Politics
illconsidered | February 11, 2010For most of us, the F in FOI stands for "freedom". It seems for Steve McIntyre, it stands for "form letter".
Via Eli Rabett we learn that the Freedom of Information requests (FOI) that are central to the only potentially damnng aspect of the CRU "swifthacking" incident have been released. They can be found here[PDF].
I have not looked at them yet, but Eli points out a very interesting one that begins thus (and we are quoting):
I hereby make a EIR/FOI request in respect to any confidentiality agreements)restricting transmission of CRUTEM data to non-academics involing the following countries…
oracknows | February 10, 2010Well, well, well, well.
I should have know that sooner or later a certain group would weigh in on the trial of Anne Mitchell, RN, whose malicious prosecution is a result of a doctor who peddles woo using his connection with Boss Hogg Winkler County Sheriff Robert L. Roberts to find out who had complained against him and prosecute her criminally, trying to throw her in jail for up to ten years for doing her duty and reporting this doctor's questionable activities. Before I reveal what crank group has weighed in, given that its identity will not come as much, if any, of a surprise, let's just…
drorzel | February 10, 2010The never-ending discussion of whether the Web can or should replace books has shifted into the corners of blogdom that I follow again, with Kevin Drum arguing for more books, Henry Farrell arguing for shorter books, and Jim Henley agreeing with Henry, and expanding it to fiction. They're all at least partly right-- more shorter books would be a good thing.
I do want to pick up on one thing Kevin said, though. He writes:
This is, I grant, a purely personal reaction, but one of my occasional frustrations with the blogosphere is a sense that people sometimes think they can understand complex…
cagapakis | February 10, 2010"The history of any given technology is extraordinarily complex."
--Rob Carlson, Biology is Technology.
Analyzing the history of a technology requires a complex look at the social, economic, and political context in which it emerged, and the reciprocal influences that the developing technology exerts on these factors. Predicting what the future of a technology will be like, how it will affect the economy and understanding the potential risks and payoffs is much much harder. Rob Carlson's new book, Biology is Technology: The Promise, Peril, and New Business of…
oracknows | February 10, 2010While I'm at it blogging about the trial of Anne Mitchell, the nurse who is being maliciously prosecuted for having reported a doctor who hawks serious woo in the form of colloidal silver for H1N1 and who also happens to be buddies with the County Sheriff, I thought it would be worthwhile to post this update from ABC News:
I also want to report report on the latest update I've received from the Texas Nurses Association, which is covering the trial every day:
THANK YOU to everyone who has contributed to the TNA Legal Defense Fund in support of Anne Mitchell. A number of donations have come…
oracknows | February 9, 2010Remember how I've been following the story of two Texas nurses who were fired and prosecuted on trumped up charges, first in September and then a couple of days ago as the case went to trial? Of course you do. I made it very, very plain that I view this malicious prosecution to be a horrific miscarriage of justice that will have a potentially grave chilling effect on nurses who witness physician misconduct and want to report it. After all, Anne Mitchell, RN and Vickilyn Galle, RN found themselves facing jail for doing nothing more than living up to their professional code of ethics when they…
pharyngula | February 9, 2010Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland made a few more videos of me babbling before I left, and has posted them to the website. I'm terrible in them — no fault to Michael, I was just worn out and burned out on the last night of my trip. You can poke fun at me if you want.
The interesting thing about them, though, is that they were made in the Oonagh Young gallery in Dublin, which is currently hosting an exhibit of blasphemous art, in blatant defiance of the blasphemy laws. Everything in there is offensive to someone; the exhibits mock religion and religious beliefs with words and pictures.
The…
pharyngula | February 9, 2010Grassroots action can do wonderful things. Voters in Don McLeroy's district in Texas are organizing an ad campaign and are looking for contributions to help air radio ads opposing McLeroy's candidacy: as they say, "The ads will target moderate republicans who realize that to compete globally in the 21st century Texas needs smart students who are well educated, critical thinkers," which is exactly the right approach to take. We need to mobilize the sensible conservatives and get them to realize that their continued entanglement with raving nutbags has been a formula for short-term electoral…
pharyngula | February 8, 2010Some guy named Gerard Alexander has an opinion piece in the Washington Post titled "Why are liberals so condescending?" I will say one thing in its favor: it gets to its point quickly and clearly in the first few sentences.
Every political community includes some members who insist that their side has all the answers and that their adversaries are idiots. But American liberals, to a degree far surpassing conservatives, appear committed to the proposition that their views are correct, self-evident, and based on fact and reason, while conservative positions are not just wrong but illegitimate,…
pharyngula | February 8, 2010Sarah Palin gave a $100K speech to a convention of teabagging wankers, she faced a few pre-screened, prepared questions, and what did she need? She had to have the answers written on her hand ahead of time!
Here's what gets me the most, though. She didn't have a cheat sheet of wonky little details, stuff that would be hard to keep straight and important to get exactly right. No, she had to write down the three most important goals for a conservative majority. What, she's shaky on that?
