Politics
drorzel | May 14, 2011SteelyKid is, as I have noted previously, half Korean, a quarter Polish, and an eighth each Irish and German. Her parents are irreligious, the extended family is Catholic (more so on my side than Kate's), and she goes to day care at the Jewish Community Center. In other words, a thoroughly American sort of upbringing. I can't wait to see what she finds to rebel against when she hits the teenage years.
For no obvious reason, three of the four kids she's most likely to play with on the playground when I pick her up in the evening (we play at the JCC for a while before going home, to give Kate…
jtoney | May 13, 2011
May 12 was a glorious day for our graduates, some 2,730 students celebrating the completion of their undergraduate education. Our Commencement Speaker John Legend, a Grammy Award Winner, shared an important message in both speech and in song: equal access to quality education is a right, not a privilege.
Mr. Legend acknowledged the recent brouhaha highlighted on FOX news about rapper Common, with whom he has performed. Common was recently invited to the White House to participate in a Poetry Jam, generating push back due to offensive lyrics in some of his songs. For example:
...the New…
pharyngula | May 11, 2011The Florida legislature has just banned sex.
An act relating to sexual activities involving animals; creating s. 828.126, F.S.; providing definitions; prohibiting knowing sexual conduct or sexual contact with an animal; prohibiting specified related activities; providing penalties; providing that the act does not apply to certain husbandry, conformation judging, and veterinary practices; providing an effective date.
At least there are a few loopholes. "It's alright, officer, she's judging my conformation and I'm studying for the NAVLE!"
Also, Disneyworld won't care. They suck the sex right…
jtoney | May 11, 2011
This is a story of two fetching women, one known for glitz and vacuous socializing, one known for serious news commentary and for reinventing the television morning news show format. Yes, as my title reveals, they are Paris Hilton and Mika Brzezinski whose paths crossed unwittingly, emblematic of American female beauty and brains.
I had the pleasure of meeting Ms. Brzezinski last night, as she was the Commencement speaker for our Graduate College. She shared with our graduates, predominantly women, the challenges of equality in the workplace - equal pay for equal work - detailed in her…
pharyngula | May 10, 2011Not the whole continent, of course, or even a majority of its residents, but there are a few hate-mongering, ignorant bigots in Uganda that need a wake-up call. They're trying to expand the death-penalty provisions in their already draconian anti-homosexual policies.
Sign this petition. It's not much, but at least it will send a message that the rest of the world looks on their brutal homophobia with contempt and disgust.
And yes, I know that American evangelicals have been responsible for fanning the flames of hatred in Uganda. Do you doubt that I look on them with any less contempt?
pharyngula | May 10, 2011That's a bargain price for throwing a reputation down the drain. FSU has turned over some hiring decisions to a billionaire ideologue.
A conservative billionaire who opposes government meddling in business has bought a rare commodity: the right to interfere in faculty hiring at a publicly funded university.
A foundation bankrolled by Libertarian businessman Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University's economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting "political economy and free…
pharyngula | May 8, 2011I guess we're finally done with World War I: the very last veteran of that war has died at the age of 110. Just think, there will be people with personal recollections of the bloody messes our country has started living in the 22nd century — what a lovely legacy.
jrosenhouse | May 6, 2011Time for a quick quiz. Who here finished all his grading today and, with the exception of scraping his carcass out of bed tomorrow morning to go to graduation, has now officially started his summer break? If you answered me, you're right! So let's get caught up on some blogging.
We start on a light note. Ever wondered who the most accurate political prognosticator is? Well, according to this study, it's Paul Krugman. Surprise! In fact, here are the top six: Krugman, Maureen Dowd, Ed Rendell, Chuck Schumer, Kathleen Parker and Nancy Pelosi. Notice anything? Except for Parker, all of…
stoat | May 4, 2011 For UK folks only, on the off chance that anyone reading this is swayable. Do you need any more than my recommendation (which is, FWIW, that AV is marginally better than what we have now, and voting no-I-want-PR is silly)? Then how about JEB? Or the cats-n-dogs version?
And just to pad out the post, a Q-and-A I had with a doubter:
> I'd heard the gist of the Gibbard-Satterthwaite theorem and was aware
> tactical voting could happen in AV, I just wanted to know how and
> whether it was significant.
As I read that page, tactical voting is possible in theory (but possibly only under…
pharyngula | May 4, 2011Salman Rushdie has an interesting insight into the fate of Osama bin Laden. He hasn't been an underground agent, stealthily hiding in caves for the last ten years — he's been living well in prosperous safety in plain sight, with the obvious assistance of…guess who.
