Politics
jlynch | October 14, 2006What is the "one institution free society is dependent upon for its survival"?
Why it is "heterosexual marriage" of course. Or at least says self-proclaimed "muscle head" Kevin McCullough. Free society depends on heterosexual marriage. Silly liberals, everyone knows that.
jlynch | October 14, 2006Over at Effect Measure, Revere gives an update on the Tripoli Six (see my earlier post). Some readers may have noticed that the New York Times devoted an editorial to the case today and the editors of Nature also weighed in [pdf]:
Most readers of Nature take it for granted that they can travel to work each day, free to enquire, express opinions and criticize government policy, without fear of intimidation or reprisals -- let alone imprisonment or torture. Sadly, these freedoms can only be dreamt of in many countries of the world, where academics must live with, and often suffer directly,…
clock | October 14, 2006I love it when David Neiwert takes a break from Minutemen and White Pride and writes a post about killer whales. In this latest such post, he ties the concern for his favourite animals to Republican War On Science and the upcoming mid-term elections.
grrlscientist | October 14, 2006I ran across an online quiz today that claims it can identify if you tend to be more of a socialist or capitalist. I think I am more of a capitalist than a socialist, despite my score (below the fold) so I think this quiz just used the wrong statements or made the statements too black-and-white for a realist, such as myself, to answer in any way other than "gee, that depends upon the circumstances, so therefore, I will disagree with this statement as written."
What were your scores and what did you think of the way the statements were written?
You Are 24% Capitalist, 76% Socialist
You…
clock | October 14, 2006Composting May Be Alternative In Wake Of Horse Slaughter Bill:
The American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, making its way from the U.S. House to the Senate, could leave thousands of horses with no final resting ground. Composting may be an environmentally friendly option that fits in the 'circle of life' frame of mind and may be less emotional, two area researchers said.
evolvingthoughts | October 14, 2006I don't usually get poetry, being aesthetically colourblind and all. But this one got to me.
tsmith | October 13, 2006Vander Plaats supports teaching intelligent design
"If we are going to teach evolution, there is another viewpoint and one that holds pretty good too (evolution) in regards to creation," Vander Plaats said. "I think that is something that I would want to visit further along with Jim Nussle in regards to 'Where are you at on that?' But my viewpoint is I would like to give both of these (time in the classroom)."
For those of you unfamiliar wth Iowa politics, Jim Nussle is the Republican candidate for governor, opposed by Democrat Chet Culver. Bob Vander Plaats, as noted, is Nussle's running…
jlynch | October 13, 2006From the American Family Association:
Amnesty for 12,000,000 illegal immigrants.
A push to make homosexual marriage and polygamy legal in all 50 states.
Only liberal judges will be appointed. They will create laws to implement the social agenda liberals cannot get passed through the legislative process.
Liberals will make the killing of the unborn more difficult to stop.
Liberals will continue to try to rid our society of Christian influence, including any reference to God in our Pledge and on our currency.
A return to the "Fairness Doctrine" in broadcasting where opposing views must be…
jlynch | October 13, 2006By now, many of you will have heard of the recent Lancet study which claims that over 650,000 Iraqis have died due to the actions of the Bush administration. The paper is available online as a pdf. I haven't as yet had a chance to read the paper (still grading), but will just note that even if the estimate is too high, it is probable that the official estimate is too low. For further commentary by SciBlings see: Mike Dunford, Mark Chu-Carroll [here and here], Mike the Mad Biologist, Tim Lambert, and I'm sure others.
razib | October 13, 2006Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank. I'll comment a bit more about Bangladesh later when I have time....
clock | October 13, 2006Another one from the post-election 2004 analysis series (November 27, 2004):
My previous post is long, I know. It is quite dense and there are lots of links. Many areas are touched on quite superficially. I have covered some of them in more detail earlier, and intend to cover some others in the near future.
One response to my previous post (on Kos, by "dotpeople", who I believe is Rich Persaud, a brilliant guy who appeared not to have liked me very much in the good old days of the Edwards campaign blog, particularly when I wrote this after Super Tuesday: http://sciencepolitics.blogspot.com/…
pharyngula | October 12, 2006She's on YouTube, accusing her opponent of believing in evolution. Wow. That wins me over.
pharyngula | October 12, 2006That's the estimated toll in Iraqi lives from our invasion.
That's an awful lot of commas.
goodmath | October 12, 2006As expected, the Lancet study on civilian deaths in Iraq has created a firestorm on the net. What frankly astounds me is how utterly *dreadful* most of the critiques of the study have been.
My own favorite for sheer chutzpah is [Omar Fadil](http://politicscentral.com/2006/10/11/jaccuse_iraq_the_model_respond.php):
>I wonder if that research team was willing to go to North Korea or Libya and I
>think they wouldn't have the guts to dare ask Saddam to let them in and investigate
>deaths under his regime.
>No, they would've shit their pants the moment they set foot in Iraq and they…
jrosenhouse | October 12, 2006From the time George W. Bush first appeared on the national scene there has been one big question: Does he actually believe all the Evangelical Christian rhetoric he uses, or is he just playing religious voters for fools. As reported last night by Keith Olbermann, it's the latter:
OLBERMANN: When President Bush touched on Iraq at his news conference this morning, he may have been revealing more than he knew.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The stakes couldn't be any higher, as I said earlier, in the world in which we live. There are there are--there…
oracknows | October 12, 2006These days, I tend to detest Michael Moore almost as much as I detest Ann Coulter. However, as they say, a stopped watch is correct twice a day, and occasionally Moore can come up with something that's so spot on funny and appropriate that even I have to give him props. (This used to happen more often several years ago and happens far less often now.) In this case, it's a segment from his old show in which he took on the "Reverend" (and I use the term loosely, given Phelps' vicious and hateful spin on Christianity) Fred Phelps over his picketing of gay funerals. The video below was made well…
clock | October 12, 2006I went to Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh on Monday to hear Elizabeth Edwards read from her new book, Saving Graces (I could not make it to the earlier event in Chapel Hill as I was picking up the kids from school at the time). Quail Ridge Books and the surrounding area can get quite busy when a famous person is coming in to sign books (e.g., when Al Gore and Jimmy Carter came there) so I made sure to come really early. By 6:45pm I have already dropped the kids off at grandma's yet I still had to make a couple of circles to find a parking space and the bookstore was already full. I'd say…
jlynch | October 11, 2006Imagine that.
More than five years after President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, [David Kuo] the former second-in-command of that office is going public with an insider's tell-all account that portrays an office used almost exclusively to win political points with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities.
The office's primary mission, providing financial support to charities that serve the poor, never got the presidential support it needed to succeed, according to the book. ...
Kuo alleges that then-White House political affairs director Ken…
goodmath | October 11, 2006I've gotten a lot of mail from people asking my opinion about [the study published today in the Lancet][lancet] about estimating the Iraqi death toll since the US invasion.
So far, I've only had a chance to skim the paper. But from what I can see about it, the methodology is sound. They did as careful an analysis as possible under the circumstances, and they're very open about the limitations of their approach. (For example, they admit that there were methodological changes compared to earlier studies to reduce the risk to members of the survey team; and there were several
data collection…