Politics
j7uy5 | January 27, 2007...the
USA has not gotten all of its highly-enriched uranium back.
As reported in a special report in the Chicago Tribune, the
USA had a program in the '50's and 60's called "Atoms
for Peace." Initially, we supplied low-grade uranium fuel to
countries that pledged to not develop nuclear weapons. But at
some point, the policy shifted, and we began shipping the high-grade
stuff. The idea was that we would get it back when it was no
longer useful as fuel.
href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-061209atoms-day1-story,1,7163234.htmlstory">
href="http://www.…
jlynch | January 27, 2007Rush Limbaugh yesterday had the following to say about women serving in the US military:
So what does it tell you they of the military? Its nothing but a little social playground for experimentation, by the way since they're liberals they'd love to weaken it and love to tear it apart and cause all kinds of controversy and strife, and they do it under the guise of women's rights, I'm sure there are some imminently qualified women in the military I am not talking about their ability to do, I am talking about the institution and what it says about a cultured civilized society that it will
round…
clock | January 27, 2007More and more science bloggers are chiming in on the story about a nasty PR campaign against open-source publishing. See Revere, Alex, Steve, Tim and Corie for a taste and several more are linked from here. Also, read David Biello in Scientific American who wrote an article about it: Open Access to Science Under Attack
Update: Now WaPo chimes in here (thanks Alex).
Please go to discuss this on the SciAm blog.
evolvingthoughts | January 27, 2007
Australia used to be, for the period of my youth, a secular society. Sure, everyone made the CoE noises, except for the few non-Christians (mostly Jews) who found their way into public office, but basically, the place of religion was defined by the nasty role of Catholic "intellectuals" who tried to force Australian mores into their own mold back in the 1930s through to the 1950s. We learned our lesson, I believed. Not any more.
Beginning with the present government (conservative, oddly known as the Liberal Party), and the past leader of the opposition (social democrat, oddly known as…
clock | January 26, 2007After a very pleasant dinner on Saturday where we discovered we agree on pretty much everything (e.g., religion, evolution, etc.), I am pleased that Larry Moran and I also agree on yet another thing.
pharyngula | January 26, 2007Two thoughts on watching this video: Dick Cheney is a contemptible tool, and Jon Stewart is one of those national treasures who makes me think being an American isn't so shameful after all.
stoat | January 26, 2007No not me, sadly :-(
RP has a nice article on and exceprting a piece by Richard Benedick on Climate Policy. One bit that struck me:
These UN mega-conferences have by now developed a predictable pattern. Considerable time is occupied by tedious problems of coordinating positions and tactics, both inside the huge national delegations and within blocs of countries such as the European Union and other regional or "like-minded" coalitions. There are the usual dire warnings-- fully justifiable--of impending global catastrophe. There are trivial protocol debates and ritualistic ministerial speeches…
clock | January 26, 2007This is two years old (February 16, 2005) but still as provocative....(also my belated contirbution to the Blog For Choice Day) and I'll repost the second part of it next Friday.
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William Raspberry wrote an editorial in Washington Post last weekend (I picked a link to a syndication that does not require registration instead of dinosaurid WaPo) about the sexual practices of young people, mainly college people. This is not the first time he wrote on this topic. For instance, he wrote a column a few years ago, immediately after the release of the…
clock | January 25, 2007Just in time for "Best Writer" Koufaxes (LOL), Lance gets back to business: Why we don't like him
Seriously, that is exactly the way we all feel. And Lance knows how to put it in words. Perhaps even words that Republicans can understand.
Update: Amanda comments
pharyngula | January 25, 2007It's embarrassing enough that all the Minnesota blogs are snorting in disgust at Michele Bachmann's kiss, but now those foreign, non-Minnesotan sites are making a big foofaraw, too.
Yes, we confess: Minnesota's sixth district elected a dumb-as-rocks, simpering, fundagelical Bush sycophant to congress, one who would enthusiastically slobber all over the president on national television.
