December 27, 2006
A source tells the Washington Post that Uafter much pressure, the Feds will be listing the Polar Bear as a "threatened" species:
The Bush administration has decided to propose listing the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, putting the U.S. government on record as saying that…
December 27, 2006
The Wichita Eagle's staff ask "Could private savings accounts be a bipartisan reform?" I cannot identify the bipartisanship in their text, though:
I was surprised when President Bush said last week that Social Security reform was one area on which he hoped to reach an agreement with the new…
December 26, 2006
Superbad no more, James Brown, has passed away.
Benn Loxo has some tracks from the Godfather of Soul in Africa.
Fluxblog writes that "James Brown's greatest gift to the world was his ability to express an undiluted yet highly stylized sexuality via a funk so intense and visceral that it served as…
December 24, 2006
Go send him good wishes.
And don't forget that the day after tomorrow begins Kwanzaa.
December 24, 2006
Little known fact: Kansas is (apparently) the world's leading producer of helium, accounting for 4 billion cubic feet per year out of the world's production of 6 billion cubic feet. Alas, production problems in Algeria and Qatar are leaving global shortages, as are problems with the helium…
December 24, 2006
Ivo Daalder examines Candidate Bush's critiques of Clinton-era foreign policy with President Bush's foreign policy. You can imagine the result when I tell you that the first item he quotes from the 2000 GOP foreign policy platform is "The [Clinton] administration has run America’s defenses down…
December 22, 2006
Within hours of Phill Kline's last attempt to intimidate Wichita-area doctor George Tiller, a state judge tossed out 30 misdemeanor charges.
Judge Paul Clark agreed to local district attorney Nola Foulston's request, finding that Kline had filed those indictments "without invitation, request or…
December 22, 2006
Having been demoted to a county district attorney in no small part because of his panty-sniffing obsession with patient records from family planning clinics, Kansas Attorney General Phill Kline has decided that one of his final official acts will be charging Dr. George Tiller with 30 misdemeanor…
December 21, 2006
Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, said, in Arabic to a Palestinian audience:
In the past, they said: "Under no circumstances will we accept a state, unless it includes all of Palestine, because Palestine is a land of Islamic endowment." Fine. This doesn't work. I can say: "…
December 20, 2006
While she couldn't block Phill Kline's selection as District Attorney, Governor Sebelius didn't have to sign the paper granting him the post. At the time when the selection by GOP officials took effect, the governor said:
With the overwhelming election of Paul Morrison as Attorney General -- an…
December 20, 2006
Thanks to Ed Brayton for revealing the existence of Anomalos Publishing. This new Christian publisher is excited to announce:
We are working on a project right now with an author who has written a phenomenal piece of fiction that will blow the lid off the creationism/intelligent design vs…
December 20, 2006
Salto sobrius brings us Tangled Bank 69: War on Christmas, the last couple week's best scienceish blogging.
December 19, 2006
Go to Participate.net and get one of 50,000 DVDs of the famed documentary. I presume this resolves whatever issues had emerged between the National Science Teachers and the film's producers.
December 19, 2006
Yes, I'm stealing Yakov Smirnoff jokes, but it's true. According to Improbable Research, Russian scientists have tested a theory:
If a depressed individual receives a physical punishment, whipping that is, it will stir up endorphin receptors, activate the ‘production of happiness’ and eventually…
December 19, 2006
Senator Brownback decided to back down on his wacky crusade against a judge who attended a lesbian commitment ceremony. Whether this will help him or hurt him in Iowa and especially South Carolina is unclear.
I continue to find it deeply disturbing to find Sam Brownback being treated as an…
December 18, 2006
The Kansas Guild of Bloggers returns this week with the finest of the Sunflower State's blogging.
Paul Decelles rightly notes that "One Dobson is one too many." In responding to Dobson's erroneous claims about the parenting ability of gays and lesbians (like our Vice-President's now pregnant…
December 18, 2006
This is excellent news. The Magnuson-Stevens fisheries act which passed not long ago has a lot of measures to cut overfishing in the oceans. Many important fish species have been fished to the breaking point, and need serious efforts to allow them to recover. This isn't just a matter of…
December 18, 2006
Ed Abbey, in a great essay on development in Arizona (anthologized in One Life at a Time, Please), commented that "the religion of endless growth – like any religion based on blind faith rather than reason – is a kind of mania, a form of lunacy, indeed a disease. And the one disease to which the…
December 16, 2006
Good news!
Anti-Torture Statute Used to Indict Son of Liberia's Ex-Leader:
The Justice Department invoked a 12-year-old federal anti-torture statute for the first time yesterday, indicting the son of former Liberian president Charles Taylor in connection with the alleged use of a hot iron, scalding…
December 16, 2006
The Kansas Guild of Bloggers will be hosted here next Monday. If you have a post that's even vaguely about, from or of interest in Kansas, send it to me via the web form, or just leave a comment here.
December 16, 2006
After a long delay, New Jersey approves $270 million for stem-cell research:
In 2004, Gov. James E. McGreevey signed a bill to establish the country’s first state-supported stem-cell research institute …
New Jersey also earned the distinction of becoming the second state in the nation, after…
December 15, 2006
Workers at a Topeka Goodyear plant have been part of a national strike by the United Steelworkers, seeking retirement security and job safety. You can sign a petition to support the workers as the strike heads into the holidays.
And given that 16,000 USW workers nationwide are going to be on…
December 14, 2006
If only we had some sort of way to detect design. It would be so handy.
The DI complaints blog is up in arms over a claim of plagiarism against Judge Jones. Not for his use of proposed findings of fact and law in his ruling in the Dover trial, but over this passage from his Dickinson College…
December 14, 2006
China's white dolphin called extinct after 20 million years:
An expedition searching for a rare Yangtze River dolphin ended Wednesday without a single sighting and with the team's leader saying one of the world's oldest species was effectively extinct.
The white dolphin known as baiji, shy and…
December 14, 2006
After New Republic writer Michael Crowley criticized Crichton's claims about climate change a character with the same name and biography showed up in his latest novel. The same biography plus one other thing, the MIck Crowley in Next by Michael Crichton is a child rapist, an heir to a…
December 14, 2006
Telic Thoughts responds (sort of) to a point I made yesterday. In the course of arguing that creationists and postmodernists talk about science the same way – as "microfascist," etc. – I pointed out a TT post with some confused thoughts on demarcation between science and non-science. Macht…
December 13, 2006
Which Historical Lunatic Are You?From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.
This followed a brief stint as one of the Kings of France.
Fans of Neil Gaiman's excellent Sandman will remember Emperor Norton's story anthologized in The Sandman Vol. 6: Fables and Reflections.
December 13, 2006
A month or so back, someone very strange published an article explaining how evidence based medicine is "fascist." Evidence based medicine, of course "is the conscientious, explicit and judicious use of current best evidence in making decisions about the care of individual patients." How horribly…
December 13, 2006
The author of this fascinatingly asinine comic:
Was arrested twice in the last month, once for driving under the influence and once for public intoxication.
Now, drunk driving itself is Not Funny™, but it is funny that the DUI arrest happened on the same day his comic strip about the horrors of…
December 12, 2006
In the Discovery Institute's ongoing war on logic and truth, they claim that:
Someone should ask Judge Jones why he is suddenly so reticent to talk about his ruling. During the past year, he has traversed the country to speak at public events and talk about his ruling at length, usually before…
