Politics
grrlscientist | May 26, 2010tags: Hazmat Dive into the Middle of the Gulf Oil Spill, Corexit, environment, Gulf oil spill, BP, British Petroleum, chemical dispersants, Philippe Cousteau Jr., Sam Champion, television, streaming video
What is the chemical dispersant, Corexit, doing to the oil in the Gulf? This video follows Philippe Cousteau Jr. and Sam Champion as they dive into Gulf's oily waters wearing hazmat uniforms. Their video shows that the oil is being broken up into tiny droplets that coat everything in their path ... birds, fish, whales, boats, the bottom of the sea and people in hazmat suits ... these small…
oracknows | May 26, 2010I love it when cranks write petitions.
They're hilarious. Usually, they're oh-so-serious and ominous, sprinkled with unintentionally, un-self-aware bits of pure comic gold. For example, check out this "petition" being circulated by the anti-vaccine activists, called The Chicago Principles on Vaccination Choice:
We, the people who affirm our belief in personal rights, in order to promote the general health and welfare for ourselves and our children and to establish justice, advocate the following principles:
1. Vaccination choice based on complete and accurate information is a fundamental…
pharyngula | May 26, 2010I've been receiving a lot of mail lately urging me to pharyngulate the America Speaking Out site, but when I saw what it was about, I held off…I could tell what kind of self-screwing it was going to be. Here's the premise: the Republicans saw, in their remote and confused sort of way, that the internet (aka "series of tubes") had some real potential, and looked really smart, and maybe if they took advantage of it, they could look a little less yokely and rubish. Seriously. You can't make this stuff up.
Lest you think Republicans are just discovering the Internet, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (…
oracknows | May 25, 2010It figures.
I've written a couple of times about a rally to be held tomorrow in Grant Park that would be hilarious were it not an indication of the threat to public health that the anti-vaccine movement represents. Actually, it is to some extent hilarious, mainly due to the anti-vaccine Poe-worthy "music" that will be the featured entertainment.
It was bad enough that the fair city of Chicago would be blighted with this nonsense--and Andrew Wakefield, too--but now the "American Rally for Personal Rights" (a.k.a. the Autism One anti-vaccine rally featuring disgraced and unethical British…
gregladen | May 25, 2010Erik Paulsen is my representative to the US Congress. This is his first term. He replaced a very centrist Republican (Jim Ramstad) who retired honorably. I worked for the Democratic Party (DFL, we call it in Minnesota) candidate, Ash Madia during that election. Ash was a good candidate but he was inexperienced (which may or may not have been a factor) not quite waspy enough for this very waspy district (which may or may not have been a factor), and although his politics matched those of the district's constituents quite well (at least as well as the long-lasting Jim Ramstad's politics did…
grrlscientist | May 24, 2010tags: Obama Gets Applause at West Point, Fox Erases It?, Fox News, right-wing propaganda, news media, politics, President Obama, West Point Academy, graduation speech, streaming video
President Obama addressed the graduates at West Point Academy on Saturday, saying, "Adversaries want to divide us, but we are united by our support for you -- soldiers who send a clear message that this country is both the land of the free and the home of the brave." His comments about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the threats of terrorism received applause from the graduates, but Fox News apparently didn…
oracknows | May 24, 2010It's been a long time comin'
It's goin' to be a Long Time Gone.
And it appears to be a long,
appears to be a long,
appears to be a long
time, yes, a long, long, long ,long time before the dawn.
- from "Long Time Gone" by Crosby, Stills & Nash
Oh, happy day!
It's finally happened, more than six years after investigative reporter Brian Deer first reported Wakefield's massive conflicts of interest and dubious activities related to his "research" suggesting a link between the measles strain in the MMR vaccine and inflammation of the gut in autistic children, nearly three years after the…
grrlscientist | May 24, 2010tags: The Bechdel Test for Women in Movies, feminism, film, movies, entertainment industry, pop culture, cultural observation, Bechdel Test, Allison Bechdel, streaming video
The Bechdel Test is a simple way to gauge the active presence of female characters in Hollywood films and just how well rounded and complete those roles are. It was created by Allison Bechdel in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For in 1985. It is astonishing the number of popular movies that can't pass this simple test. It demonstrates how little women's complex and interesting lives are underrepresented or non existent…
catdynamics | May 23, 2010song by Tim Miller, for middle America
h/t < HREF="http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/">CR
grrlscientist | May 23, 2010tags: Scientology, SeaOrg, cults, religion, mind control, offbeat, weird, L Ron Hubbard, A Look at Scientology's Secret Base, Twin Peaks, AnonOrange, Angry Gay Pope, streaming video
The Twin Peaks base houses a vault full of Scientology's precious scripture. It's also a place to hide if WWIII breaks out. And it's a place where celebrities can come and escape. But judging by all the high fences and UltraBarrier, it's also a prison camp. Protesters AnonOrange and the Angry Gay Pope pay them a visit, seeking missing cultists Shelly Miscavige and Heber Jentz. Instead, they meet cultists Sarah…
grrlscientist | May 22, 2010tags: Scientology, SeaOrg, cults, religion, mind control, offbeat, weird, L Ron Hubbard, Scarlett Hanna, Australian Broadcasting Company, streaming video
Scarlett Hanna, the daughter of the president of the Church of Scientology in Australia, speaks out against the organization in this eye-opening interview with the Australian Broadcasting Company.
