Politics
gregladen | December 2, 2007A sizable fraction of the international business community launched an effort to press for mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas emissions yesterday, on the eve of a major round of climate negotiations set to begin Monday in Bali.
In an unprecedented show of solidarity, leaders from 150 global companies endorsed the idea of a legally binding framework in a statement published in the Financial Times newspaper.
[source]
The idea is, of course, that these businesses recognize that this is gong to have to happen, but no one business can do it unilaterally. There are two reasons for that, which are…
gregladen | December 2, 2007The Courier Journal is a regular normal every-day newspaper out of Louisville, Kentucky. James K. Willmot is a normal every-day former science teacher at a Goshen Kentucky school. He works in a lab now in Britain, but he's from Louisville. The following Op Ed in the Courier-Journal by James Willmot should be sobering for anyone living in the readership zone of that paper, or anyone with kids in the area:
There is a great educational injustice being inflicted upon thousands of children in this country, a large percentage of whom come from the Kentucky, Ohio and, Indiana areas. The source…
evolvingthoughts | December 1, 2007
[Australian politics: look away]
Oh dear. It took only seven days for the shine to wear off the Labor victory. Julia Gillard has outlined the priorities for education: computers and trades training centres in schools. Yep, that's right, the single most important aspect of education in Australia is trade education and toys.
Never mind that the past 20 years has seen a decline in tertiary education funding by governments of both stripes, so that universities now have to attract overseas students in full fee paying courses to survive. It's all about trades. And toys.
Now I do not think that…
gregladen | December 1, 2007Yes, you read that right. Finally, the guy has something to contribute:
(you may want to watch only the first minutes or so)
O'Reilly's point is that every American has the responsibility to take it in the butt from George Bush, no matter what he says.
j7uy5 | December 1, 2007Uprising Radio reports on an item of social justice:
href="http://uprisingradio.org/home/?p=2134">San Diego
County Searches Welfare Recipients’ Homes
Published on 28 Nov 2007 at 12:06 pm
GUEST: Eric Isaacson, Partner in the law firm,
Coughlin-Stoia, and cooperating attorney with the ACLU of San Diego
& Imperial Counties
If you live in San Diego and are a welfare
recipient, investigators from the County’s DA office can show
up unannounced and without a warrant to search your home in order to to
confirm that you are eligible for government aid. Failure to submit to
the…
laelaps | November 30, 2007I'm officially an old man; I intended to finish On the Origin of Phyla tonight and write about evolution as fact and theory, but instead I fell asleep at 7 PM after a trip to the grocery store. Lame... In lieu of anything substantial, then, here's one of my favorite Simpsons moments satirizing some of the super-conservative amendment proposals from recent years (Federal Marriage Amendment, I'm looking at you).
clock | November 30, 2007Peter Suber reports that the Charleston Advisor gave its 2007 Lemon Award to PRISM. I first learned about this from an e-mail:
"The Charleston Advisor (TCA) announced its seventh annual Reader's Choice Awards for products and services in academic libraries, although "winning" one of these awards isn't always a good thing. For example, the 2007 Lemon Award went to the Association of American Publishers for PRISM (The Partnership for Research Integrity in Science and Medicine), the controversial web initiative created to oppose efforts to make publicly-funded research free on the web. "These…
oracknows | November 29, 2007Heard on the radio this morning, a commenter responding to a radio talk show host's pointing out to him that Mike Huckabee doesn't accept evolution as valid. This is as close as I can remember what he said, but the gist is correct:
We disagree on that. But not believing in evolution is something I can overlook. It's not that important. It's not as though he'll have stormtroopers knocking down my door because of it.
Maybe not, but if elected Huckabee would have a huge say over federal educational and biological research policy and funding. Being a creationist, as Mike Huckabee is, to me is an…
tsmith | November 29, 2007Over at Correlations, I have a post up describing the case of a Liberian immigrant who's been jailed in New York for the importation of bushmeat. She's arguing that to punish her for this is in violation of her first amendment right to freedom of religion. More at the link...
gregladen | November 29, 2007As New York mayor, Rudy Giuliani billed obscure city agencies for tens of thousands of dollars in security expenses amassed during the time when he was beginning an extramarital relationship with future wife Judith Nathan in the Hamptons, according to previously undisclosed government records.
The documents, obtained by Politico under New York's Freedom of Information Law, show that the mayoral costs had nothing to do with the functions of the little-known city offices that defrayed his tabs, including agencies responsible for regulating loft apartments, aiding the disabled and providing…
oracknows | November 29, 2007We've had one example this week of people with minds so open that their brains fell out at the Oxford Union, which invited Holocaust denier and British National Party leader Nick Griffin to "discuss free speech." Now, sadly, I see another, this time it's the United States government, which has invited die-hard antivaccinationists to be on a major federal panel about autism:
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Advocates who believe vaccines may cause autism will join mental health professionals and neurologists on a new federal panel to coordinate autism research and education, the U.S. Health and Human…
pharyngula | November 28, 2007Whoa. Giuliani is toast. The guy was using city funds to pay for his gambols with his mistress?
This would be good news if it weren't for the fact that Huckabee, Romney, Thompson…heck, the whole revolting Republican lineup…make me ill.
tsmith | November 28, 2007 Revere has been covering the situation in Indonesia regarding sharing of influenza viruses with the US and other countries. For those of you who don't follow these issues, Indonesia has been the country hardest hit thus far by H5N1 (113 cases and 91 deaths as of 11/12/07). However, while one might think they would welcome outside help with diagnostics and strain typing, they've been very reluctant to share their viruses. Revere explains:
But Indonesia still refuses to share its human H5N1 isolates, contending they get nothing tangible from an arrangement which is likely to lead to…
drorzel | November 28, 2007I generally listen to ESPN radio in my office in the morning, because I like the Mike & Mike show. Unfortunately, they're followed by Colin Cowherd, who is a world-class pinhead.
He's currently holding forth on the death of Sean Taylor, with his basic position being that Taylor had it coming because he had a checkered past. If you were reading back in April, you can probably guess how happy I am to be hearing this line of argument.
In support of this brilliant insight, he's just touted his track record in correctly assessing high-profile public legal cases by noting that he didn't believe…
pharyngula | November 28, 2007Trent Lott may be bailing out of politics, but it looks like his successor may be Chip Pickering, Pentecostal kook who had a brief appearance on Borat. Is it an improvement to replace a mean stupid thug with a religious airhead with a nice haircut?