Politics
evolvingthoughts | April 25, 2007
If an author publishes work and I copy it for my own purpose, then I have stolen something from the author (and publisher, if the copyright is held by both). But if I quote something of the author's for the purposes of discussion, then I have committed no theft, in pretty well every jurisdiction that is cosignatory to the Berne Convention on Copyright. It's called "fair use". In fact, the whole point of publishing is to have people discuss what you publish, right?
Not according to Lisa Richards of the Society of Chemical Industry, it isn't. She sent a nasty letter threatening legal action…
grrlscientist | April 25, 2007tags: marijuana, illegal drugs
Beware: Misinformation alert
Wow, who knew, but the marijuana sold (illegally, of course) in the USA is stronger than ever before, which could explain the increasing number of emergency room visits due to this drug, according to government drug experts. (Image source).
Analysis of seized samples of marijuana and hashish showed that more of the cannabis on the market is of the strongest grade, the White House and National Institute for Drug Abuse said.
They cited data from the University of Mississippi's Marijuana Potency Project showing the average levels of…
grrlscientist | April 25, 2007tags: Condoleezza Rice, subpoena, Iraq war, politics
It's about Condoleezza Rice was subpoenaed regarding the Iraq war, since we are finally interested to get to the bottom of why America is caught up in this stupid war. Today, the House of Representatives' Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted 21-10 to subpoena Condoleezza Rice to appear before the panel next month. The Secretary of State is expected to testify about administration justifications for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Meanwhile, crybaby Republicans accused Democrats of a "fishing expedition." But Democrats said…
oracknows | April 25, 2007This is the sort of thing that really irritates me.
Shelley, over at Retrospectacle posted a rather nice analysis of a paper that appeared in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture entitled Natural volatile treatments increase free-radical scavenging capacity of strawberries and blackberries. She was skeptical about news reports and press releases about the article, and did an analysis that showed that the paper did not show quite what the press was representing it as showing. In her post, she used a figure from the paper under the "fair use" doctrine to illustrate her point, and…
j7uy5 | April 25, 2007George
McGovern takes Cheney to task for, among other things, misunderstanding
political history.
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">
href="http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-mcgovern24apr24,0,4084076.story?coll=la-opinion-center">Los
Angeles Times:
VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney recently attacked my 1972 presidential
platform and contended that today's Democratic Party has reverted to
the views I advocated in 1972. In a sense, this is a compliment, both
to me and the Democratic Party. Cheney intended no such compliment.
Instead, he twisted my views and those of my party…
j7uy5 | April 24, 2007
Regarding
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/24/education/24loans.html?ex=1335067200&en=c2a6501764fefef8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss">efforts
to reform the practices of student loan vendors, in
light of the recent scandal:
The
state-by-state regulatory action, so far limited
largely to efforts by Democrats, comes at a time of little progress in
the development of federal rules on lenders’ dealings with
colleges. A bid by the Education Department to negotiate such rules
collapsed on Friday in disagreement among representatives of colleges,
banks and other…
pharyngula | April 24, 2007Atrios has links and videos of the Tillman hearings on misinformation from the battlefield; Tillman, you may recall, was the soldier who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan a few years ago. Jessica Lynch also gives an accurate account of her story. The common theme is that our government lied to us, intentionally distorting the facts to achieve propaganda goals. These are ugly stories of a government with no regard for the truth, except in how it can be twisted to support failed policies.
Why is this administration still in office again?
grrlscientist | April 24, 2007tags: Karl Rove, Tom Hamburger, missing emails, politics
Remember those five million or so missing White House emails .. ? It seems that BushCo have been trying to give Americans the slip, but because we are not as stupid as BushCo, we are not deceived.
As if the Gonzales fiasco was not enough, "the Bush administration and its chief strategist may be about to face a whole new problem," reports CNN's American Morning.
Apparently, the Office of Special Counsel is about to launch a sweeping investigation into Karl Rove's political operations. Ooooh, goody!
Among other things, the…
grrlscientist | April 24, 2007tags: congressional timetable, troops, Iraq war, politics
Bush has no empathy or consideration for anyone, which means that the troops, the gallant men and women of this nation's military, are stuck in a losing war with no end in sight. This is shameful. The fact that Bush can change this situation, but won't, demonstrates his shocking arrogance and stupidity and disregard for the lives of mainstream Americans.
Bush is steadfastly resisting Congress's timetable for a withdrawal of our troops from Iraq.
