Politics
oracknows | September 17, 2007
It would appear that there's finally some good news in the strange and sad case of Starchild Abraham Cherrix. The AP reports that he and his doctor are reporting that his lymphoma is in remission again:
FLOYD, Va. -- A 17-year-old who won a court battle against state officials who tried to force him to undergo chemotherapy for his lymphatic cancer is in remission following radiation treatments over the past year, the teen and his doctor said.
Starchild Abraham Cherrix's case spurred debate on whether the government should get involved in family medical decisions. It also led to a state law…
pharyngula | September 17, 2007Remember, we're supposed to be pushing for the restoration of the Office of Technology Assessment. Have you written or phoned your senators and representatives yet?
denialism | September 17, 2007Let's keep this ball rolling. On Friday we started talking about the importance of the OTA
It used to be, for about 20 years (from 1974 to 1995), there was an office on the Hill, named the Office of Technology Assessment, which worked for the legislative branch and provided non-partisan scientific reports relevant to policy discussions. It was a critical office, one that through thorough and complete analysis of the scientific literature gave politicians common facts from which to decide policy debates. In 1994, with the new Republican congress, the office was eliminated for the sake of…
oracknows | September 16, 2007Even though I only rarely blog about politics, I'm with Ed Brayton, P. Z. Myers, and Amygdala on this one. Truly a wonderful thing has happened to the Presidential race.
Alan Keyes has entered the race for the 2008 Republican nomination for President.
No one can bring the crazy and stupid to a Presidential race the way Alan Keyes can. (My only hope for even better would be if Ted Nugent were to throw his hat into the ring.) His combination of self-righteous pandering to the religious right, nutty Libertarian views, and just plain silly statements far exceed anything any of the other…
pharyngula | September 16, 2007Everyone: get on your email or your phone, contact your representative, and tell them to support HR2826, the house bill to restore habeas corpus. You can find the text of the bill here (search by bill number for "HR 2826"). This is an opportunity to tell your congresspeople to support a positive action to restore a little bit of respect for the constitution, instead of the usual desperate call to oppose some odious scrap of legislative defilement coming out of the far right reaches of political hell.
pharyngula | September 16, 2007While Revere is showing a rerun of that glorious anti-religion riff (it's worth listening to again!), here's another clip of Marcus Brigstocke being right in every particular once more.
pharyngula | September 15, 2007By the addition of a new candidate who actually believes in God. Yes, everyone, Alan Keyes has entered the race.
Dear jebus, why is the race for the election of the president of the most militarily powerful country on earth such a ludicrous joke? Shouldn't this be an office for serious people with serious plans and serious expertise, and shouldn't certifiable lunatics like Keyes be given the cold shoulder? (Oh, right: they can't do that, because if sanity were a prerequisite, the entire Republican slate would evaporate.)
pharyngula | September 14, 2007Our country seems to have killed at least a million Iraqis at the whim of George W. Bush and his cabal of neocons.
I know that his former friends have started disowning him — he's no True Conservative now — but since he is officially a mass-murdering monster, can we also expect them to retroactively declare him an atheist?
evolvingthoughts | September 14, 2007
When the Republicans began their deconstruction of American democracy, under Newt Gingrich, one of the immediate targets was the emasculation of the Office of Technology Assessment. Since that time, the Republicans have mangled, misused and rhetorically denied any science that failed to fit their self-interests or those of their sponsors, as Chris Mooney detailed in his magisterial The Republican War on Science.
There's an old saying - you are entitled to your opinions, but you are not entitled to your own facts. If there is nobody telling American legislators what the facts are, they seem…
neurophilosophy | September 14, 2007A new survey, released today by the ORB polling agency, suggests that around 1.2 million Iraqi civilians have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion of March 2003. That's more than 4% of the country's population.
pharyngula | September 14, 2007Mark Hoofnagle is urging everyone to get behind a simple, non-partisan goal that would greatly benefit science policy: bring back the Office of Technology Assessment.
