Politics
pharyngula | June 30, 2006Found on Buridan's Ass:
"Someday the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."—H.L. Mencken
clock | June 30, 2006
This post was initially published on September 16, 2004. It takes a critical look at some UCLA studies on brain responses of partisan voters exposed to images of Bush and Kerry:
Using M.R.I.'s to See Politics on the Brain
The researchers do not claim to have figured out either party's brain yet, since they have not finished this experiment. But they have already noticed intriguing patterns in how Democrats and Republicans look at candidates. They have tested 11 subjects and say they need to test twice that many to confirm the trend.
The Political Brain
Do liberals ''think'' with their…
clock | June 29, 2006This week, it took me quite a while to figure out how to answer the Ask a ScienceBlogger question: "What are some unsung successes that have occurred as a result of using science to guide policy?"
As a relative newcomer to the United States, and even more a newcomer to American politics, I was not around long enough to pay attention to various science-driven policies of the past. Most of what I know are far from "unsung" successes - from Manhattan Project, through Clean Air and Clean Water acts, to the EWndangered Species Act, to the international Kyoto Protocol. Dealing with DDT, DES,…
clock | June 29, 2006I hope you have heard the Diane Rehm Show on NPR this morning at 10EDT (the first hour of the show). The guest was the presiding Episcopal Bishop-Elect Katharine Jefferts Schori, the first woman to lead the Episcopal Church. She is an amazing woman. You should listen to the show here (Real Audio) or here (Windows Media) (the best parts are starting at about 8th minute). I especially liked the way her training in oceanography influences the way she looks at the world and the way her church should be organized.
For instance, she is aware that greater species diversity makes an ecosystem more…
clock | June 29, 2006This post was first written on October 28, 2004 on Science And Politics, then it was republished on December 05, 2005 on The Magic School Bus. The Village vs. The University - all in your mind.
Eric at Total Information Awareness wrote two excellent posts on something that touches me personally, yet has much broader consequences on the country as a whole: the well-organized and well-funded assault of the Right on the University (check some links in the comments section, too): Freedom Fighters and Academic Freedom Fighters.
There were a couple of other articles on the same topic, e.g.,The…
stcynic | June 29, 2006I've avoided saying anything about the current uproar over the NY Times until now, mostly because I think the whole situation is patently absurd. Every single side of the story is represented by people who are, frankly, completely full of shit. The New York Times is full of shit, their critics are full of shit, and the right wingers calling for treason charges are completely full of shit. Every single facet of this thing just screams hypocrisy on the part of every single person involved.
Let's start with the NY Times. On September 24, 2001, the Times ran an editorial that called for more…
clock | June 29, 2006WHY DAVID BRODER AND MARSHALL WITTMAN THREATEN DEMOCRACY:
If you look out over the landscape and think that both sides are equally bad and that the answer is somewhere in the middle, then you aren't looking very closely. In fact, you're not looking at all. You're letting a pre-existing concept (the vanity of your own conspicuous centrism and bipartisan goodness) warp your perceptions of reality.
AND ALL THE PUNDITS ARE INSANE :
The fact that the GOP isn't getting chased out of town and harassed endlessly by adopting this policy shows just how skewed everyone's center of gravity is. There…
pharyngula | June 29, 2006I suppose this is a kind of threat—an archaic and quaint threat, but I'm sure some people take it seriously—but the Catholic church has made a strong statement against embryonic stem cell research.
The Vatican stepped up its fight against embryonic stem cell research on Wednesday, saying that scientists involved in such work would be excommunicated.
Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, head of the Vatican department dealing with family affairs, said in a magazine interview that "destroying human embryos is equivalent to an abortion... it's the same thing".
"Excommunication applies to all women,…
clock | June 28, 2006...if we all pitch in an help the challengers to get elected to the Kansas School Board - those people who are trying to replace the Creationists and get science education in the state back on track. How can you help? Josh Rosenau of Thoughts From Kansas has all the information put together so you can get the information and, if you can, help.
tsmith | June 28, 2006 Especially in religious circles, much has been made about the "uselessness" of condoms for the prevention of infection with the human papilloma virus (HPV). This is the virus that is responsible for almost all cases of cervical cancer, against which a new vaccine was recently approved (for more background, see this post). Approximately 20 million Americans are currently infected with HPV, and over their lifetime, about half of sexually active adults will be infected at one point. Though most strains of the virus are harmless, a small portion of them cause cervical cancer in women, a…
clock | June 28, 2006
This is one a couple of posts about Creationism, written originally on May 1st, 2005.
