Politics
j7uy5 | November 8, 2007This story
href="http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F00F16FD3A5E147B93CAA9178AD95F438685F9">originally
ran in the New York Times, 40 years ago.
It is behind a pay wall now, but it is
href="http://harpers.org/archive/2007/11/hbc-90001600">reprinted
in Harper's; I found it from a link at
href="http://www.oldamericancentury.org/index.htm">Project
for an Old American Century:
"We Do Not
Torture": The Lies Started in 1967
DEPARTMENT: No Comment
BY: Scott Horton
PUBLISHED: November 5, 2007
New York Times, “Branding Rite
Laid to Yale University,” Nov. 8, 1967…
pharyngula | November 7, 2007I just got this fairly typical piece of election email.
A MESSAGE FROM JOHN EDWARDS '08
Dear PZ,
John Edwards needs your help during the next Iowa statewide canvass,
Saturday, November 17 and Sunday, November 18.
It goes on, but never mind. The annoying thing is the source: it's from Ted, at the domain for my university and my lab. It has a spoofed source address! This is the kind of obnoxious crap I get from the peddlers of gadgets and drugs for my penis … it's not the behavior I expect from someone who wants me to vote for him.
Just a word of warning to any candidates out there: it doesn't…
grrlscientist | November 7, 2007tags: evolution, politics, education, Kitzmiller, Dover School District, intelligent design, Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial, NOVA, streaming video
Occasionally, very rarely in fact, I wish I had a television, and this is one of those days. I just received an ad from Kate Becker, regarding a new NOVA program, "Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial" which will air 8 pm on Tuesday, November 13 on your local PBS station (you might have also noticed that they are advertizing this program on this site).
This program documents the war over evolution that came to Dover, Pennsylvania…
pharyngula | November 7, 2007
It's too bad that this is for the Secular Party of Australia. I'd like to see the Democrats run an ad like this here. Can you imagine the meltdown in the media?
drorzel | November 6, 2007Today was Election Day in most parts of the US, and while there aren't any big national races going on, there were a number of local contests-- town boards, county legislatures, state judges, and so on. I stopped by the local elementary school on my way home, and did my bit for representative democracy, and I would like to take this opportunity to thank George W. Bush.
Thanks to our intrepid President, it took me about six seconds to vote. I was in the booth for a little longer than that, just to look at the cross-listings of candidates (most of the candidates on the ballot were endorsed by…
pharyngula | November 6, 2007I was shocked to open Current Biology and find the leading news article was titled "Call to atheists," and it was actually a pleasantly neutral article that simply reported on Dawkins' efforts to organize atheists and promote a positive view of secularism — I guess I'm simply so used to so many media references that get immediately defensive of religion and treat atheism as something scary. It's very nice.
Right after reading it, however, I got a note from Melissa. If you want to see something that should choke a cockroach, watch the parade of Democrats getting in line to stand up and defend…
jrosenhouse | November 6, 2007On the subject of national politics, I come from the blind loyalty wing of the Democratic Party. When I look at the sort of things Democrats do when they have power compared to the sorts of things Republicans do, it seems clear to me that the Dems do a far better job of running states and countries. I have no patience for people who think that what is needed is a third party, or who think that voting for Ross Perot or Ralph Nader makes then independent and above the fray. Politics is a dirty business under the best conditions, but to the extent that there is any hope that the government…
tsmith | November 6, 2007In our paper on HIV denial, Steven and I started the introduction off with a note about South African president Thabo Mbeki:
This denial was highlighted on an international level in 2000, when South African president Thabo Mbeki convened a group of panelists to discuss the cause of AIDS, acknowledging that he remained unconvinced that HIV was the cause. His ideas were derived at least partly from material he found on the Internet. Though Mbeki agreed later that year to step back from the debate, he subsequently suggested a re-analysis of health spending with a decreased emphasis on HIV/AIDS.…
razib | November 6, 2007Over at the Sepia Mutiny blog there has been seem dispute over whether Pervez Musharraf's declaration of a state of emergency in Pakistan. Some contributors are appalled, while others are urging caution. One of the posts was titled In defense of a dictator, and it understandably drew a lot of fire from those who make a vociferous case for democracy over the dictator.
But I think there are some problems here. Too much of our discourse is defined by a bipolar framing of the issues between democracy and dicatorship, as if these two states are binary opposites inverted on all characters. When…
tqa | November 6, 2007
In all of the fuss about the imminent confirmation of a man who says he can't judge whether or not strapping someone down and pouring water over them until they think they're drowning is torture, there's an important question that I think we've lost sight of: how on earth did we wind up in this position in the first place?
