Politics
pharyngula | February 14, 2006I feel like Wonkette: a reader sent along a bit of personal commentary about Deutsch, from someone who knew him at Texas A&M. It's gossip, nothing more, so take it or leave it.
Well, of course, the Batt [the Aggie school paper, The Battalion] is not the Times, so there was nothing in
today's issue. However -- you will love this! talk about your "Aggie
Network"... -- sitting across the hall from me even as I write is a
former editor of said rag.
According to XXXXX this guy "gives Republicans a bad name". A
friend of hers used to date him. XXXXX called him "a stereotype
Young Republican…
stcynic | February 13, 2006Everyone knows by now that Vice President Dick Cheney accidentally shot a fellow hunter during a quail hunt in Texas over the weekend. No big deal there, it's a risk you take and no one is going to suggest it was anything but an accident. But the fact this was not real hunting but a "canned hunt", where farm-raised game are released as little more than targets for lazy "sportsmen" to kill. These farm-raised animals aren't even afraid of humans, having been raised by them, so they just sit there while you kill them. According to this letter, 500 pheasants were released on this ranch in Texas…
drorzel | February 13, 2006Like PZ, I wasn't going to mention the whole "Cheney shoots another hunter" thing, because that is, after all, part of the sport of hunting. And while I don't personally hunt (I prefer fishing), I went to a high school where classes were unofficially cancelled on the first day of deer season, so I have no objection to the idea.
Finding out what kind of hunt it was changes my opinion, though:
Monday's hunting trip to Pennsylvania by Vice President Dick Cheney in which he reportedly shot more than 70 stocked pheasants and an unknown number of mallard ducks at an exclusive private club places a…
razib | February 12, 2006Diana of Letter from Gotham expresses some of what I've been thinking. I am rather uninspired by what I perceive as the relative silence on the Left and the swarming hysterics on the Right.1 Though I tend to sympathize with the suspicion of Islam evinced by many on the Right, I have commented on the problems with a singular focus on reiteration of values in a vacuum of empirically driven analysis, and attempted to address the issue obliquely later in the form of a post. As for the silence of the Left, I am silent myself because the gut reaction is so inchoate and underwhelming.
Addendum: I…
pharyngula | February 12, 2006I know, everyone's making a big deal of this, but I honestly don't care that Cheney accidentally shot a fellow hunter. People do make mistakes, and hunting is a risky sport with dangerous devices—I simply don't see it as saying much about his character or capability that he made a potentially tragic error on a hunting trip. At best, it says that maybe he's getting too old and careless to be armed and in public.
On the other hand, this says volumes about Cheney's character.
Monday's hunting trip to Pennsylvania by Vice President Dick Cheney in which he reportedly shot more than 70 stocked…
pharyngula | February 12, 2006I've been hearing about the usual despicable performances of Republicans at CPAC, and in particular the heinous stylings of Ann Coulter, and I have to 'fess up to considerable outrage fatigue. Then I learned that she was picking on me.
That said, she [Ann Coulter] did not disappoint her fans, coming to the stage under the thumping dance house beats to deliver a string of punch lines. Democrats: "Someday they will find a way to abort all future Boy Scouts." College professors: "sissified, pussified." Harvard: "the Soviet Union." John Kerry: the other "dominant woman in Democratic politics."…
jlynch | February 12, 2006 One of the more "enlightened" aspects of politics here in Arizona are voter initatives, wherein the public gets to petition to put stuff on the ballot. In the windup for the November elections, the streets are already crawling with petitioners wanting to get the necessary quota of signatures to get their particular fixation on the ballot.
This year, we have the Protect Marriage Arizona ammendment to the state constitution which is actually being spearheded by the Center for Arizona Policy, a right-wing, conservative Christian group that also (in 2004) supported teaching ID in AZ schools. As…
stcynic | February 10, 2006You gotta love this. George Deutsche continued his dodging in an interview with the New York Times. Here's my favorite line:
"When I left college," he said, "I did not properly update my resume. As a result, it may appear misleading to some. However, I was up front with NASA about my undergraduate status when they hired me."
Apparently he thinks that on a resume, you put in all the stuff you hope to accomplish later and then delete them if you don't before you send it out. He also says that the email demanding that the word "theory" be appended to "big bang" every time it was mentioned on a…
stcynic | February 10, 2006You can hear an interview with George Deutsche, the boy wonder who just resigned from NASA because he lied on his resume about having graduated from Texas A&M, here. It's pretty funny stuff. I especially like his defense of having lied on his resume.
Host: Was it public, I mean, it was pretty much known when you were at the Bush campaign, when you were working for the Bush campaign, that you had left school to come work for the Bush campaign.
