Politics
pharyngula | May 1, 2011There isn't much information available, but apparently Osama Bin Laden has been killed and his body recovered. I'm expecting his head to be mounted on a pike outside the White House now.
So…are we done? Can we bring the troops home and call off the war on terror?
Some people don't seem to realize that my words above are sarcastic. Allow me to clarify.
While it's necessary to stop terrorists, sometimes with violence, it is barbarous to gloat over the execution of an enemy. I find the chanting crowds cheering over the corpse disturbing, and the triumphal tone of our leaders is misplaced. We…
catdynamics | May 1, 2011IF reports that US assassinated Osama bin Laden are true,
then the big question is how this affects US relations with Pakistan.
Particularly if, as rumoured, ObL was well housed near Islamabad.
Abottabad near Khyber?
Now with bonus maps!
Now with actual correct bonus maps.
Details on Wiki: Death of Osama bin Laden
This is probably more important in the long run than Afghanistan, the Taliban,
or even the effect on US public morale.
Heavy firing near Pakistan Military Academy (thenews.com.pk)
"ABBOTTABAD: Three loud blasts were heard near the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) Kakul Road late…
jrosenhouse | May 1, 2011Writing in The New York Times, Dave Eggers and Ninive Clements Calegari bring some blessed common sense to the subject of teacher salaries:
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…
pharyngula | May 1, 2011Say hello to Grady Warren, presidential candidate representing the Florida Tea Party. He's not a racist, he says, he's just "tired of Blacks, nigras, Muslims, and Hispanics, especially the illegals, calling us racist for trying to save the America that we love."
I bet you can't make it all the way to the end of this video. I only got about halfway before I shut it down.
pharyngula | May 1, 2011Michele Bachmann opened her mouth again. She compared increasing the tax rates for the rich to the Holocaust.
She said she was shocked to hear that many Americans weren't aware that millions of Jews had died until after World War II ended.
Bachmann said the next generation will ask similar questions about what their elders did to prevent them from facing a huge tax burden.
"I tell you this story because I think in our day and time, there is no analogy to that horrific action," she said, referring to the Holocaust. "But only to say, we are seeing eclipsed in front of our eyes a similar…
oracknows | April 30, 2011Dedicated to a certain commenter who thinks I'm an "eco-fascist" because I criticized Ann Coulter for abusing physics and biology for claiming that "radiation is good for you," I present a video that succinctly describes everything you need to know about the "Climategate" affair:
I posted it on my Facebook profile, too, and already a certain Libertarian comedian with a monumentally poor understanding of science and a chip on his shoulder when it comes to scientists has been drawn to it like a moth to a flame.
Actually, I had been planning on posting this video anyway sometime during the…
cevans | April 30, 2011
As you may have heard, SETI is in trouble.
Funding cutbacks on a state and federal level have forced the Allen Telescope Array -- SETI's new homebase, actually just a part of the U.C. Berkeley's Hat Creek Radio Observatory (HCRO) -- into indefinite hibernation. With U.C. Berkeley losing ninety percent of its NSF University Radio Observatory money this year, and the growing California budget shortfalls, the hunt for extraterrestrial life has simply, and pragmatically, fallen by the wayside.
This financial deficit particularly smarts because the Allen Telescope Array was just about to…
illconsidered | April 29, 2011Barak Obama has finally released his long form birth certificate. Will it satisfy the Birthers?
(Yes, there is a climate connection. Check the links!)
sa smith | April 28, 2011What is there to say in response to this?
Rep. Sally Kern, R-Oklahoma City, said minorities earn less than white people because they don't work as hard and have less initiative.
"We have a high percentage of blacks in prison, and that's tragic, but are they in prison just because they are black or because they don't want to study as hard in school? I've taught school, and I saw a lot of people of color who didn't study hard because they said the government would take care of them."
What a disgusting excuse for a human.
What a disgusting waste of life.
Imagine if a thoughtful child, of any…
pharyngula | April 28, 2011Ellen Lewin is a professor in the anthropology department at the University of Iowa. Like all of us, she is constantly dunned with email announcing this, that, and the other thing at our universities, and sometimes we get email that makes our blood boil. In this case, she got mail from the College Republicans, announcing a "coming out" party (like Republicans in the midwest are a closeted and oppressed minority…) that featured some hagiographic movie about George W. Bush (that ignorant ass), an "animal rights barbecue" and other such joyful shenanigans to celebrate the party of morons and…
oracknows | April 28, 2011Among the most bizarre and risible conspiracy theories currently going around, rising to the top (or near the top) has to be notion that President Obama was not actually born in the United States and therefore is not a U.S. citizen and not eligible to be President of the United States. Indeed, ever since the heat of the 2008 election, this particular unsinkable rubber duck of a conspiracy theory keeps getting slapped down by reason and evidence, only to rise to the surface again and again and again. It's truly a wingnut paradise, because, quite frankly, the people who passionately believe it…
pharyngula | April 27, 2011Well, it is, but I don't recommend voting on it. It's on WingNutDaily, and the only way to vote is to register with them…which is not recommended. Them folks is craaaaazy! They were asked their opinion of Obama's birth certificate.