How is it even possible that we are having discussions about what is and is not technically torture? How is it possible that we are listening to Senators ask a nominee for Attorney General to take a position on whether or not certain "interrogation techniques" are…
drorzel | November 6, 2007This is somewhat belated, as it's no longer active, but I had a bunch of other things to do last week, and never got around to posting about Blog My Wage:
HOPE asked Houston City Council member Peter Brown to spend a week living on the wage of a city worker. Council Member Brown took the challenge and lived -- and blogged -- on the wage of city employee Belinda Rodriguez, who has just $23.03 a day to buy food, gas and clothing for herself and her three children.
Better late than never, though. It's a brief but fascinating look at what being poor is like. I've been fortunate enough in my life…
gregladen | November 5, 2007We shall not be moved. ..."
Fifty five of us jammed in a bus designed to hold fourty people plus a driver, rolling down Highway 90 from Upstate New York to Chicago. As a teenager (just turned 15), I was thrilled to be going to Chicago to attend the Fight Back Conference, a thinly disguised Communist Party meeting. I was going, in part for Keith, the young African American kid (about 12 years old) who was shot in the back by a state trooper just under a year earlier. Keith was driving a mo-ped down the toll road, on the shoulder, where he shouldn't have been. It appears that he did not…
pharyngula | November 5, 2007Matthew Chapman's suggestion that the presidential candidates have a debate on science is naive, idealistic, and a step in the right direction. It will never happen, because the issues of science we could talk about are not up for debate, and I don't think any of the candidates in any party are competent to discuss them, and they know it. They won't step into a venue where their grade-school level understanding of science will face serious challenge, or where their embarrassing misunderstandings will be publicly aired.
Now what would be feasible, I think, would be a debate on science policy.…
razib | November 4, 2007Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science has an interesting post up, Income, religious attendance, and voting:
Church attendance is a strong predictor of how high-income people vote, not such a good predictor for low-income voters.
Why? I think the most likely explanation is that cultural considerations become more salient as one increases up the income ladder. Check out their chart.
j7uy5 | November 4, 2007There is very little published about this, so I have no idea why it
happened. Dick Cheney's attorney,
href="http://www.usnews.com/blogs/news-desk/2007/11/1/cheney-lawyer-is-leaving.html">Shannen
Coffin, has resigned. He "is expected to take a
breather from the rapid pace of government service," then return to
private practice.
The announcement was made late Thursday last week, and was essentially
ignored by the media. Google News lists
only the US News & World Report article,
and one mention at
href="http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004627.php">TPM
Muckraker. Perhaps…
oracknows | November 4, 2007I've written before about how animal rights cranks have started resorting to terroristic tactics in order to intimidate or frighten researchers into ceasing to do animal research. As you may guess, I have little but contempt for the Animal Liberation Front (is that anything like the People's Front of Judea or the Judean People's Front?) and their ilk, who routinely use lies such as the claim that no good has ever come of animal research or the utterly risible claim that we can now somehow replace the use of animals with computer or cell culture models, coupled with vandalism and intimidation…
evolvingthoughts | November 3, 2007
I have a rule: a political party is usually the exact opposite of its name. Hence, the Liberal Party of Australia is not liberal, the National Party is not national, the Labor Party does not represent those who work, and Family First... well, what can one say?
clock | November 3, 2007Michael Pollan has the goods:
However many worthwhile programs get tacked onto the farm bill to buy off its critics, they won't bring meaningful reform to the American food system until the subsidies are addressed -- until the underlying rules of the food game are rewritten. This is a conversation that the Old Guard on the agriculture committees simply does not want to have, at least not with us.
In other words, contact your Senators today!
j7uy5 | November 1, 2007(AP)
href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/11/01/politics/main3441060.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_3441060">President
Bush compared Congress' Democratic leaders Thursday with
people who ignored the rise of Lenin and Hitler early in the last
century, saying "the world paid a terrible price" then and risks
similar consequences for inaction today.
Yeah. If the Dems don't impeach the guy who's talking about
World War III, we very well could pay a terrible price for inaction.
Oh, and which is better: going to war reluctantly, and winning, or going to war eagerly, and being a loser?
oracknows | November 1, 2007Over the summer, I got into a bit of an argument with a certain Libertarian comic named Tim Slagle who doesn't seem to accept the scientific consensus that anthropogenic global warming is happening or that it is a potentially grave problem. In a perilous bit of criticism, given that comedy often depends on saying stupid things, I deconstructed his comedy routine in which he threw all sorts of bad arguments and straw men as attacks on Al Gore. It was a routine with the old trope that "science has been wrong before," with a truly unpleasant bit of scientist-bashing thrown in for good measure.…