Creationism Is Just One Symptom Of Conservative Pathology
I am not an "evolutionist". I am not a "Darwinist". I am a biologist. Thus, by definition, I am an evolutionary biologist. Although my research is in physiology and behavior, I would never be able to make any sense of my data (or even know what questions to ask in the first place) without evolutionary thinking.
As I am also interested in history and philosophy of biology, I consider myself a Darwinian. But not a "Darwinist" or "evolutionist" - those…
grrlscientist | June 28, 2006
Am I unpatriotic if I don't own a TV?
.
tags: satire, humor, George Bush, politics
pharyngula | June 28, 2006Time's former "Blog of the Year," the execrable PowerLine blog with which I share a state, has done it again: said something so stupid and so palpably false that I'm feeling a bit embarrassed about ragging on Oklahoma in my previous post—I should feel ashamed by association at being a Minnesotan. Check out Deltoid: down is up in the world of the Hindrocket.
clock | June 28, 2006Spanish Parliament Supports Rights for Apes
Spanish MPs push for apes' rights
What do you think?
jrosenhouse | June 27, 2006The latest attempt to pass a constitutional amendment allowing Congress to pass laws against flag “desecration” failed by one vote in the Senate. It had already passed the House. Had it passed the Senate, it would surely have gotten the approval of the necessary three-fourths of the states.
Here's a brief article from the New York Times summarizing the vote.
One vote, folks. That's how stupid and right-wing this country has gotten. People who support flag-burning amendments are the sort of people who like their patriotism cheap, empty and emotional. No serious person could possibly think…
pharyngula | June 27, 2006Atrios finds it odd that, since 31% of Americans believe in astrology and it qualifies as a mainstream belief, that "people are falling all over themselves to mock someone who had a perfectly mainstream belief apparently shared by millions and millions of Americans."
I just have to say that in my case it's not odd at all. I'm being consistent.
pharyngula | June 27, 2006…but I have to defend Rush Limbaugh. He was detained for having a bottle of Viagra at the airport? What was he going to do, threaten Palm Beach with his little gift from god?
I think Limbaugh is a lying hypocritical scumbag, but what alarms me more here is the way airport security and customs has become an arm of fascism: a way to invade the privacy of the individual, all in the name of protecting us from the faceless evil of the other. A guy, I don't care who it is, traveling with one bottle of Viagra is not a threat, and this shouldn't have warranted even a prim finger wagging with eyebrow…
j7uy5 | June 26, 2006I used to blog about this kind of thing fairly often. I do it
less, now, partly because so many other people are ding a fine job
themselves. This time, I am not writing in order to make a
significant contribution to public debate. Rather, I am
writing it in order to feel better.
Several newspapers reported on the Administration's use of information
from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication
(SWIFT) to track financial transactions. The reported intent
is to track terrorist financing.
President Bush and Vice-President Cheney issued condemnations (
href="http…
clock | June 26, 2006There is a whole slew of responses to this silly post by Comissar/
It is a typical effort to make "balance" between Left and Right in order to make the Right appear more palatable, ...or palatable at all. The typical He-said-She-said approach that tries to equalize the enormously dangerous policies of the Right (see my previous post below) with follies of some powerless, silly people on the fringes that nominally belong to the Left (and vote Nader when it really matters!).
But, since when was Astrology part of the Democratic Party platform, even at state level, like Creationism and Global…
clock | June 26, 2006Bush Is Not Incompetent by George Lakoff:
Progressives have fallen into a trap. Emboldened by President Bush's plummeting approval ratings, progressives increasingly point to Bush's "failures" and label him and his administration as incompetent. Self-satisfying as this criticism may be, it misses the bigger point. Bush's disasters -- Katrina, the Iraq War, the budget deficit -- are not so much a testament to his incompetence or a failure of execution. Rather, they are the natural, even inevitable result of his conservative governing philosophy. It is conservatism itself, carried out according…