Wingnut wrongosphere
revere | January 28, 2010The Reveres have written many posts about the World Health Organization in five years. Some just reported on their activities, others, as seemed appropriate, were critical or praised them. WHO operates in a difficult landscape under rules of engagement not well suited to fighting an enemy that recognizes neither national borders nor national sovereignties and one might question this intergovernmental agency's relevance given those constraints. But we have always bridled at accusations WHO acted unethically or incompetently, neither of which is true. WHO does a difficult job with just a…
revere | January 24, 2010Some readers seem to think I should be commenting on the election of Scott Brown to the US Senate in Massachusetts. I don't have much to say. Senate Democrats brought it on themselves, although it's too bad they also brought it on the rest of us, but that's the way the system works. So Welcome to the Senate Mr. Brown. I'm sure The Family will be glad to have you over for dinner:
revere | November 15, 2009Any article entitled "On swine-flu conspiracy theories" should have an automatic warning label, but the one noted below, in the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail is really terrific (h/t ML). Conspiracy theories are all over the internet and they even show up here in the comments from time to time, but I'm glad to say our readership is saner than some. Like scientific theories, conspiracy theories aren't hard to formulate (humans being an inventive and imaginative species), but like good science, conspiracies aren't so easy to implement. It's not that conspiracies don't exist, the…
revere | September 15, 2009It was only a matter of time before the Right Wing smear machine set its sites on Obama's nominee for Director of OSHA, Dr. David Michaels. And now that time has come. David is a friend and colleague and his name is not a stranger here (and here, here, here and probably other posts as well). His name comes up not because he's my friend but because of his contributions to public health. His PhD is in occupational epidemiology and he's made important contributions in the area of popcorn workers lung (despite the humorous name, it is a deadly disease) and beryllium poisoning. He knows government…
revere | July 30, 2009It seems our enthusiasm for Obama's nomination of epidemiologist David Michaels to be the next head of OSHA was noted over at the high profile Science Magazine blog, ScienceInsider by Jocelyn Kaiser. Ms. Kaiser is among an elite group of science reporters and she almost always gets things right. Recognizing the importance of this nomination is certainly getting things right. My only complaint is that after noting that we (and many others) are delighted by the choice, she also notes that Michaels "is not without critics." That would be fair enough if the "critics" were fair enough. You'll find…
revere | July 16, 2009I spend a lot of time at a computer keyboard typing about biological viruses like influenza A, but computer networks are also subject to self-reproducing parasites of one kind or another and we continue to have a layperson's fascination with those organisms, too. I say "organisms" because try as I might, I can't figu®e out any criteria that distinguishes them from the carbon-based ones we mainly write about here. But that's another topic. This post is about yet another kind of harmful parasite, right wing politicians with only a couple of neurons firing, one of which they are using to…
revere | June 13, 2008If you want to see what difference environmental protection enforcement makes, just go to eastern Europe or the former Soviet Union. Or China. In the 1970s the US led the world in cleaning its environment and was consolidating its gains with well-staffed, motivated federal and state environment agencies. But that was then. Last weekend the US Senate couldn't even manage a paltry 60 votes to stop a filibuster of a bipartisan and none too strong global warming bill. This kind of failure isn't new. The US slow motion fall in environmental leadership has been going on for decades. In the Bush…
revere | May 20, 2008When the Religious Right made a Big Deal that SpongeBob Pants was gay or was advancing the "Gay Agenda" I didn't pay much attention. First, my kids were grown and I didn't have the faintest idea who SpongeBob Pants was (actually I still don't). Second, the whole thing was just too ridiculous for words:
xIn a new video [2005] to be distributed to 61,000 schools across the nation, homosexual activists are using popular children's TV characters such as SpongeBob SquarePants and Barney the dinosaur to surreptitiously indoctrinate young children into their lifestyle, a pro-family activist group…
revere | April 11, 2008Faith-based disaster relief sounds a bit like a contradiction to me. Why did God send the disaster in the first place? But what do I know. I'm an atheist. I'm also an American, however, and it seems passing strange to me that money raised from Missouri taxpayers should be used to support religious organizations to "transform lives and empower Missourians." That's what Republican Governor Matt Blunt is doing with his faith-based disaster relief initiative, designed "to increase cooperation between state government and faith and community-based groups in providing services to Missouri families…
revere | April 5, 2008Since this piece in Wired referenced an email with a date of April 1 I was pretty sure this was an April Fool's joke. But the joke was on me. It's was for real:
A U.S. government-funded medical information site that bills itself as the world's largest database on reproductive health has quietly begun to block searches on the word "abortion," concealing nearly 25,000 search results.
