This might be the most insane news article ever.

House conservatives criticized President Bush, accused the Senate of fouling the air, said prisoners rather than illegal farm workers should pick America's crops and denounced the use of Mexican flags by protesters Thursday in a vehement attack on legislation to liberalize U.S. immigration laws.

Note, it's not even about taking jobs away from Americans anymore. Now it's about preventing slave prison laborers from being forced to do stoop labor.

This is how stupid conservatives are. Can you even imagine the logistics of prisoners being used to replace the millions of migrant laborers who come in each year? The complete and total impracticality and stupidity of this suggestion? How retarded are these people? Then again, it was Dana Rohrabacher of California who is widely acknowledged as the stupidest man in congress.

I love this headline:

"Former DeLay aide pleads guilty to fraud charges"

Rudy, a top DeLay aide while the Texas lawmaker served as House Majority Leader, took payments from Abramoff in 2000, then helped stop an Internet gambling bill opposed by Abramoff's clients, papers filed in U.S. District Court in Washington said.

Later, while working as a lobbyist, Rudy also was extensively involved in arranging a golf trip to Scotland for Rep. Bob Ney and congressional staffers, the court papers said.

However, I don't understand how a staffer can "help stop" a gambling bill. Doesn't this imply that Delay himself was bought as part of this package? If this guy did this using the authority of the majority leader's office, doesn't that mean Delay was ultimately responsible?

Despite being widely acknowledged as "Republican Lite," Lieberman enjoys a great advantage over his primary challenger Ned Lamont because of his long incumbency. However, I think it's time the Democrats of Connecticut decide the guy who felt getting a bj was an impeachable offense, and violating FISA wasn't, doesn't deserve to be sent back to Washington.

It sounds like Connecticut Democrats might be starting to agree.

Lieberman became Obama's mentor when Obama was sworn into the Senate in 2005. They stayed close at Thursday night's event, too, entering the room together and working the crowd in tandem.

Despite the camaraderie between the two, the crowd was clearly more receptive to Obama's remarks than Lieberman's speech about party unity and the potential for Democratic victories at the ballot box this fall.

In fact, scattered boos greeted Lieberman when he took the podium, and he had to stop three times during his remarks to shush the crowd so he could deliver key points.

Lieberman gets booed by Democrats and cheered by Republicans. Maybe that's a sign that he is a Republican.

Okay guys, just because George Mason University hires some right-wing zealots and wins some basketball games, it doesn't mean that the school is any good. I'm seeing a series of articles in the Wall Street Journal doing everything possible to promote this mediocre school because it suits the Journal's wacked political opinions.

Check this out--a search for "George Mason University" on the Wall Street Journal produces five results just for today!

03/31/06
WSJ
George Mason Shoots Namesake to Fame
03/31/06
WSJ
Rodney Dangerfield University
03/31/06
WSJ
A Fever in the Blood
03/31/06
WSJ
TV Shrink's Second Chance
03/31/06
WSJ
No Rocket for This Trial
03/30/06
WSJ
Ask.Com's New Look Scores Big Points
03/30/06
WSJ
For George Mason, an Educational Slam Dunk?
03/30/06
WSJ
Wrangling Names for Big Numbers
03/29/06
Law Blog
George Mason’s Law Students Are Partying Like . . . Well, Law Students
03/29/06
WSJ
Duke, North Carolina Advance
03/27/06
Law Blog
A Great Week For Quattrone, Though He Ain’t Out of the Woods
03/27/06
WSJ
Freedom Cannot Be Traded for Economic 'Security'
03/27/06
WSJ
A Basket Case
03/25/06
WSJ
Who's Your Daddy?
03/25/06
WSJ
Classy Economist
03/24/06
WSJ
Extrasensory Reception
03/23/06
Law Blog
More Good News For March-Madness Cinderella-Story George Mason

Okay, GMU professor Vernon Smith did get a Nobel for Economics (FWIW, there is really no such thing as a Nobel in economics). But remember, this is the school that:

• Has hired all sorts of crackpot professors to get close to the administration, and basically looks the other way at their bogus scholarship. Case in point, the Enron-Supported Mercatus Center.