illconsidered | May 22, 2010Roy Spencer, darling of the climate skeptic community, says he is not very organized, as Phil Jones said of himself, and that
"if you asked me to find original data from 20 years ago I'd have great difficulty too. We just didn't realise in those days how important and controversial this would all become - now it would just all be stored on computer."
This is quoted in a BBC article on the recent Heartland climate conference in New York.
Spencer goes on to say:
"Phil Jones has been looking at climate records for a very long time. Frankly our data set agrees with his, so unless we are all…
clock | May 21, 2010A 1947 movie made by the Department of War - as current today as it was then:
You can download the video or watch it bigger here.
pharyngula | May 21, 2010Cynthia Dunbar, one of the wingnuts on the Texas board of education, is a revolting human being. She delivered a 'prayer' before a meeting that is an excellent example of grandstanding piety. She seems to be lecturing god on American history…her version of American history.
Of course she wasn't actually lecturing god — that entity doesn't exist, and if you believe he does, then it would be an act of hubris to stand there and tell him what to think — but she was instead taking a moment to harangue the committee and audience with her far-right revisionist baloney without risk that someone…
palmd | May 21, 2010I hate writing about politics, but the mainstreaming of racism since the election of Obama makes writing about politics a moral imperative. We'll start with Dr. Rand Paul, who is running for one Kentucky's senate seats. The usual racist dog whistles are apparently too subtle for Paul, which is good. I'd rather a politician be explicit about his bigotry. What I really love about the Paul case is his attempt to make his bigotry an inevitable consequence of his other beliefs. This is good, and I'll tell you why.
Paul says that he disagrees with the parts of the Civil Rights Act that forbid…
pharyngula | May 19, 2010Today is the day for the big protest rally in Austin against the follies of the board of education. Meet at the Texas Education Agency, 1701 Congress Ave., at 1pm. They're also asking that you register your attendance, although I'm sure no one will be turned away if they don't.
pharyngula | May 18, 2010A Republican congressman from Indiana, Mark Souder, is resigning. He's one of those conservative, abstinence-only sorts of politicians who uses family, family, family to flog his politics for him, so it's no surprise that the reason he's quitting is that he got caught with his pants down in an affair.
But sit down, here's the part you will not believe: it was a heterosexual fling! Maybe he should get a medal from his party for confounding expectations.
pharyngula | May 18, 2010It's not all good news: Jonathan Katz may have lost a position, but someone who had much more power to do good keeps his. Our Minnesota governor, Tim Pawlenty, is also a homophobic jerk—he just vetoed a bill that promoted some common decency, giving gay partners a few end-of-life rights and responsibilities, so gay people could make decisions about disposition of the body at the death of a partner, for instance. It was a bill that did not go so far as to legalize gay marriage, but simply acknowledged that grieving gay people ought not to be barred from making decisions about the people they…
pharyngula | May 18, 2010I remember Joycelyn Elders. The woman was appointed to the position of surgeon general, and when asked about masturbation at a conference on AIDS, she replied, "I think that it is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught." It was a perfectly ordinary comment about something nearly everyone does or has done, and she got fired for it, by Bill Clinton. It was part of my disillusionment and disappointment with the Democrats.
Now look who Obama has appointed to a team to assist with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico: Jonathan I. Katz. He's not quite a climate change denialist,…
catdynamics | May 17, 2010you know how sometimes a bank will just decide that it didn't like how the original term of its loan worked out and it will just change the deal to something better?
They can do that, it is all in the fine print.
Now they've done it again
and it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people.
See, in the debacle that was the end of the Icelandic financial system, a lot of things were tried - kinda stuff I am quite sure will never happen in more mature responsible systems in the developed world.
One thing was the need for capital reserves for the banks as losses started to mount.
The simplest…