Politics
jlynch | February 27, 2007
GrrlScientist had this first, but it is such a perfect encapsulation of the sheer stupidity and arrogance of the current administration that it is worth posting again. Olbermann on Rice's statement on Fox News that rewriting the 2002 Congressional authorization for the use of force in Iraq
would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then the resolution that allowed the United States to do that so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown.
Notre Dame and the Graduate School of International Studies at…
grrlscientist | February 27, 2007Wow, this streaming video is Keith Olbermann's fabulous smack-down of Condoleezza Rice's stupid statements about the Iraq War [8:20].
pharyngula | February 26, 2007DarkSyde is plugging the Yearly Kos Convention, which will be held in August in Chicago. I recommend it highly—we attended last year, and it was a blast meeting all those people. I suspect this year's event will be even bigger.
grrlscientist | February 26, 2007Below the fold is a video that is meant to be provocative. On one hand, I agree with what the kid is saying, but on the other hand, I find it repulsive that the adults involved with the making of this video are comfortable with using a kid to say such things. Why hide behind a kid? Why not take credit for your own opinions and words?
Rhetorical response from Bill O'Reilly ... *yawn* .. why wouldn't he just ignore this, instead of drawing more attention to the video by ranting about it?
oracknows | February 26, 2007It looks to me as though one of my favorite lefty bloggers, Majikthise (real name: Lindsay Beyerstein), dodged a bullet. In a Salon.com article, she describes how she originally was approached to blog for the John Edwards campaign. As you may recall, Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon ultimately was offered the job and ultimately ended up having to resign as Edwards' political enemies quote-mined her blog for quotes that could be used against her, Michelle Malkin did a "dramatic reading" of selected excerpts from her blog, and that embarrassment to Catholics everywhere, William Donohue of the…
pharyngula | February 26, 2007It looks like Lindsay Beyerstein dodged a bullet—she was offered the position with the Edwards campaign that Amanda Marcotte accepted, and she turned it down. It's a smart article—there are some good lessons to be learned about blogs and politics from it.
The Edwards campaign wants decentralized people-powered politics. Ironically, by hiring well-known bloggers to manage a destination Web site, it was actually centralizing and micromanaging. Every campaign needs a blog, but the most important part of a candidate's netroots operation is the disciplined political operatives who can quietly…
evolvingthoughts | February 25, 2007
Mahatma Gandhi is reputed to have once been asked by a journalist what he thought about western civilisation. "I think it would be a very good idea", Gandhiji is supposed to have replied. True or not, the anecdote came to mind when I read William Rees-Mogg's piece in the Times Online: "Religion isn't the sickness. It's the cure". A curative religion, one that civilises, would be a very good idea. Pity it's not yet in existence.
Rees-Mogg repeats the old canards of conservativism about "modernity" - it is a moral failure, a panic against religion, a neurosis, and it caused social Darwinism…
pharyngula | February 25, 2007In response to this crazy attempt to smear Mitt Romney with the sins of his fathers literally, a few people are disqualifying themselves from future runs for the presidency with similar confessions. I have to admit there's a skeleton in my family tree, too: apparently, one of my ancestors was hanged as a witch in 17th century Massachusetts.
No one will be surprised at that, I suppose. Especially since if your family can trace its roots in this country back almost 400 years, you might well be related to her, too.
pharyngula | February 25, 2007The Smithsonian has been sending mixed signals for a while now. They allowed the Discovery Institute to use their halls to promote an ID movie (at least they later disavowed any association), but refused to have anything to do with Flock of Dodos, and they aren't going to endorse any Darwin events for 2009, the bicentennial of his birth…and then there was the whole ghastly Sternberg affair, in which we learned that a research associate there was a baraminologist, helping IDists get articles published. I love the museum, but something weird has been going on in the administration.
Get ready…
j7uy5 | February 24, 2007I won't rehash the distinction between faith-based and reality-based
reasoning, figuring that most blog readers -- at least the progressive
ones -- know the meaning and context.
However, I would like to make one point. Reasoning that is
not
reality-based can come in different flavors; not all are linking
specifically to faith. Some are linked to ideology.
This is
an insidious kind of cognitive error to which we all are susceptible.
