyngula | April 26, 2008I think he's due, but he's not the only one. It's like our entire army is being turned into a pocket theocracy.
When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.
But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. "People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!" Major…
gregladen | April 26, 2008The Chernobyl Meltdown happened on this day in 1986.
On 26 April 1986 at 01:23:40 a.m. (UTC+3) reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant located in the Soviet Union near Pripyat in Ukraine exploded. Further explosions and the resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Nearly thirty to forty times more fallout was released than Hiroshima. The plume drifted over parts of the western Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Northern Europe, and eastern North America. Large areas in Ukraine, Belarus…
jlynch | April 25, 2008
According to Expelled, this guy must be some kind of "Darwinist," right?
He’s Tony Zirkle and he’s seeking the Republican nomination for Congress in Indiana. Above he is addressing a bunch of like-minded individuals - at a birthday celebration for Hitler no less. Visiting his campaign site is like spending time in a sewer.
He graduated from Andrews University, a Seventh Day Adventist school in Michigan, where he has also been an adjunct faculty member. He attended Andrews University Theological Seminary (but didn’t graduate). He (and I’m guessing his little shaven-headed buddies) are as…
oracknows | April 25, 2008
Ed happened to beat me to this one, which I saw on Orcinus. If you want a lesson on what not to do to get elected, here it is, courtesy of Tony Zirkle, candidate for the Republican nomination to run for a seat in his House district in northwest Indiana:
Don't show up at a white supremacist commemoration of Hitler's birthday.
Don't give a speech about white women being taken into sexual slavery in Israel to a white supremacist commemoration of Hitler's birthday while standing under a large portrait of Adolf Hitler.
Don't talk about sexually transmitted diseases supposedly being encouraged…
voltagegate | April 25, 2008
Two waterways meet in a surreal junction at Vale Summit, a small low streambed in the Appalachian forests of Maryland, surrounded by high sandy banks and the faint sound of passing traffic.
Bright orange coal mine drainage from the Hoffman tunnel washes iron oxides and sulfates over rocks and tree limbs and completely distorts the little brown flow of Braddock Run, a smaller, slower but rich stream, providing a home to benthic invertebrates and young fish that the drainage cannot.
Braddock Run exhibits all the attributes of a healthy stream: neutral pH, low iron levels and a diverse scatter…
gregladen | April 24, 20085 Mos. In Prison For Terrorizing Gay Neighbors
A British court has sentenced a woman to 150 days behind bars and her daughter to 24-months of supervised probation for a terror campaign against the gay couple who lived next door.
The court was told that the pair began harassing Michael Harris and Shires Crichton, of Kingston, Kent, after the couple sided with another neighbor in a dispute.
From March until May 2007 Karen Reeves, 44, and Christie Myles, 22, yelled homophobic remarks at the couple and on one occasion Reeves drove her car at one of the men.
"Although there was no evidence of…
tsmith | April 24, 2008You may recall the case of geneticist Robert Farrell, who had been initially charged with bioterroism for sharing generally-harmless strains of bacteria with a colleague, SUNY-Buffalo art professor Steven Kurtz. Farrell plead guilty to a reduced charge last fall and received a fine and probation. Now the verdict is in for Kurtz; more after the jump.
A federal judge on Monday (April 21) dismissed the case against Steven Kurtz, an art professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo, saying that the government indictment against him "is insufficient on its face," The Buffalo News…
voltagegate | April 24, 2008That was the posted price of premium gas in downtown Atlanta this morning.
purepedantry | April 23, 2008Boo on you, Barack and Hillary.
Others have this subject amply covered, but I wanted to note that Barack and Hillary have both jumped on the anti-vaccinationist bandwagon. The bandwagon is getting crowded what with McCain already being on it.
Granted, Barack and Hillary did not say something as flagrantly wrong as when McCain cited "strong evidence" that thiomerosal causes autism. But it is still very disconcerting when politicians engage in this sort of flagrant pandering. Don't they have advisers? Don't they have a single person on their staff who can screen out this nonsense?
It just…
drorzel | April 23, 2008At Inside Higher Ed this morning, there's an article with the headline At U. of Georgia, Furor Over Clarence Thomas. As always when I see such things (or, say, complaints about having Mike Huckabee speak on campus here), my first thought was "Curse you, Georgia, for making me think, even for a nanosecond, that David Horowitz might have a point."
This turns out not to be the expected contorversy over Thomas's politics. Instead, it's about his past:
Rather than sparking debates about Thomas's jurisprudence or his politics, though, the announcement has led to a flurry of criticisms drawing…
drorzel | April 23, 2008As I may have mentioned in the past, we at Chateau Steelypips have benefitted greatly from Yale Law School's loan forgiveness program for graduates taking public service jobs. Since Kate shattered my dreams of a self-funded basement lab by deciding to use her pricey law degree for good rather than racking up billions as Evil Corporate Scum, the funds they provided to help pay off her loans were a crucial element of our finances for the first few years of our marriage. In fact, you could argue that they're the reason there's a physical Chateau Steelypips in the first place-- even in 2002, I…
pharyngula | April 22, 2008What am I supposed to do when all three candidates for the presidency turn out to be credulous, anti-science ignoramuses? Obama thinks there's a link between vaccines and autism, and now Hillary has jumped off the cliff with him. They're both nuts, or at least suck-ups to the kooks.
Orac, of course, weighs in.
denialism | April 22, 2008With the news that in addition to John McCain both Clinton and Obama have now pandered to anti-vaccine denialism I think it's time to reiterate there isn't a political party in this country that has a truly sound grasp on sound science. And in this instance it is clear that both sides are more than happy to pander to the denialists.
The fact is that there is no link between vaccines and autism. As time has gone on the denialists move the goalposts further and further back as the evidence for a link becomes increasingly unlikely. First it was thimerosal, and now 6 years after its removal…
tsmith | April 22, 2008Via Razib, Obama on vaccines:
"We've seen just a skyrocketing autism rate. Some people are suspicious that it's connected to the vaccines. This person included. The science right now is inconclusive, but we have to research it."
--Barack Obama, Pennsylvania Rally, April 21, 2008.
and Clinton:
I am committed to make investments to find the causes of autism, including possible environmental causes like vaccines. I have long been a supporter of increased research to determine the links between environmental factors and diseases, and I believe we should increase the NIH's ability to engage in…
gregladen | April 21, 2008The democratic party is polling tomorrow in Pennsylvania. The conventional wisdom says that there is a number of percentage points reflecting Clinton's expected win above which this would truly count as a win for her, and below which it could be perceived as a victory for Obama. If Obama "wins" in this election, things could change quickly with Clinton being seen as heading for the door. However, a win is a win, and even a small margin for Clinton may be seen by the Clinton campaign as, well, what it would be, to be fair: Winning Pennsylvania. Were Obama to actually, numerically, win the…