Politics
emjohnson | March 12, 2010(updated below - Update II - Update III)
CIA peppered bread with LSD in 1951 Image: The TelegraphYesterday the UK newspaper The Telegraph published an article revealing that a mysterious 1951 outbreak of mass hysteria in France was actually the result of a secret experiment performed by the Central Intelligence Agency when they spiked the village's bread with LSD:
The mystery of Le Pain Maudit (Cursed Bread) still haunts the inhabitants of Pont-Saint-Esprit, in the Gard, southeast France.
On August 16, 1951, the inhabitants were suddenly racked with frightful hallucinations of…
edyong | March 12, 2010This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science.
For all the millions that are poured into electoral campaigns, a voter's choice can be influenced by the subtlest of signals. Israeli scientists have found that even subliminal exposure to national flags can shift a person's political views and even who they vote for. They managed to affect the attitudes of volunteers to the Israeli-Palestine conflict by showing them the Israeli flag for just 16 thousandths of a second, barely long enough for the image to consciously register.
These results are…
oracknows | March 12, 2010My first big splash in the blogosphere will have occurred five years ago in June, when I first discovered the utter wingnuttery that is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. It was then that I wrote a little bit of that not-so-Respectful Insolence that you've come to know and love entitled Salon.com flushes its credibility down the toilet, a perfect description of an article by RFK, Jr. published in Salon.com and simultaneously in Rolling Stone entitled Deadly Immunity. As I look back, I realize that, as widely linked to and discussed as it was at the time, that post, arguably more than any other, was the…
catdynamics | March 11, 2010 So... these credit default swap thingies,
they pay out if some credit instrument goes bad, like a bond issue,
and, famously, financial companies buy them as side bets hedges against financial "events", including betting against instruments they are promoting to clients, and deals they have no involvement in at all
and they are not regulated
Soooooo........
countries can play this game also, right?
So, Iceland owes a few $billion or so.
It faces sovereign default in 2011 unless a miracle happens.
CDS spreads right now are about 5-6% for Icelandic bonds, which is huge, yet way too small - 1-…
pharyngula | March 11, 2010Constance McMillen is a high school student in a small town in Itawamba County, Mississippi. She's also gay.
I think you can guess where this is going. I can see the flames of someone's personal hell from here.
It looks like Ms McMillen is a very confident person, though, so I'd guess that her situation has made her stronger. She decide to attend the high school prom with her girlfriend; Ms McMillen was planning to wear a tuxedo. Good for her: she's proud of who she is, and was going to be respectable and decorous about the issue. The flames are licking a lot higher, you can tell already.
I…
emjohnson | March 10, 2010It is a common argument by those who are opposed to evolution's implication for religious belief to label Darwin as a social Darwinist and a racist. Adrian Desmond and James Moore's book Darwin's Sacred Cause has gone a long way towards dispelling any claims that Darwin sought to justify black inferiority (in fact, as they show, countering such arguments was an important part of Darwin's work). However, the claim that Darwin inspired social Darwinism is a persistent argument and those that proffer it will stoop to any level in order to discredit him. As I pointed out in my series…
aardvarchaeology | March 10, 2010A recurring theme here on Aard is my complaints about how useless certain kinds of higher education are if you want a job. For a change, let's take a look at what kind of degree is most likely to get you a job in Sweden over the coming decade. The Swedish National Agency for Higher Education has just published a study that offers data on this very issue. Here are the degrees where there will be a labour shortage in Sweden for the foreseeable future!
Medical laboratory scientist, Sw. biomedicinsk analytiker
High-school teacher of manual skills for craftspeople such as carpenters and plumbers…
grrlscientist | March 10, 2010tags: Obama Now Experiencing Presidential Puberty, cultural observation, social commentary, news report, health care reform, parody, satire, humor, fucking hilarious, television, Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert, Ezra Klein, streaming video
Stephen Colbert interviews Ezra Klein, who explains the reconciliation process that Democrats need to pass health care reform and what Republicans can do to drag it out indefinitely.
The Colbert Report
Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Action Center - Health Care Bill - Ezra Klein
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes
Political…
awild | March 9, 2010Watch beetle guru Anthony Cognato trying to deal with Fox News ignoramus Tucker Carlson:
It isn't news that Fox News isn't, um, news. Nor is it news that Fox can't grasp the benefits of public investment in knowledge creation- perhaps because actual knowledge is anathema to their business model. But I digress.
I'm going to complain instead that Cognato missed out (or was edited out) on a major talking point to counter Fox's bluster. Fox pretends Cognato just sidled up to suckle at the stimulus teat while the getting was good. A university welfare queen, or something. But that's simply…
pharyngula | March 9, 2010Roy Ashburn, California legislator, opponent of gay equality, unwilling to even recognize gay rights activists, has admitted at the age of 55 that he is gay.
