Politics
clock | May 17, 2010
New podcast and forum at PRI World Science:
Listen to a story by reporter Laura Starecheski, followed by our interview with Ethan Watters.
Our guest in the Science Forum is journalist Ethan Watters.
His latest book is Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche.
"America is homogenizing the way the world goes mad," Watters writes. He contends that Americans are exporting their view of mental illness to the rest of the world.
Watters says culture influences not only how people deal with mental disorders but how mental disorders manifest themselves. Yet those cultural differences…
clock | May 16, 2010
I got this video from Orac's blog where an interesting comment thread is developing. This also goes against those who lament the "echo chambers" but those tend to be the same people who write HeSaidSheSaid articles every day - they live in a binary world where only "who wins the two-horse horserace" matters and anything more sophisticated than that is 'elitist' and to be ignored as 'outside of mainstream' which - the mainstream - they, the savvy Villagers with nice hairdos on TV, get to define.
pharyngula | May 16, 2010Have you heard about the Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act?
Meanwhile, the bill recently introduced by Joe Lieberman and John McCain -- the so-called "Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act" -- now has 9 co-sponsors, including the newly elected Scott Brown. It's probably the single most extremist, tyrannical and dangerous bill introduced in the Senate in the last several decades, far beyond the horrific, habeas-abolishing Military Commissions Act. It literally empowers the President to imprison anyone he wants in his sole discretion by…
pharyngula | May 14, 2010Once upon a time, there was a bill moving through congress that was a good bill. It increased funding for research, and for science and math education. It had bipartisan support and was sailing through.
There is a villain to this story, though. Some congresscreatures — Republicans, led by a fool from Texas — didn't like the good little bill. It's not clear why. Maybe because it was going to cost some money. Maybe just because they don't like that science and education stuff.
So they hatched a plan, taking advantage of a little rule. They made a motion to recommit, stopping the bill in its…
pharyngula | May 14, 2010That insane tea-baggin’ Maine GOP convention did something else of interest. Some of the Republican caucuses were held in a local school, including the 8th grade classroom of teacher Paul Clifford. He returned to the classroom after the weekend to discover that the Republicans had indulged themselves in remodeling the classroom.
For seven years, Clifford has had "a collage-type poster depicting the history of the U.S. labor movement" on his classroom door. He uses it "to teach his students how to incorporate collages into their annual project on Norman Rockwell's historic 'Four Freedoms'…
ddobbs | May 14, 2010
A Times story this morning reports that, according to both documents and scientists in the US Minerals Management Service (MMS), the MMS routinely silenced safety and environmental warnings from staff in order to grant permits for even huge, high-risk drilling permits, including the BP rig that blew.
It's a good (and nauseating) story, and I'm tempted to say it's timely. Yet this story would have been a lot more timely before the rig blew, no? As I read it, I wondered why I had not read it weeks ago, when the Obama administration started proposing an expansion of drilling off US coasts.…
eklemetti | May 13, 2010
An aerial view of Eyjafjallajökull erupting on May 11, 2010, with the extent of the black ash from the eruption on GÃgjökull clearly evident, along with the cracks in the glacier near the lava flow. Photo from the Icelandic Met Office, by Sigurlaug Hjaltadóttir.
Since this past weekend's disruptions due to Eyjafjallajökull, the air over Europe has cleared and most of the airports in Spain, Portugal and Germany (along with those in Morocco) have reopened. The current ash advisory by the London VAAC looks like it will only effect transatlantic flights and Iceland itself, with the ash cloud…
oracknows | May 13, 2010One of the biggest examples of either self-delusion or lying that emanates from the anti-vaccine movement is the oh-so-pious and indignant denials that inevitably follow from its members and leaders whenever someone like me has the temerity to point out that they are, in fact, anti-vaccine. The disingenuously angry denials usually take a form something like this, "I'm not anti-vaccine; I'm pro-safe vaccine." (This is Jenny McCarthy's favorite variant of this gambit). Another variant is for anti-vaccine activists to claim that they aren't anti-vaccine at all; they're just "concerned" that…
catdynamics | May 12, 2010Útrásar Víkingar - that is what we called them, the new Masters of the Universe who set forth from Iceland in the last decade to conquer the new world of finance.
As with their predecessors, once off-shore, their enrichment schemes ended up involving more looting and raping than maybe was really essential, and as with their predecessors, they brought the aggro back home with them.
