Politics
j7uy5 | April 14, 2007The
href="http://content.nejm.org/" rel="tag">New England
Journal of Medicine has a set of three
early-release editorials, all pertaining to prescription drug safety,
and all openly accessible:
href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMp078041">Paying
for Drug Approvals — Who's Using Whom?
Jerry Avorn, M.D.
face="Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif">
href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMp078057">Drug
Safety Reform at the FDA — Pendulum Swing or Systematic
Improvement?
Mark McClellan, M.D., Ph.D.
href="http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/NEJMp078048…
oracknows | April 13, 2007Having done a lot of trauma coverage in my time (although the last time I covered trauma call was nearly eight years ago), I have to admit that, when I first heard of the motor vehicle collision (I never call such crashes "accidents" because they rarely are) in which New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine was seriously injured, the first question that popped into my mind after "How did this happen?" was:
Was the Governor wearing seatbelts?
Of course, I strongly suspected that I already knew the answer, and, indeed, I did. The answer was no. Here's what apparently happened:
Gov. Jon S. Corzine was…
grrlscientist | April 13, 2007Is this the same way that one "accidentally" invades a country, "accidently" sets up offshore subsidiaries to avoid US law, and "accidently" profits off the misery and death of the poor and unfortunate? I think that Rove needs to be "accidentally" deleted from his job. He is, afterall, employed by the people of this nation -- or so the rumor goes.
Below the fold are details of how the White House is "accidentally" stretching the boundaries of credulity ...
Karl Rove's lawyer on Friday dismissed the notion that President Bush's chief political adviser intentionally deleted his own e-mails…
grrlscientist | April 13, 2007tags: Liberalism, liberals, politics
This essay was sent to me by a friend and I thought you would appreciate reading it. I am posting it here intact, except for a few editorial improvements.
Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.
All but $10 of his…
terrasig | April 13, 2007Despite living in a state with a heavy military economy, the closest I've come to knowing the sacrifices of Iraq War service personnel is through my ScienceBlogs colleague, Mike Dunford, of The Questionable Authority. While his wife is delpoyed in Iraq, Mike is in grad school looking after their two kids. The latest slap in the face to my friend was his learning about the three-month extension of his wife's deployment...not through the unit Family Readiness Group...but on CNN streaming in his campus center.
Mike has posted a letter to his congressional representatives thanking them for…
voltagegate | April 13, 2007PNAS will print a study next Tuesday that takes a closer look at the effects of deforestation at specific latitudes. The study suggests that deforestation of higher latitudes may lead to a greater cooling effect than leaving areas intact or implementing afforestation plans. Needless to say, their findings have riled some folks.
Part of what they found was already accepted. Forests on and around the equator (mostly rain forests) are exceedingly good at cycling water back into the atmosphere. When the forests are removed en masse, this evapotranspiration is greatly reduced, allowing the…
oracknows | April 12, 2007The answer is no, given his position on the Kathy Sierra case and the death threats she received and the online savaging to which she was subjected.
Kos attacks calls for a bloggers' code of conduct. This is actually the one point where I tend agree with him. It wouldn't help the situation and would be a muzzle on free speech, although I can understand why Sierra might have called for such a code. Unfortunately, it would not have stopped what happened to Sierra. If Kos had stopped there, I might actually have found myself in the uncomfortable position of actually agreeing with him on…
grrlscientist | April 12, 2007Not only has Wolfowitz dragged the US into that quagmire known as the Iraq War, thereby causing Americans and Iraqis much unnecessary grief, but he also is embarassing America in front of the world since, as head of the World Bank, he gave his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, a job that has a very generous compensation and pay raises. He apologized to the World Bank, but when will he apologize to the families of the 3270+ dead American soldiers and millions of Iraqis who are suffering because of his colossal f*ck-up?
Of course, the White House is stubbornly (and stupidly) voicing its support for this…
grrlscientist | April 12, 2007Great, now the rethuglicans are apparently missing a bunch of emails that pertain to the dismissal of the eight US attorneys -- sort of like Nixon's "18 minute gap" in the White House telephone conversation tape recordings. But Senator Patrick Leahy, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, will not be ignored: he threatened further action in response to the news. "Those e-mails are there, they just don't want to produce them," he said. "We'll subpoena them if necessary."