That is so sad. To live a half-century in denial, to be so steeped in self-loathing that you build a career on stamping down people just like yourself, and to only now wake up and confront the truth…assuming he lives into his 70s, that's an admission that two thirds to three quarters of your life was spent living a lie.
This one life is all you've got, Roy. Live it by being true to yourself.
oracknows | March 8, 2010I haven't written much about this before, at least not in this context, but vaccine scares are nothing new, nor is execrably fear mongering journalism about vaccines. Those of you who read Paul Offit's Autism's False Prophets or Arthur Allen's Vaccine probably know about a particularly egregious example of both that occurred in the early 1980s and concerned the DTP (diptheria-pertussis-tetanus) vaccine. In 1982, the local NBC affiliate in Washington, DC aired a special report entitled DPT: Vaccine Roulette. Indeed, Vaccine Roulette was the prototype of the muck-raking, sensationalistic sort…
pharyngula | March 8, 2010She's as funny as a clown's pratfall, but she's also as fascinating as a head wound. I hope she'll vanish from the public discourse, but here I am, at the same time gawking over her latest inanities.
Remember how she was caught looking at really trivial notes written on her hand? She's got a new excuse. God does it, too, and if it's good enough for him, it's good enough for Sarah. It's in the Bible, in Isaiah 49:
15Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. 16Behold, I have graven thee…
catdynamics | March 8, 2010Já, maður reddar þessu bara einhvernveginn...
Diplomatic cable form Reykjavik to Washington - Jan. 2010
UK/NL offer to ISK re: Icesave (PDF)
ISK negotiating team report (PDF)
h/t Evil Henry Paulson on Calculated Risk
j7uy5 | March 8, 2010A few days ago, there was a minor ripple in the political world, when a
media person tried to get John McCain to say that Obama is a
socialist. Even though McCain had hinted at that several times
during the campaign, he would never state directly that Obama is a
socialist. Well,
href="http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,587772,00.html">he still
won't (as reported by Fox):
DAVID GREGORY, HOST, "MEET THE PRESS": Do you think that
goes too far? Is it a socialist agenda from the president?
SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-ARIZ.: There is no doubt in my mind America's a
right-of-center nation, and this…
oracknows | March 8, 2010If there's one law that (most) supporters of science-based medicine detest and would love to see repealed, it's the Dietary Supplement and Health Act of 1994 (DSHEA). The reason is that this law, arguably more than almost anything else, allowed for the proliferation of supplements and claims made for these supplements that aren't based in science. In essence, the DSHEA created a new class of regulated entity called dietary supplements. At the same time, it liberalized the rules for information and claims that the supplement manufacturers can transmit to the public and while at the same time…
grrlscientist | March 7, 2010tags: scientology, religion, cults, mind control, Thetan, silly, offbeat, beliefs, Xenu, L Ron Hubbard, television, BBC, streaming video
Speaking of Mormonism and other cults .. erm, religions .. I thought I'd give you a peek at Scientology. In this television report, hidden cameras go inside the London Scientology Organization to expose their inner workings. It seems that even the Mormons could learn a few mind-control techniques from the Scientologists.
I find it really depressing to think that one Scientology survivor exchanged one form of mind control for another: after he escaped…
grrlscientist | March 6, 2010tags: children, religion, cults, mind control, television, silly, offbeat, beliefs, funny, education, streaming video
This amusing video is from a British TV show, Outnumbered. In this clip, young Ben asks the vicar some awkward questions about Jesus -- questions that most religious people have been asked at one time or another.
emjohnson | March 5, 2010In light of the Oscars this Sunday I thought those of you who missed it would enjoy my review of District 9 (which is up for four Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay).
Inexplicably, a UFO appears over one of Earth's remote cities. Hovering a few hundred meters above the terrified citizens, a government mission to board the craft is executed only to find the strange beings living in disease and desperation. A decision is made to save their lives and relocate the aliens to the city's outskirts. In that moment, what seemed to be a compassionate action develops…
emjohnson | March 5, 2010Nuuchaanulth Ceremonial Curtainfrom the Family of Naasḳuu-isaḳs of the Hupacasath Nation
Human beings around the world honor their dead and the memories of their relatives. We have enacted special rituals related to the handling of human remains from the sacred funeral pyres of India to the professionalized aseptic embalming practices of the United States. Even more so, the treatment of the dead by outsiders is something that can generate outrage. Consider the media controversy when Al-Jazeera aired footage of coalition soldiers who had been killed by Iraqi militants or the hanging of…
razib | March 4, 2010My posts below on IQ, politics & religion resulted in a fair amount of blogospheric response, and weird comments. A few quick points
1) I think results on standardized tests are informative and correlate reasonably with a host of life outcomes. If you don't think they do, that's fine, I don't particularly care. But just do note that your dismissal of IQ carries no weight with me. Additionally, though I believe IQ to be substantially heritable, even that's not necessarily important in this case (since I am not focusing on evolution). Rather, realized test scores correlate with other…