Politics
pharyngula | May 28, 2006If you're getting tired of the Yearly Kos news, have no fear, it'll all be over in two weeks. If not, Matt Bai has an article on it in the NY Times. It's The Future!
grrlscientist | May 27, 2006
After watching this video, I am not sure if I should shake my head or just drink excessively.
tsmith | May 26, 2006Species of the bacterium Clostridium have long been a scourge of humans. They are gram-positive, spore-forming bacteria that can be found in the soil around all of us. The spores then germinate when exposed to anaerobic conditions.
Clostridium botulinum is the cause of botulism, a serious and potentially fatal paralytic illness often caused by ingestion of contaminated foods. More recently, the bacterium has been used as the source of that anti-wrinkle miracle, BoTox: botulinum toxin type A, allowing all of Hollywood to smile without a wrinkly forehead (ah, the wonders of nature!).…
pharyngula | May 25, 2006Read and discuss:
I and the Bird #24 (illustrated!)
Skeptics' Circle #35 (hosted by a pseudo-Skeptico…or is it a pseudo-pseudo-Skeptico?)
Carnival of the Liberals #13
Or talk about anything you want. The pope's presence annihilates ice cream and tampons. Bill Frist really needs to take a shower before working in the Senate. What kind of penalties would be appropriate for Kenny Boy? I'm sure you can all think of something to talk about—I'm buckling down for a few hours to finish reviewing a paper.
stcynic | May 25, 2006Like many others around the blogosphere, I'm finding it quite amusing that the Congressional leadership has finally found an exercise of executive law enforcement authority frightening enough to get upset about - unfortunately, it took a raid on a Congressman's office to do it. The FBI raid on Rep. William Jefferson's office last weekend has Congress absolutely apoplectic, despite the fact that A) they had a warrant and B) Jefferson had been videotaped taking bribes from an undercover officer. If that isn't probable cause, I don't know what is.
But the Congressional leadership is freaking…
stcynic | May 25, 2006Now this is really funny. There's a new documentary out, The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress, by Robert Greenwald. It apparently is an expose on DeLay's corruption, and the DeLay folks are busy trying to spin the claims in it. They sent out a mass email about it that included a one-page fact sheet that declared:
Hollywood Pulls Michael Moore Antics on Tom DeLay
Colbert Cracks the Story on Real Motivations Behind the Movie
That's right, they're using a Stephen Colbert interview, where he asked such questions as, "Who hates American more, you or Michael Moore?", as evidence to disprove the…
pharyngula | May 23, 2006Hang on, close your eyes, don't click on the "Read on…" link at the bottom of this post; I've put an obscene picture of explicit prurience below the fold. It might arouse you to engage in wild monkey-sex in your workplace, or worse, inspire horrific violence. Don't view it if you are a sensitive person!
Alternatively, if you're wondering what kind of sick, blue-nosed prude would find such a simple and lovely image of a natural act between mother and child offensive, you need look no further than the LiveJournal administration.
(via Jeff Hess)
stcynic | May 23, 2006George Will has a terrific column from last week about the incredibly annoying new catchphrase from the right - "values voters". He writes:
An aggressively annoying new phrase in America's political lexicon is "values voters." It is used proudly by social conservatives, and carelessly by the media to denote such conservatives.
This phrase diminishes our understanding of politics. It also is arrogant on the part of social conservatives and insulting to everyone else because it implies that only social conservatives vote to advance their values and everyone else votes to . . . well, it is…
pharyngula | May 22, 2006Chad reports a not-so-subtle message from a science conference:
The annoying thing was the peripheral message-- she took pains to state several times that both Democrats and Republicans in Congress support science, in a tone that basically came across as chiding us for thinking otherwise. That was annoying by itself, but at the very end of the talk, she specifically warned against taking partisan positions, citing the letter supporting John Kerry that was signed by a couple dozen Nobel laureates as something that made it harder to keep science funding. She said that after that, when she met…
drorzel | May 22, 2006A scientific conference like DAMOP almost always includes a conference banquet (to which people may or may not bring dates), usually the last night of the meeting, where everybody gets together to eat massive quantities of catered food and drink massive amounts of wine supplied by the conference. The quality of these ranges from your standard rubber chicken sort of fare to the multi-course gourmet meal (with a different bottle of wine for each course) provided at a conference I attended in Bordeaux.
