Politics
tqa | November 1, 2007
It's not often that I start a post with an apology (that usually comes later) but I think I have to this time. Dr. Watson, I'm sorry that I've got your name in the same title as Westboro Baptist. As unpleasant as you've been at times, you're not anywhere close to being in the same league as the Phelps infestation. It's just that I've got a pretty good reason for talking about you and the villainous horde in the same post, and splitting up the names in the title didn't read well. I'm pretty sure that I can keep the two of you out of the same sentence in the remainder of the text.
By any…
clock | November 1, 2007
Click to enlarge. Seen on the John Edwards campaign page (got it in one of their e-mails asking for money). Scary, isn't it? Effective framing?
drorzel | November 1, 2007Well, so are all the other Presidential hopefuls-- not one of them has responded to my offer to endorse any candidate who will play me in basketball-- but I particularly want to address Colbert. After all, he's supposed to be the unconventional maverick candidate here, tooling around in a bus stolen from John McCain...
Now, you might say, "Why does Stephen Colbert need your endorsement? After all, his fan group on Facebook has 1.3 million members, and he's got a tv show (admittedly, on basic cable), while you're just a jackass with a web page. He's got the power to break the DonorsChoose…
j7uy5 | October 31, 2007This won't happen, but I think it should.
Television media should not be allowed to participate, other
than to do the broadcast. The media performance in the
10/30/07 Democratic debate shows that MSM do not know how to conduct a
useful debate.
Find a good media company, say Seed Media, and have
them host the Democratic Party debate. Have the editorial
board prepare topics & guidelines for questions. Show
the topics & guidelines, but not the questions, to the
candidates ahead of time.
Get some scientists to write the questions, using the topics &
guidelines. Get some…
j7uy5 | October 31, 2007It was kind of depressing to see the post on Effect Measure (
href="http://scienceblogs.com/effectmeasure/2007/10/chemical_plants_internal_dange.php#more">Chemical
plants: internal dangers, external costs) about the
half-measures being taken to safeguard chemical plants and facilities.
The chemical security problem is as urgent
as it is obvious. Chemical plants are potentially static weapons of
mass destruction: large volumes of ammonia, chlorine, highly flammables
like propane, large repositories of chlorinated organic solvents and
chemical feedstocks like phosgene and more.
The…
hrynyshyn | October 31, 2007For reasons unknown to this observer, Tim Russert has in some parts a reputation as a serious journalist. Last night's Democratic presidential debate should put that notion to rest. Russert asked Dennis Kucinich to verify a passage from a new book by reincarnation nut-case Shirley MacLaine in which he is said to have seen a UFO, and then put the question of extraterrestrial life to Barack Obama. What the frak?
Both answers -- Kucinich: "I did ... it was unidentified" and Obama: I don't know" -- were the only possible reasonable responses. The problem with Russert's questions is not that…
tqa | October 30, 2007
President Bush announced today that he has (finally) named a nominee to replace Jim Nicholson as head of the Veterans administration. His choice, retired Lt. General James Peake, is probably one of the more qualified people that this President has ever nominated to do anything. That's the good news. The bad news is that's not a very high bar to clear.
Seriously, though, Peake certainly has the qualifications to run the VA. He's a West Pointer, he is a combat veteran who served in the infantry and was wounded twice in Vietnam, he's a medical doctor, and he was the Surgeon General of the…
denialism | October 30, 2007Another sign the monkeys are running the zoo is the news that the head of consumer protection doesn't want consumer protection.
The top official for consumer product safety has asked Congress in recent days to reject legislation that would strengthen the agency that polices thousands of consumer goods, from toys to tools.
On the eve of an important Senate committee meeting to consider the legislation, Nancy A. Nord, the acting chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, has asked lawmakers in two letters not to approve the bulk of legislation that would increase the agency's…
oracknows | October 30, 2007...at least, that was my first reaction when I first read this reaction by the Karen Malec of the Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer to posts by Mark Chu-Carroll and myself pointing out the numerous flaws in the latest "study" being circulated to "support" a link between abortion and breast cancer.
