WhatEVAH!
mikethemadbiologist | February 5, 2008On his campaign website, Romney has listed ten incidents that supposedly mean McCain is unstable. Let's review them:
1. Defending His Amnesty Bill, Sen. McCain Lost His Temper And "Screamed, 'F*ck You!' At Texas Sen. John Cornyn" (R-TX). "Presidential hopeful John McCain - who has been dogged for years by questions about his volcanic temper - erupted in an angry, profanity-laced tirade at a fellow Republican senator, sources told The Post yesterday. In a heated dispute over immigration-law overhaul, McCain screamed, 'F--- you!' at Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who had been raising concerns about…
mikethemadbiologist | January 11, 2008The sound you're hearing is the heads of everyone who cares about civil liberties going BOOM! According to the AP, the telephone companies cut off the FISA wiretap programs when they weren't paid on time:
Telephone companies have cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau's repeated failures to pay phone bills on time.
A Justice Department audit released Thursday blamed the lost connections on the FBI's lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000.
In at…
mikethemadbiologist | December 3, 2007I received the most bizarre spam email. It claims to be from the company that makes Guinness:
Guinness Online Lottery.
Diageo Ireland
P.O. Box 1759,
Killorglin, Co. Kerry
Irelandwww.guinness.com
THE GUINNESS COMPANY OFFICIAL PRIZE NOTIFICATION
We are pleased to inform you of the result of the just
concluded draws held by Guinness Company. Your E-mail was
among the 5 Lucky winners who won £2,500,000.00 GBP
(Two Million, Five Hundred Thousand, British Pound Sterling's)
each in the Guinness Company online Lottery. This draw is being
organized to enhance awareness and publicity of the…
mikethemadbiologist | October 31, 2007Not only does Conservapedia, which is like Wikipedia but stupid, spew idiocy about evolution, have some true hackery about evolution, but this part, pulled from the main page, says it all:
(here's a full-sized image complete with cheesy soundtrack)
Masterpiece? Are conservatives trying to destroy what culture the U.S. does possess?
Help Public School Kids by Funding my Challenge at DonorsChoose
mikethemadbiologist | October 31, 2007Well, I don't know if it's the best, but it's pretty damn cool. This evening if you're in Boston, you should swing by 261 Marlborough Street (Back Bay). They always put on a good display, and this year looks to be no different.
mikethemadbiologist | October 11, 2007
It's bad enough that a plane which previously made non-stop flights from the continental U.S. to Guantanamo Bay crashed in the Yucatan with tons of cocaine aboard. What's even more ridiculous is the 'cover' story.
The plane was owned by Donna Blue Aircraft which is in the business of "Aircraft Consultance and Sales."
According to Boing Boing:
Mad Cow Morning News visited the owners of the plane, "Donna Blue Aircraft Inc" of Coconut Beach FL., and discovered that it's an "empty office suite with a blank sign out front."
There was no sign of Donna Blue Aircraft, Inc., at the address listed at…
mikethemadbiologist | September 6, 2007"More vomit! Damn it, I need more vomit!"
Actually, before I get to this post about people who believe in demonic possession, I have a very simple question. If you believe in demons, isn't that almost akin to worshiping them? After all, we do refer to believers as God-fearing people. Anyway, I've been meaning to post this description of the casting out of demons from Joe Bageant's Deer Hunting With Jesus (italics mine; "Brother Mike" refers to the author's brother):
After the worship service, I approach Brother Mike about exorcism: "I gotta ask you, Brother Mike," I said, "do you cast out…
mikethemadbiologist | August 20, 2007Josh Marshall describes his correspondence with a journalism professor who bashed blogs this weekend in The LA Times. Marshall writes:
There's certainly no end of blog pontificating fueled by puffed-up self-assertion rather than facts. But Skube's piece reads with a vagueness that suggests he has less than a passing familiarity with the topic at issue....
Now, whether we do any quality reporting at TPM is a matter of opinion. And everyone is entitled to theirs. So against my better judgment, I sent Skube an email telling him that I found it hard to believe he was very familiar with TPM if he…
mikethemadbiologist | August 15, 2007One of the things that's hammered into your head as a baby scientist is the importance of running controls. Typically, you run a positive control--a 'gamed' experiment where you know what the outcome should be and which tells you that the experiment is working--and a negative control which should not give any results at all (e.g., a PCR reaction without any DNA) to make sure there's no contamination or other spurious results. It's always puzzled me why people don't like to run controls because if you don't do the controls, you'll have to redo the experiment, which is a lot more work than if…
mikethemadbiologist | August 9, 2007At least according to an internet quiz:
You Are 95% Feminist
You are a total feminist. This doesn't mean you're a man hater (in fact, you may be a man).
You just think that men and women should be treated equally. It's a simple idea but somehow complicated for the world to put into action.
Are You a Feminist?
Of course, the internets tell me that I'm also 55% Irish:
You're 55% Irish
You're very Irish, and most likely from Ireland.
(And if you're not, you should be!)
How Irish Are You?
That might have something to do with my having had Guinness for breakfast....
mikethemadbiologist | August 7, 2007Maybe the crazy people are out to get me after I exposed Giuliani's Mistress of Woo. One of the interesting things about working at a health-oriented non-profit is that you occasionally receive letters and emails from people who feel the overwhelming need to convince you of their Overarching Pangalactic Theory of Everything. Here's one recent missive from Visionary Positive Art, called "Open to Question"--as far as I can tell, it's about the Virgin Birth:
Is the Virgin Mary the answer to salvation? Can a virgin have a child without having intercourse?
Many years ago, a newspaper published…
mikethemadbiologist | July 21, 2007Again. ScienceBlogling razib discusses some noises various biologists are making about levels of selection (I've touched on this topic before in the context of group selection). Sweet Baby Intelligent Designer, save us from this madness.
I've been through this before--hell, I've even published stuff related to the topic**, and there isn't much there except for intellectual masturbationuninteresting and bad philosophy. If it doesn't provide me with testable hypotheses and the conceptual tools to do so, it's just not useful. That's what happened the last go around with this in the late 80s…
mikethemadbiologist | July 9, 2007One of the fun things about blogging is that I get a lot of weird emails, like this one from the Israeli embassy:
Press Release
Israeli Ambassador Sallai Meridor Announces Switch of Official Diplomatic Vehicles to Hybrid-Electric
***For Immediate Release*** July 9, 2007
WASHINGTON - Israel has announced that starting this fall, it will significantly reduce the petroleum consumption of its senior diplomats in the United States by switching to hybrid-electric vehicles. The symbolic initiative, led by Israel's Ambassador to the United States,…