• Was denied by Phi Beta Kappa because GMU didn't want Michael Moore to speak on campus.


• Charged one of its own students with disorderly conduct and trespassing for protesting against military recruitment. The student was an Air Force Veteran.

I'm sorry, but even with the greatest basketball players, that is not a track record of excellence.

Unless you want your loved ones to die.

In the largest study of its kind, researchers found that having people pray for heart bypass surgery patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slightly higher rate of complications.

Congrats to Kos, and talking points for helping expose the bullshit of Kaloogian (the Republican liar running for the Dukester's former seat). Apparently, this guy thought he would show the true peacful nature of Baghdad under Bush that the press refuses to show.

Since that Baghdad doesn't exist, he just posted this picture of a street corner in Turkey.



Umm, notice none of the signs are even written in the correct language much? That looks like a roman script to me and everyone else with a friggin brain.

What a jackass.

**Update** Fark has pointed me to this collection of images suggesting the new picture that Kaloogian posted as a replacement for the Turkey picture is also not a very good example of a peaceful Iraq, as the building shown in the middle has since been blown up.

I don't quite understand the shots that are shown though, are they talking about the big blue building in the middle or one right by it being blown up?

Maryland has approved a fund for ES cell research in the state.

So the trend continues, blue states move forward with science, and will reap the benefits of top-tier universities, discovery of novel and patentable technologies and attracting the best and brightest from the country, while the red states will continue to attract creationists.

To them, I say, study this chart:

So, the Boston Herald finally Published the shot There is little question that it was indeed, the Italian gesture for fuck off.

"It's inaccurate and deceptive of him to say there was no vulgarity in the moment," said Peter Smith, the Boston University assistant photojournalism professor who made the shot.
Despite Scalia's insistence that the Sicilian gesture was not offensive and had been incorrectly characterized by the Herald as obscene, the photographer said the newspaper "got the story right."
Smith said the jurist "immediately knew he'd made a mistake, and said, 'You're not going to print that, are you?' "
...
"The judge paused for a second, then looked directly into my lens and said, 'To my critics, I say, 'Vaffanculo,' " punctuating the comment by flicking his right hand out from under his chin, Smith said.
The Italian phrase means "(expletive) you."

And here is the picture of fuck-off goodness.

The title of the editorial says it all, "Part "D" for "Defective" -- The Medicare Drug-Benefit Chaos".

It's a pretty good dissection of the disaster of the new Bush administration drug-benefit. Just think Katrina meets healthcare.

In many cases, the program worsened patients' situations, with a particularly heavy burden falling on indigent Medicaid enrollees. Before the new entitlement, most had virtually all their medications covered fully by the states. But on January 1, 6.2 million of these vulnerable elderly were reassigned to one of the private insurance companies designated by Medicare to run its program. Word of these arrangements didn't always reach the patients, insurers, or pharmacies accurately, and tens of thousands of indigent patients were told to get prior authorization, pay a large initial deductible, or make substantial copayments for regularly used medicines they previously received at no cost.[2] Thousands discovered that the drugs they had been taking for years were not covered by their new insurers. Clinical crises ensued, and 37 states had to provide emergency payments for frail citizens.[3]

Despite its youth, the Medicare drug benefit is already chronically ill. But with extensive rehabilitation, it could go on for years, albeit with impaired functional capacity. Debate continues over whether its early spasticity was caused by inept management of its birth or a genetic disorder present at its creation.
...
As with other nature-versus-nurture debates, the correct answer to the question of causation is "both." The drug benefit was defective from its conception and then malnurtured at birth. Its legislative history was marked by heavy input from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, with predictable results.
...
The new law prohibited the government from negotiating with pharmaceutical manufacturers for lower costs, though nearly every country that guarantees drug coverage to its citizens does so. Lobbyists argued that it wouldn't be fair for drug companies to have to negotiate prices with such a powerful buyer. Yet Medicare has different rules for less influential vendors: it sets the prices it pays physicians, hospitals, laboratories, nursing homes, and essentially every other recipient of Medicare funds.