Then I thought about it. That post was one of my more ambitious posts, and it reached a length even greater than the usual Orac-ian standard of logorrhea to match its ambition. Indeed, the post took me two or three times longer to put together than the typical heapin' helpin' of Respectful…
clock | October 30, 2007Rockridge Institute published a set of articles (and a video ad) that I found quite interesting about the way to frame health care. See for yourself:
Introduction to Rockridge's Health Care Campaign:
Framing for Rockridge is about the honest expression of the progressive moral view based upon empathy and responsibility for oneself and others. It is about recognizing government's role to protect and empower citizens. In other words, we want to communicate our moral view as directly as possible. We want to make sure the moral view is not lost in the fog of complex policy proposals.
The Logic…
drorzel | October 30, 2007In today's New York Times Natalie Angier has a nice story about increased interest in physics:
Many people wring their hands over the state of science education and point to the appalling performance of America's students in international science and math competitions. Yet some of the direst noises about our nation's scientific prospects may be premature. Far from rejecting challenging science courses, students seem to be embracing them.
This year, for example, the American Institute of Physics said that the percentage of high school students taking physics courses was at an all-time high,…
evolvingthoughts | October 29, 2007
Here is a wonderful (and for us old fogeys, resonant) essay by Chris Kelly at The Huffington Post on the use of the Geneva Convention by both Nazis and Allies during the second world war. The money quote:
In real life, bombing Germany killed a half million civilians, but interned American and British airmen were generally treated according to the Geneva Conventions. They weren't systematically tortured. They weren't deliberately humiliated. They weren't held in solitary cells. International organizations were given their names and their families were informed of their capture. Their…
evolvingthoughts | October 29, 2007I actually don't dislike the guy, but this is one of the funniest political ads I've ever seen.
For forners (not from Orstraya), it helps to know that Rudd leads the erstwhile socialist party, speaks Mandarin, and is likely to win the next federal election.
jrosenhouse | October 29, 2007Former World Chess Champion and current political activist Garry Kasparov appeared on Bill Maher's program the other night. The entire, seven minute interview is worth watching, but I especially liked this part:
MAHER: But if you look at what's going on in Russia, Putin has a very high approval rating. I mean there is something...
KASPAROV: How do you know? (Laughter) Are you seriously, are you relying on the polling results from a police state? I think with the same tight control of media and a pervasive security force, Bush and Cheney could enjoy the same approval rating here.
MAHER:…
neurophilosophy | October 28, 2007The New York Times Magazine contains a long article about the close ties between evangelical Christians and the Republican party.
clock | October 28, 2007Local elections are next week.
This is my official endorsement for Sally Greene for Chapel Hill Town Council.
And not just because she is a blogger.
Or because she was endorsed by The Independent.
But because of what Brian said.
j7uy5 | October 27, 2007Today I watched the C-Span broadcast (
href="rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/energy/energy102307_warming.rm">link
to Real Player file,
80 minutes) of Dr. Gerberding's testimony to the Senate Committee on
Environment and Public Works. The topic: The potential
effects of
climate change on public health.
After seeing it, I have to agree that she was able to make many good
points, and the Senate is more informed as a result. That
fact
does not excuse the White House censorship of her written report;
rather, it simply means that their anemic efforts at censorship were
relatively ineffective…
pharyngula | October 27, 2007We have to rely on comedians to tell us the obvious.
And that's because over the last seven years, because of the incompetence that goes by the name George Bush, we've become the most insecure, paranoid superpower ever. We don't think we can get anything right anymore. We can't take care of our own citizens after a hurricane, or plan for our wars, or maintain our infrastructure, and our celebrity rehab facilities obviously aren't working at all.
clock | October 27, 2007Since I was gone to two meetings and nobody else can walk the dog as regularly as I can, the dog spent the week at Grandma's in Raleigh. Today I went to pick her up (the dog, that is) which placed me in the car at precisely the time of NPR's Talk of the Nation Science Friday (OK, I intentionally timed it that way). And lo and behold, there was Gavin Yamey on the radio! Hey, I thought, I know this guy! We had lunch together and we exchange at least a dozen e-mails every week.
Gavin is editor at PLoS Medicine and, as part of the Global Theme Issue on Poverty and Human Development, he…
denialism | October 26, 2007It's the big news, at a FEMA press briefing FEMA employees threw softball questions to give the appearance of answering questions from the press.
. No one asked about trailers with formaldehyde for those made homeless by the fires. And the media seemed to be giving Johnson all day to wax on and on about FEMA's greatness.
Of course, that could be because the questions were asked by FEMA staffers playing reporters. We're told the questions were asked by Cindy Taylor, FEMA's deputy director of external affairs, and by "Mike" Widomski, the deputy director of public affairs. Director of External…