Osama bin Laden, the world's most wanted man, was found living at the end of a dirt road 800 yards from the Abbottabad military academy, Pakistan's equivalent of West Point or Sandhurst, in a military cantonment where soldiers are on every street corner, just about 80 miles from the Pakistani capital Islamabad. This extremely large…
pharyngula | May 4, 2011I'm just amazed that Texas citizens will elect congresspeople who will do things like this:
In response to the worst state budget crisis since World War II, the Texas House has proposed slashing $27 billion from the budget, including huge cuts to education, nursing homes, and health care for the poor. Yet last Friday, the Texas House Ways and Means Committee approved a tax break for those who want to buy yachts costing $250,000 or more.
I think every unemployed worker, everyone struggling by on minimum wage, every waitress working for less than minimum wage, every teacher watching her…
catdynamics | May 3, 2011Astonishing GeoEye imagery of bin Laden compound after the raid.
GeoEye took a clear 1m resolution image of Abbottabad the day after the raid, with a nice clear image, coincidentally, taken of the bin Laden compound
Click for high res image:
"Copyright © 2011 GeoEye - Satellite image courtesy of GeoEye."
here is the close-up of the compound from GeoEye's portal
The dark cross shape in the yard is the special forces helicopter lost in the raid and destroyed on the ground.
h/t GeoEye blog and NASAwatch
drorzel | May 3, 2011Kevin Drum notes a growing backlash against education reform, citing Diane Ravitch, Emily Yoffe and this Newsweek (which is really this private foundation report in disguise) as examples. The last of these, about the failed attempts of several billionaires to improve education through foundation grants, is really kind of maddening. It makes the billionaires in question (Bill Gates, Michael Dell, Eli Broad, and the Wal-Mart Waltons) sound like feckless idiots, but I can't tell if that's just bad writing.
The core of the piece is the finding that the districts these guys put money into haven't…
pharyngula | May 3, 2011It really is that clear and simple. Republican policies lead to women dying of neglect and abuse, and they don't care. Tom Levenson does the estimates, just using their recent opposition to Planned Parenthood as an example — and that's a legislative jihad that has a body count.
Planned Parenthood does lots more than screen for gynecological cancers, of course. This is just one example of the real commitment to saving lives, to life, that marks that organization. But this story makes the point well enough: when you cut poor and vulnerable people's access to health care real harm results.…
pharyngula | May 3, 2011Eggers and Calegari have an excellent op-ed on the problem of American education: in short, it's the money, stupid.
When we don't get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don't blame the soldiers. We don't say, "It's these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That's why we haven't done better in Afghanistan!" No, if the results aren't there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.
And yet in…
drorzel | May 2, 2011Over in Scientopia, Janet notes an interesting mis-statement from NPR, where Dina Temple-Raston said of the now-dead terrorist:
[O]ne intelligence officials told us that nothing with an electron actually passed close to him, which in a way is one of the ways they actually caught him.
As Janet notes, this would be quite a feat, given that electrons are a key component of ordinary matter. But for the sake of silly physics blogging, let's take this seriously for a moment. Suppose that Osama bin Laden really could make himself utterly devoid of electrons: would that be a good way to hide?
To…
oracknows | May 2, 2011Here's a brief one for you all. Former UPI editor and now editor of the anti-vaccine crank blog Age of Autism has a talent for incredibly un-self-aware statements. This time around, in the wake of President Obama's having released his "long form" birth certificate, ol' Danny Boy posted a quickie statement (in amongst a bunch of other almost as amusing quickie statements) that reads:
Now that the "birther" myth has been debunked, maybe we can get rid of the ridiculous but widespread notion -- pushed by people who should know better -- that vaccines don't cause autism.
Uh, no, Dan. You have it…
drorzel | May 2, 2011The New York Times ran a couple of op-eds on Sunday about education policy. One, by Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari is familair stuff to anyone who's heard me talk about the subject before: teachers in the US are, on the whole, given fewer resources than they need to succeed, paid less well than other professions with comparable educational requirements, and then castigated as incompetents. And we wonder why top students aren't interested in education.
The other by R. Barker Bausell, offers a simple and seemingly objective standard for evaluating teacher performance: measuring their…
oracknows | May 2, 2011After more than ten years, finally, Osama bin Laden is dead:
This is such monumental news that I think it's appropriate to pause blogging in order to pay tribute to the brave men and women who finally not only killed the terrorist mastermind behind 9/11 but brought his body back. Well done!
I've written about my experiences in 9/11 before. Although I wasn't in Manhattan and didn't know anyone personally who was killed in the attacks, I was close enough, and I knew people who had family and friends killed in the attack. That was more than enough. Too much, in fact.
jtoney | May 1, 2011
Source.
In a rare late night statement in the East Room of The White House Sunday, President Obama announced that Bin Laden is dead.
This historic announcement raises more than questions than answers.
How will this affect terrorism abroad and in the US?
How will this affect our relationship with Pakistan?
Did Bin Laden have a legacy plan for this possibility for the global network of cells?
What has been the cost, in lives and treasure, for this historic step, and the ripple effects in the future?
Will this strengthen our domestic security?
What will be the effect on the 2012 Presidential…