Politics
clock | September 27, 2006I heard this on NPR and now it is available online on Bloomberg.com: USA has slipped from 1st to 6th place in the World Economic Forum's annual rankings.
As I have predicted immediately after the 2004 election, US is not going to survive another 4 years of Bush and retain primacy in anything - economy, scientific/technological leadership, military might, or moral high ground. Moral high ground is hard to quantify but do you really believe we are still Number One, the Shining Light, Beacon of Democracy, etc.? Military might - you decide. Now, economy is officially gone. Science/technology…
evolvingthoughts | September 26, 2006Just when I am convinced that liberal values are dead and democracy, real democracy, is doomed in the biggest English speaking nation, along comes a major network (NBC) commentary, that puts it all out there, in a manner that Murrow would have been proud of. The failure of Bush and his henchmen is laid out here. If Americans care about their freedoms and reputation, they should watch this, which tells you what the rest of the world has known for some time. It is good to see some journalism happening in the US media again.
jlynch | September 26, 2006Bumping this up so as to give Chris some Tempe loving ...
Changing Hands is a legendary bookstore here in Tempe, and tomorrow it will host Chris Mooney at 7pm for a talk on his wonderful book The Republican War on Science which is now available (updated!) in paperback. Chris' book is an eye-opening account of how the GOP has taken the politicization of science to a whole new level and is required reading for anyone (scientist or not) who cares about science in 21st Century America. Bring your copy as Chris will be signing.
Oh, and I'll be there - this might be your chance to meet two…
pharyngula | September 26, 2006
($1.93? Can you get them cheaper if you buy them in bulk at Costco or Walmart?)
oracknows | September 25, 2006I wrote last week about the Tripoli Six, six health care workers who were jailed by Libya on trumped up charges of infecting patients at a hospital they worked at with HIV. Since then, many other have chimed in, and the most recent count of blog posts about this case is well over 100. According to Nature, this attention is starting to have an effect:
Bloggers have rallied around a call from a humanitarian lawyers' organization for greater international pressure to free six medical workers who risk execution by firing squad in Libya on charges of deliberately infecting over 400 children with…
j7uy5 | September 25, 2006One of the nutty aspects of the Medicare prescription drug program is
the so-called "
href="http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/21/the_face_on_the_doughnut_hole.php">doughnut
hole." The doughnut hole occurs once the
beneficiary reaches a certain spending limit. This is
described in a recent
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/24/AR2006092400957.html">Washington
Post article:
Under the standard plan, however, the government
picks up the bulk of
drug costs only until the beneficiary and the government together have
spent $2,250 for the year. At…
drorzel | September 25, 2006We get the Sunday New York Times delivered every week (which accounts for the higher-than-usual number of stories from the Times that I link on Sundays...), and I read most of it, but I usually run out of steam before I get to the Magazine, unless the cover story really grabs me. This week was one of those times, with their profile of Michael Oher. I'm bothered by this particular story, in a way that's a little hard to explain, so I'm going to babble about it here a bit, and see where that leads.
On the surface, it's a really heartwarming story. Michael Oher is a poor black kid from the slums…
clock | September 25, 2006Pam found the link to this article from LA Times in which Rev.Jerry Falwell compares Hillary Clinton with the Devil:
"I certainly hope that Hillary is the candidate," Falwell said, according to the recording. "She has $300 million so far. But I hope she's the candidate. Because nothing will energize my [constituency] like Hillary Clinton."
Cheers and laughter filled the room as Falwell continued: "If Lucifer ran, he wouldn't."
At that moment in the recording, Falwell's voice is drowned out by hoots of approval. But two in attendance, including a Falwell staff member, confirmed that Falwell…
clock | September 24, 2006Here is a nice article about Elizabeth Edwards and her new book and here is a nice interview with her. She is such a wonderful person. She should run for President herself!
As for her husband, a new poll from Iowa does not look good for Democrats, but of all Dem potential presidential candidates, Edwards still does the best of all of them. It looks really bad for Hillary, though, with negatives far higher than the positives.