EnergyBudget cutsTaxLift AmericansSpirits
Man, next time I go off to give a talk, I'm going to get a…
catdynamics | February 7, 2010There was a truly weird advert or contributed op-ed on the radio a couple of days ago.
Some conservative anti-tax guy, and a left-wing editor had joined in calling for a US "Question Time", a la the UK "Question Time" in Parliament.
ie the President doing questions and answers with Congress, formally.
Inspired, in part, I suspect, by Obama's performance against the congressional republicans in a question and answer session, though conservative dude brought out the old teleprompter canard against Obama in explaining why he thought it was a good idea.
There is just one slight problem: "…
oracknows | February 7, 2010About five months ago, I blogged about a true miscarriage of justice, the sort of thing that should never, ever happen. In brief, it was the story of two nurses who, disturbed at how a local doctor was peddling his dubious "herbal" concoctions in the emergency room of the local hospital when he came in to see patients, reported him to the authorities. Moreover, they had gone up the chain of command, first complaining to hospital authorities. After nothing happened for months, they decided to report the physician, Dr. Rolando Arafiles, Jr., to the Texas Medical Board because they honestly…
catdynamics | February 7, 2010The Yorkshire Ranter analyses the Climate Research Unity coverage in your friendly neighbourhood grauniad.
Robert P. points us to an analysis of the crack itself - kinda blah. Basically trawling through a misconfigured server by a script kiddie.
drorzel | February 7, 2010My talk at Maryland last Thursday went pretty well-- the impending Snowpocalypse kept the audience down, as people tried to fit in enough work to compensate for the Friday shutdown, but the people who were there seemed to like it, and asked good questions. If you weren't there, but want to know what I talked about, here are the slides on SlideShare:
Talking to My Dog About Science: Why Public Communication of Science Matters and How Weblogs Can Help
View more presentations from Chad Orzel.
This flattens out some of the more animation-dependent jokes, but gets you the basic idea. It is, of…
catdynamics | February 4, 2010Penn State has released the preliminary conclusions of its inquiry into the purloined e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia.
Dr Free-Ride provides an excellent discussion
PSU story on the internal inquiry
Full report (pdf)
In the meantime, the Grauniad reports police questioned a UEA scientist about the original cracking of the CRU e-mail archive
There has been considerable external pressure on PSU on this issue, with protests planned by conservative student groups this friday on campus, weather prermitting...
The Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy…
emjohnson | February 4, 2010
Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig has a new article in The Nation entitled "How to Get Our Democracy Back." In the piece he challenges both the Right and the Left on the ineffective means to create real change in this country. Attempts to shrink government by conservatives or to reform government by liberals have been useless because the underlining problem has not been addressed: the power of corporate lobbies that control policy.
In an earlier post (see: The Shadow of Scientific Opinion) I quoted the education reformer and philosopher John Dewey:
[P]olitics is the shadow cast on…
oracknows | February 4, 2010I realize I complain periodically about when I get into what seems to me to be a rut in which I'm writing pretty much only about anti-vaccine lunacy. This is just such a week, when the news on the vaccine front has been coming fast and furious, first with Andrew Wakefield's being found to have behaved unethically and dishonestly by the British General Medical Council, only to be followed up a few days later with the news that the editors of The Lancet had retracted his 1998 paper, the paper that started the MMR scare in the U.K. and launched a thousand autism quacks. Meanwhile, the cranks…
drorzel | February 3, 2010In the wake of recent political developments, there has been a lot of hand-wringing about why Democrats in Congress are so spineless, and have been unable to pass meaningful legislation despite huge majorities. After thinking about my travel plans last night, I think I have the key to the Grand Unified Theory of American politics.
The problem is not that Democratic politicians are uniquely craven, or venal, or anything like that. The problem is Washington, DC.
No, this is not a prelude to some right-wing rant about how the Real America can be found only in states with more livestock than…
pharyngula | February 2, 2010Go sign this petition, too: it asks Obama to recognize Darwin Day on 12 February. Who knows, he might be willing!
A Proclamation
Charles Darwin was the first to propose the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection. On Darwin Day, celebrated on the anniversary of Darwin's birth on February 12, 1809, we celebrate the life and discoveries of Charles Darwin and express gratitude for the enormous benefits that scientific knowledge, acquired through human curiosity and ingenuity, has contributed to the advancement of humanity.
It is sobering to imagine where the human race would be…
cagapakis | February 2, 2010I've had some great suggestions for "Official" State Microbes in comments and via twitter. I'm filling in the map as they come:
So far we have:
Alaska -- Alcanivorax borkumensis for its oil consumption
California -- Ralstonia metallidurans for its gold precipitating qualities (and CA-MRSA as a terrifying runner up)
Illinois -- Penicillium roqueforti for its blue cheese making
Maryland -- Chlamydia trachomatis for UMD research on the bug
Massachusetts -- Escherichia coli for its importance to biotech
New York -- Pseudomonas putida, the first organism to be the subject of a patent case, which…