Politics
oracknows | April 20, 2012It just occurred to me that, even though there was news about it, I never mentioned what's happened recently with respect to California bill AB2109. As you might recall, I wrote about this bill about four weeks ago. In brief, this bill, if passed into law, would require that California parents seeking a "personal belief" exemption for vaccines to meet with a physician and have a physician sign off on what is more or less an informed consent form stating that the parents had been informed of the risks and benefits of vaccines and, more importantly for purposes of the personal belief exemption…
catdynamics | April 17, 2012The European Space Agency has made its selection for the next Large Mission to be flown by ESA, with a launch window in about 2022
and the winner is... JUICE
Jupiter moons orbiter.
Formerly known as Laplace.
The losers were ATHENA - a descoped version of IXO, the third version of the next generation x-ray observatory, and, NGO, aka eLISA - the descoped version of the much beloved LISA, the long proposed space based gravitational wave observatory.
Some residual funding for x-ray optics, and laser systems will be provided to provide technological readiness for future mission opportunities…
sa smith | April 15, 2012HOW DID I NOT KNOW THIS???
A couple weeks ago, the would-be-hilarious-if-they-werent-so-dangerous group, the National Organization for Marriage (OMNOMNOMONOMNOM!) had their 2008 donor list leaked via the Human Rights Campaign (pdf).
One of the largest donations came from none other than the president of the John Templeton Foundation, John Templeton ($450,000) and his wife Josephine ($100,000).
I recognize that John Templeton the person and The Templeton Foundation as a foundation are different entities. However considering the personal financial and political causes taken up by Johnny boy,…
drorzel | April 12, 2012The big publishing news this week is the US Department of Justice bringing an anti-trust suit against the major book publishers and Apple for allegedly colluding to force the "agency model" of ebook pricing on Amazon and other retailers, resulting in higher prices for consumers. I already links dumped an article about the detailed charges, and three of the six companies involved have agreed to a settlement that will change the way their books get priced. A couple of the publishers, particularly Macmillan, whose nasty public spat with Amazon kicked this whole thing off, have decided to fight…
jtoney | April 10, 2012An interesting turn of events! Now on live video feed, it appears that Obama vs. Romney may well be inevitable with the announcement of Rick Santorum leaving the Presidential race.
From Sam Stein of The Huffington Post:
In a surprise decision Tuesday, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) will announce that he is suspending his presidential campaign, The Huffington Post's Jon Ward has learned and several other outlets have reported.
The Pennsylvania Republican had taken a break from the campaign trail for several days to tend to his ailing daughter, Bella. He had pledged to continue…
sa smith | April 2, 2012The Young Earth Creationist Intelligent Design Creationist 'Academic Freedom' bill 'authored' by infamous Young Earth Creationist Intelligent Design Creationist 'Academic Freedomist' Sally Kern (introduced this year by King Gus of the Playground) is dead.
The Education Committee didnt even talk about it.
Cant wait to see the exact same bill introduced by the exact same Usual Suspects next year.
**rolleyes**
sa smith | April 2, 2012There has been a 'fun' story going around the scientific and pop-culture media circles for the past couple of months.
Apparently, a couple of labs worked together to make a 'bird flu' a 'mammal/people flu', and somehow terrorists are going to use this information to kill everyone on planet earth, and this research must be stopped or kept a secret and buried at the bottom of the ocean in a lead box or something (thats why James Cameron went to the bottom of the ocean, right?).
Ugh.
*sigh*
Where to start-- Okay, there are different kinds of influenza. Bird flu, swine flu, people flu-- Part of…
choofnagle | March 28, 2012Writing in today's Times, Richard A. Oppel asks, "Whatever happened to Ron Paul?"
Ron Paul has fans, in the traditional sense of the word--fanatics. They foam over this small and strange man, whose career in Congress has largely been ineffectual. Thousands go to his rallies, but as Oppel observes, "A Feb. 27 event at Michigan State University drew 4,000 people. But at polling places the next day, Mr. Paul finished third -- with 3,128 votes -- in Ingham County, where the campus is. Mr. Romney got more than three times as many votes." Paul's supporters attribute this to a failure in…
jtoney | March 28, 2012
How could Israelis love Iranians? This compelling video points a simple truth: how can you hate someone you don't know? Could this be a game changer?
Such an approach can, and should be, applied to any culture. It's a beginning, and much is at stake.
From PRI's The World:
For the first time, Israelis went out to protest on Saturday night against an attack on Iran. About a thousand people turned up for the demonstration in Tel Aviv. Intentionally or not, the event got a boost from a couple who launched an anti-war campaign on Facebook a little over a week ago.