Deutsche: It was known that I, uh, was an undergrad when I was with the Bush campaign. It was known that I was an undergrad when I worked for the…
stcynic | February 10, 2006The White House must be equal parts furious and frightened over this report in the National Journal that says that Scooter Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the Plame incident that he was authorized by his superiors to leak classified information to reporters in order to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence reports. The court has released a document in which Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald says that Libby testified to that in front of the grand jury:
"Mr. Libby testified in the grand jury that he had contact with reporters in which he disclosed the content of the…
jlynch | February 9, 2006As PZ notes, George Deutsch has finally come out from under his rock. Avowedly uncontrite for lying in his vita he has the following to say:
Mr. Deutsch said he resigned of his own volition because he was unhappy with the negative publicity he and NASA were receiving in the news media. "I was just sick of it," he said. "I was being smeared. My integrity and credibility was being questioned. And as a human being, as a human being, I just could not take it anymore." (source)
Kid. You had - and have - zero credibility when talking about science. Leave it to the pros, 'mkay? And while you are at…
razib | February 9, 2006Years ago on the now cancelled show Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher Peter Coyote was on a panel with a Republican pundit. They were discussing the issue of flag burning, and the latter asked Coyote why he remained in this country if he thought it was OK to burn its flag. Coyote responded, "Because in this country, I can." To this the Republican pundit could only smile and respond, "touche." There are many values that as an American I cherish, but freedom is the queen of them all.
pharyngula | February 9, 2006…and makes a total ass of himself.
In the interview, Mr. Deutsch said that Dr. Hansen had partisan ties "all the way up to the top of the Democratic Party," and that he was "using those ties and using his media connections to push an agenda, a worst-case-scenario agenda of global warming." He said that anyone who disagrees with Dr. Hansen "is labeled a censor and is demonized and vilified in the media — and the media of course is a willing accomplice here."
And how does he know Hansen was a mere partisan flack peddling bad science? Because Deutsch almost has a bachelor's degree in journalism…
grrlscientist | February 8, 2006Note: Inspired by the Terri Schiavo situation, I rewrote the basic template for a living will from one that was emailed to me by a reader, R (thanks!). This was then nominated for a 2005 Koufax Award for "Most Humorous Individual Post".
This essay was first published on 2 April 2005 on my original site under the same title.
Date: 2 April 2005
Living Will of GrrlScientist, (also known as Hedwig the Owl in some parts of the blogosphere), [address elided], NY, NY, 10024.
I, GrrlScientist (also known as Hedwig the Owl), being of sound mind and body, unequivocally and publically declare that in…
razib | February 8, 2006NPR has a piece, Evangelical Leaders Urge Action on Climate Change. Paging Chris Mooney for commentary (and Ed Brayton).
You can see the full list of signatories here, I was surprised that some heavy hitters are on the list. For example, the presidents of Calvin College, Wheaton College and Whitworth College. This isn't selection biased from the liberal wing of the evangelical movement (though some of those are there). Calvin is American's premier Reformed liberal arts institution, and produced Alvin Platinga, the Protestant philosopher in the United States. Wheaton has been called the "…
stcynic | February 8, 2006Remember the story the other day about a 24 year old journalism graduate named George Deutsche who didn't know what the word "theory" meant and was telling the scientists at NASA what they can and can't say on the website? As it turns out, he wasn't even a journalism graduate. Texas A & M confirmed that he did not graduate from there, meaning he faked his resume to get the job. Washington is now abuzz with anticipation at the inevitable announcement of his nomination as director of FEMA. Here's my favorite line in the article:
Repeated calls and e-mail messages to Mr. Deutsch on Tuesday…
pharyngula | February 8, 2006There are several items of note at Salon today, so if you don't subscribe, watch the little commercial, you'll get some good bang for the buck.
Garrison Keillor (who is coming to UMM this Saturday—a few tickets are still available!) rips into "little man" Bush.
There's an interview with Daniel Dennett on "Dissecting God".
Most important of all, we learn that Keith Knight's wife is OK. Hooray! They cut a teratoma out of her—I really think she ought to ask to have it in a bottle to take home (teratomas can be particularly grisly and cool.)
jlynch | February 7, 2006So Deutsch has resigned. Best summation comes from Jim Hansen: "He's only a bit player. The problem is much broader and much deeper and it goes across agencies. That's what I'm really concerned about."
grrlscientist | February 7, 2006Why does it not surprise me to learn that the mouthy 24 year old punk, George Deutsch, appears to have never graduated from Texas A&M at all, despite claims to the contrary? According to Scientific Activist, who made this little discovery;
Although Deutsch did attend Texas A&M University, where he majored in journalism and was scheduled to graduate in 2003, he left in 2004 without a degree, a revelation that I was tipped off to by one of his former coworkers at A&M's student newspaper The Battalion. I later confirmed this discovery through the records department of the Texas A…
jlynch | February 7, 2006It gets better. Apparently George "It's a theory" Deutsch did not graduate from Texas A&M after all and withdrew from there in June '04 without a degree. Apparently, the qualifications to become a Presidential appointee (and thus official censor) to NASA are, umm, nil. More importantly, it appears that he claimed to have a degree (if the New York Times article is to be believed). So, not only does he have no experience in science, and got his job as a political kickback, but he may have lied about his qualifications.
Hat tip to John Kotinek for passing me on the link.