Sound off on Obama's release of his purported long-form birth certificate
The most compelling eligibility arguments deal with parental citizenship, and this document shows Obama's father was not a U.S. citizen, making Obama ineligible40% (93)
Now that Obama is so willing to be open, let's hear him explain why he has a Connecticut-based Social Security Number when…
pharyngula | April 27, 2011The president has announced that he has an American birth certificate, like this was really an issue. If he thought this would end the yammering inanity, he was mistaken.
Donald Trump is preening.
He should have done it a long time ago. I am really honored to play such a big role in hopefully, hopefully getting rid of this issue.
Playing the role of a prancing moron who promoted the issue is nothing to be proud of, Donny.
Meanwhile, the Republicans are playing a game of pretending they didn't never call Obama's parentage into question, no how.
In a statement after Obama spoke, Republican…
jrosenhouse | April 26, 2011Over at The New Republic, Georgetown University history professor Michael Kazin writes:
No group in American politics gets more respect than independent voters. Pundits and reporters probe what these allegedly moderate citizens think about this issue and that candidate, major party strategists seek the golden mean of messaging that will attract independents to their camp and/or alienate them from the opposing one. Presidential nominees and aides struggle to come up with phrases and settings that will soothe or excite them. But what if millions of independents are really just a confused and…
pharyngula | April 26, 2011I have to agree with Ezra Klein's explanation.
President Obama, if you look closely at his positions, is a moderate Republican from the early 1990s. And the Republican Party he's facing has abandoned many of its best ideas in its effort to oppose him.
oracknows | April 26, 2011"Health freedom." It's a battle cry frequently used by supporters of "alternative" medicine against what they perceive to be persecution by the medical and scientific establishment that uses the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, and other federal agencies charged with regulating pharmaceuticals, food, cosmetics, and medical devices in order to protect the public against fraud, adulterated food, and quackery. It's a potent argument to those not versed in skepticism and science-based medicine, and even to many who are. After all, Who could argue with "health freedom"?…
drorzel | April 25, 2011I try not to do any shilling for political groups on the blog, but I'll make an exception for the National Center for Science Education. Why? Three reasons:
1) They do good and important, if not always glamorous work, supporting the teaching of evolution in public schools, both in the classroom and in the courts.
2) Josh Rosenau has a really good blog, one of the best on science-and-politics issues, and his day job is with NCSE.
3) Jerry Coyne is a jackass, whose latest bit of jackassery involves sending an open letter to NCSE complaining that Josh (among others) was mean to him on the…
oracknows | April 25, 2011I should have popped up some popcorn. I had a feeling this was coming, but who knew it would be so entertaining when it finally happened?
On Tuesday, I wrote about how famed vascular surgeon Dr. Lazar Greenfield had written a bizarre, sexist attempt at Valentines Day humor in which he implied that evolutionary biology meant shows that semen is a mood enhancer for women and in essence recommended unprotected sex on Valentine's day, slipped his lame attempt at humor into the official newsletter of the American College of Surgeons, and then as a result was later forced to resign his position as…
pharyngula | April 24, 2011Go read Open letter to the NCSE and BCSE. Or read it here:
Dear comrades:
Although we may diverge in our philosophies and actions toward religion, we share a common goal: the promulgation of good science education in Britain and America--indeed, throughout the world. Many of us, like myself and Richard Dawkins, spend a lot of time teaching evolution to the general public. There's little doubt, in fact, that Dawkins is the preeminent teacher of evolution in the world. He has not only turned many people on to modern evolutionary biology, but has converted many evolution-deniers (most of…
illconsidered | April 23, 2011There is a very interesting article on Nature.com that provides an example of something a bit uncommon in the climate wars: an intelligent and well reasoned disagreement with the IPCC. (h/t to Climate Etc.)
The article is well worth the read in its entirety, but its central point is a relatively straightforward one. The smaller the portion of the earth's surface (or time period for that matter) you are examining, the more difficult and less useful it is to consider attribution of climate change. And yet, the IPCC, according to this article, is seeking research that specifically attributes…