Politics

Like a Saturday roundup, but a day delayed. Some other topics I found interesting this week, but didn't have a chance to elaborate on... Afarensis mentions new research on the evolution of the Crenarchaeota, a group of archae. Laura Bush speaks on the President's malaria initiative. Both Ed and Janet muse on the FDA approval of the new HPV vaccine--and ramifications thereof. Via Eastern blot, 2006's Art of Science winners. Wanna work at Seed? They're looking for fall interns; deadline is July 6th. And of course, don't forget to send in your submissions for this week's Animalcules…

Here's more or less what I said at the YearlyKos panel today, assembled from my notes and with all the "ummms" removed. It's very general, but hey, what can you do in ten minutes? Next time they should give me 30 minutes and I'll flash up some genes and copulating squid and splutter out more blasphemy. Two hundred and thirty years ago, when our country was founded, we faced a number of crises: we were a small weak country, threatened by great world powers, and at war. We persevered and succeeded, and I think we won out because of two fortunate endowments or opportunities. The founding…

Tom DeLay made his farewell speech to the house yesterday and had the astonishing gall to accuse the other party of being for "more government, more taxation, more control over people's lives and wallets." The 3rd or 4th most powerful Republican lawmaker in charge during the most astounding increase in Federal spending and debt we've ever seen is criticizing someone else for being for more government? The guy who rubber stamped and defended every Bush policy that diminished the bill of rights is complaining about more control over people's lives? In related news, Paris Hilton called someone…

Before we continue, let's get a few definitional matters out of the way. First, there is the "state of nature" issue. A longstanding tradition in political philosophy is that humans existed at some stage in a state of nature, that is to say, a condition of living without the constraints of historical society. Hobbes thought it was a bellum omnia contra omnes - a war of all against all. Locke, on the other hand, thought that it was a state of free association of contractually independent agents capable of making a social contract. Both positions are just biologically unrealistic. Humans, if…

I'm here in sunny Las Vegas, hanging out in the lobby with the free wireless and watching all the funny blogger nerds with the orange badges walking by. Heh. Oh, hang on…I'm wearing an orange badge and blogging in a corner. Yeah, I'm such a nerd. I don't know how much time I'll have for actually posting things here this weekend, but I've queued up a series of reruns to appear automagically at various times, so the site won't be totally drying up. Half the liberal blogosphere seems to be here, so I've got to do something to keep a void from appearing.

A couple of days ago, on the Day of the Beast (6/6/06), Ann Coulter took the opportunity to unleash yet another spray of spittle-drenched attacks on liberals (Godless: The Church of Liberalism) into bookstores across the nation. As is her schtick, she's made quite the stir over the airwaves by making very inflammatory and offensive statements. This time, it was about the 9/11 widows during an interview with Matt Lauer Tuesday morning (video here) about what she wrote in her book: These self-obsessed women seem genuinely unaware that 9-11 was an attack on our nation and acted like as if the…

First, the good news: Holocaust-denying, white nationalist, atheist nutjob Larry Darby lost the Democratic primary for Attorney General in Alabama. Now the bad news: He somehow managed to garner 43.53% of the vote. His opponent got 56.47%. It wasn't close, but it was a hell of a lot closer than I thought it would be. I once expressed amazement that such a crank could get 12% support in an opinion poll; now in the primary he somehow managed to get over 40% of the actual vote. I guess that it just goes to show that in some places in this country, a bit of white nationalism and anti-Semitism can…

Following Coulter's screed yesterday, Keith Olberman drop kicks her sorry ass [WMV, 10M]. She accuses the widows of "politicizing" and making money from the September 11 attacks, something she (and the administration) have also done. How come Conservatives aren't speaking out against this harpy?

Fundamentalist Christian nutball Roy Moore lost the Republican primary race for governor by a landslide. Unfortunately, atheist nutball Larry Darby came much closer to winning the Democratic primary for attorney general, getting 43.5% of the votes. I have no idea what that means.

Yesterday, the Vatican named gay marriage as one of the factors threatening the traditional family as never before. Today, supporters of a marriage amendment could not even get together enough votes to actually get to vote on the amendment, falling eleven votes short. Seven Republicans voted to kill the amendment: Lincoln Chafee (RI), Susan Collins (ME), Judd Gregg (NH), John McCain (AZ), Olympia Snowe (ME), Arlen Specter (PA) and John Sununu (NH). John Stewart - in tackling Bill Bennett - says it best: Stewart: So why not encourage gay people to join in in that family arrangement if that is…

Where's your god now, Moses? Nyah.

