Politics
grrlscientist | January 2, 2008This online quiz might explain why I am not very excited about any of the candidates who are running for president this time around;
Okay, I've never heard of Mike Gravel until this moment, have you? What were your results?
Updated later: Okay, I am working on a beer at the moment and my results have changed -- I am becoming more aligned with the space alien guy, which leads me to ask, what did they put into my beer??
YIKES!
Christopher Dodd 80%
John Edwards 79%
Hillary Clinton 79%
Barack Obama 75%
Joe Biden 74%
Ron Paul 58%
Rudy Guiliani 34%
Fred Thompson 33%
John McCain 30%
Mike Huckabee…
razib | January 2, 2008My views apparently match Dennis Kucinich & Ron Paul:
# 1 Dennis Kucinich 75% similarity
# 2 Ron Paul 75% similarity
# 3 Christopher Dodd 73% similarity
# 4 Bill Richardson 73% similarity
# 5 Mike Gravell 71% similarity
# 6 John Edwards 69% similarity
# 7 Barack Obama 68% similarity
# 8 Hillary Clinton 67% similarity
# 9 Joe Biden 63% similarity
# 10 Mitt Romney 53% similarity
# 11 Fred Thompson 51% similarity
# 12 Mike Huckabee 49% similarity
# 13 Duncan Hunter 49% similarity
# 14 John Mccain 48% similarity
# 15 Rudy Guliani 43% similarity
Via Omnibrain.
evolvingthoughts | January 2, 2008
I'm going to have to start a "freedom watch" thread, I can see.
Australia, under the ALP government, is to impose an "opt-out" internet filtering system on all lSPs, leading to the question asked by IT-Wire: what happens if I do opt out? Will I be listed somewhere as a potential child porn user? Or a potential terrorist? And anyway, why make the end user suffer because the authorities cannot prosecute or even find the child porn sites?
I will get back to philosophy and science (although this is an exercise in moral philosophy and philosophy of law and politics). But it seems to me that…
evolvingthoughts | January 1, 2008
Since I am divesting myself of the occasional political whine, here's another.
The US-based Electronic Privacy Information Center and the UK-based Privacy International have assessed over 70 countries for their protection of privacy, both online and generally. The worst nations are Russia, China, the United Kingdom and the United States. Yes, that's right, the least private nations include the two supposedly most democratic nations. They have a map:
While I was less surprised to find France as a poor performer, I was unpleasantly surprised to find my own country as rating poorly and…
evolvingthoughts | December 31, 2007
OK, so the next door party finished about 1.30, but the family disputes finished about 5 am, so instead of thinking, I'm going to let others think for me, and round up a few New Years Day links...
Wesley Elsberry at Austringer has a nice piece on why creationists use the conflict model for the relation of science and faith.
Thinking Meat asks if life was "nasty, poore, brutish and short" as Hobbes thought, or things were simply just as much about survival as they are now, in preagriculture.
PsyBlog asks how well Epicurus, one of my favourite Greek Philosophers, fares in the light of…
choofnagle | December 31, 2007Glenn Simpson reports in today's Journal on how lenders lobbied against state anti-predatory lending laws, with the result of worsening the subprime crisis. While the federal government was asleep at the wheel, or worse, worshiping the "miracle of instant credit," states were trying to protect their residents from being harangued by jackals promoting risky or questionable lending plans. $20M in donations, however, made it possible to roll back protections:
During the housing boom, the subprime industry succeeded at more than just writing mortgages. It also shot down efforts by some states…
denialism | December 31, 2007I see that I'm in good company in my curiosity about why Ron Paul enjoys so much crank magnetism. And his crank magnetism and appeal to racist groups can't be denied. Here for instance, is Ron Paul posing with Don Black, culled from the neo-nazi Stormfront website:
Now, I think its unlikely Ron Paul knew who this was when he posed for this shot, but between this and their endorsement of Paul on Stormfront radio, I think it's pretty well confirmed who their candidate is. Also note, this picture was taken at the "Values Voters Presidential Debate" just as a reminder of who "Values Voters"…
denialism | December 31, 2007Bill Kristol will soon have a weekly column in the New York Times. I have to admit, I'm really excited.
You see, Bill Kristol, or as we like to call him Krissandra has a nearly supernatural ability to be wrong. While some might think that the NYT has lost all credibility by hiring someone as unrepentantly incorrect as Kristol, I think they're providing a valuable service.
After all, if we see what Bill Kristol has to say, we always will know that we should do the opposite. He's not a worthless idiot, he's actually a very useful one, simply because he's so consistently incorrect.
oracknows | December 30, 2007The other day, I posted about how quacks and pseudoscientists seem to find Ron Paul's promise of "health freedom" as irresistible as moths do flame. Now it seems that Ron Paul has another most excellent endorsement to add to that of Stormfront, Dr. Mercola, and Mike Adams, not to mention to the support of the likes of David Duke and 9/11 Truthers.