Called Popline, the search site is run by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Maryland. It's funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, the federal office in charge of…
revere | January 12, 2008Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff often seems mystified that the public doesn't want to be protected as much as he wants to protect them. Maybe a look at the record of the protectors will provide some clue. Protectors like the Transporation Security Administration (TSA), the lovable airport screeners that have done so much to make air travel a tiring and tiresome pain in the ass.
TSA makes mistakes. Quite often, it appears. Some of those mistakes can be pretty onerous. If your name gets on a no-fly list you are in for a heap of inconvenience -- or worse. But, as we were assured by TSA…
revere | January 8, 2008Faith-based environmental protection. Why not? The Bush administration isn't using the law or regulations:
Ignoring all legal and technical evidence -- and the advice of his career experts -- [EPA Administrator Steven] Johnson sided with the car industry and rejected the request of California to enforce the state's landmark greenhouse gas standards for motor vehicles. (No fewer than 19 other states have already adopted these standards or are considering them, representing about half the U.S. population.) In fact, Johnson took action that his own legal team said was probably illegal.
[snip]
In…
revere | January 2, 2008The 60s radical group, the Weathermen, took their name from a Bob Dylan song, Subterranean Homesick Blues: s' "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." Now we have the converse. You don't need to break wind to know this weatherman blows. On his blog, Chris Allen, the TV weatherman from WBKO, Bowling Green, Kentucky, explains to us why he doesn't believe that humans are responsible for climate change. He is quick to say that just because he doesn't have a "Dr." in front of his name is no reason we shouldn't take his arguments seriously. We agree. This is why we shouldn't…
revere | December 31, 2007What the hell. It's the end of the year. Always fun to look back at those events which alter and illuminate Our Times. And You Were There:
revere | May 17, 2007Jerry Falwell is no more. I won't mourn him, but I won't rejoice either. I always thought it a bit creepy to be glad when someone dies, or if not creepy, unseemly. Anyway, there are plenty more where he came from, wherever that is.
Like Pastor Rick Warren, televangelist of the huge California Saddleback Church with a huge parish of 20,000 and a wallet to match. Pastor Rick has a reputation to keep, so having it known his richest parishioner is a pornographer is bad PR. Not just a rich parishioner, but the publisher of Warren's devotional self help book, The Purpose Driven Life. Not just his…
revere | September 9, 2006Science textbooks are expensive so one would think everyone would be happy about the free books being handed out to all students by the South Iron Elementary School in Annapolis, Missouri. Wouldn't you know it, some activist Federal judge stopped it:
A federal judge ordered a small-town school to suspend a program that gives free Bibles to students, saying it improperly promotes Christianity.
U.S. District Court Judge Catherine Perry also scolded school officials for continuing the program after warnings that it violated the Constitution.
South Iron Elementary in Annapolis, a town of 300 in…
revere | July 29, 2006I think NY Senator Chuck Schumer is a jerk, so don't take this defense of him the wrong way. I still think he's a jerk. But this attack on him by the wingnut wrongosphere is just too stupid to pass commenting on:
The executive committee of the National Clergy Council, representing church leaders from Catholic, Evangelical, Orthodox and Protestant traditions, today calls on New York senator Charles Schumer to immediately apologize for his bigoted comments made yesterday on the floor of the US Senate.
Mr. Schumer referred to traditional Christians who object to the willful destruction of human…