January 14, 2010
NCSE's Eugenie C. Scott has been awarded the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal, the most prestigious award from the most prominent scientific honor society in the nation (at least). Care to guess the reaction at Billy Dembski's place?:
Iâm heartened to see our tax dollars working to…
January 14, 2010
Texas Shuts Door on Millions in Race to the Top Education Grants:
Funding public schools doesn't make any sense.
Actual Rick Perry: "We would be foolish and irresponsible to place our childrenâs future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special-interest groups thousands of miles away in…
January 13, 2010
I stopped reading the New York Times op-ed page after they put it behind a paywall. It turned out that I could get smart economic commentary from Brad Delong without having to pay the fee to get Paul Krugman. I could get a diverse range of voices by reading other blogs, and never had to contend…
January 8, 2010
Billy Dembski is concerned. His latest book, The End of Christianity, was attacked by a Baptist minister as a work of theistic evolution, and Dembski defended his honor by charging that windmill:
Johnny T. Helms' concerns about my book THE END OF CHRISTIANITY as well as his concerns about my role…
January 8, 2010
This headline is hardly news, but still noteworthy. A few days ago, Todd Wood (a young earth creationist from Bryan College, in Dayton, TN) noted an article in ICR's Acts & Facts on trilobite tracks by his predecessor at Bryan, creationist Kurt Wise:
"Why would dozens of feet of rock have…
January 8, 2010
Jan 8, 2010: Bruce Chapman, President of the Discovery Institute: Warming's Alarm-Ringer Stilled by U.K. Chill:
Prime Minister Brown is one of the world's most outspoken alarmists on global warming. He presently is one of the quieter spokesmen on the subject of his freezing country.
Leading to…
January 7, 2010
The Governator has some thoughts on how to fix our state's broken fiscal situation:
In a state of the state speech, the governor said creating jobs was the top priority for his last year in office and proposed spending $500 million in worker training funded by part of the budget which is in surplus…
January 6, 2010
So the failure of an underpants bomb on an airplane has led to a massive rethinking of our entire approach to airline security, as well as our intelligence analysis. Conservatives think it should also prompt us to rethink closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay, and keep terrorism trials out of…
January 3, 2010
To celebrate the 4th anniversary of ID creationism's defeat in Dover, PA, the Disco. 'Tute is making things up. Having, it seems, nothing new to say on the subject, they've reposted an ill-argued and factually inaccurate essay by philosopher of the mind Thomas Nagel, prefacing it by claiming:…
January 3, 2010
In an excellent article about the response to the swine flu pandemic, we have these penultimate paragraphs:
Dr. Frieden said he thought a victory over the antivaccine movement had been scored. Nearly 60 million people have been vaccinated, including many pregnant women and children, with no surge…
January 2, 2010
The Times seeks to explain "What to Expect as the T.S.A. Tightens Airport Security":
preparing for any new security measures is not straightforward. The T.S.A. has purposely been vague about what travelers will encounter, other than more police at the airport and additional layers of security.…
December 31, 2009
Happy 2010! I'm perfectly happy to put an end to the Naughties and to welcome in the 'Teens, hoping against hope for progress in the coming decade. I got to watch fireworks from the roof of my lovely new apartment building with my lovely fiancée and our lovely friends, and so far I'm feeling…
December 31, 2009
This is old news, but the National Review is worried about Star Trek:
I have over the past couple of months been watching DVDs of Star Trek: The Next Generation, a show I missed completely in its run of 1987 to 1994; and I confess myself amazed that so many conservatives are fond of it.
In…
December 27, 2009
Discovery Institute boss Bruce Chapman considers healthcare reform, and wonders Is it Constitutional?
The answer is: Yes.
This has been a simple answer to a stupid question.