DAMOP does all right in the food department, though you're not going to get real gourmet fare…
pharyngula | May 20, 2006Right-wing crank Mark Steyn plagiarizes his way through another exercise in formulaic hackery. Alas, he will not have died a painful and horrible death by page 2.
I'd flunk him, too, and I'd also report him to the academic integrity committee. He'd probably complain that I'm out to get him, though.
oracknows | May 19, 2006I've written a lot before about the current President of Iran and his anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, as well as the religious fanaticism of the regime he leads. Here's more evidence of where theocracy can lead:
While the Iranian economy appears to be heading for recession, one sector may have some reason for optimism. That sector is the garment industry and the reason for hopefulness is a law passed by the Islamic Majlis (parliament) on Monday.
The law mandates the government to make sure that all Iranians wear "standard Islamic garments" designed to remove ethnic and class distinctions…
oracknows | May 19, 2006It looks like Orac has acquired a new fan.
You see, yesterday I wrote a rather long fisking of Vox Day. (Don't worry, I'm not going to continue it yet again; this dead horse has clearly been beaten enough). In it, I happened to make a brief mention of and link to an apparent admirer of Vox's who goes by the 'nym of MikeT, who defended Vox's idiotic Holocaust analogy while calling him a "devilishly clever bastard." I found his comments while doing a Technorati search to see what others were saying about Vox's article, and my mention of MikeT was very brief.
This morning, out of curiosity, I…
pharyngula | May 19, 2006Looks like I'm going to be sitting on a panel with Wesley Clark—he's on the climate change bandwagon.
jrosenhouse | May 18, 2006With the Bush administration, and Repbulicans generally, tanking in the polls, the time has come to do some serious pandering to the right-wing base. Expect to see a lot more articles like this one, from The Washington Post:
A U.S. Senate panel advanced a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage on Thursday as the committee chairman shouted “good riddance” to a Democrat who walked out of the tense session.
“If you want to leave, good riddance,” The Senate Judiciary Chairman, Republican Arlen Specter, told Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russell Feingold, who refused to participate because, he said…
pharyngula | May 18, 2006
While we're delving into the right wing fever swamps, take a look at this unintentionally funny post by Indian Cowboy. I was astounded: I thought Lucky Ducky was only a joke found in the comic strips and the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, yet there the concept lies, taken seriously by someone.
The post is full of graphs and charts, but it's really an overwrought attempt to explain a very simple concept. In a system where people pay in different amounts of money to a central pool, like the federal government, and in which those revenues are disbursed more or less equally to all,…
pharyngula | May 18, 2006For all the people saying this massacre couldn't have happened, and that those who expose it are traitors: let me remind you of My Lai. It has been 38 years, so many have forgotten.
Gary has a link there that will lead you deep into the right wing fever swamp. It's creepy how those on that increasingly discredited side are more upset that a senator mentioned this than that a 3-year-old girl may have been willfully murdered by our soldiers.
oracknows | May 18, 2006I'm sorry to do this to you again, kind readers, to subject you to Vox Day a second time in the same week. However, I just couldn't let this pass. Hopefully my traffic won't fall precipitously as people turn away in disgust at being subjected to too much Vox, but I have to take that chance. Besides, it is about bad historical analogies regarding the Holocaust and Nazi Germany, which I have a hard time resisting replying to when they're bad enough. In retrospect, I almost wish I had sicced the Hitler Zombie on Vox a couple of days ago, because Vox is showing more and more signs of having had…