Politics
pharyngula | October 31, 2010This is an alien-eye view of what we puny humans have been doing to ourselves for the last 60 years.
It's all just fireworks until the giant mutant radioactive insects emerge to eat us!
pharyngula | October 30, 2010I had the Stewart/Colbert rally on in the background most of today. There were funny bits, there were entertaining bits, I'm sure everyone there had a good time. It was a pleasant afternoon of entertainment on the mall.
But in the end, I was disappointed. It was also an afternoon of false equivalence, of civility fetishism, of nothing but a cry about the national tone, of a plea for moderation. And you can guess what I think of moderation.
A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Tom Paine…
oracknows | October 29, 2010I know I kvetch from time to time about the currently dismal funding situation for biomedical research and worry about whether I'll be able to keep my lab funded. However, every so often I'm reminded that cancer researchers by and large have it pretty good, at least compared to some academic disciplines:
drorzel | October 29, 2010The New York Times has a video highlighting particularly clever campaign commercials in the New York area, which includes this spot from my uncle John Orzel's state senate campaign:
I'm not aware of any polling regarding the race, so I have no idea how things will turn out next Tuesday. The word from my parents is that spirits are high in the campaign (read: Uncle John is enjoying the process, and the friends and relatives making up the campaign staff are as well), so that's good, at least.
Anyway, if you're in the Binghamton area, vote for my uncle next week. If not, enjoy the award-worthy…
oracknows | October 28, 2010I was out late last night due to the call of duty. By the time I got home, it was too late, and I was too beat to provide you with the heapin' helpin' of Insolence, Respectful or not-so-Respectful, that I usually do. Nor did I have time to draft a substantive reply to Dr. Zilberberg, who is in the comments and apparently very unhappy that I criticized her for her tendency towards dualism and her repeating various things that sound similar to some of the favorite gambits of the anti-vaccine movement. I had basically had the temerity to suggest to Dr. Zilberberg that, if she doesn't want to be…
gregladen | October 27, 2010The following composite image represents what the Tea Party stands for. It is the image of the Libertarian movement, like it or not. It is what today's Republican Party stands for.
It is what you get if you don't vote next Tuesday.
Top: Rand Paul (right) and one of his campaign workers, Tim Profitt. Bottom: Tim Profitt stomping the head of a woman who disagrees with Rand Paul.
It is what you get if you don't vote next Tuesday.
If you are in Minnesota, here is how to find your polling place. Elsewhere, there are similar resources. This is not hard .
gregladen | October 27, 2010Rand Paul's henchman, alleged assailant Tim Profitt ("The Stomper") has been summoned before a judge on assault charges . Profitt has started whining about his safety being in danger and claims to have received numerous death threats after he and his buddies wrestled an unarmed woman to the ground and stomped on her at a political rally because they did not like her opinion.
He now claims that the reason that he stomped the victim, political activist and 90 pound weakling Lauren Valle, on the head is because he has a bad back and could not bend down, presumably to punch her on the head.
The…
gregladen | October 26, 2010In light of this recent story of Rand Paul reporters wrestling a woman to the ground and stepping on her head, I decided to post this political campaign note from Jack Conway's campaign, because it contains parallel (and rather disturbing) information:
Rand Paul's issue positions -- and his prior conduct -- are more than quirky or odd. They are wrong.
Not just because he thinks our seniors should be forced to pay a new $2,000 Medicare deductible. And not just because he wants a new 23% sales tax on everything nationwide -- a tax that would penalize the poor and middle class.
I mean, he even…
pharyngula | October 26, 2010I'm so glad we have organization like the Republican Party and the Teabaggers to keep our home-grown fascists busy.
drorzel | October 24, 2010In yesterday's post about the experience of science, I mentioned that I had both a specific complaint about the article by Alexandra Jellicoe (which I explained in the post) and a general complaint about the class in which the article falls. I want to attempt to explain the latter problem, partly because I think it will be useful, but mostly because it's stuck in my head, and I need to at least type out the explanation before I can move on to other things.
The article in question doesn't contain all of the elements I'll mention below, but I think it clearly falls into a class of articles that…
pharyngula | October 21, 2010In the governor's race in Illinois, just the fact that he's Republican is sufficient that I would discourage you from voting for Bill Brady. There's also this video in which he claims to believe in both creation and evolution, but I have to say I found the interviewer more annoying than the wanna-be governor.
