Politics
pharyngula | February 15, 2007Read House Bill H0224, the appointment of a state poet laureate, and you'll see what I mean.
clock | February 14, 2007Last week, John Edwards put forward his healthcare plan which got pretty positive reviews - not an all-out single-payer system, but a good step in the right direction, pitting private and state providers in direct competition with each other (and since state can provide better care more efficiently for less money than any business, in the long run it should become popular enough to displace private health insurance from all but the richest people's plans) which should reduce the cost of healthcare over time.
Unfortunately, the Right-wing attack on bloggers on the matter of science and…
hrynyshyn | February 14, 2007At the heart of the fuss over the departure of two members of Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards' blogging team is a science story, specifically the controversy surrounding the "Plan B" birth control pill. This has been overlooked in favor of the larger political fallout and bears re-examining.
Of the two former Edwards bloggers, Melissa McEwan's writings were the less sensational. Her reference to President Bush's "wingnut Christofascist base" and use of profanity suggests she needs to learn to be a little more careful, but it wasn't her personal blog posts that really made the…
clock | February 14, 2007Chris Bowers: More Resignations! More Apologies! and Terrorism Remains A Key Political Tool Of the Right
Aldon Hynes: Fighting for Democracy
Lane Hudson: Right-Wing Attack Puts Bloggers' Lives in Danger
oracknows | February 14, 2007[Note: There is a followup to this post here.]
I've been writing a lot about dichloroacetate (DCA) lately, perhaps even to the point of becoming repetitive and risking boring my readers. Fortunately, this post is not primarily about DCA. Unfortunately, it's about a question that is related to the recent hype over DCA in that it pits the desperation of dying cancer patients who want to try out the latest drugs, even if they haven't been demonstrated to be safe or efficacious, versus the what remaining ability the FDA has to regulate drug safety and, some might argue, the scientific method…
clock | February 13, 2007Under attack, Pandagon has been down all day. But you can see here (and re-posted here) what scum of the Earth resides on the political Right in this country. This is a good time to read this again. And please find time to read all ten parts of this series on eliminationism in America. Sensing a long-term, if not permanent loss, the wounded beast of the Right is lashing at everything in sight and they are not shy to use physical force if needed.
Also on the topic, three must-read posts by Liza Sabater: Hell hath no fury like a feminist scorned, Aldon Hynes: In praise of Icarus, and…
pharyngula | February 13, 2007I sure hope time straightens out the race for the presidency, since I find myself unimpressed by the entire field. John Edwards has just moved to the bottom of my list of acceptable Democratic candidates, after Hillary Clinton (after Hillary! That's pretty low) since he has just allowed Amanda Marcotte to resign. I am unimpressed by the lack of loyalty he's shown to his employees; I'm not an absolutist on that point, since I think loyalty can be carried too far, to the point of stupidity (case in point: GW Bush). But what pisses me off is that he failed to support her in the face of genuinely…
clock | February 13, 2007Ten months later (this was posted first on March 22, 2006), he has a tenure-track position there. Not a bad idea to give a good talk at various places....
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I have to brag about my famous brother and at the same time provide you with some quality reading about Milosevic and Serbia. Feel free to tranfer the ideas to the USA, the victimhood of the fundamentalist Christians etc.
First, here is an article about a talk my brother gave in Alberta the other day:
Lecturer examines 'poisonous zombie swamp' of Serb politics
and here is a little bit older, but…
drorzel | February 13, 2007I'm having the sort of morning where I feel like lobbing a grenade at somebody, and the predictable outrage over yesterday's story about a creationist paleontologist is as good a target as any.
The issue here is whether it's appropriate for Marcus Ross to receive a Ph.D. for work in paleontology, given that he's a young-earth creationist. His scientific papers are all perfectly consistent with modern understanding, speaking of events taking place millions of years in the past, but he himself believes the earth is less than 10,000 years old, and was created as described in the Bible.
