Politics
jtoney | July 24, 2011
Summer Camp at Utøya
What did the young victims murdered at Utøya believe in?
For many families, this was a dream camp for their children, turned into a hell by admitted terrorist Anders Behring Breivik. My thoughts are with them as they rebuild towards a brighter future.
According to the camp's website:
Politics
We based our fundamental outlook on the democratic socialism. Our vision is that individuals together to create a free and just society, where ecology is in front of the economy, and human values ahead of material prosperity.
Our core values are:
Freedom for all people.…
jtoney | July 24, 2011
Photo: Courtesy of the National Library of Medicine.
When the leech begins its work - using its 360 minuscule teeth to scissor in - he laughs, "Now we are into business!"
(Andrew Plucinski, hirudotherapist.)
Could leeches help Rep. Michele Bachmann's affliction?
This is not a joke, and is not intended in any way to be disrespectful towards Rep. Bachmann's challenge of dealing with migraine headaches, recently reported in the context of her candidacy for President of the United States. Migraines affect an estimated 36 million Americans, regardless of their political opinions. How an…
pharyngula | July 23, 2011Isn't he clever?
Do you think Congress should repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)?
YES - The definition of marriage should be expanded to include same-sex couples. 434 votes
NO - Traditional marriage is a sacred institution & cornerstone of our society. 284 votes
Let's make him regret it.
pharyngula | July 23, 2011You want to see how the Right loves to twist events to whatever end they want, just read the conservative columnists. Jennifer Rubin at the WaPo has already decided this was the work of jihadists, and sees this as an opportunity to lobby for mo' money for defense.
This is a sobering reminder for those who think it's too expensive to wage a war against jihadists. I spoke to Gary Schmitt of the American Enterprise Institute, who has been critical of proposed cuts in defense and of President Obama's Afghanistan withdrawal plan. "There has been a lot of talk over the past few months on how we've…
jtoney | July 22, 2011A horrific update of the impact from this terrible event, from Reuters, far more than the earlier estimate of 17 victims.
@Reuters
Reuters Top News FLASH: Norwegian police say at least 80 killed in shootings at Utoeya
From Former United States Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, PJ Crowley
What happened and why? The more we understand, the better chance there is to save innocent lives.
pharyngula | July 22, 2011Texas, that hotbed of creationism, has been reviewing curriculum supplements, including some additions composed by creationists. Governor Rick Perry recently appointed a hard conservative, Barbara Cargill, to head the state board of education. It was looking gloomy.
And now the board voted 8:0 to reject the creationists and approve good evolutionary biology standards. I'm impressed. But I can't quite shake the feeling that they've got something devious in mind.
Just maybe, though, the board is wising up.
catdynamics | July 22, 2011Large explosion in the center of Oslo, Norway.
Near government buildings and VG newspaper, at central square.
Multiple injuries. Early reports suggest it was a car bomb.
P3S: NRK now reporting at least 80 kids killed on the island.
Guy must have been a true psychopath to be able to shoot that many people in cold blood.
youtube footage of immediate aftermath
NRK video immediately after explosion
NRK report, in norwegian, with pictures
PS: reports now of at least 7 dead in the explosion many wounded, some seriously,
100+ "walking wounded"
View Larger Map
Concurrent shooting attack at a…
drorzel | July 22, 2011The final Space Shuttle landed the other day, leading to much lamentation over the end of the program, all over the Internet. It was absolutely choking my Twitter feeds for a while, which is mostly what I was thinking about when I re-tweeted this snide comment from Robert Lamb (though, to be fair, most of the people choking my Twitter feeds with Shuttle-related comments are space obsessives anyway, so it's not that new). I got a little grief for that over in locked LiveJournal land, so I thought I might as well say a bit more about it here.
While there is some part of me that feels a little…
pharyngula | July 21, 2011Now that the Cloyne report is available, the perfidy of the Catholic church is directly measurable. Michael Nugent has tallied up a list of all the documented, unambiguous cases of Irish Catholic officials lying — just blatant, undeniable, flat out lying to investigators. I'm pretty sure that's against one of their commandments.
If you want to see a Catholic nuisance closer to home, look to Philadelphia. They have a new archbishop, and he's apparently because he's overtly political.
