Politics
clock | August 26, 2006A year ago this Monday, Katrina hit the Gulf states. We all blogged like crazy.
Since Bush Administration is desparately trying to supress the memory of their debacle, King Cranky and Melissa suggest we do a blogswarm - everyone blogs about Katrina on Monday and Shakes will collect the posts in a huge linkfest.
Need a reminder and a collection of facts? Check this Katrina timeline (via Arse Poetica)
pharyngula | August 26, 2006Perhaps this is redundant, since Jon Swift has already taken care of it, but how could I possibly resist an article titled "The Death of Science," posted on a "Blogs for Bush" site? It's got wingnuts, it's got irony, it's got dizzyingly inane interpretations of science. It's like everything that's wrong with the Bush approach to science, all in one short article.
What reasons could a blinkered Bush supporter with a petrified brain and no background in science possibly advance to support the claim that science is dead?
A lot of different factors - but the main thing was that science could…
clock | August 25, 2006
From January 15, 2006, another good book....
From Chris Mooney, a book suggestion, that I immediatelly followed. You know I have written a number of times on sexual politics, from the historical non-existence of "traditional" marriage to femiphobia as a psychological root of wingnuttery. Thus, of course I clicked on the link and ordered the book immediatelly. Who knows, once I read it I may write a post on it, too.
The book is How The Pro-choice Movement Saved America by Cristina Page. Here are a couple of excerpts from the editorial reviews:
The abortion issue is a cover for a…
tsmith | August 25, 2006Seed's Jacob Klein has a video up from his time at the AIDS conference last week: link. It includes short interviews with Kay and Rick Warren, evangelical Christians and founders of Saddleback Church, the grandaddy of all mega-churches. (Warren is also the author of The Purpose-Driven Life, which I've admittedly not read). It's interesting to hear their views, but as noted in this SF Gate article, there's still a lot of skepticism about their motivations and methods. (For example, while they discuss treatment and dealing the HIV, they don't pass out condoms, and their ABC's emphasize "…
clock | August 25, 2006 You probably know that I am quite interested in the history, current state, evolution and future of the institution of marriage, mainly because it is an important indicator of societal attitudes towards sex and towards gender-relations, which is the key to understanding political ideology. Between May 29, 2005 and February 23, 2006 I frequently mentioned Stephanie Coontz and particularly her latest book - Marriage, A History, e.g., in New History Of Marriage, Stephanie Coontz On Marriage, Op-Ed on the 'End of Marriage', Don't Know Much About History.... and What 'traditional' marriage?.…
clock | August 25, 2006It is great when you write a blog post about somebody, then that somebody shows up in the comments and clarifies his position thus starting an interesting conversation (both in the comments and via e-mail), then you realize that his book-signing tour is bringing that somebody to your town, so you go there and meet that somebody in person and have a great conversation, which inspires you to write yet another blog post - the one under the fold....
It's too late and I am too tired to write a long post on this, but I know I won't have time tomorrow. All dirty, scrungly and unshaven after a day…
clock | August 25, 2006A very brief review from April 17, 2005....
I have just finished this fun fast-paced novel of not-so-far future. There are no more taxes, Police and NRA are security companies for hire, and Government investigates only if you can pay for it. Nobody seems to be able to recognize the US President when he appears in public, but CEOs of conglomerates are celebrities of sorts. It is a libertarian dream....and a logical outcome of such ideology is anarchy, and that is why every friggin' idiotic libertarian small-government, anti-tax, "free-market", gun-toting moron has to be forced to read this…
pharyngula | August 25, 2006DefCon Blog has put up a video clip of an unused embryo's fate.
Watch it get eliminated. It sounds horrific, but it's a matter of pulling a tube out of a flask of liquid nitrogen and putting it in the trash. That's what the Religious Right is getting all worked up about.
stcynic | August 25, 2006Here's an amusing interview with my favorite demented little harpie/wannabe Senator in the Florida Baptist Witness. Some of these statements will leave you scratching your head wondering what the hell she's talking about. Like this gem:
Do you support civil rights protections on the basis of sexual preference?
Civil rights have to do with individual rights and I don't think they apply to the gay issues.
Or this tired little cliche:
Do you support a federal constitutional amendment to define marriage as being only between one man and one woman? Why or why not?