The usual…
razib | February 13, 2007My coblogger @ GNXP Ikwa has a measured response to Chris Mooney and Alan Soka's notable op-ed about the conflict between the Right & science. Here's the gist:
For example, I don't think it's obvious that fundamentalist Christian fears that Darwinism will lead to the death of morality and the collapse of civil society are less reasonable or strongly-believed than the fear that the discovery of a genetic or biological contribution to social inequalities will lead to death of empathy for the disadvantaged and the collapse of all progressive values. Parenthetically, I don't think either…
oracknows | February 13, 2007Every so often, just for laughs or my own personal edification, periodically I check my referral logs to see who's linking to me and what posts are being linked to. Most of the time, there's not much there worth commenting on. Sometimes, it's bloggers who agree with me; other times, it's bloggers who were simply amused enough by something I've posted to link to it; and occasionally, it's bloggers who really, really don't like me, for reasons that most of you would find obvious. Sometimes, however, there's a link that catches my attention. In this case, the link came from here.
At first glance…
grrlscientist | February 13, 2007I stumbled across this video spoof and thought you would enjoy it too.
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tags: streaming video, politics, humor, satire
pharyngula | February 13, 2007Take a look at the newly introduced California Bill AB 165.
This bill would establish the Office of Faith-Based and Community
Initiatives within the office of the Governor and would require the
office to serve as a clearinghouse of information on federal, state,
and local funding for charitable services performed by charitable
organizations, as defined, encourage those organizations to seek
public funding for their charitable services, act as a liaison
between state agencies and those organizations, and advise the
Governor, the Legislature, and an advisory board of the office on the
barriers…
clock | February 12, 2007Amanda resigned.
You know, if they were going to hurl this kind of crap at me every day, I'd have resigned, too. Not just that they lie about what she said and what that means, they even lie about who they are:
The Catholic League is the nation's largest Catholic civil rights organization. It defends individual Catholics and the institutional Church from defamation and discrimination.
Yeah, right! Didn't we just spend the last couple of days showing that this is a loudmouth organization of anal sphincters defending other individual anal sphincters from the - oh, horror! - hearing the…
clock | February 11, 2007A bunch of new links on the Basic Concepts and Terms in Science list (or my 'enhanced' list, if you prefer).
Bitch PhD has a new (paying!) gig at Suicide Girls News Blog and starts out with a post explaining the Plan B: How Does This Plan Work?
Revere on Effect Measure: Freethinker Sunday Sermonette: the Edwards blogger dust-up
Ezra Klein, in an op-ed in The Guardian (online only): We want a divider, not a uniter, and more on the topic on his own blog: More Shamefaced Obama Skepticism
Chuckles1 puts it even better: The OTHER Abraham Lincoln
A comment by Elizabeth Edwards - Response to a…
hrynyshyn | February 11, 2007John Edwards' recent decision not to fire two bloggers from his staff after word got out that they didn't always use the most diplomatic language in during their pre-Edwards campaign days should give him a big boost among those the bloggers were hired to attract -- the so-called "netroots." Such people wanted to see him respect diversity of opinion and the First Amendment. I am one of them, and I like a lot of what I hear and read coming out of Edwards' campaign. Edwards is showing himself to be a mature and sophisticated politician, one that understand the world is not all black and white.…
grrlscientist | February 11, 2007This streaming video is a variant of the old baseball joke, but it's still funny.
jlynch | February 10, 2007John McCain seems to think it is Europe's fault that things aren't going well in Afghanistan. He believes that Europe should follow Washington's lead and put more forces and resources into the country. Spake McCain:
"Failure in Afghanistan risks a reversion to its pre-9/11 role as a sanctuary for al Qaeda terrorists with global reach, a defeat that would embolden Islamic extremists, and the rise of an unencumbered narcostate."
Yes indeed. But perhaps failure will be more due to the administration opening a second front in the "War on Terror" before Afghanistan was taken care of. It is a…