"I think that with Chaput you will see a much more politically active archbishop than we saw with Cardinal…
pharyngula | July 20, 2011Last week, the Cloyne report was released. This document describes patterns of child abuse and in particular the willful intransigence of the Catholic church in correcting the problems in Ireland, and it's pretty damned damning. One significant detail: the Church's defense in recent months consists of claiming priestly pedophilia was a thing of the past, a product of the laxity and corruption of the general social atmosphere in the 60s and 70s, pushing the blame onto that awful liberal culture, not the church. Unfortunately, the Cloyne report assesses policies in the late 1990s, so we're…
drorzel | July 20, 2011Keeping the week's unofficial education theme, Kevin Drum posts about the latest "kids these days" study, namely the just-released NAEP Geography results. Kevin makes a decent point about the 12th grade questions being fairly sophisticated, but includes one comment that struck me as off base:
I gotta tell you: I went through the five sample questions for 12th graders, and they were pretty damn hard. This was not "identify France on a map" stuff. I ended up getting them all right, but I was half guessing on some of them.
He says that as if it's a bad thing, but it seems to me that it's really…
jtoney | July 20, 2011
Michael Bay's "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" is a visually ugly film with an incoherent plot, wooden characters and inane dialog. It provided me with one of the more unpleasant experiences I've had at the movies.
Roger Ebert
Having witnessed the destruction of the twin towers on 9/11 from across the Hudson river, it was years before I could look at an airplane taking off from Newark airport without evoking that nightmare. Watching Transformers: Dark of the Moon brought it back in a visceral way with scene after numbing scene of toppling skyscrapers destroyed by Decepticons.
Yes, the…
drorzel | July 20, 2011One of the standard education reform proposals that gets suggested every time somebody brings up the condition of American public education is that teachers should be offered some form of performance incentive, whether in the form of "merit pay" programs on a continuing basis, or bonuses for reaching particular targets. This is one of those ideas that economists swear ought to work, but a new RAND Corporation study found that, well, they don't. This is based on a three-year pilot program run by the New York City school district, which offered selected districts bonuses of up to $3,000 per…
pharyngula | July 20, 2011Somehow, I get the impression I wouldn't get a fair shake.
"Hey! You there! Hands up! I see you walking while wearing socks with sandals on a Sunday! We're takin' you in to the Ecclesiastical Court!"
pharyngula | July 20, 2011Is anyone surprised that Bill O'Reilly slavishly defends Rupert Murdoch? Of course not — I'm pretty sure his employers have tattooed the word "tool" somewhere on his anatomy. You might be surprised at the stupidity of his rationale…wait, no, you won't be. Nothing the "tide goes in, tide goes out" man says could be unexpectedly inane.
I give up. There's nothing surprising here. Bill O'Reilly brings in a stooge from the right-wing Heritage Foundation, and they sit around whining about the fact that the NY Times has been reporting on the NewsCorp scandals…because it's a British affair. Who cares…
jtoney | July 19, 2011
Source.
What ever happened to Prof. Al-Singace, a Bahraini enginner who "was taken forcibly from his home on March 17th and imprisoned without charge"?
I have an update received today from Scholars at Risk as a follow up to my earlier post.
The military Judge's choice of rescheduling his appeal for September 11 is curious. I am not offering a legal opinion and am not familiar with this particular case; I am simply advocating for due process protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
From Scholars at Risk:
Professor…
jtoney | July 19, 2011The Universal Periodic Review "has great potential to promote and protect human rights in the darkest corners of the world." - Ban Ki-moon, UN Secretary-General
Should nations open themselves up to scrutiny by the United Nations? The Universal Periodic Review, adopted in 2006, takes a very close look at how nations fare in a broad range of areas such as civil rights, immigration and respect for basic human rights.
The United States participated in this review, with the goal of establishing a model for other nations. Surprisingly, the United States fared far worse on this "humanity…
pharyngula | July 19, 2011There's a Sarah Palin "documentary" out, called The Undefeated, and it's a weird example of conservatives trying to create a new alternative reality again. First, she was defeated: notice that it isn't Vice President Palin. Second, the professional reviewers are all panning the movie — it's a hagiographic mess. But the crazies on the right must salvage the reputation of the movie, for great honor.
The tactic they've chosen is to claim that it has tremendous grass roots appeal and that audiences have been flocking to it. Right-wing bloggers have been shouting that "'The Undefeated' Roars to…