The lesson is simple, with powerful enough lobbyists congress will make laws that benefit you, even if fundamentally unfair, or inconsistent with laws that apply to other people. Sorry, I guess that was obvious. But then, NEJM suggests the Give UP model will correct the problem:

Medicare Part D lives on, responding semiappropriately to noxious stimuli by flailing its limbs as best it can. It even shows some limited capacity for learning, and one important learning opportunity is just seven months away. Elderly citizens vote in droves, and many of them will have hit their "doughnut hole" by early November. At that point, they will let their legislators know how they feel about the program.

Long live Arrested Development.

The word is, the creator is no longer interested in the series and believes it reached an appropriate conclusion. Despite interest from Showtime and ABC, Arrested Development will not return.

Wired reports this interview with Tom Okarma, CEO of Geron which is starting a major trial using cells derived from embryonic stem cells to help reverse damage from spinal cord injury.

It sounds interesting, and Okarma sounds cautious and very consciuos of the importance of getting this first major trial right. For every trial that fails because it was rushed, the field will be more and more difficult to fund and fight for.

We recognize that the world's spotlights are going to be on this. So we want to structure out as much subjective stuff as we possibly can. That's the first point. The second point, again to your point of safety, is that the initial patients in the trial a) will get a very low dose of cells, which is always done with a new therapy. They just start with less than the therapeutic range because you want to be sure there's no toxicity associated with this.

How are we going to monitor for toxicity in a patient that has a complete thoracic injury, that has no sensation below the point of injury? Well, if we start with a T3 lesion (an injury at the third vertebra in the thoracic region of the spinal cord), the question will be: Do we see evidence of an ascending paralysis? In other words, changing patients' physiology from a T3 lesion to a T2 or a T1, ascending toxicity.

We start with complete patients because they have no hope of recovery and we want to offer them something. We're starting with thoracic lesions because there's no significant impact for the patient should we see toxicity go from, say, a T3 to a T2 lesion. If we had started with cervical complete lesions and went from C4 to C2, that would be significant because we would reduce respiratory drive.

We're turning every single stone over that we can to reduce -- if not eliminate -- the risk to these patients who volunteer to get the cells for the first time. Once we go through the initial safety cohorts ... then we start looking at incomplete lesions. For all these patients, the efficacy is based on three simple principles: Do we restore sensation in any way or conversely reduce neuritic plan? Do we change bowel or bladder control? Do we see patients enjoying some degree of local motor recovery?

I don't even know what to do about this

I mean really, Joe Scarborough convening a conference about the "War on Christians" in this country? Are they kidding me? And saying that Tom Delay was driven from office for being a Christian? Like 99% of congress isn't Christian?

"It doesn't rise to the level of persecution that we would see in China or North Korea," said Tristan Emmanuel, a Canadian activist. "But let's not pretend that it's okay."

Among the conference's speakers were former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Sens. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) and Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) as well as conservative Christian leaders Phyllis Schlafly, Rod Parsley, Gary Bauer, Janet Parshall and Alan Keyes.

To many of the 400 evangelicals packed into a small ballroom at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, it was a hard but necessary look at moral relativism, hedonism and Christophobia, or fear of Christ, to pick just a few terms offered by various speakers referring to the enemy.

So, let me get this straight. America's war on Christianity is composed of the 15% of the population in this country not acting Christian enough. Ok. They consider an absence of complete christian domination of the populace to be a war against them, and these war crimes consist of people having different moral values and a dislike for Christ? What is it about there being more than one religion in this world that they don't understand?

If they keep this up someone is going to get fed up and show them what a real war on a religion is. Maybe we should send them to Iraq for a reminder, or Afghanistan to get them prosecuted for apostasy.

Anyway, this guy gets it about right:

"This is a skirmish over religious pluralism, and the inclination to see it as a war against Christianity strikes me as a spoiled-brat response by Christians who have always enjoyed the privileges of a majority position," said the Rev. Robert M. Franklin, a minister in the Church of God in Christ and professor of social ethics at Emory University.

Then there is the componenet of this that might actually be seen as a war, that is, a war on Christian intolerance.

