Politics
pharyngula | February 4, 2006If you haven't heard enough about human-animal hybrids, I'm interviewed in BellaOnline.
pharyngula | February 3, 2006I simply do not understand some people's attitudes towards sex. I'm a fairly conservative guy in that department, I thought, happily involved in a long term and conventional relationship, but these stories I'm hearing about the new breed of American puritanism are simply incomprehensible to me. This Kansas law to criminalize consensual amorous activities between teenagers sounds so freakily Talibanish to me.
While Kansas is one of 12 states in which sex under a certain age—16, 17, or 18—is always presumed illegal, regardless of consent or the age difference between the partners, Kline's…
stcynic | February 3, 2006Radley Balko has a brilliant essay on the Fox News page about a series of ill-considered government policies to protect American catfish farms from competition from Vietnamese competition. Then after reading that, you really should go read the hilariously idiotic emails he received from the hyper-patriots. I particularly enjoyed the one from the guy complaining about "unregulated fish parts" flooding the market.
pharyngula | February 2, 2006Bush didn't really mean we were going to try and reduce our dependency on Middle East oil.
Bush didn't really mean we were going to invest more in alternative energy research.
In this thread, I've got Bush apologists trying to tell me he didn't really mean that he was going to prohibit a wide range of reproductive biotechnologies.
Now look at this analysis. Bush apparently proposed to increase the numbers of math and science teachers by 70,000 over four years. But what he actually seems to have meant was retraining 70,000 existing teachers, but without saying anything about ever paying for it…
razib | February 2, 2006John Derbyshire compliments me a bit in his January Diary over at NRO, under "Jeunesse." Who wouldn't link to someone patting them on the back? He takes a jab at Intelligent Design under "The Blogger's Life." Derb's almost finished reading Mark Ridley's Evolution, I'm praying he'll mention his insights in another column and keep taking a stand against what he considers a "folk religion." His new book, Unknown Quantity: A Real And Imaginary History of Algebra, should be out sometime in April.
tsmith | February 2, 2006Quarantines were briefly discussed in the comments on this thread. A recent study in the journal "Health Affairs" carried out jointly by researchers at Harvard and the CDC determined attitudes about quarantine in Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and the U.S.
One thing to note: remember quarantine is for individuals who have been exposed, but are not showing signs of illness. Those who *are* sick would be put into isolation (likely at a hospital--if there are available beds). Just so no one gets those two confused...
U.S. perspective on compulsory quarantine. In the United States, compulsory…
stcynic | February 2, 2006Jim Anderson has a slightly different take on the State of the Union address than I did. He actually liked some of the rhetoric (since I didn't bother to listen to it, I didn't much care about what a speechwriter wrote for him to say). Along the way, he makes a point that I do agree with:
No matter what fears of theocracy lefties may harbor, they're misplaced when directed at Bush. Bush isn't a theocrat any more than tee-ball is baseball or Keanu Reeves is an actor.
I think this is correct and I think some of the rhetoric on the left in this regard gets a little hysterical. I certainly fear…
stcynic | February 1, 2006I'll give you a moment to stop laughing at the title of this post. ***whistles for a minute*** Ready? Okay. Here's a good example of the absolute vacuousness of state of the union addresses (and by extension, pretty much all political rhetoric). From last night's speech:
Every year of my presidency, we've reduced the growth of nonsecurity discretionary spending.
It reminds me of those commercials for some vitamin supplement that uses as many weasel words as possible - "Some studies suggest that eating caramelized rat droppings may reduce the risk of some types of cancer." Here's what that…
tsmith | February 1, 2006I've been meaning to post on this, 'cause it just irks me. I'm sure many of you likely saw this study:
Political bias affects brain activity, study finds
Democrats and Republicans alike are adept at making decisions without letting the facts get in the way, a new study shows.
"We did not see any increased activation of the parts of the brain normally engaged during reasoning," said Drew Westen, director of clinical psychology at Emory University. "What we saw instead was a network of emotion circuits lighting up, including circuits hypothesized to be involved in regulating emotion, and…
stcynic | February 1, 2006I'm with Zach Wendling when it comes to the state of the union address - a completely pointless hour of interrupted TV programming at best. I can't imagine why anyone takes such an address seriously. It's an hour of empty words that no one in their right mind believes the President has any intention of following through on, interrupted 4297447 times by Pavlovian applause at idiotic catchphrases by people who really ought to know that they're listening to words with less substantive content than sugar free jello. Oh, and let's not forget about the inevitable pundit parade on every news channel…
Inexperienced religious groups receive AIDS funding--but don't worry, it's not politically motivated
tsmith | February 1, 2006Religious groups getting more AIDS funding,
Bush administration earmarked $200 million for less-experienced groups.