Israeli teacher and…
oracknows | March 27, 2012This week, the Supreme Court is hearing a case that can only be described as historic. Any of you out there (in the U.S. anyway; I realize that my readership is international) who have paid even a passing attention to the news can't help but avoid reporting, debate, and polemics related to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), which is often disparagingly referred to as "Obamacare." If the law is upheld, or even if most of the law is upheld, it will radically reshape health insurance in this country. Having spent 13 years in the trenches at cancer centers that see a high…
jrosenhouse | March 27, 2012It was cold, and it was pouring rain for much of the afternoon, but the rally was a huge success nevertheless. The official estimate from the Park's Department was 20,000, which seems about right to me. I'm not generally a real social person, and I'm not much of a joiner. But given that I live in a culturally conservative part of the country, and spend so much time reading and thinking about religious right propaganda, it was with a sense of physical relief that I spent the afternoon standing in solidarity with my fellow atheists.
And make no mistake, this was an atheist rally. A New…
jdupuis | March 27, 2012This post has superseded my two previous link collection posts here and here.
The first focused solely on the Research Works Act, the second added posts on the Elsevier boycott and this one also incorporates posts on the reintroduction of The Federal Research Public Access Act. These three stories are all intertwined to the extent that it is difficult to separate them out completely. That being said, I'm not attempting to be as comprehensive in coverage for the boycott or for FRPAA as for the RWA.
Some relevant general resources:
The Cost of Knowledge: Researchers taking a stand against…
drorzel | March 27, 2012I mentioned this in the Links Dump this morning, but Timothy Burke's post on the inherent tensions in the residential part of small college life is really excellent stuff, and deserves more than the 1000 characters I can quote in Delicious:
At Swarthmore this semester, for example, some students were deeply annoyed that the administration attempted to enforce a rule against parties between midnight and 2am on Thursday nights (or Friday mornings, to be more precise). Other students are this very minute angry that the administration has not acted more forcefully, rapidly or directly against…
oracknows | March 26, 2012It would appear that Dr. Bob Sears, author of The Vaccine Book, is in the news again. Specifically, he's brought himself back into the spotlight by publishing in that wretched hive of scum and quackery, The Huffington Post, a fallacy-filled attack on a bill in California, AB 2109, designed to tighten up the process for obtaining philosophical exemptions from vaccination requirements for school entry and improving the process of informed consent for parents seeking such exemptions. In this, Dr. Sears has solidly aligned himself with the worst elements of the antivaccine movement. Sadly, it is…
denialism | March 26, 2012With the Supreme Court hearing arguments for the next three days on the Affordable Care Act, many commentators, including Dahlia Lithwick appear to have so much contempt for the Roberts court that they believe the issue will likely be settled on politics rather than law.
The first proposition is that the health care law is constitutional. The second is that the court could strike it down anyway.
...
The law is a completely valid exercise of Congress' Commerce Clause power, and all the conservative longing for the good old days of the pre-New Deal courts won't put us back in those days as if…
stoat | March 25, 2012So, the Tories have been naughty boys again and everyone is shocked - shocked, I tell you - to discover that all that money that people pay to the political parties is actually paid for something, rather than just given for love. Well, its a bit of fun but I doubt it goes anywhere, because no-one is surprised. Labour will posture, but then squirm when their union money comes up. The house of Lords is stuffed with people who bought their way in.
My 'umble prediction is that the "main" damage will come from an impression of incompetence, and it won't be much. They are supposed to be…
oracknows | March 23, 2012I've discussed the concept of "misinformed consent" multiple times before. Quacks in general, particularly the "health freedom" movement proclaim their dedication to "informed consent." "All we're asking for," they will say, "is informed consent." The antivaccine movement in particular demands "informed consent" about vaccines. Be it Barbara Loe Fisher, the bloggers at the antivaccine crank blog Age of Autism, or any of a number of antivaccine warriors, demanding "informed consent" seems to be every bit as much of the antivaccine arsenal as the "toxins gambit" or ranting about "fetal cells"…
denialism | March 21, 2012In the continual spread of assaults on women's reproductive freedom in the wake of the 2010 tea party movement, another state, Idaho, is legislating women receive unnecessary and invasive medical procedures prior to obtaining abortion.
This is part of an unprecedented effort at the state level to restrict reproductive rights, and in 2011 a record number of these measures have passed.
And it won't stop here, as we've seen in Georgia, they are trying to pass a law to force women to carry all 20 week gestations to term, even if the fetus is dead. And if you think that's creepy, Georgia isn't…
jdupuis | March 20, 2012Knowledge, science, information, common sense, openness?
A whole bunch of things are under attack by various conservatively-minded levels of government here in Canada.
Those of you thinking of moving north to avoid the insanity might want to have a second thought.
It seems that we normally smug and superior Canadians have recently...
Walked away from statistically valid methods of collecting census data
The head of Statistics Canada has delivered an extraordinary rebuke to the Harper government over its plan to scrap the mandatory long-form census, quitting his post in a highly public letter…
gregladen | March 20, 2012Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power by Rachel Maddow (signed by the author!) and I'm reading it with great interest, even though I'm totally swamped with other things. Damn you Rachel Maddow for writing such an engaging book!
I'm just starting it but wanted to share a couple of observations.
The nature of war in (well, 'by') America--and the nature of the military and government's relationship to it--evolved over time from the days of the Founding Fathers to the end of the Viet Nam era, as described in Rachel Maddow's new book, in very interesting ways. In particular, Maddow…