Politics
grrlscientist | December 10, 2006This article is so good that I just had to quote a few choice bits here for you to read, but there's more of this if you follow the link below.
If the blue states are sinkholes of moral decay, as right-wing pundits insist, how come red states lead the nation in violent crime, divorce, illegitimacy, and incarceration, among other evils? To a bus-riding innocent on Manhattan's stroller-filled Upper West Side, it looks like a case of hypocrisy meets stupidity.
In contemporary lore, the good people of the red states walk in Jesus's sandals while the rest of us are following Satan into the…
j7uy5 | December 9, 2006So far, I have resisted commenting on the report of the Iraq Study
Group. But this is too good to pass up. From
href="http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/12/nothing_can_mat.html">DeLong,
who got it from
href="http://myalteregospeaks.blogspot.com/2006/12/s-r-t.html">Alter
Ego, comes a precious quote from a
href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/12/20061207-1.html">Presidential
press conference:
Q Mr. President, the Iraq Study Group said that
leaders must be candid and forthright with people. So let me test that.
Are you capable of admitting your failures in the…
grrlscientist | December 9, 2006Like, DUH!
Paul Taylor at the Pew Research Center writes that in the six years since President Bush was first elected, two unprecedented things have happened to America's optimists. They've become much more Republican. And there are fewer of them.
These trends are revealed by Election Day exit polls taken in 2000 and 2006 as well as longer-term patterns found by the "ladder of life" battery of questions that is administered by the Pew Research Center and the Gallup Poll every few years since 1964.
The nationwide Election Day exit poll question asks voters: "Do you expect life for the next…
clock | December 9, 2006As a part of the Hardball College Tour, Tweety will be in Chapel Hill on Tuesday at the Memorial Hall, chatting for an hour with John Edwards. Tickets are free if you can come, or just watch on Tuesday night.
Though likelihood is small, it is not totally impossible Edwards may use this opportunity to announce his Presidential run.
But, what does it mean to announce? This is such a drawn-out ceremony. First you go on TV and, when asked, respond it is too early to even think about it. Later, you go on TV and say you have not ruled it out. Then, you go on TV and say that you have not made…
evolvingthoughts | December 8, 2006The below-the-fold note was seen on WIRED. It's a plea to prevent political interference from continuing to demolish the scientifically worthwhile aspects of the NASA program, in favour of the bread and circuses smell to the lunar base. A friend worked in the Astrobiology Program NASA funded, which is where nearly all "origins of life" research takes place, apart from some European labs. They closed it down to fund the President's "Vision". Also, go read NASAWatch.
From: tpsmbl@planetary.org
Subject: NASA Science Situation More Dire Than We Thought!
Date: December 5, 2006 8:30:00 AM PST
Dear…
evolvingthoughts | December 8, 2006
Those who know me, or try to proselytise me with petitions or for political party support, know that I am a moral vacuum. At least, that's what I say when they try ("Sorry, I'm a moral vacuum". It gets great reactions). I like to talk about facts and practices, but not to prescribe or proscribe. I have my own moral code, but you won't get me trying to convince you of it.
But sometimes moral claims are too strong to ignore. A couple of these popped up lately on the Science Blogs, and I thought I'd shirk my duty by linking to the morally better informed and formed.
One is, of course, the…
tsmith | December 8, 2006As I've been busy this week, other Sciencebloggers (with Revere leading the fray and more posts here) have updated everyone on the newest developments in the case of the Tripoli Six (previous update here), the six medical workers on trial for their lives in Libya, accused of spreading HIV to more than 400 children in a hospital there. Nature's Declan Bulter broke news on a new Nature paper showing, using molecular phylogenetics, that the strains of HIV which infected the children were already circulating in the hospital prior to the medics' arrival--again, showing that these workers are…
clock | December 8, 2006Here's another topic seen through the Lakoffian looking glass (July 23, 2005):
-----------------------------------------------
Why is there a widespread belief that the difference between patriotism and nationalism is one of degree: loving one's country versus loving it even more? I think that the difference is not quantitative but qualitative - the phrase "love for one's country" used by the two kinds of people (patriots and nationalists) is based on very different meanings of the words "love", "for", "one" and "country".
I am assuming that this confusion arises from the fact that…
pharyngula | December 8, 2006I'm going to rudely hijack one political issue to make a point about another. I think you'll quickly figure out what it is.
NARAL has been undermining their own relevance by failing to support pro-choice positions in a misguided attempt to court moderates—basically, as Ezra Klein points out, they're failing to recognize their role in the political ecosphere. They're an advocacy group for a specific range of policies, not a politician who has to balance constituencies—they are supposed to be spokespeople for one particular constituency.
…one thing groups like NARAL have a tendency to do is…
j7uy5 | December 7, 2006This has been a topic at ScienceBlogs before. Now, finally,
the New England Journal of Medicine is catching up. They have
an editorial on the ethics of vaccination against Human Papilloma
Virus. It turns out that there are many facets to this issue.
