Social Commentary
j7uy5 | December 9, 2006Flying carp, also called Asian Silver Carp (among others), present a
significant risk to homeland security. The fish can grow to
50, even 100 pounds. Propellers on boats prompt the fish to
jump out of the water, sometimes into boats, sometimes striking boaters.
A video of this is available at the NPR site,
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5542199">here.
The video shows the carp jumping into the boat, although it
does not show anyone getting hit.
Hypophthalmichthys
molitrix
The NPR story, link above, mentions that these carp are an invasive
species,…
j7uy5 | November 22, 2006"There is nothing which I dread so much as a division
of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader,
and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble
apprehension, it to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our
Constitution." -John Adams
Source,
found at The
Center for Michigan, self-described as: a new "think and do"
tank, seeking far-reaching, moderate policy solutions to the state's
deep economic and political problems.
j7uy5 | November 14, 2006News reports suggest that the new Democratic majority is planning to
try to change the course of US environmental policy:
href="http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DEMOCRATS_ENVIRONMENT">Democrats
to Stress Environmental Issues
By JOHN HEILPRIN
Nov
14, 2:42 PM EST
WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Democrats who will
steer environment issues in the new Congress are polar opposites of
their Republican predecessors, but changing environmental policy is
like turning around an aircraft carrier - it's very slow...
In other news, the USS Intrepid is still stuck in
the mud
in the Hudson…
j7uy5 | November 9, 2006
href="http://www.allhatnocattle.net/1-13-04_revenge_bush_oneill.htm">
Often I see people who have been admitted to a psychiatric hospital
after hitting
bottom. They have nothing. At first, it seems
difficult to know what to do. The guiding idea, though, is
always the same: you have to establish a foundation. That
means a safe place to stay, food, water, clothing, etc.
(By the way, the photo has nothing to do with psychiatric patients.)
We can spend a lot of time trying to figure out whether to put the
person on Geodon, or Abilify, or whatever. But the fact is,
the foundation…
j7uy5 | November 6, 2006The annual
href="http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/cpi_2006/cpi_table">Corruption
Perceptions Index is out, and the USA placed 20th.
Not too bad, except last year, we were 17th. At
least we did not fall as far as
href="http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2006/11/7/nation/15937303&sec=nation">Malaysia,
which slipped by 5 spots, to 44th. (I'm not picking on
Malaysia; it's just that their article came out on top in the Google
News listing of articles on the subject.)
It is difficult to know what to make of this. My main point
in posting it is to remind by…
j7uy5 | November 6, 2006
href="http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20061104/cleisure/cleisure1.html">Elevating
trivia over substance
published: Saturday | November 4, 2006
There is a deepening triviality in the conduct of American politics,
which should be a matter of great concern to the citizens of the United
States. In this process, form trumps substance and minor side issues
are often the subject of long and tedious debate while fundamental
matters get shunted to the sidelines. It is a kind of politics that
finds congruence and context in this growing American notion of
'infotainment' and well-suited…
j7uy5 | November 6, 2006The people who support this policy are not only heartless, they are
idiots.
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/washington/03medicaid.html?ei=5090&en=12f703522d8d3a89&ex=1320210000&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1162703532-so0p8YsoJEPd7rc82J6fjg">
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/washington/03medicaid.html?ei=5090&en=12f703522d8d3a89&ex=1320210000&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1162703532-so0p8YsoJEPd7rc82J6fjg">Medicaid
Wants Citizenship Proof for Infant Care
By ROBERT PEAR
Published:…
j7uy5 | October 28, 2006I knew the economic news was bad, but I did not know how bad, until I
saw
href="http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8079134">this
article in The Economist, thanks to a
href="http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2006/10/the_economist_g.html">link
from Brad DeLong.
EVERYONE knows that America's economy is slowing.
Thanks to
the bursting of the housing bubble, overall GDP growth has fallen back
sharply. The biggest short-term uncertainty for the world economy is
whether American consumers stop spending and drag the country into
recession. But beyond the business…
j7uy5 | October 26, 2006A bunch of others beat me to it (
href="http://scienceblogs.com/grrlscientist/2006/10/lush_rumball_an_ignoramus.php">1
href="http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2006/10/despicable_rhetoric_from_rush_limbaugh_1.php">2
href="http://scienceblogs.com/bushwells/2006/10/rush_limbaugh_radio_pundit_or.php">3),
so I did not blog about Limbaugh's offensive diatribe against Michael
J. Fox's advertisement. But Limbaugh's latests statements are
sufficiently offensive that I want to take a moment to respond.