There were a number of polls over the past couple of months, some polled everyone, some polled potential Democratic voters, some polled the Dem grassroots, and some…
clock | September 24, 2006Revere and Lindsay now report that the Tripoli Six story has spread from science blogosphere to both Left and Right political blogs, ranging from DailyKos to Instapundit (gosh, even Free Republic!). This is certainly not just a science/medicine issue, and is certainly not a partisan issue - it is a matter of saving innocent lives!
Declan Butler, who has been on top of this, has already collected 82 blog links on Connotea and is working on the next step - getting the MSM to place this story on front pages. Can you help? Blogswarm this story by blogging about this, or blogging about this…
j7uy5 | September 22, 2006Funny how sometimes things fall into place. Yesterday, I
wrote a post about DeVos' promotion of the teaching of Intelligent
Design/Creationism. I also heard that
href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060922/wr_nm/chavez_dc_1">Hugo
Chavez' mention of Noam Chomsky's book,
href="http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?pwb=1&ean=9780805076882">Hegemony
or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance,
resulted in instant promotion of the book to bestseller status.
That brought to mind the recent
href="http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/09/…
clock | September 22, 2006From October 09, 2004. I'd write it differently today, but the main point still stands.
Life begins, takes its course, and ends.
The course of Life determines the directionality of Time. Without Life, it would be impossible to determine which way the Time goes, what is Past and what is Future.
Every living organism dies, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Life becomes Non-Life.
But, when does Non-Life become Life? This seems to be the key question in the discussions about abortion, stem-cell research, and other touchy political/religious topics.
Usual answers: at the time of fertilization, or 40…
tsmith | September 22, 2006The more I read about this, the worse it gets. In addition to the links I mentioned yesterday, Laurie Garrett mentioned she's been covering this for years. One example is this piece from this past June.
One of the newly charged Bulgarians, Smilian Tachev, an engineer, told Bulgarian journalists last month that he was originally arrested in Benghazi at the same time as the nurses and doctor, and during 174 days of captivity witnessed gruesome torture of the health care workers.
"The nurses were beaten with many-stranded wire, for a long time and painfully," Tachev said. "Then they were…
evolvingthoughts | September 21, 2006'We'll bomb you to Stone Age, US told Pakistan' - World - Times Online.
How interesting - one of the more democratic Islamic countries was told by the US deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage, that the US would "bomb them back into the Stone Age" if they didn't cooperate in the war on terror, and to curb the free expression of support for terrorism. The nation that began by asserting its sovereignty from foreign control, and which counts freedom of expression as a basic freedom, did that...
j7uy5 | September 21, 2006When I came home from work, and saw the headline: DeVos Backs
Discussion of Intelligent Design, I knew I wanted to blog it.
Alas, I get the afternoon paper.
href="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/devos_and_intelligent_design.php#more">Ed
Brayton gets the
href="http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060920/NEWS99/60920015">morning
paper, and had already beaten me to it. Not only
that, but
href="http://scienceblogs.com/mikethemadbiologist/2006/09/the_republican_war_on_science_1.php">Mike
and
href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/09/…
jlynch | September 21, 2006Elif Shafak, the Turkish novelist accused of "denigrating Turkish national identity" under Article 301 of Turkey's penal code, has been acquitted. Shafak, a professor at the University of Arizona, had faced charges for comments made by characters in her novel The Bastard Of Istanbul, specifically on the mass killings of Armenians in the final years of the Ottoman Empire in 1915. More details here.
drorzel | September 21, 2006Over at Inside Higher Ed, William Durden resorts to satire in response to the Spellings commission report:
In the nation's current zeal to account for all transfer of teaching and insight through quantitative, standardized testing, perhaps we should advance quantitative measurement into other areas of human meaning and definition. Why leave work undone?
I suggest, for example, that a federal commission propose an accountability initiative for those of faith (not such a wild notion as an increasing number of politicians are calling the traditional separation of church and state unhealthy for…