I fully support a federal…
clock | August 25, 2006
I wrote this post on Dec 23, 2004 and posted it both on Science And Politics and DailyKos. Then, on April 03, 2005, I reposted it on my blog again. Many good books have been published since then, but the list would not have changed too much if I have made it today, e.g., I would have replaced E.J.Graff's book on the history of marriage with much better book on the same topic by Stephanie Coontz, and I probably would have replaced the last two on the list with new books by John Dean and Geoffrey Nunberg on the strength of reviews and what some smart bloggers said, as I have not read them…
clock | August 24, 2006This is the movie I want to see next:
Profits on a plane:
In truth, the film's title is more of an attention-grabber than an accurate representation of a film that should be considered the human race's nightmare. Sauper's film is a punishing account of global free trade as a zero sum game. Everything the affluent West takes from Africa makes it richer, and all of Africa's recompense comes in the inverted form of suffering at the hands of war, famine and pestilence.
pharyngula | August 24, 2006The situation on the right wing must be getting bad when you can't even tell Jack Kemp and Phyllis Schlafly apart anymore.
pharyngula | August 24, 2006Shelley asks what we think of the death penalty…that's an easy one to answer. I am absolutely against it; I think it brutalizes the culture, puts untoward power in the hands of government, and since I have little trust in the reliability of the court system, allows irreversible and tragic errors. I don't have to go on about it, though: just read Wilkins. I've decided to let him think for me this month.
One other thing I'd add, though: the death penalty isn't even an effective deterrent. For it to work, you have to assume that death penalty offenses are committed in a rational state of mind,…
drorzel | August 24, 2006Over at Retrospectacle, Shelley has decided to ask us all a nice, simple, uncontroversial question:
"Are you for or against the death penalty, or (if its conditional), in what cases? Furthermore, do you believe that societies that sanction war are hypocritical for opposing the death penalty?"
Yeesh.
Actually, though, this is relatively easy to answer. I'm going to put my comments after the cut, though, to build suspense....
Ooooh-- suspense...
I'm going to do a slight spin on the time-honored tactic of denouncing the question as completely uninteresting. This might be an interesting question…
pharyngula | August 24, 2006In a surprising discovery, reading the Wall Street Journal opinion pages will make you 57% dumber, will kill 8,945,562,241 neurons, and will force you to invent ridiculous statistics. Don't follow that link! The article will make you cry as you go through a Flowers for Algernon experience.
You could read it through the Echidne filter for a little protection (she's a goddess, she was safe in reading it.) Arthur Brooks, billed as a professor at Syracuse University's Maxwell School of Public Affairs, has written an incredibly stupid article, arguing that because Republican parents outbreed…
hrynyshyn | August 24, 2006The government spokesthingies say it's just a oversight. "On its own, it's not really a smoking gun," Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education tells New Scientist. "Inadvertant" is the explanation supplied to the New York Times. But the white space where "evolutionary biology" used to be in a list of science majors eligible for federal student assistance sure looks suspicious to me.
Here's a screen grab of the controversial list, taken from a pdf at the AC/SMART grant website.
See? Right where 26.1303 should be.
The conspiracy theory is weakened, however, by the fact that…
pharyngula | August 24, 2006If you've been following the Australian lungfish saga, there's a new development, and it's an ugly one. As the Noosa Journal reports (they don't seem to have a web accessible archive, so this issue may vanish soon; here's a screenshot), the Queensland government is actively suppressing scientific information that highlights the environmental costs of building the damaging dams.
The Beattie Government has ordered the shredding of a vital report used to list the unique Queensland lungfish under Federal environmental laws, according to a world authority on the species, Macquarie University's…
pharyngula | August 23, 2006
Chris Mooney is trying to kill me.
It's true. He sent me this book, The Republican War on Science(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) (now available in a new paperback edition!), that he knew would send my blood pressure skyrocketing, give me apoplexy, and cause me to stroke out and die, gasping, clawing in futile spasms at the floor. Fortunately, I've been inoculating myself for the past few years by reading his weblog (now also in a new edition!), so I managed to survive, although there were a few chest-clutching moments and one or two life-flashing-past-my-eyes experiences, which will be handy if I…