As described in the
href="http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20651099-…
j7uy5 | October 23, 2006I just love this cover. I haven't actually read the magazine
in over 30 years, but this cover is a gem.
j7uy5 | October 17, 2006Answer: They both look the other way.
A recent article in Wired details how Kevin Poulsen
caught a registered sex offender by scanning MySpace
profiles.
href="http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,71948-0.html?tw=wn_culture_5">MySpace
Predator Caught by Code
...I've been invited here to witness the end-game of a police
investigation that grew from 1,000 lines of computer code I wrote and
executed some five months earlier. The automated script searched
MySpace's 1 million-plus profiles for registered sex offenders -- and
soon found one that was back on the prowl for seriously…
j7uy5 | October 5, 2006Rupert Murdoch is a damn liar. Is there a journalistic board
of ethics? Can Fox's broadcasting license be revoked?
src="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/upload/2006/10/foxoreillymarkfoleydem100306uy5.jpg"
height="300" width="302">
I know
href="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/10/fox_turns_foley_into_a_democra.php">Ed
and
href="http://scienceblogs.com/smoothpebbles/2006/10/in_the_fair_balanced_view_mark.php">David
are already all over this, but it is just so offensive, I had to join
the echo chamber.
j7uy5 | October 3, 2006The best commentary I've seen so far about predatorgate is in the
href="http://www.bangornews.com/news/t/viewpoints.aspx?articleid=141292&zoneid=34">Bangor
Daily News:
Tuesday, October 3, 2006 - Bangor Daily News
As deplorable as former Rep. Mark Foley’s advances at pages
are, if Congress uses the salacious details of this episode to hide its
own sorry oversight record, in this and other recent situations, those
teen pages would be misused again. Nothing hides other faults like
possible sexual impropriety of an elected official.
The FBI is now looking into the alleged actions…
j7uy5 | September 27, 2006On the way home from work, one day last week, I
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6096545">heard
some excerpts from the book,
href="http://www.bordersstores.com/search/title_detail.jsp?id=56030755">Imperial
Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone,
by Rajiv Chandrasekaran. (Chandrasekaran also has some articles in the
Washington Post, here:
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193.html">1
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2006/08/28/DI2006082800508.html">2.)
It's a…
j7uy5 | September 23, 2006There is no additional comment needed; the study speaks for itself:
href="http://today.reuters.com/news/ArticleNews.aspx?type=domesticnews&storyID=2006-09-20T191504Z_01_N20379527_RTRUKOC_0_US-LIFE-CHEATING.xml">Business
grad students most likely to cheat: study
Wed Sep 20, 2006
Reuters
BOSTON (Reuters) - Graduate business students in the United States and
Canada are more likely to cheat on their work than their counterparts
in other academic fields, the author of a research paper said on
Wednesday.
The study of 5,300 graduate students in the United States and Canada
found…
j7uy5 | September 22, 2006Funny how sometimes things fall into place. Yesterday, I
wrote a post about DeVos' promotion of the teaching of Intelligent
Design/Creationism. I also heard that
href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060922/wr_nm/chavez_dc_1">Hugo
Chavez' mention of Noam Chomsky's book,
href="http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbninquiry.asp?pwb=1&ean=9780805076882">Hegemony
or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance,
resulted in instant promotion of the book to bestseller status.
That brought to mind the recent
href="http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/09/…
j7uy5 | September 21, 2006When I came home from work, and saw the headline: DeVos Backs
Discussion of Intelligent Design, I knew I wanted to blog it.
Alas, I get the afternoon paper.
href="http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2006/09/devos_and_intelligent_design.php#more">Ed
Brayton gets the
href="http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060920/NEWS99/60920015">morning
paper, and had already beaten me to it. Not only
that, but
href="http://scienceblogs.com/mikethemadbiologist/2006/09/the_republican_war_on_science_1.php">Mike
and
href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2006/09/…
j7uy5 | September 18, 2006The rest of the world would be laughing at us about this, if we did not have nuclear weapons.
j7uy5 | September 3, 2006A couple of days ago, I heard this
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5746173">interview
on NPR, with Steve Inskeep. Inskeep was
interviewing
href="http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/09/01/ap/national/mainD8JRRH080.shtml">Spc.
Mark Wilkerson, just before he turned himself in for having
gone AWOL.
Wilkerson served one tour of duty in Iraq, but refused to go back.
He sought CO status, but was told it would take a
long time before his status would be reviewed. Apparently, he
was told to go ahead with his redeployment, and they would let him know
later…