FWIW, Chapman's point is slightly less stupid than one might think, focusing on a commission tasked with presenting Congress…
December 26, 2009
ID-blog Telic Thoughts, between efforts at debunking 9/11 and denying the last few decades worth of climate research, has time for A Christmas Story. Shorter version:
For Jack Bauer so loved the world that he sent his only daughter out into it, then died in her arms after she was brutally raped by…
December 22, 2009
Washington Post, 12/22/2009 â Obama rejects criticism on health-care reform legislation:
"Nowhere has there been a bigger gap between the perceptions of compromise and the realities of compromise than in the health-care bill," Obama said in an Oval Office interview with The Washington Post about…
December 21, 2009
We knew that the Discovery Institute was wrong about evolution. They recently set out to prove to the world how wrong they are about global warming, having also shown how poorly they grasp the difference between weather and climate, how little they understand about tsarist Russia, about Social…
December 21, 2009
Kevin Drum reproduces the following graphic (from here via here) under the title "The Aging of Science."
The problem is that this isn't about the Aging of Science. First, most scientists don't seek NIH grants, so this would, at best, show the aging of medical research. But really, it represents…
December 21, 2009
Steve Benen reminds me about the GOP effort to block a defense spending bill to delay health-care reform:
Senate Republicans said Thursday that they would try to filibuster a massive Pentagon bill that funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an unusual move that several acknowledged was an effort…
December 18, 2009
Via Tyler Longpine, a report finds that health insurance reform would significantly reduce the number of uninsured in Kansas:
About 228,000 uninsured people in Kansas would gain coverage by 2019 under the Senate health reform bill, according to a new report by Families USA, a national group…
December 18, 2009
Jason Rosenhouse replies to my post yesterday about health insurance. You'll recall that I took progressive opponents of the current Senate bill to task for complaining about a mandate that people buy health insurance as if we didn't have parallel examples to see how insurance mandates work.…
December 16, 2009
I don't say this often, but Atrios isn't talking sense:
I feel like those more supportive of this bill are attacking anti-mandate strawmen. The reason for thinking that without a public option or similar mandates are going to be a disaster is that without competition or sufficient affordability (…
December 15, 2009
Kevin Drum is right. As sucky as the current Senate bill is, it's a marked improvement over the status quo ante and it gives a path to more reforms later. Failing to pass a bill (as advocated by some progressive leaders) is suicide. Democratic voters are already demoralized from all the…
December 15, 2009
I currently have ~400 RSS feeds in NetNewsWire. That is too many. By the end of the month, I'll have half that, with a goal of being below 100 feeds by the end of January. If you are one of those left out, sorry. Hopefully someone else will link to you and thereby bring you back to my attention…
December 14, 2009
The AP reports In North Carolina, Lawsuit Is Threatened Over Councilmanâs Lack of Belief in God:
Detractors of [recently elected city councilman Cecil] Bothwell⦠are threatening to take the city to court for swearing him in last week, even though the stateâs antiquated requirement that…
December 11, 2009
A few weeks ago, the makers of water-rocket launcher the Aquapod sent me a review copy of their device. It's a plastic tripod with a bike pump nozzle and a pressure valve to prevent your pressurized water bottle from exploding on the launch pad. A string and simple latch hold the…
December 10, 2009
Janet Stemwedel brings her expertise in science and science ethics to bear on the contents of the emails stolen from the University of East Anglia. As with all of her work, the whole thing is worth reading, but I want to pick up on this claim:
If you don't thoroughly document your code, no one but…
December 9, 2009
Blogging has been scant here of late for two reasons. First, I've got enough going on that blogging time is limited, and I don't have a lot I need to get off my chest. Second, the world is currently utterly dominated by the stupids. The climate change treaty negotiations at Copenhagen, which…
December 6, 2009
TalkingPointsMemo notes an odd simile, using the headline: Tom Friedman Compares Afghanistan To "Special Needs Baby". Friedman told Fareed Zakaria:
This is nation building. This is nation building 101 in the most fragmented country in the world. Fareed, we're talking about Afghanistan. And we're…
December 5, 2009
The Russia That Was:
Bring back the Tsar!
Honestly.