At issue is how the White House complies with two seemingly competing laws. One is the 1978 Presidential Records Act, which…
clock | April 11, 2007As you know, the last several days saw quite a flurry of blog posts about framing science. I posted my thoughts here and I keep updating my post with links to all the new posts as they show up (except the expected drivel by William Dembski, some minor creaitonists and Lubos Motl). Some of the other bloggers ignored my post, many linked to it without comment, and many linked to it with positive commentary - with two exceptions.
One was Larry Moran (who probably skimmed it quickly, found what he did not like in it with his own frame of mind at the time, and used it as a starting point to…
grrlscientist | April 11, 2007Vice President Dick Cheney was recently invited to be the commencement speaker at Brigham Young University, but this invitation has triggered a protest at the ultra-conservative Mormon university. It seems that some of the faculty and students -- who are devoutly Republican -- are offended by Cheney's lack of integrity and character, and his generally scummy behavior. For example, several students mentioned that they were appalled by Cheney's use of an expletive on the Senate floor in a June 2004 exchange with Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont.
"The problem is this is a morally…
grrlscientist | April 11, 2007This streaming video gets to the point regarding Iraq .. which of course, means it is not safe for work (so watch it in the broom closet while on your lunch break).
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tags: streaming video, humor, politics
voltagegate | April 11, 2007My news editor wrote a great column (filling in for me) about the politicization of science and Climate Crisis Action Day last issue that I meant to link but never got to it:
As a science columnist, I would guess that I would be ignoring a pretty specific requirement of the Voltage Gate without addressing the scientific implications involved. Climate change is a scientific issue, one that will require the collective knowledge and drive of many of the world's best. However, the lines between science, politics and culture are becoming increasingly blurred. The overwhelming dedication to…
pharyngula | April 10, 2007He should be so proud — he has taken first place in the 2007 Jefferson Muzzle Awards. These are awards given for "egregious or ridiculous affronts to free expression in the previous year", and little Georgie won it for:
For its unprecedented efforts of discouraging, changing, and sometimes censoring the reports and studies of government scientists in order to make them more supportive of political policies, a 2007 Jefferson Muzzle goes to… the Bush Administration.
It's a well deserved honor. The description goes on to list several specific instances of Bush administration manipulation of…
grrlscientist | April 10, 2007This story has been around the block a few times, but I thought it was appropriate to share with you anyway.
A major research scientific institution has just announced the discovery of the densest element yet known to man and science. The new element has been named Bushcronium. The scientific symbol for the new Bushcronium is the letter "W".
Bushcronium has one neutron, twelve assistant neutrons, seventy-five deputy neutrons, and two hundred and twenty-four assistant deputy neutrons, giving it an atomic mass of three hundred and eleven.
These particles are held together by dark forces…
grrlscientist | April 10, 2007Things are moving along in the Alberto "I'm a Lying Fucktwit" Gonzalez scandal .. moving at a crawl, but at least they are moving forward. With any luck, he'll be gone this by weekend. Otherwise, we will have to wait until 17 April to celebrate his resignation.
The House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed new documents Tuesday from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as part of its investigation into the firings of federal prosecutors, with the panel chairman saying he had run out of patience.
"We have been patient in allowing the department to work through its concerns regarding the sensitive…
evolvingthoughts | April 10, 2007
SYDNEY broadcaster Alan Jones' comments before the 2005 Cronulla riots were likely to have encouraged brutality and vilified people of Lebanese and Middle Eastern background, Australia's broadcasting regulator says.
Source
evolvingthoughts | April 10, 2007
This is Australian parochial politics - pass by if you have no interest.
The PM, the minister for Immigration, and the minister for Foreign Affairs, the leader of the Opposition and various other pollies have called for the mufti of Australia, Sheik al Hilali, to leave Australia.
Look, the man's a weed, a slug and a racist, and probably supports the use of terrorist violence. But exiling people from their home nation - and he is now an Australian resident if not a citizen - is not the Australian way. It is not democratic, and it is not the act of the leaders of a free country. Start by…
clock | April 9, 2007It appears that scientists are not the only ones who do not grok framing. Jeffrey Feldman's book got blasted by some ninkompoop in NY Times yesterday. Jeff responds:
Indeed, when I read that passage I wondered if the reviewer had given up on reading my book just after glancing through the table of contents. It seems that, instead of writing about my book, Fairbanks popped in a DVD of "The Matrix," or maybe "A Clockwork Orange," and then churned out a piece of creative non-fiction reacting to those other works of sci-fi.
Update: More about the "fairbanksing" of Feldman here, here and here.