Here's an example from a recent Washington Post article:
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/17/AR2007021701334.html">…
pharyngula | February 23, 2007The early word is that he didn't say a word about Intelligent Design creationism or evolution, which is fine with me…but instead gave the standard Rethuglican "rah-rah for the war!" speech, which is even worse. He's all in favor of the "surge", and is predicting we'll know how it's all going to work out in a matter of months.
McCain, a decorated Vietnam veteran who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war, said he hopes Americans will be patient and give the new Iraq strategy, led by Gen. David Petraeus, an opportunity to succeed. He said it should be clear within "some months" whether…
pharyngula | February 23, 2007We knew this was going to happen. Our Crazy Jesus Lady now claims to have the inside scoop on the Iranian secret plan to take over the northern half of Iraq, name it the Iraq State of Islam, and use it for a terrorist training ground. She didn't say how she knows this. My money is on some god whispering it in her ear one night, along with the gay secret plan to put spy cameras in her bathroom.
grrlscientist | February 23, 2007... especially in America.
Governor Rick Perry angrily defended his relationship with Merck & Co. and his executive order requiring that schoolgirls receive the drugmaker's vaccine against the sexually transmitted cervical-cancer virus. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Perry's chief of staff had met with key aides about the vaccine on Oct. 16, the same day Merck's political action committee donated $5,000 to the governor's campaign.
Despite the donated money, I still think the governor did the right thing, that Gardasil (or an equivalent anti-HPV vaccine) should be mandatory,…
clock | February 23, 2007Former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack To Drop 2008 Bid:
Democrat Tom Vilsack is abandoning his bid for the presidency after struggling against better-known, better-financed rivals, a senior campaign official told The Associated Press on Friday.
Vilsack left office in January and traveled through states holding early tests of strength. He had faced a tough challenge from rivals such as New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and John Edwards, who have had more success raising money and attracting attention - even in Vilsack's home state of Iowa.
Vilsack was scheduled to make a…
clock | February 23, 2007Evolution works according to a very small set of simple rules. If a) there is variation in a trait in a population and b) that variation is heritable and c) one variant is better adapted to the current local environment, then d) the best adapted trait will increase in the proportion within the population in the next generation. Once you understand this simple algorithm (perhaps, for fuller understanding, learn some basics of the ways genotype maps onto phenotype via development), everything about the living world is explainable without magic.
John McCain works according to a very small set…
drorzel | February 23, 2007Two American physicists are reporting the discovery of nearly perfect quasicrystal patterns in the decorative tiles of a certain type of Islamic art:
Penrose tiling is very reminiscent of "girih" - the elaborate patterns used in Islamic architecture. While travelling in Uzbekistan, [Harvard physicist Peter] Lu noticed motifs with 10-fold rotational symmetry, which is a hallmark of some Penrose tiling. This inspired him to search through thousands of photographs of Islamic patterns to try to find a quasi-crystalline pattern - and this led him to a wall of the Darb-i Imam shrine in Iran.
It's…
evolvingthoughts | February 22, 2007
All this talk about how Republicans or Democrats support the troops in Iraq (rarely Afghanistan, notice?) got me thinking. Why should we support troops?
Don't get me wrong. You probably have me pegged as a radical leftwing communist pacifist anarchist. Not at all (I'm not even libertarian; they don't have a word for what I am). I'm not saying we shouldn't support our country's troops (I'm Australian, but my nephew is recently back from a tour as an SAS communications expert in Afghanistan). I'm asking why we do, and how we should.
For a start, it ought to be noted that we rarely give the…
pharyngula | February 22, 2007We faculty at UMM are about to go off to a Campus Assembly meeting, which is always good for making one thirsty. Fortunately, there's a Drinking Liberally scheduled for tonight, at 6:00, at Old #1—it would be a great idea if we all stopped in for a little refreshment and conversation afterwards.
This is, of course, wide open to everyone of the liberal persuasion, so townies, out-of-townies, and students are also welcome to stop by.
pharyngula | February 22, 2007John McCain is going to be addressing the Discovery Institute in a panderiffic event tomorrow. DefCon Blog has a petition urging him to cancel his appearance, on the perfectly reasonable grounds that no candidate should be giving moral support to such a contemptible organization.
I have mixed feelings about it. I'm no fan of McCain, and I like watching the far Right embed themselves ever deeper into Christian lunacy—I have this hope that someday everyone will wake up and see the whole Christian/Republican edifice as purest poison. So I can't quite bring myself to sign the petition, not that…