It used to be, for about 30 years (from 1974 to 1995), there was an office on the Hill, named the Office of Technology Assessment, which worked for the legislative branch and provided non-partisan scientific reports relevant to policy discussions. It was a critical office, one that through thorough and complete analysis of the scientific literature gave politicians common facts from which to decide policy debates. In 1994,…
drorzel | September 14, 2007One of our senior physics majors has made a video promoting sustainability to students, and posted it on YouTube. I need to figure out the best way to link it from the department web page, but it occurs to me that I have this big Internet platform I can use to plug it:
It's a good piece of work. Amazing what kids these days can do.
tsmith | September 14, 2007Just a quick post to note that fellow ScienceBlogger Nick Anthis has up a post on HIV denial in South Africa. Though this is a topic I've touched on, he goes into a deeper history of it, including more about the cultural reasons for denial (whereas I typically focus more on the science).
In other news, I have an editorial today in the The Times Higher Education Supplement in London. You can find it here (registration required).
terrasig | September 14, 2007[Welcome Daily Kos readers and many thanks to DarkSyde for the link - btw, if you're wondering what Terra Sigillata is, click here.]
The other day I fired off a quick post on the absurdity of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is proposing to cut reimbursements for two radioimmunotherapy drugs for lymphoma to less than their cost. The two immunotherapy drugs in question are Bexxar (I-131 tositumomab) and Zevalin (Y-90 ibritumomab) - both drugs target the CD20 protein on the surface of normal and malignant B-lymphocytes, killing the cells by the radioactive emissions of…
denialism | September 13, 2007So I was thinking. It isn't really enough to merely react constantly to anti-scientific behavior which seems to permeate the media, the interwebs, and policy discussions on Capitol Hill these days.
It used to be, for about 20 years (from 1974 to 1995), there was an office on the Hill, named the Office of Technology Assessment, which worked for the legislative branch and provided non-partisan scientific reports relevant to policy discussions. It was a critical office, one that through thorough and complete analysis of the scientific literature gave politicians common facts from which to…
pharyngula | September 13, 2007
It's not happy Roy, but cynical Roy … but then, these are cynical times.
Now, can we give the troops some real support? Like, by bringing them back home?
evolvingthoughts | September 13, 2007
Larry Caldwell, a well-known proponent of antievolutionism, tried and failed to get "the controversy" taught in the school district of his kids' school. He failed, so he sued the school board because he was "discriminated against... for being Christian". The suit was just thrown out.
What bothers me is not that antievolutionists would again try to use the legal system to change the definition and content of science - we have come to expect that in this political battle (and it is nothing else but a political battle. There's no science or even decent philosophy there). What bothers me is…
jlynch | September 13, 2007I predict this may ruffle a few feathers. I don’t have time to comment myself, but I’m sure PZ, Jason and other can more than adequately weigh in. Avery Cardinal Dulles writes in the theo-con journal First Things:
Science, however, performs a disservice when it claims to be the only valid form of knowledge, displacing the aesthetic, the interpersonal, the philosophical, and the religious.
The recent outburst of atheistic scientism is an ominous sign. If unchecked, this arrogance could lead to a resumption of the senseless warfare that raged in the nineteenth century, thus undermining the…
pharyngula | September 13, 2007Here's another online petition you can sign — this one is to censure Kathy Griffin's censorship. Go ahead and sign, although I'm beginning to wonder if the reason people aren't marching in the streets and fending off flying teargas canisters and roaring angrily in person at the bad guys is that they're too damned busy filling out all these forms on their computers, instead.
Maybe I need to create a new category here: "futile, impotent political posturing" or something. But at least it feels a little bit good.
(via Greg Laden)
clock | September 13, 2007OK, that is an overstatement (for now). Will Raymond for Town Council!
There. That's better.
I thought Will must be busy as I did not hear from him lately and he did not show up at any of the recent bloggy events in the area. So, he was busy preparing for his second run for the Town Council. He did not make it last time around, but now the voters know him better, so anything can happen! And having the broad support of local bloggers is not something to scorn at in a place like Chapel Hill either!
I am sure that he'll announce on his blog when he needs locals to volunteer, but until then (…