January 17, 2009
As someone at ScienceOnline'09 mentions the Twittering of the Hudson River landing, I had just started reading Orac's explanation of why that happened. Apparently God hates pigeons, but doesn't mind people so much.
January 16, 2009
Carl Zimmer Live Blogging The Mars Methane Mystery: Aliens At Last?, reports that:
2:14 Lisa Pratt of Indiana University is talking biology. She is stoked.
2:15 Okay, I mean as stoked as scientists get at press conferences where they talk about photic zones. You can see it in the rise of her…
January 14, 2009
Those of you attending ScienceOnline '09 this weekend should look for TfK.
Those of you not attending should feel deeply ashamed.
January 14, 2009
ThinkProgress points out how torture doesn't just hurt the victim, and doesn't just destroy our national soul. It also keeps terrorists from being prosecuted:
Susan Crawford, the “top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial,” tells Bob…
January 13, 2009
At the home of top IDolator Bill Dembski, some other IDolator writes a post best summarized as:
Exaptation proves ID.
No, really. Actual quote:
While the article does not directly address the implications for Darwinism of the existence of “latent” or “preexisting” evolutionary potential, the…
January 13, 2009
PZ Myers and a Canadian denialist blog are locked in a tight race for this year's best science blog. Go vote for the tentacled one.
January 5, 2009
Ned Ryun, baby boy of the discredited and disreputable former Congressman Jim Ryun, wonders "do we really need 600,000 new govt. employees?":
Appears that Obama is promising 600,000 new government employees. That is just slightly troubling.
Ryun is currently employed at a conservative group that…
January 5, 2009
Science's policy blog reports:
[T]he House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee has invited not only noted economists Martin Feldstein, Mark Zandi, and Robert Reich [to discuss the economic recovery bill] but also Maria Zuber, a professor of geophysics of the Massachusetts Institute of…
January 1, 2009
I am aghast. Due to an asinine and ill-considered proposition limiting property tax increases, California is having trouble balancing its budget. The Democratic legislature had an elaborate scheme to keep the state running, but Governor Ahnold Schwarzenegger shot it down.
The plan he's proposed…
January 1, 2009
Via ZooBorns, Amani the Baby Aardvark:
The keepers at the Detroit Zoo describe young Amani as "hideously cute," which is fair only if one emphasizes "cute."
January 1, 2009
"Comes A Time" by Neil Young from the album Comes A Time (1977, 3:06).
Oh, this old world
keeps spinning round
It's a wonder tall trees
ain't layin' down
There comes a time.
And none too soon!
December 31, 2008
Via Laughing Squid.
December 31, 2008
Martin Cothran, the perpetually benighted Disco. Inst. blogger, considers the tussle over Blagojevich's Senate appointment and sees it as a fight, The Democrats vs. the states:
Whether Burris serves as Senator from Illinois is a matter for the people of Illinois to decide, not the U. S. Senate.…
December 31, 2008
TPMMuckraker highlights this quote from former AG Alberto Gonzales' interview with the WSJ:
[F]or some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.
We could, of course…
December 30, 2008
Discovery Institute boss Bruce Chapman has some ideas about your financial future.
In September, while declaring that President Bush's stock was on the rise, Disco. frontman Chapman insisted the growing financial crisis was awesome:
The disappearance of Lehman Brothers and the transformation of…
December 30, 2008
Several of the blogs have pointed to the Disco. Inst.'s shameful abuse of the suicide of Jesse Kilgore in an end-of-year fundraising pitch. Kilgore, a college student who had recently returned from military service in Iraq, had been challenging aspects of his upbringing, and his father (a…
December 29, 2008
Yet another study confirms what we've known for a long time, abstinence education doesn't work:
The new analysis of data from a large federal survey found that more than half of youths became sexually active before marriage regardless of whether they had taken a "virginity pledge," but that the…
December 25, 2008
Eartha Kitt and Majel Barrett both passed away recently. Barrett has had a role in all of the Star Trek movies and series, including the forthcoming prequel.
Update: See comments below. I'm a moron.
December 25, 2008
Playwright, Nobel Prize-winner, and peace activist Harold Pinter passed away yesterday. Pinter was most famous for the Pinter pause, a stage-directed delay which allowed actors to reorganize themselves, and for the audience to take in the events on stage. It also contributed to the disquieting…
December 24, 2008
Don't let Santa's jolly-seeking missiles get you.
And, as we warriors in the war on Christmas say, Season's Greetings.
December 24, 2008
You remember Kenneth Starr, right? The prudish pantysniffer who invested millions of your tax dollars to figure out where and when Bill Clinton got sexual favors from an intern and then reported all the prurient details.
Anyway, he's been brought in by the anti-gay bigots seeking to enforce Prop.…
December 24, 2008
In the Wichita Eagle, we get Santa Claus and the Establishment Clause:
This time of year, every public school administrator has to know a simple fragment of Constitutional law. It has many implications in the school setting during the holiday season. "Jingle Bells" is OK. Christmas hymns with…
December 24, 2008
The UAW should buy GM and turn it into a worker-owned cooperative.
December 23, 2008
Debra Saunders, in today's Chronicle, decries Intolerance 2009. She is trying to claim that it is hypocritical for groups seeking gay equality to oppose Rick Warren while supporting Obama. Both oppose gay marriage, you see. That Obama opposed Prop. 8 and has repeatedly stated his desire to see…
December 23, 2008
Mike the Mad Biologist is, well, mad. In writing about Obama's science team, I commented that:
scientists often distinguish [technical challenges] from the challenges in testing our broad conceptual understanding of the laws of nature. While "test tube jockeys" often produce important results,…
December 22, 2008
2009 is going to be a big year for science. It's the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, and the 150th of the publication of his opus, On the Origin of Species. It's the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first telescope-assisted astronomical observations, the 400th anniversary of Kepler's…
December 22, 2008
The Center For American Progress's Wonk Room wonders Is Coal-Poisoned Sushi Killing Jeremy Piven? Piven left a Broadway play because of a doctor's finding that he has elevated mercury levels. "Piven’s doctor, Carlon Colker," the Wonk Room relays, "explained that his mercury poisoning was caused…
December 22, 2008
Climate Progress's Joe Romm is upset with John Tierney. John Tierney pans Obama Science Advisor John Holdren for being on the opposite side from a range of high-profile climate change deniers, delayers, and equivalents. Romm responds (in part):
Tierney is easily the worst science writer at any…
December 20, 2008
In his weekly address, President-elect Obama says:
the truth is that promoting science isn't just about providing resources – it's about protecting free and open inquiry. It's about ensuring that facts and evidence are never twisted or obscured by politics or ideology. It's about listening to what…
December 19, 2008
ZOMFG! The Museum of New Zealand has a website where you can build your own squid! I present you with my invention, Joshteuthis.
Go forth!