"I'm disappointed that the Democratic leadership has chosen this course," Bush complained…
oracknows | April 24, 2007As I mentioned before, I was at the American Association for Cancer Research Meeting in Los Angeles last week. During the meeting, I happened to attend a plenary session talk by the Director of the National Cancer Institute (NCI), Dr. John Niederhuber, whose topic was the rather dire NCI funding situation. I've written about this topic before, both in general, in terms of my personal experience "sweating to the NIH paylines," to lamenting at how we as biomedical researchers are in essence treated as freelance money sources for medical schools. Coupling Dr. Niederhuber's talk at the meeting…
drorzel | April 24, 2007Another way of reading some of what I said last week would be as a statement that I would say something about the Virginia Tech killings, and what I think they mean in policy terms. This is really tough to do, in part because I still think it's kind of tacky to be making political points with this horrible situation, but mostly because there isn't much to say.
I mean, 33 people are dead because one kid was deeply and profoundly screwed up. I think it's the height of tacky to attempt to diagnose exactly how he was screwed up from the videos-- shades of Bill Frist and Terri Schiavo-- but it's…
pharyngula | April 24, 2007Al Gore is generally a good guy, and I think his message on global warming is an important one. He's still traveling around, giving his slideshow that we've seen in An Inconvenient Truth, but apparently he has added some new material — and these aren't slides that make me very happy.
The slide I found particularly interesting/shocking/sad, was his new(?) slide containing a graph of human population growth over the past couple hundred-thousand years. It started off good. He pointed at the beginning of the graph, showing the population of humans on Earth from 200,000 years ago, and referred to…
jrosenhouse | April 23, 2007If you're curious, in an interview lasting just over four and a half minutes, Bill O'Reilly uttered 609 words, while Dawkins uttered a mere 342. Considering the way O'Reilly usually treats his guests, that's a pretty good ratio.
At the start of every show, O'Reilly gives the headlines of the major stories he will be discussing. But there was no teaser for his interview with Dawkins. Likewise, when he goes to a commercial break he tells you what is coming up later in the show. But there was no mention of Dawkins until the commercial break right before that segment (which came roughly half…
grrlscientist | April 23, 2007tags: Alberto Gonzales, Gonzo, US Attorney General, politics
"I will stay as long as I believe I can be effective," said Gonzales.
Wrecking the constitution, no doubt. How many congresscritters have to demand his resignation before he finally gives it up as a lost cause? And worse, does Bush adore liars, or what? Even the GOP was demanding his resignation.
But Gonzo, in a supreme show of arrogance, has decided to stay because, as he says;
"As long as I think that I can be effective and the president believes that I should continue to be at the head of the Department of Justice, I'll continue…
drorzel | April 23, 2007So, back when I was cussing a lot about the premature politicization of the Virginia Tech shootings, I threatened to give my real opinions on the subject of gun control on Monday. It's Monday, and I try to be good to my word, so, this is that post.
Dipping back into my shady past on Usenet, there's this old post, which turned up in .sigfiles for a while:
Actually, a smallish number of people with strong opinions and mind control powers would probably be the simplest possible explanation for the gun control debate, which typically involves critical reasoning diluted to near-homeopathic levels…
evolvingthoughts | April 22, 2007
Well, I'm off to Sin City, sorry, Sydney, tomorrow to visit Chris Mooney, who's giving a talk in that metropolis, and Tim Lambert, another Sb Scibling. But before I go, I just had to note this study on the effects of the gun buyback and stricter controls in Australia following the Port Arthur Massacre. A prior study had argued that it had no effect on the rate of gun deaths; this study says that around 280 deaths per year have been prevented, both suicides and violent crime-related deaths.
At the actuarial rate of $AUS2.5 million per death saved, the $500 million buyback paid for itself in…
pharyngula | April 22, 2007Near as I can judge, Pharyngula is the third most popular blog in the entire state of Minnesota, as measured by traffic and inbound links. This is a good and distinguished place to be, and I'm both pleased and surprised that this obscure little collection of rants has ranked so highly.
Except…
It's a distant third behind the top two in the state.
The top two are right-wing kool-aid drinkin' blogs, Powerline and Captain's Quarters.
Whenever people refer to the Minnesota blogosphere, they get so boggled by the spectacle of lunacy in the top two that they never quite manage to count down to #3…
clock | April 21, 2007It is Sunday. You have time to read it. And you should - no excuses! In today's New York Times - You Are What You Grow:
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For the answer, you need look no farther than the farm bill. This resolutely unglamorous and head-hurtingly complicated piece of legislation, which comes around roughly every five years and is about to do so again, sets the rules for the American food system -- indeed, to a considerable extent, for the world's food system. Among other things, it determines which crops will be subsidized and which will not, and in the case of the carrot and the…
evolvingthoughts | April 21, 2007
Jonathon Gottschall, in a recent piece in New Scientist (reprinted here) offers what he calls "Literary Darwinism":
Understanding a story is ultimately about understanding the human mind. The primary job of the literary critic is to pry open the craniums of characters, authors and narrators, climb inside their heads and spelunk through the bewildering complexity within to figure out what makes them tick.
Yet, in doing this, literary scholars have ignored the recent scientific revolution that has transformed our understanding of why people behave the way they do. While evolutionary…