Politics
grrlscientist | December 3, 2006Bush/Cheney have managed to torpedo the GOP's credibility for the most part, so I am thinking of the Democratic possibilities for the presidential run in 2008. So far, we have;
Clinton -- I'm still waiting to be impressed by her
Edwards -- quiet, a true class act, there's nothing wrong with him that I am aware of
Gore -- after his loss in 2000, who knows if he'll ever run again
Richardson -- relatively unknown but so far, appears to be a good, strong candidate
Obama (pictured) -- another class act, looks best to me so far, but I haven't read enough about him to form a strong opinion
Who…
grrlscientist | December 3, 2006Fifteen years after most scientists have discounted the validity of "Gulf War Syndrome", which was first observed after the Iraq-US war I that ended in 1991, Epidemiologist Robert W. Haley has been trying to prove that thousands of troops were poisoned by a combination of nerve gas, pesticides, insect repellents and a nerve-gas antidote.
But the scientific concensus is that this syndrome is a myth.
"After hundreds of millions of dollars and a decade or better of research, we really haven't made any significant findings," said John R. Feussner, who was VA's chief research officer from 1996…
evolvingthoughts | December 2, 2006Google prides itself for being an ethical company. "Do no harm" is their motto, I believe (although some Chinese dissidents may dispute this). But what happens when an honest site is hacked and porn links are included on their index page?
Google delists and deindexes that site immediately, with neither warning nor notification of what is wrong, that's what. What site are we talking about? The award winning anticreationist site, The Talk Origins Archive.
Wesley Elsberry, the admin, gives the story of trying to get Google to reindex us here. But the site has been subjected, along with the Panda…
grrlscientist | December 2, 2006Because I like to read about First Amendment Law and wish to write about this issue on my blog with a little more authority, I have fervently wished to take a class on First Amendment Law at Columbia University, where one of the foremost scholars of First Amendment Law teaches. But, as you might have guessed, this class is very expensive -- and who knows if they would even allow a scientist to take it (which I think they ought to do).
However, if the Democrats have their way, it looks as though my wish -- and much more importantly, the dreams of thousands of kids nation-wide to simply…
jlynch | December 1, 2006AP is reporting:
[Incoming Senate Judiciary Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy], business travelers and privacy advocates expressed outrage Friday over the unannounced assignment of terrorism risk assessments to American international travelers by a computerized system managed from an unmarked, two-story brick building in Northern Virginia...
The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years. Some or all data in the system can be shared with state, local and foreign governments for use in hiring, contracting…
clock | December 1, 2006Carnival of the Liberals is turning One next week. TNG of Neural Gourmet will be hosting the Big Anniversary Edition on December 6th and he has asked people to submit their best post (of course!) - but not the best post of the week: the best post of the year! However, that post cannot be one that has already been submitted or published on a previous editions of the carnival.
Although I have hosted one of the first editions, I believe I have submitted only once (I do not remember which post - perhaps the one about the Love/Hate of Hillary) and NEVER had a post actually appear on the carnival…
jrosenhouse | December 1, 2006Timothy Noah of Slate has noted the same phenomenon I commented upon in yesterday's post. Namely, that many former war supporters now want to blame the Iraqis for the chaos in their country. Here's Noah nailing Charles Krauthammer:
In the Dec. 1 Washington Post, Charles Krauthammer writes that the Maliki government's failure “is rooted in an Iraqi political culture that makes it as yet impossible for enough of the political leadership to act with a sense of national consciousness.” What's remarkable is that the people now saying things like this are the same ones who, early on, criticized…
tsmith | December 1, 2006 GOP wants law to define when fetuses feel pain
While they still can, House Republicans are looking at scheduling a vote next week on a fetal pain abortion bill in a parting shot at incoming majority Democrats and a last bid for loyalty from the GOP's base of social conservatives.