Over at Gene Expression, Razib responds to my brain drain comments in a way that provokes some twinges of Liberal Guilt: Second, Chad like many others points to the issue of foreign scientists allowing us (Americans) to be complacent about nourishing home grown talent. I don't totally dismiss this, there are probably many doctors and lawyers out there who could be scientists if the incentives were right (Ph.D. scientists are one of the least compensated groups in relation to how much education they have). But, I would frankly rather focus on tightening labor supply on the low end of the…

It's true, he always makes me laugh. It's the bow tie, the strangled delivery (he always looks like he's careful not to open his mouth too much, lest something fly in…or out), and his oh-so-prim-and-proper prudery. But early in the American epidemic, political values impeded public health requirements. Unhelpful messages were sent by slogans designed to democratize the disease — "AIDS does not discriminate" and "AIDS is an equal opportunity disease." George, you are a Republican. Vague political slogans that dance around the actual issues without mentioning any vulgar behaviors or body…

I guess the "Beat on Conservatives Who Make Fools of Themselves" trifecta is in play, so I might as well run with this. Keith Olbermann unleashes a massive smackdown on Bill O'Reilly. Transcript and video are at onegoodmove. Abraham Lincoln did not shoot John Wilkes Booth. Titanic did not sink a north Atlantic iceberg. And FOX News is neither fair nor balanced. These are facts intelligible to all adults, most children, and some of your more discerning domesticated animals. But not, as the third story on the COUNTDOWN prove yet again, not to Bill-O. ... The guilty pleasure offered by the…

Over at The American Prospect, Charles Pierce does a hilarious riff on the "Top 50 Conservative Rock Songs" piece that I blogged a while back. A sample: I liked it so much better when conservatives weren't trying to be cool. I liked their, stern, iron-jawed parental disapproval of everything that happened since Calvin Coolidge blew town. I liked it when they thought it was all devil music sent by Khrushchev to take advantage of a young populace already weakened by fluoride in the water and Elvis on the electric television set. Becoming a young conservative meant you made a conscious choice…

I often wonder what goes through the minds of those who propose utopian political ideals that turn out to become the worst of all possible dystopias, like Leninism or Maoism, or for that matter the extreme laisse faire capitalist conservatism. For it appears to me that these systems would work just fine, if only they didn't involve any human beings. And that raises an interesting question in my mind, and I hope, yours too. What sorts of political systems are biologically feasible for human beings? As Aristotle said, Man is a Political Animal, but what sort of political animal? Any…

I've gotten an absolutely unprecedented number of requests to write about RFK Jr's Rolling Stone article about the 2004 election. RFK Jr's article tries to argue that the 2004 election was stolen. It does a wretched, sloppy, irresponsible job of making the argument. The shame of it is that I happen to believe, based on the information that I've seen, that the 2004 presidential election was stolen. But RFK Jr's argument is just plain bad: a classic case of how you can use bad math to support any argument you care to make. As a result, I think that the article does just about the worst thing…

Another week, another "Ask a ScienceBlogger" question. This week, the topic is the putative "brain drain" caused by recent US policies: Do you think there is a brain drain going on (i.e. foreign scientists not coming to work and study in the U.S. like they used to, because of new immigration rules and the general unpopularity of the U.S.) If so, what are its implications? Is there anything we can do about it? This is really three questions, with a fourth sort of assumed on the way to the third. Answers below the fold. The first question is "Is there a 'brain drain' going on?" That one, I can…

I'm probably going to regret posting this article, as I normally don't venture much into these areas. Chalk it up to its being 6/6/06 and say that the Devil made me do it, but I plan on diving in. Besides, I feel the need for a brief change of pace. Regular readers of this blog know my low opinion of RFK Jr. It began nearly a year ago when he published a deceptive conspiracy-mongering article about the alleged link between thimerosal and autism in Rolling Stone and Salon.com last year, in which he completely misrepresented a conference held about vaccines as a massive conspiratorial coverup…

I'm sort of on a roll of unpleasantly political posts lately, which I try to avoid. I can't really not link Scalzi on the framing of gay marriage, though: There's a manifest difference in a debate which has as its founding proposition that same-sex marriage is a theoretical construct in the US -- which is the proposition marriage bigots want to promote -- and the debate which has as its founding proposition that same-sex marriages are already here, and there thousands of them. The latter forces the marriage bigots to come out and admit that their proposed amendment and their goals destroy…