Politics
pharyngula | October 26, 2007Adam Cuerden sent along this old political cartoon that doesn't really make much sense to me. Are we supposed to sympathise with William Gladstone? He's the guy with a big knife trying to murder the lovely creature who just wants to cling to his rock and be left alone. Tattooing his tentacles with the the words "rebellion," "lawlessness," "outrage," "sedition," etc. doesn't change the action we're witnessing.
(click for larger image)
clock | October 26, 2007On Monday, the U.S. Senate voted to pass the FY2008 Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Bill (S.1710), including a provision that directs the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to strengthen its Public Access Policy by requiring rather than requesting participation by researchers.
The vote was a veto-proof 75-19. However, the House version of the bill passed with a smaller majority, so the Presidential veto is still possible (perhaps likely). Still, this a big step in the right direction, and important battle won. Moreover, the real battle over this bill resides in some other…
pharyngula | October 25, 2007My least favorite political/economic group is the Libertarians, so it is a wonderfully pleasant experience to watch as China Miéville takes a sharp and dismissive rhetorical blade to a Libertarian pipe-dream. He's specifically criticizing something called the Freedom Ship, a gigantic free-floating escapist fantasy for Libertarians, in which they cruise the seas with their own closed colony of warriors for greed.
Libertarianism is by no means a unified movement. As many of its advocates proudly stress, it comprises a taxonomy of bickering branches--minarchists, objectivists, paleo- and…
jrosenhouse | October 25, 2007Writing at the Cato Insititue blog, Chris Edwards believes he has found the Ann Coulter of the left:
For those who think that it's just conservatives, such as Ann Coulter, who are mean-spirited, they should check out the new book by Jonathan Chait, a senior editor of the New Republic, entitled The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Crackpot Economics.
I managed to get through the introduction and first chapter of Mr. Chait's book. Alas, I could read no more. Here are some of Chait's characterizations of supply-side economists and supply-side economics-…
oracknows | October 25, 2007I approach this topic with a bit of trepidation. I say this not because I'm unsure that I'm correct in my assessment of the article that I'm about to apply some Respectful Insolence⢠to. Rather, it's because the last time I brought up anything having to do with abortion, it got ugly. The topic is such a polarized one that virtually anything one says is sure to attract vitriol. Regardless, though, this article by Dennis Byrne, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune and the "study" to which it refers, are so appallingly idiotic that even fear of touching the third rail of American politics will…
clock | October 24, 2007Global Theme Issue on Poverty and Human Development (which I mentioned a few days ago here) was a great success. You can see all the articles associated with it here.
PLoS has collected all the poverty-related articles from its Journals on this nifty collections page.
A PLoS Medicine article - Food Insufficiency Is Associated with High-Risk Sexual Behavior among Women in Botswana and Swaziland - was one of the few that were highlighted at the event at NIH. Gavin has the details. Nick Anthis gives his angle.
jrosenhouse | October 24, 2007Columbia University Law Professor Michael Dorf uses the Dumbledore flap as a teachable moment:
These principles may seem obvious enough when considering the relation of a fiction writer's intentions to her text, but they are highly contentious when it comes to legal documents. In the balance of this column, I will explain why James Madison is no more of an authority on the meaning of the U.S. Constitution, than J.K. Rowling is on Dumbledore's sexual orientation.
Interesting! I recommend the remainder of this fairly short essay. Here's the conclusion:
But now we must ask a further…
j7uy5 | October 24, 2007The Honorable John Dingell has drafted legislation that
would bring an end to the war in Iraq. There is no bill
number yet, so it is a bit too early for us all to write our
Representatives to urge support.
href="http://www.house.gov/apps/list/press/mi15_dingell/PR071023iraqpullout.shtml">Dingell
Introduces Legislation Requiring U.S. Pullout from Iraq by January 20,
2009
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Washington, DC - Congressman John D. Dingell (D-MI15)
today introduced legislation setting a hard date for a pullout from
Iraq. The bill does not yet have a number. The
Congressman made…
tqa | October 24, 2007
Several days ago, Senator (and longshot Presidential candidate) Christopher Dodd (D-CT) made some news by promising to do whatever he could to block any legislation that would retroactively grant immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated with President Bush's warrentless wiretapping program. He started off by placing a hold on the bill - a procedural move that would normally block the legislation from being voted on. After hearing that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid plans to move the bill to the floor despite the hold, Dodd is now promising to go to the floor of the Senate…
denialism | October 24, 2007This is why we need the Office of Technology Assessment (and listen to it), Bush is trying to bring back SDI, big time.
President Bush said yesterday that a missile defense system is urgently needed in Europe to guard against a possible attack on U.S. allies by Iran, while Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested that the United States could delay activating such a system until there is "definitive proof" of such a threat.
