Politics
pharyngula | August 10, 2007The wingnuts are still outraged that there is a Muslim in congress and that a Hindu delivered an opening prayer (which was pretty dang lame, anyway). Now look at this silly little man (R-Idaho) ranting about the death of America:
Last month, the U.S. Senate was opened for the first time ever with a Hindu prayer. Although the event generated little outrage on Capitol Hill, Representative Bill Sali (R-Idaho) is one member of Congress who believes the prayer should have never been allowed.
"We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of…
drorzel | August 10, 2007The National Science Board has released a draft report for public comment titled "A National Action Plan for Addressing the Critical Needs of the U.S. Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education System." You can dowload the PDF of the report from that page, and email any comments to: NSB_STEMaction@nsf.gov.
I've only skimmed the report, so I won't be sending comments in any time soon, but if I were to make a snap suggestion, it would be that they re-order their suggestions to reflect the usefulness of the recommendations.
They have a helpful one-sentence summary of their two "…
drorzel | August 10, 2007Via Inside Higher Ed, the Center for Responsive Politics has a new report on political contributions by academics
So far in the '08 election cycle, people who work for institutions of higher education have given more than $7 million to federal candidates, parties and committees, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Nearly 60 percent of that money has gone to presidential candidates. The industry's favorite, Barack Obama, has raked in nearly $1.5 million in the campaign's first six months, followed by Hillary Clinton with almost $940,000.
Seventy-six percent of the…
jlynch | August 9, 2007
These are new licence plates for Oklahoma, where apparently the Koolade was drunk in vast quantities. I think I need to lie down.
pharyngula | August 9, 2007I mentioned the growing entanglement of fundamentalist religion in the military the other day, and here's another example: proselytization in the military by evangelical freaks like Stephen Baldwin.
Baldwin became a right-wing, born-again Christian after the 9/11 attacks, and now is the star of Operation Straight Up (OSU), an evangelical entertainment troupe that actively proselytizes among
active-duty members of the US military. As an official
arm of the Defense Department's America Supports You program, OSU plans to mail copies of the controversial apocalyptic video game, Left Behind:…
evolvingthoughts | August 8, 2007
Nature [subscription required] is reporting that Brazilian ecologists are threatening a strike if Marc van Roosmalen is not released. You'll recall that I posted on his case before. Van Roosmalen is a maverick primate researcher who has effectively been imprisoned for 16 years for political reasons. Brazilian researchers are justifiably concerned that if he can be, so can they, in the course of their doing their ecological research. Nature reports:
...in 2002, van Roosmalen was charged with taking four monkeys from the forest northwest of Manaus without permits. The charges led to a…
jrosenhouse | August 8, 2007After yesterday's post suggesting that the Democrats hadn't caved on the FISA vote, a number of commenters and bloggers pointed out to me that the outrage was that the Democratic leadership allowed the bill to come to a vote at all. They could have blocked it, thereby giving more time to push for the more sensible FISA reform bill proposed by Senators Rockefeller and Levin.
After thinking it over last night, I've decided that they're correct. I hadn't paid adequate attention to the procedural issues behind the FISA vote, and was too focused instead on the outcome of the vote itself. So I'm…
clock | August 8, 2007Immature?
Senescent?
Or just cowardly?
Favourite put-down topic: Hair.
Do a search on "femiphobia"....
pharyngula | August 8, 2007Here's an odd correlation for you: whenever I take a swipe at the foolishness of Scott Adams, I get a major uptick in the usual trickle of Christian email. I don't quite see Adams as a friend to Christianity, although he does seem to foster the kind of shallow thinking on which religiosity thrives. Anyway, for your delectation, I've put a couple of samples below.
First, here's something we can expect to see lots of in the next year. I'm no fan of Obama myself, but this kind of silly slander is contemptible.
Who is Barack Obama?
Probable U. S. presidential candidate, Barack Hussein Obama was…
pharyngula | August 8, 2007Sara at Orcinus takes apart the macho little boys of the Republican party — it's one of those posts that explains a lot.