However, in our favor, we did not re-elect Mark Kennedy to the senate. He was such an outrageous bootlicking Bush toady, we might have witnessed some hot and explicit flunky-on-prez action instead…consider…
clock | January 24, 2007Too busy these days with the conference and the anthology and getting my life back afterwads to pay too much attention to politics, but I heard that Hillary Clinton is running, Bill Richardson is running, John Kerry is not running and that there was some kind of a meaningless speech the other night that everyone is talking about.
oracknows | January 24, 2007The other day, I did a reality check on a story making the rounds through the blogosphere about an alleged new cure for cancer that, if you believe some hysterical bloggers, is being suppressed because it would cut into their profits. I took one blogger to task for what I characterized as the "utterly ridiculous title" of his post (Objectively Pro-cancer). Well, he apparently didn't like that and showed up in my comments claiming that he was joking.
It sure didn't sound like a joke to me, but I thought I'd poll my readers to see if anyone thought I was out of line in my criticism. So, look at…
pharyngula | January 24, 2007Grrr. This story pisses me off beyond all reason. It's a trumped up contretemps generated by one of our local Minnesota Republican hacks, griping about a UM faculty member using her campus email.
A University of Minnesota professor has come under fire for sending a message using her university e-mail account to help comedian Al Franken with his likely U.S. Senate candidacy.
Sally Kenney, director of the Center on Women and Public Policy at the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, sent an e-mail last week from a "umn.edu" address to an undisclosed number of…
jrosenhouse | January 24, 2007There was only one small part of Bush's State of the Unon address that really jumped out at me. Here it is:
This war is more than a clash of arms -- it is a decisive ideological struggle, and the security of our nation is in the balance. To prevail, we must remove the conditions that inspire blind hatred, and drove 19 men to get onto airplanes and to come and kill us. What every terrorist fears most is human freedom -- societies where men and women make their own choices, answer to their own conscience, and live by their hopes instead of their resentments. Free people are not drawn to…
clock | January 24, 2007Rep. Brad Miller, familiar to Daily Kos readers from his frequent posting here, will play a critical role in a new subcommittee formed by House Democrats to investigate allegations of GOP science and policy abuse. The new Science Oversight and Investigation (I & O) subcommittee will report to the House Committee on Science and Technology. The parent committee has jurisdiction over non-defense Federal spending. That includes agencies such as NASA, DoE, EPA, NOAA, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, just to name a few.
Miller, who won reelection in a 2 to 1 landslide…
j7uy5 | January 23, 2007Great idea: create a "volunteer civilian corps" that would give
Americans the opportunity to contribute their valuable skills, to take
the stress off the regular military.
Translation: let's hire mercenaries, who'll think they're getting a
good deal, making $100,000 a year, while getting shot at; even though
their corporate bosses make millions, sitting in their executive
leather chairs. Great idea: increase the profit incentive for
starting a war. Move the Clock another minute closer to
midnight.
That is my strongest impression of the State of the Union Address.
Which, by the way, had…
purepedantry | January 23, 2007I have to admit I was a little skeptical of this argument, but it is growing on me.
Basically, he is saying that executives are paid ungodly amounts because people are willing to pay them that. If it isn't my money I have no right to begrudge them theirs. And furthermore I really have no idea what CEOs do or how they do it, so I have no basis to judge whether it is worth it.
Money quote:
Many observers who say that they cannot understand how anyone can be worth $100 million a year do not realize that it is not necessary that they understand it, since it is not their money.
All of us have…
oracknows | January 22, 2007I would have written about this one on Friday, except that Your Friday Dose of Woo had to be served up. (You did read last week's YFDoW, didn't you? It was a particularly loopy bit of woo, with a bad computer interface grafted on to it, to boot!) The reason I wanted to write about it is because the responses to this particular bit of news in the blogosphere grated on me, for reasons that will become apparent soon.
It's about a new cancer drug that I learned about from both fellow ScienceBlogger Jonah and readers who forwarded articles about it to me. If you believe some other bloggers (one of…
purepedantry | January 22, 2007Michael Barone argues in his column that one of the problems with our political process is the way in which we pick our President:
The single most glaring defect in our mostly admirable political system is the presidential selection process. You can point to other defects -- the equal representation of the states in the Senate, judicial usurpation of decision-making on sensitive issues -- but the downside risks are greater in the selection of the one official who is far more powerful than any other. So what's wrong with it?
It starts too early, takes too long and ends too abruptly. Thirteen…