It is a hard concept to translate, best I could come up with was "Sally Vikings" - in the sense of how a besieged fortress might send out a raiding party, no intent to conquer permanently, and not really to break…
palmd | May 12, 2010You know that big oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? It turns out that the folks who drilled it, the folks who pumped it, and the folks who worked on it weren't at fault---at least according to their sworn congressional testimony. And I sure as hell know it's not my fault. I mean, I do commute to work alone in my car, and I do like my air conditioner. And my livelihood depends to a certain extent on an auto industry whose mileage standards haven't really changed in the last few decades. But it's not my fault.
Anything as complex as drilling for oil a mile under the ocean thousands of times…
pharyngula | May 12, 2010The other day, I posted about the smear campaign in Alabama against Bradley Byrne, which tried to impugn the man by saying, "Byrne supported teaching evolution…said the Bible was only partially true". Byrne won a speck of sympathy from me, despite the fact that he's a Republican, for at least standing up for the evidence.
That sympathy is gone now. Byrne has come back with a rebuttal.
• I believe the Bible is the Word of God and that every single word of it is true. From the earliest parts of this campaign, a paraphrased and incomplete parsing of my words have been knowingly used to insinuate…
pharyngula | May 12, 2010The wingnuts had a party in DC! It was called May Day: A Cry to God for a Nation in Distress, and consisted of a small mob of prayerful crazies listening to people at the microphone beg God to force Hollywood to make more movies like Gibson's Passion, and by the way, make sure that hussy Dakota Fanning isn't in them. It's an odd way to help a nation in distress, by asking for more torture porn.
Alas, a Minnesotan was also there, and she embarrassed us with this little speech:
And father, we repent that we have not used godly wisdom when we have elected officials into elected positions in our…
grrlscientist | May 12, 2010tags: A Sneak-Peak at UK Conservatives, Not the Nine O'clock News, UK politics, conservative politics, immigrants, racism, comedy, humor, funny, satire, parody, television, Rowan Atkison, streaming video
This British comedy reminds me of conservative politics (and politicians) in the USA, especially those in Arizona. Amazing how little things change, isn't it?
This was the second episode from the first season of Not the nine O'clock News (1979).
catdynamics | May 11, 2010As you may recall, over 18 months ago Iceland lead the world into a minor financial crisis, with the rest of y'all toddling along later.
Now Iceland takes the lead again, as a Special Prosecutor issues some indictments and the perps start walking...
In the autumn of 2008 all three Icelandic investment banks collapsed in quick succession, followed by the currency, financial system and the government.
Exciting times.
The root cause was that the banks had essentially looted the entire economy, while overleveraging their banks, fakes capital through circle-jerk loans, and given out bonuses and…
stoat | May 11, 2010Broon has gone, for good this time, unlike yesterday's fake resignation. He appears to have achieved one thing: yesterday's last-gasp offer to the LD appears to have forced the Tories to offer a referendum on AV.
However, it wasn't enough to tempt the LD's to him, and his own party was iffy, and it wouldn't have been a majority. So today he said "bugger this for a game of soldiers" and pissed off. Only he wrapped it up in a dignified speech.
My own keyinsight (hexapodia!) is so-far unarticulated by anyone else, and is hidden over the fold.
OK, so I think that this is Broon's last piece of…
illconsidered | May 11, 2010Some old news here and some new, all of it about my favorite climate contrarian, Lord Cristopher Monkton. He is my favorite because he is a clown and the more he is put forth as denialism's "Septical Champion" the better.
First the old news. You may recall Tim Lambert debated Cristopher Monckton in Sydney a couple of months ago. Well that debate is up on YouTube in full. It is a 15 part playlist, but Tim tells us his presentation is part 3 and 4. I watched most of it and it is worth the time.
I think it is kind of amusing, and revealing, that Monkton claims some rather intimate knowledge…
oracknows | May 11, 2010In yesterday's post, in which I discussed the President's Cancer Panel report on environmental toxins and cancer, I criticized one of the reactions to it, specifically that of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH), even referencing a truly hilarious Daily Show clip in which Jeff Stier, Associate Director of ACSH didn't exactly come off looking particularly good. (Let's just leave it at that.) Apparently my criticism didn't sit too well with Gilbert Ross, MD, the Medical/Executive Director of ACSH, because he actually showed up in the comments, apparently wounded that I would point…
pharyngula | May 10, 2010We shouldn't pick on the South all the time, so here is a tale out of the eminently Yankee state of Maine. The Maine Republican party recently met to establis their official platform, and ended up getting hijacked by the tea-baggers. Their new platform contains all kinds of nutty demands.
The document calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve, demands an investigation of "collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth," suggests the adoption of "Austrian Economics," declares that "'Freedom of Religion' does not mean 'freedom from…