The background is this: HPV is a major factor in the
development of cervical cancer. About 10,000 women are
diagnosed with cervical cancer each year in the USA, and there are
about 3,700 deaths per year from the disease.
To put that in perspective, that is more than the total number of
deaths in the terrorist attacks on 9/11. …
clock | December 7, 2006Amanda just reviewed Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma and also recently wrote a post on the same topic while under the influence of the book. I agree with her 100%, so go and read both posts.
I have read the book a couple of months ago and never found time to write a review of my own. I also remember that I finished the book on a Thursday afternoon - an important piece of information as it is on Thursday afternoons that there is a Farmers' Market here in Southern Village, barely a block from me. The first thing I did when I closed the book was to walk up to the Farmers' Market…
terrasig | December 7, 2006We last spoke in September about the case of five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor unjustly imprisoned in Libya for the inconceivable charge of intentionally injecting 426 children with HIV at Al-Fateh Hospital in Benghazi. These health care workers are guilty of nothing other than volunteering as medical missionaries to care for ill children in an underserved medical system. Increasing evidence is suggestive that the workers are scapegoats for the poor medical conditions existing at the hospital that likely led to the spread of HIV across pediatric patients.
Nature has now…
grrlscientist | December 7, 2006Former President, Jimmy Carter, wrote a book, Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid, that was recently released. Unfortunately, a long-time aid of Carter's, Kenneth Stein, resigned because of the publication of this book, claiming it was one-sided and filled with factual errors, material copied from other sources and "simply invented segments," according to an excerpt of the letter published by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Deanna Congileo, Carter's spokeswoman, said the former president stands by the book.
Carter issued a brief statement saying that Stein had not been actively involved with…
clock | December 7, 2006Revere reports that there is a new article in Nature (pdf) demonstrating even stronger scientific support for the innocence of the Tripoli 6, the one doctor and five nurses facing a possible death penalty in Libya. The final verdict will be read on December 19th. The international pressure from the medical world as well as the blogosphere has been enormous, but there is no sign that the Libyan government is listening to it. Certainly now, in the last stretch, we need to renew our efforts and broadcast about this and ask our readers to write letters to people in power. Janet provides…
oracknows | December 6, 2006A few months ago, I wrote about a horrific miscarriage of justice in Libya that could result in the deaths of innocent health care workers whose only crime was to have the wherewithal to want to work in Libya to help the people there, but who have been falsely accused of intentionally infecting children with HIV. My original post was prompted by Declan Butler and an article in Nature.. The six health care workers (known as the Tripoli Six or the Benghazi Six) were convicted in a sham trial that was rigged and far from impartial. Apparently Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi found them a…
pharyngula | December 6, 2006Go read Effect Measure on the recent events in the case of the Tripoli Six. This is the story of a team of health care workers who were blamed for an outbreak of HIV among young patients at a Libyan hospital—they've been tried in a kangaroo court and face very unpleasant prospects.
Now, in a powerful reply to the Libyan accusations, Nature has published the results of a detailed analysis of the viruses afflicting the children, and the story is clear: the cause of the outbreak was the poor hygiene present at the hospital before the six workers arrived. Here are the major conclusions of the…
jlynch | December 6, 2006In the past I have commented on the case of the Tripoli Six - medical workers wrongly accused of deliberately infecting more than 400 children with HIV at the al-Fateh Hospital in Benghazi in 1998. As Revere and Janet note, a paper [pdf] just published in Nature has demonstrated that the most likely route of infection was poor hospital hygeine, probably before any of the health care workers were in Libya.
Please see Revere and Janet's posts for things you can do to make sure that the workers are not executed for a crime they did not commit.
jstemwedel | December 6, 2006You may remember the plight of the Tripoli Six (also known as the Benghazi Six), the physician and five nurses on trial in Libya for infecting 400 children in the hospital where they were working with HIV even though there is overwhelming evidence that the most likely route of infection was poor hospital hygeine, probably before any of these six health care workers even set foot in Libya. (Nature provides details of the scientific analysis of the evidence in this PDF.)
While the public outcry from the scientific community in support of the Tripoli Six has been great, those watching the trial…
grrlscientist | December 6, 2006Do you remember Bill Clinton? It appears that the Vietnamese in Hanoi certainly remember him fondly because they swarmed all over him to get an autograph, photograph or a handshake. These are the same people who could barely be bothered to crawl out of bed in the morning when the current president visitied Hanoi last month.
Clinton, in town to sign an agreement between his foundation and the Vietnamese to get more AIDS drugs to children, left the Hilton Hotel in the center of Hanoi, crossed an intersection buzzing with motorbikes, and strolled toward Hoan Kiem Lake, the spiritual heart of…