oracknows | August 8, 2007&uotI've been on call and grant writing, both of which have put a major crimp in my blogging time, preventing my usual daily magnum opus and leaving me reposts and pithy link-and-comment posts, at least for today. Since having become a little irritated by comparisons to Nazis by a certain opponent of bans on indoor smoking, I thought now would be a great time to show you something that I've been meaning to show since the time that I moved the old Blogspot blog over to ScienceBlogs. Yes, I'm talking about the origin of the Hitler Zombie. This post, which appeared on June 2, 2005, is in…
jrosenhouse | August 7, 2007Several of my fellow Science Bloggers have come to a strange conclusion regarding the recent FISA vote in Congress. Ed Brayton titles his post on the subject “Democrats Cave on FISA Amendment.” P.Z. Myers concurs, writing, “It's a perfect example of the failure of the Democratic party: they allowed the FISA bill to pass, and essentially revealed that they don't give a damn about civil liberties.” Mike Dunford, writes, “Because every time the Republicans threaten them, they drop to their knees and beg for mercy - like they just did in the Senate, with this wiretap legislation. I swear,…
jrosenhouse | August 7, 2007Certain portions of the political blogosphere have erupted over the subject of teacher's unions. It started with this column, from July 3, by Richard Cohen of The Washington Post. Those of you who follow these things will recognize Cohen as one of the most odious skunks in the punditocracy. Any time his name comes up we really must recall the following incident, here described memorably by The Daily Howler:
In October 2000, things got better. Cohen savaged VP hopeful Joe Lieberman for something he said before B'nai B'rith. “I wonder what in the world he's talking about,” Cohen wrote.…
jlynch | August 7, 2007Over at Corpus Callosum, Joseph highlights a "Pick Your Candidate" webpage. You enter your stand on various issues, and the page ranks the candidates based on their similarity to your views. Here’s the Top Five it spat back at me:
Kucinich
Gravel
Obama
Clinton
Edwards
Somewhat satisfyingly, the least compatible choices are all Republicans and all negative scores: Thompson, Brownback, McCain, Cox, Giuliani, Huckabee, Tancredo, Romney, and Hunter. The only Republican to get a positive score (10) was Ron Paul.
Give it a try.
hrynyshyn | August 7, 2007As a Canadian, it's long been a bit of an embarrassment for me that Michael Ignatieff is considered one of Canada's leading intellectuals. Worse now that he's also a sitting member of Parliament. But today's quasi-apology in the New York Times for supporting the invasion of Iraq is perhaps the strangest thing he's written yet. As Mike the Mad Biologist and Matthew Iglesias have already pointed out, academia by and large was not in favor of Bush's blunder. So where does Iggy get the idea that it was?
Everybody seems to have their favorite most-absurd excerpt from the essay, which attempts to…
j7uy5 | August 7, 2007The
problem, specifically, is that patients with insurance
have higher copays and deductibles. According to an article
on Medscape (free registration required):
href="http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/560983">U.S.
Hospitals Struggle Over Who Can Afford to Pay
By Kim Dixon
CHICAGO (Reuters Life!) Aug 06 - For-profit hospitals, which are
blaming unpaid medical bills for tamping down profits, are struggling
with a simple question: Which patients have the ability to pay their
hospital bills? ...
HMA and LifePoint Hospitals are among the major chains that posted
falling profits in…
pharyngula | August 7, 2007It's frightening to see religion poisoning our military, but it's happening. A group of generals is facing disciplinary action for promoting an evangelical religious organization, and they admit to being oblivious to the problem of a general declaring that his "first priority is his faith in god", or in supporting a fanatical Christian group that wants to target foreign diplomats, ambassadors, and other representatives for conversion to Christianity. These fellows lent the dignity and responsibility of their positions to a weird cult, and now they defend themselves with this particularly…
oracknows | August 7, 2007After a long run of arguing against global warming and indoor smoking bans, it appears that our favorite Libertarian comic with a penchant for bad arguments and ad hominem attacks on scientists has temporarily left the field of blog combat in a huff of "giving up" that reminds me of a certain Black Knight telling a certain King that he's not beaten and that it's "just a flesh wound." I'm not worried; I'm sure he'll be back whenever he returns from his vacation to speak for himself. In the meantime, while the blog silence is golden, I'd like to step back a minute. I don't want to rehash old…
j7uy5 | August 7, 2007This
is an interesting exercise. Go to a site and state your
position are various issues that are major themes for next year's
Presidential election. Also rank the importance of each issue
to you.
When you do this, you are not seeing the names of any of the
candidates.
The site then shows you which candidate most closely matches you on the
issues.
I'm not saying that you should choose your vote based only upon logic,
but I suggest that you at least consider what would happen if you did.
Pick Your
Candidate.
pharyngula | August 6, 2007It's a perfect example of the failure of the Democratic party: they allowed the FISA bill to pass, and essentially revealed that they don't give a damn about civil liberties. Revere is right: don't support them. Don't donate to the DCCC. He recommends ActBlue, which does look like a very good organization that actually promotes progressive politics rather than the craven do-nothing politics of the current party organization.
You should also voice your displeasure with your representatives. I gave Senator Amy Klobuchar grief for her spinelessness, and also yelled at my representative
Collin…