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The bill, by Rep. Chris Smith, R-New Jersey, defines a 20-week-old fetus as a "pain-capable unborn child" -- a highly controversial threshold among scientists. It also directs the Health and Human Services Department to develop a brochure stating "that there is substantial evidence that the process of being…
oracknows | December 1, 2006Yesterday, I explained why a study that purports to show that psychotic patients tended to vote for President Bush in the 2004 election and is presently making the rounds to snarky gloating through the left-wing blogosphere is so utterly flawed that almost certainly does not mean what the author claims it does, given the data dredging, small sample size, and the failure even to consider alternative hypotheses to explain the observations. In my discussion, I complained that I had only found one skeptical take on the study among the credulous acceptance and use of the study to imply (or…
clock | December 1, 2006An oldie but goodie for the connoisseurs of my long political rants (May 11, 2005):
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I am not an economist. Actually, I have no background in economics at all, if one ignores "Capitalism for Beginners" and "Marx for Beginners".
Like all Yugoslavs of my generation, I suffered through a couple of years of "Marxism" classes back in high school and college - classes that both teachers and students hated and did the absolute minimum. My high-school teacher gave us not-so-subtle hints about what she thought about it. When it was time for Marxism class,…
grrlscientist | December 1, 2006Would you want to choose your next national leader using a reality TV show instead of an election by the people? Well that's what Canada is doing. Even though I am no fan of reality TV, I am captivated by this interesting idea. They certainly couldn't do a worse job than what has already transpired in several nations already -- not namin' any names, though!
Some countries have elections. Some countries have sectarian violence. Others have civil war. But in Canada, they do things differently.
Next March four former Canadian prime ministers will take part in a reality TV show titled The Next…
grrlscientist | December 1, 2006Every morning, when I wake up, I give thanks to the great spaghetti monster that I am not waking up as George Bush. After all, I might be a failure, but that's to be expected when you consider all the odds I've faced. However, George Bush has always had everything handed to him on a silver platter and has a flock of apologists who rewrite history so he is presented in a good light, such that you'd think that he would rarely fail at things, but the fact is that failure is the only thing that he's managed to accomplish. Georgie's most recent and most dismal failure? Iraq: the American-triggered…
drorzel | December 1, 2006The Times last weekend had a big article on the "achievement gap" in education, where poor and minority students are found to lag behind upper- and middle-class white students in many subjects. The author looks at a number of innovative shools that are producing good results with students from the at-risk groups, and considers a number of factors that might cause the gap.
If you're a regular blog reader, you've probably already run across this, as it's been commented on locally by Jonah, Dave, and Jake, and on the wider Internet by a cast of thousands (see, for example, Matt Yglesias). It's…
evolvingthoughts | November 30, 2006Last night, the Australian media held their annual awards ceremony, the Walkley Awards. A somewhat funny event occurred when an iconoclastic blogger, founder of Crikey.Com, was presenting an award, and was physically attacked by an obviously drunk political editor from one of Murdoch's papers. He clearly didn't like the fact that the blogger, Stephen Mayne, constantly criticised the mainstream media for its bias, especially in matters political. His parting comment to the assailant, Glen Milne (who I have never really liked), was funny too: "Settle down, folks; it's just another drunk…
jlynch | November 30, 2006
Today in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give her bus seat to a white man and is arrested for violating the city's racial segregation laws.
jlynch | November 30, 2006
USA Today is reporting that Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport will next month begin trials of backscatter x-ray screening. And how are the TSA ensuring that "naked" pictures of passengers wont appear online?
At airports, they will be programmed to shade or blur travelers' bodies and medical devices. Screeners will view the images in remote rooms and delete them instantly.
Yeah, that will work.
(The above picture, by the way, is of Susan Hallowell, director of the TSA's security laboratory, who said "It does basically make you look fat and naked - but you see all this stuff".)
pharyngula | November 30, 2006
Tild~ has a nice retort and badge for the Republicans. Now every time they pull that "Democrat party" stunt, we just reply back with a reference to the Republican't party.
pharyngula | November 30, 2006Justice Scalia: "I told you I'm not a scientist. That's why I don't want to deal with global warming."
He's quite right, actually: he's not a scientist, nor should we expect him to be. That's why our government ought to be served by competent scientific advisors…and why it's a shame that Scalia will probably think he's doing his job if he listens to people from hack tanks like CEI and the Heritage Foundation.