Politics
pharyngula | February 15, 2011Paul Krugman has a lovely phrase to describe Republican policies: Eat the future. They are under pressure to cut spending, any spending, but they refuse to touch anything that might cause immediate pain to the electorate…so instead, anything in the budget that affects future voters is going to get the axe.
Once you understand the imperatives Republicans face, however, it all makes sense. By slashing future-oriented programs, they can deliver the instant spending cuts Tea Partiers demand, without imposing too much immediate pain on voters. And as for the future costs — a population damaged by…
pharyngula | February 15, 2011I'm only a few miles away from the Dakotas — if HB1171 passes, I could put on some hospital scrubs (camouflage, you know), lurk quietly in a hospital, and when some ob-gyn pokes his or her head out, BAM, justifiable homicide.
FOR AN ACT ENTITLED, An Act to expand the definition of justifiable homicide to provide for the protection of certain unborn children.
BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA:
Section 1. That § 22-16-34 be amended to read as follows:
22-16-34. Homicide is justifiable if committed by any person while resisting any attempt to murder such…
pharyngula | February 11, 2011I think. Mubarak finally woke up and noticed that nobody likes him, and has resigned. That's the good news.
The bad news is that power has been turned over to a military council. Shouldn't a stable state have a plan for managing succession and change that is entirely civilian?
But for now it's entirely for the better that a man who held onto power for 30 years has been deposed. Let's just hope they aren't trading one dictator for another.
illconsidered | February 11, 2011The Egyptian dictator, Hosni Mubarak, has resigned, finally relenting to weeks of massive protests. Is he the latest casualty of climate change?
This is a provacative question, but I believe one worth discussing. Obviously, there are always many factors in a people's uprising, the precise balance of which will always be subjective and varied from protestor to protestor. But that doesn't mean said factors can not be isolated and examined each on their own.
Like any extreme hot weather event, it is not possible to attribute this directly to a change in global climate, but like said weather…
stoat | February 11, 2011 Some good news for a change. Well done chaps! Now, how about that dictatorship we're propping up in Saudi Arabia?
I didn't actually do anything useful in all this (other than copy-editing the wikipedia article, I'm sure that boosted their revolutionary fervour) but I was rooting for them.
Brian was more useful.
On a lighter note: don't try this at home: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEjiw1VcPGU
Refs
* Egypt's Mubarak resigns as leader (BBC)
jtoney | February 10, 2011Breaking news of the potential end to Egypt's President Mubarek's time in office indicates that the "transition" may well become a resolution very soon, perhaps tomorrow, Friday, February 11. Will this date mark a new chapter of Egyptian history?
I sincerely hope that this crisis ends quickly and peacefully. This is, fundamentally, a human rights issue.
BREAKING NEWS: Noon on February 11
Is this the beginning of a wave of change?
CAIRO -- President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt resigned his post and turned over all power to the military, ending his 30 years of autocratic rule and bowing to a…
catdynamics | February 9, 2011The House Appropriations Committee released a partial summary list of the cuts they plan to make relative to Obama's 2011 budget request, in discretionary items.
Note the 2011 budget year is underway on a continuing resolution, holding funding at 2010 levels, which includes appropriations for a number of things that have been cancelled.
Here are some of the science items released so far, apparently more to come.
The Senate will, of course, also have a say.
· NASA -$379M
· NSF -$139M
· National Institute of Standards and Technology -$186M
· NOAA -$…
jrosenhouse | February 7, 2011Jerry Coyne and P. Z. Myers (here and here respectively) have taken note of a session at the upcoming AAAS Annual Meeting entitled: Evangelicals, Science, and Policy: Toward a Constructive Engagement. They object to this intrusion of religion into a science meeting. In the comments to their posts, Nick Matzke has been gamely trying to defend the session.
These sorts of discussions always remind me of the paleontology conference I attended in 2009. I reported on it here and here. The conference featured two sessions of interest. I was there to participate in a panel discussion on…
pharyngula | February 7, 2011It's astonishing how regressive Republicans can be. Would you believe the Minnesota Republicans think women are worth less than men, and are willing to pass legislation legalizing that view?
Minnesota Republicans have introduced legislation that would repeal the 1984 Local Government Pay Equity Act (LGPEA), which directs local governments to ensure that women are paid the same as men. While local governments say reporting requirements are costly, equal rights groups say the law needs to stay intact in order to ensure fair pay, especially for women of color.
HF7/SF159 would repeal a laundry…
drorzel | February 6, 2011I'm taking some flak in the comments to yesterday's book recommendation request post, so let me illustrate what I meant with an example. Lots of people recommended the Andrew Lang Fairy books, which are freely available online. I looked at the first story in the first book, which is plenty entertaining, but also has this bit that stopped me short:
Hardly had [an evil sorceror] reached his own house when, taking the ring, he said, "Bronze ring, obey thy master. I desire that the golden ship shall turn to black wood, and the crew to hideous negroes; that St. Nicholas shall leave the helm and…
drorzel | February 4, 2011I've been watching the Al Jazeera English livestream off and on this week to keep up with events in Egypt. At some point, SteelyKid came in while I had it on, saw shots of the cheering crowds from Tuesday, and said "People dancing!"