Aargh.
Franklin Graham just got federal AIDS money. His group, Samaritan's purse, has a mission described as "meeting critical needs of victims of war, poverty, famine, disease and natural disaster while sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ." This is the same Franklin Graham who has said about Islam,
The God of Islam is not the same God. He's not the son of God of the Christian or Judeo-Christian faith. It's a different God, and I believe it is a very evil and wicked…
jlynch | February 1, 2006 Some quick blasts as it's mid-week, I'm busy, and probably wont do much blogging until the weekend.
Last night Bush said: "[W]e need to encourage children to take more math and science and to make sure those courses are rigorous enough to compete with other nations." Rigorous ... as in "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. Youâre asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, the answer is yes"? Chris comments here.
Over at Uncommon Descent, Dave Springer loses it and probably gets bitch-slapped by Dembski. Details here…
pharyngula | February 1, 2006
I didn't listen to the State of the Union Address last night, preferring to maintain my equanimity by attending a talk on quantum physics, but I knew I could trust my readers to email me with choice weird science bits. I'm getting a lot of "WTF?" email about this statement from Bush:
Tonight I ask you to pass legislation to prohibit the most egregious abuses of medical research, human cloning in all its forms, creating or implanting embryos for experiments, creating human-animal hybrids, and buying, selling or patenting human embryos.
It's pure political calculus. He throws away the mad…
drorzel | February 1, 2006Though the tagline promises politics in addition to physics and pop culture, I try to keep the political content to a minimum. Not because I'm particularly worried about offending anyone, but because I don't particularly like the way I sound when I write about politics these days. I get very cranky, and even if I like the post when I put it up, a few days later I'm posting short filler entries just to move it off the front page faster, because reading it makes me cringe.
Of course, that's only part of the reason why I didn't watch the State of the Union address last night, despite having…
tsmith | January 31, 2006As mentioned over on Gene Expression, Radio Open Source has called for Blogs of the Union (BOTU), in preparation for tonight's State of the Union address. I thought about it quite a bit last night, but couldn't get anything down without being too depressed (and depressing). So instead, I'll just cite a story in today's Des Moines Register that shows how Iowans view the state of the union.
A 61 percent majority of Iowans think the nation has gotten off on the wrong track, according to The Des Moines Register's latest Iowa Poll. Nearly as large a segment of the state's adults --59 percent --…
pharyngula | January 31, 2006I've got a couple of posts that have been nominated for The 2005 Koufax Awards: Best Post, so I've quickly brought them on board here at the new site. Voting isn't yet open, but here they are:
Idiot America. This one is something of a howl of anguish, and it's really more a lot of quotes from Charles Pierce's article of the same name in Esquire. If this gets the nomination, credit should go more to Pierce than to me—and that's OK.
Planet of the Hats. This article is probably the best representation for how I actually feel about religion. It's all metaphor, but if you don't get it, I won't be…
pharyngula | January 31, 2006
I love this article.
Ctenotrish sent along a copy of Greetings from Idiot America, by Charles P. Pierce (sorry, but it's behind a firewall, and you have to pay $2.95 to see it) from the latest Esquire. I don't think I've ever read this magazine before—it's one of those things with half-naked young ladies draped over the cover, which, strangely enough, isn't something that usually entices me to pick up a copy—but this one article has all the vigor and passion that most of our media have wrung out of their press, replacing it with tepid timidity and vacuous boosterism for whatever the polls…
pharyngula | January 31, 2006Oh. My. Nonexistent. God. Debbie Schlussel.
How does anyone take these "conservative commentators" seriously? She read a NYT article that shows a genetic link between Asians and Native Americans, and guess what that means? It was OK for Europeans to displace them from the Americas, because they were invaders, too!
So whom did THEY steal the land from? Somebody else, obviously. Yet, no "Dances With Wolves" and "Into the West" from Hollywood about that.
Well, not obviously: no humans lived here prior to their migrations. And yes, there certainly were territorial struggles between different…
pharyngula | January 31, 2006Well, Kevin Drum's prediction about the State of the Union address is a bit vague and general:
Bush's theme may well be that he's right and his critics are wrong; and his vision may well be of a year of partisan trench warfare with congressional Democrats.
But Chris Mooney gets specific:
A while back I blogged about an idea floated by Morton Kondracke: That George W. Bush should try to become the "science" president by emphasizing, in his State of the Union speech, themes of global scientific competitiveness and the need to ensure that the good old USA is leading the pack. Well, it now seems…