Yes, indeed, it's Hutton Gibson:
(Hat tip: Orcinus and VoteRonPaul.com.)
Because nothing adds to the credibility of a candidacy with overwhelming support among pseudoscientists like the endorsement of a Holocaust denying conspiracy theorist, who…
evolvingthoughts | December 29, 2007
The New York Times has a long overdue article on the stupidity of airport security measures for those flying to, within or in markets affected by the United States post-9/11. Pointing out that the security screening at airports in no way reduces any threats (but screening luggage does considerably), and that anyway it is the role of government enforcement agencies to prevent terrorism the old fashioned way, using police work techniques, Patrick Smith highlights the loss of rights, the incredible costs, and the increase in inefficiency of a mode of transport that was supposed to improve our…
pharyngula | December 29, 2007OK, 'fess up — some of you know that I thoroughly detest libertarianism, that reactionary political movement that seeks to elevate greed and selfishness as a ruling principle, and I suspect one of you got me a subscription to Reason magazine a few months ago, just to taunt me. If your goal was to persuade me to come over to the side of unbridled anti-social self-centeredness, you failed. The issue comes, I glance through it, find a few little bits and pieces I can agree with, but because they're all imbedded in this thick tarry fecal sludge of libertarianism, I end up throwing the whole thing…
gregladen | December 29, 2007According to the New Hampshire State Republican Party and an Associated Press report, Republican presidential candidate and Texas Congressman Ron Paul will be excluded from an upcoming forum of Republican candidates to be broadcast by Fox News on January 6, 2008.
[source]
drorzel | December 29, 2007Kate's parents live on the New Hampshire side of Boston, and we're down visiting for the weekend. This morning, I went downstairs with the tablet to do my morning blogroll in front of the tv while Kate slept in. I didn't really appreciate what being this close to New Hampshire meant for television.
Oh. My. God. If I lived here full-time, I don't think I'd be able to watch tv at all. Every commercial break features at least one, if not two political campaign commercials. Within half an hour, I felt like I was drowning in smarm.
There are advantages to living in a state with a late primary. As…
pharyngula | December 29, 2007One little post about waterboarding seems to have stirred up the mob, but at least the majority seem to agree that it is torture. How could it not be? It's a process for causing pain and suffering, nothing more. At least the commenters here, even the ones I disagree with most strongly, are more honest than our politicians, many of whom seem to be in a state of denial.
But then the argument becomes whether torture is a useful procedure. I'm going to surprise some people and agree that torture is an extremely powerful tool. It's just useless for gathering information. There's just no way you…
gregladen | December 28, 2007President Bush's boyhood home was severely damaged by a fire.I
nvestigators in Odessa now believe an arsonist is to blame.
[source]
Burning Bush Home
pharyngula | December 28, 2007Someone was willing to try waterboarding on himself — he was in complete control, but he still found it a terrifying experience.
Now we just need to get all our representatives who claim it is not torture to try it themselves.
gregladen | December 28, 2007Possibly even exceeding Ron Paul in his moronosity. Most recently, he has shown himself clueless in matters of foreign policy.
People who questioned my view of foreign policy probably need go back and read the speech that I delivered back in Washington in September. ...[where I talk about] those eastern borders near Afghanistan to be able go after the terrorists....
Uffda...
clock | December 28, 2007In the wake of the signed omnibus bill that funds NIH and ensures open deposition of NIH-funded research, here are some thoughtful questions:
Why the NIH bill does not require copyright violation:
The great advantage of the requirement to deposit in Pubmed (rather than simply to expose on a publisher or other website) is that the act is clear. You can't "half-deposit" in Pubmed. They have the resources to decide whether any copyright statement allows the appropriate use of the information or is suffiently restrrictive that it does not meet the NIH rules.
At some stage the community will get…
oracknows | December 28, 2007Lately, bloggers, including some of my fellow ScienceBloggers, have been expressing various concerns about the phenomenon that is Ron Paul, the Republican candidate who's ridden a wave of discontent to do surprisingly well in the polls leading up to the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries. First, Jake and Greg have pointed out that Ron Paul apparently does not accept the theory of evolution. The other day, Ed Brayton and Sara Robinson discussed a story about an open letter by Bill White, the leader of the American Socialist Workers' Party, in which White claimed that Paul and his aides…
evolvingthoughts | December 27, 2007
Just to demonstrate that it is not only the Christians who have their religious fundamentalists opposing science, here's a piece that claims that the Vedas are the source of all true scientific knowledge. OK, guys, inventing zero was cool, but what have the Vedas done for us lately (apart from sectarian violence)?