Sometime on Wednesday, she marched over to me, and demanded to watch a video. I asked what she wanted, and she said "People dancing!" At that point, though, the live video was of people throwing Molotov cocktails off a hotel roof onto protesters below. I didn't think that was really appropriate toddler fare, so I showed her this instead:
Three-ish years later,…
pharyngula | February 3, 2011The Pope must be wearing ratty, ragged underwear under those silk robes; all the fancy gold statues in the Vatican must be gilt over rotting wood; the famous paintings are all cheap reproductions. The place must be on the verge of economic collapse. At least, that's what I assume must be the case, since the UK government paid for the Pope's visit out of Department for International Development funds, a part of the budget that is normally earmarked for aid to "war-torn or fragile states" as part of a commitment to fight global poverty.
So the Vatican must be sort of like Somalia. I had no idea…
jtoney | February 2, 2011
People protested against President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt outside the United Nations headquarters in New York on Saturday. Source: The New York Times
This article was co-authored with Dr. Morad Abou-Sabe, President of the Arab American League of Voters of New Jersey.
Dear President Obama,
The US bears an enormous responsibility for the ongoing crisis in Egypt as violence escalates. Unfortunately the delay of a formal response from the White House to the political strife that began January 25, combined with ambiguity in your speech on the evening of February 1 has done little to quell the…
aardvarchaeology | February 1, 2011This time of year I've repeatedly been taking part in the Global Population Speak-Out, reminding my Dear Readers that a lot of humanity's main problems could (and will) be solved by shrinking the planet's human population drastically. It's up to us: either we quit having enough children to replace the people who die, thus easing population down over centuries, or our numbers will crash catastrophically though war, famine and pandemics. In other words: let's turn down nativity or we will see mortality turned up on us, each producing similar effects.
It is in my opinion unethical for anyone to…
oracknows | January 31, 2011Breast implants have been the subject of controversy since they were first developed in the 1960s, with the controversy reaching a head in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when thousands of women with silicone implants reported a variety of ailments, including autoimmune disease and a variety of other systemic illnesses. These reports led to a rash of lawsuits and, ultimately, the banning of silicone breast implants for general use for breast augmentation in 1992. After that, silicone breast implants were only permitted in women requiring breast reconstruction or women enrolled in clinical…
jtoney | January 30, 2011
The New York Times Sunday Magazine published a brilliant essay today by Executive Editor Bill Keller, "The Boy Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest" that describes an evolving relationship between news media outlets and their source and the complex balancing act between the freedom of press and a government's responsibility to protect. It portrays a fascinating behind the scenes view of how several normally competing news organizations worked collaboratively with the source, Julian Assange, to make sense of mountains of disparate, arcane pieces of data in multiple forms.
One of the major sources…
stoat | January 30, 2011The Indian government seems to be making a minor speciality in boosting voodoo science, presumably caring less for their reputations and more for fighting off any restrictions on coal burning. Or it may be all a matter of tedious internal politics and corruption, who knows.
This springs again from an article in the Hindu which is kind enough to destroy its credibility right up front by beginning A key belief of climate science theology.... Before I return to the obvious lies - "Cosmic ray impact ignored" - I'll do the throw-away stuff at the end, viz:
In November 2009, Mr. Ramesh had released…
pharyngula | January 28, 2011Governor Rick Perry has been talking about education.
Well, there is a lot of fat to cut from our public schools, especially those in our biggest urban areas like Houston and Dallas. I am concerned that some the highly diverse Magnet public schools in this city are becoming hotbeds for liberalism. Do we really need free school bus service, Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, Asian-Pacific Heritage Month, ESL, special needs and enrichment programs like music, art or math Olympiad? I think we should get back to the basics of the three Rs, reading writing and arithmetic. I mean when…
pharyngula | January 27, 2011What a stupid, ignorant woman. She's baffled by the phrase "Sputnik moment"; she reads it over and over; it makes her vaguely uncomfortable, with that Russian sound to it; and rather than asking someone or looking it up, she decides to invent her own totally wrong definition built on false premises (the Soviet Union was bankrupted by a satellite launch in 1957? Ha ha, screw you, Ronald Reagan!), and declare it on national television? It must be bad, that commie Obama said it.
Man, if I thought the American electorate cared at all about intelligence in its presidential candidates, I'd…
jrosenhouse | January 27, 2011By now you have no doubt heard that MSNBC, apparently fretting that their ratings were not low enough, has fired Keith Olbermann. Brilliant move! They have replaced him with the milquetoast, CW spouting Laurence O'Donnell, meaning that reruns of NCIS are probably now the best option for weeknights at eight (except for Mondays, of course, when everyone should be watching House).
Of course, Olbermann's ouster has brought out the self-righteous set, here represented by Laurie Fendrich over at the Chronicle blog:
Self-proclaimed left-leaning Democrat though I am, I could barely tolerate the…