The seemingly contrasting messages came as the Bush administration grappled with continuing Russian protests over Washington's plan to deploy elements of a missile…
drorzel | October 24, 2007One of the odd things about blogdom, and the commentariat in general, is the way that people will all seem to latch on to some particular idea at about the same time, despite the lack of any obvious connection between them. I keep having days when I scan through my RSS feeds, and find the same topics coming up again and again.
This week's emergent theme seems to be "Kids These Days." It started with this deeply silly complaint about the "whiteness" of indie music by Sasha Frere-Jones in the New Yorker, which strikes me as a classic example of a writer straining to find deep cultural meaning…
pharyngula | October 24, 2007Here's the true, heroic history of America:
You know this is "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week", right? Now you must check out the true, heroic recounting of the horrors faced by one of Horowitz's neo-con speakers at the deepest pit of hell Wellesley. The girls made mean faces at her. This is cause for great fear and concern on the right: it suggests that Hamas is offering eye-rolling classes to their terrorist curriculum, and the Horowitzians cannot survive that kind of mockery.
We really are living in Roy Zimmerman's America. I don't think I like it much, even if it is funny.
evolvingthoughts | October 23, 2007
Much to do about the sexual inclinations of a fictional character in the most successful (and I still think, despite the lack of editorial control, one of the classic) children's stories. PZ Mungle has this to say:
I really, honestly, truly do not give a good goddamn if Dumbledore is gay. He's a fictional character, the author is getting a little too freakily obsessive over her characters, and it doesn't affect me one way or the other how the character swings. So Rowling says he's gay. Eh. Move on.
Now it is my considered opinion that the only time a person's sexual inclinations are of…
jlynch | October 23, 2007According the Associated Press, the White House severely edited congressional testimony given Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the impact of climate change on health. The testimony was cut from 14 pages to four, though some of the redacted material appears to have come up in questions.
The deletions directed by the White House included details on how many people might be adversely affected because of increased warming and the scientific basis for some of the CDC’s analysis on what kinds of diseases might be spread in a warmer climate and rising sea…
pharyngula | October 23, 2007Do we have to wait until he's elected to impeach him? 'Cause right now I'd like to see Huckabee kicked off the campaign trail and sent back to repeat grades 6-12.
Oh, I believe in science. I certainly do. In fact, what I believe in is, I believe in God. I don't think there's a conflict between the two. But if there's going to be a conflict, science changes with every generation and with new discoveries and God doesn't. So I'll stick with God if the two are in conflict.
So when he's faced with two claims, he'll follow the one that ignores all the evidence and sticks to its guns in the face of…
pharyngula | October 23, 2007The chemists among the readers here have probably already all heard this, but there is a bit of a flap in the American Chemical Society over Open Access publishing. It seems some within the ACS have been protesting Open Access; unsurprisingly, it seems that many of them have connections to the scientific publishing industry. I was deeply amused by the fellow who scorned open access because is it is "socialized science," as if government support of science were bad, and as if we weren't all dependent on the largesse of state and federal government support. Oh, if only we could return to the…
pharyngula | October 22, 2007Perhaps Barack Obama really wants to make sure I won't vote for him. At least, that's how I'm interpreting his attempts to couple environmentalism and religion.
Meeting the threat of global climate change will take hard work and faith, Obama said.
"Not a blind faith, not a faith of mere words, not a faith that ignores science, but an active searching faith," said Obama, a member of the United Church of Christ. "It's a faith that does not look at the hardship and pain and suffering in the world and use it all as an excuse for inaction or cynicism, but one that accepts the fact that although we…
razib | October 22, 2007Some of you know that Bobby Jindal was just elected as the governor of Louisiana. Jindal has an interesting story, he's the son of Indian immigrants, received degrees in biology and public bolicy from Brown, passed on Harvard Medical School for a Rhodes Scholarship, and took over the Louisiana Public Health System at the age of 24.
He is also a convert to Catholicism, and extremely politically conservative. Conservative blogger Patrick Ruffini had a political orgasm a few days ago in response to Jindal's victory; and it was typical on the Right blogosphere. I really don't think that Bobby…
tqa | October 22, 2007
Here are a few numbers from the latest Reuters-Zogby poll. See if you can find the one that's not like the others:
Rated President Bush's performance as excellent or good: 25%
Rated Congress' performance as excellent or good: 11%
Said the U.S. is heading in the right direction: 26%
Rated the performance of U.S. foreign policy excellent or good: 18%
Rated the performance of U.S. economic policy excellent or good: 26%
Said they were very or fairly proud of the U.S.: 88%
Those numbers remind me of a bit from Terry Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment:
"...you might not like everything about…