There's a point where he's hectoring Brady, telling him there are only two sides, he's either got to be in favor of some garbled version of young earth creationism/intelligent design creationism, or he's in favor of evolution. The interviewer insists on this despite Brady stating that he…
illconsidered | October 21, 2010The sorry saga continues...
WASHINGTON (October 21, 2010) - Yesterday, the University of Virginia made two court filings in its fight against Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli's politically motivated investigation of climate scientist Michael Mann.
In its most strongly-worded court filing to date (pdf), UVA characterized Cuccinelli's investigation as "an unprecedented and improper governmental intrusion into ongoing scientific research" and said that Cuccinelli is targeting Mann because he "disagrees with his academic research regarding climate change."
UVA also argued that Cuccinelli'…
sa smith | October 20, 2010I dont think I really need to add much commentary to this.
A brief conversation with Mary Fallin
Q: Creation or evolution?
A: I believe in creation.
Q: Science or religion?
A: I am a woman of faith, and my faith is very important to me. It's a daily part of my life. So religion and preserving our freedom of religion is a very important value to me as a public official. That's standing up for our Constitution.
A brief conversation with Jari Askins (Dem)
Q: Creation or evolution?
A: Creation. That's just the way I was raised. When I was in school, the lessons in school did not conflict with the…
drorzel | October 20, 2010As a sort of follow-up to yesterday's post asking about incompetent teachers, a poll on what you might call the "Peter Threshold," after the Peter Principle. Exactly how many incompetent members can an organization tolerate?
The acceptable level of incompetence in any organization (that is, the fraction of employees who can't do their jobs) is:Market Research
This was prompted by one commenter's estimate that 30% of business managers are incompetent, which seems awfully high to be acceptable, particularly in the business world where, we're told, incompetents are regularly fired without…
pharyngula | October 20, 2010Video is not Christine O'Donnell's friend — every time she opens her mouth she exposes her ugly, ignorant side. The latest faux pas comes from here performance in a debate with her opponent in which she reveals she hasn't read the first amendment, and is surprised by what's in it.
Here's the relevant part:
"Let me just clarify," O'Donnell pressed. "You're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?"
"The government shall make no establishment of religion," Coons said, summarizing the gist of the specific words in the First Amendment's establishment…
drorzel | October 19, 2010As mentioned in the previous post, there has been a lot of interesting stuff written about education in the last week or so, much of it in response to the manifesto published in the Washington Post, which is the usual union-busting line about how it's too difficult to fire the incompetent teachers who are ruining our public schools. Harry at Crooked Timber has a good response, and links to some more good responses to this.
I'm curious about a slightly different question, though, which is in the post title. There's a lot of talk about how incompetent teachers are dragging the system down, but…
drorzel | October 19, 2010There have been a bunch of interesting things written about education recently that I've been too busy teaching to comment on. I was pulling them together this morning to do a sort of themed links dump, when the plot at the right, from Kevin Drum's post about school testing jumped out at me. This shows test scores for black students in various age groups over time, but more importantly, it demonstrates one of my pet peeves about Excel.
If you look at the horizontal axis of this plot, it shows regularly spaced intervals. If you actually read the labels, though, you'll see that they're anything…
drorzel | October 15, 2010A big and important argument about religion and science has flared up again on Twittter. It occurs to me, though, that nobody has taken the obvious step of polling people about their actual beliefs, so let's see if we can't settle this question with (social) SCIENCE!:
I would prefer to be a member of:Market Research
What? It's not like this is any more pointless than the actual science-and-religion argument that's going on in blogdom.
jrosenhouse | October 14, 2010An interesting exchange between moderator Wolf Blitzer and Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, from a recent debate.
BLITZER: Let's give you a chance to respond to some of the things she said because in a television appearance back in 1998 on Bill Maher's show you said evolution is a myth. Do you believe evolution is a myth?
O'DONNELL: I believe that the local -- I was talking about what a local school taught and that should be taught -- that should be decided on the local community. But please let me respond to what he just said.
BLITZER: We'll let you respond but answer the…
pharyngula | October 14, 2010Ross Douthat proposes an explanation for why Republicans are so wacky on climate change. He points out that there's a strong strain of climate change denial in the American public, one that's also present in other countries.
What's interesting, though, is that if you look at public opinion on climate change, the U.S. isn't actually that much of an outlier among the wealthier Western nations. In a 2007-2008 Gallup survey on global views of climate change, for instance, just 49 percent of American told pollsters that human beings are responsible for global warming. But the same figure for…