The Rev. Tom Crouse, pastor of a Congregational Church in Holland, Mass., said that after hearing about a gay beauty pageant in California, he decided to hold a "Mr. Heterosexual Contest" in Worcester, Mass., on Feb. 18.

"It was just an event to proclaim the truth that God created us all heterosexual," he said. But to his surprise, he said, he received anonymous death threats, local officials condemned the contest, and "even Bible-believing churches were not on board. They said it wasn't loving."

If it is a war when people stand up to your bigotry, then maybe, yeah, there is a war against you. But only against your bigotry, not against your religion.

What a bunch of whiny bitches.

Yeah yeah yeah, Andy Card is out big whoop. Isn't anyone else disturbed that he will be replaced by budget director Joshua Bolten?

Think about it, Bush's budget director. He's got to be the most incompetent guy in the entire administration.

Speaking of deregulation, think about what a disaster Direct To Consumer Advertising (DTCA) for prescription drugs has been. The only countries in the world stupid enough to allow drug companies direct access to consumers are the US and New Zealand (which is now working to re-ban DTCA), and our drug costs and spending on prescription drugs have skyrocketed compared to costs in the rest of the world. There is an interesting, and accessible free article this month in PLoS medicine on the subject. Here are some highlights:

DTCA is limited to drugs that are profitable to advertise: mostly expensive, new drugs for long-term use for common indications. Such advertising increases premature rapid uptake and overuse of new drugs before flaws, including safety problems, have been discovered and communicated to health professionals [21,23,24]. Many new drugs are inferior to older treatments, and over two-thirds are no better but are often more expensive [25]. Increased use of new drugs stimulated by DTCA can lead to adverse events directly (for example, cardiovascular events associated with COX-2 selective inhibitors, which were heavily advertised to the US public) [23,26,27] or indirectly, by diverting resources from more cost-effective interventions.
...
DTCA aims to persuade rather than to inform, and there is evidence that it is effective at persuasion [12,21]. Content analyses of DTCA have found that the information provided is usually flawed and incomplete [28-32]. Examples include a study of 320 drug advertisements in popular US magazines that found that the advertisements rarely provided information about success rates of treatment or alternative treatments [32], and a study of 23 US television advertisements for prescription drugs that found that the majority gave more time to benefits than to risks [28].

Such advertising can lead some people to falsely believe they are well informed, so it reduces their motivation to search for more reliable information. Finding reliable information is already difficult (like finding a needle in a haystack) and the "noise" of DTCA just makes the haystack larger.
...
DTCA rarely focuses on, and tends to drown out, high-priority public health messages about diet, exercise, addictions, social involvement, equity, pollution, climate change, and appropriate use of older drugs. Older drugs are less profitable to advertise because a share of the sales stimulated goes to generic competition. Consequently, DTCA for any currently advertised drug will become less profitable after expiry of patent protection from competition.When DTCA no longer provides competitive return on investment, it is stopped. Consequently, if there are any benefits from current DTCA (such as stimulating new requests for statins after a myocardial infarction), those benefits will be for a limited time only.

Pretty damning article if you ask me, it dismisses every single positive argument for DTCA as being overwhelmed by negative consequences. Why do we allow drug companies to make their bullshit commercials again? You know, commercial speech is not protected like other speech. It is acceptable to limit, regulate or even ban it, especially if it is deceptive at which point it is no longer speech and is instead called fraud.

In all the hubbub over Scalia's obscene hand gestures, I almost forgot about the real interesting nugget in those stories. Apparently, he's been talking about cases that are about to appear before the court, a big ethical no-no. See this WP story on the backlash against Scalia for this ethical violation.

So, what do you think the odds are that Scalia will do the right thing and recuse himself? I place them at about 10000:1.

Donald Rumsfeld offered some useful information explaining why the US is failing to win the hearts and minds of the world, apparently it is our poor communication skills:

The United States is faring poorly in its effort to counter ideological support for terrorism, in part because the government does not communicate effectively, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Monday.

Rumsfeld then raised his hands into his trademark "samarai duck" stance and composed a haiku on the necessity of knowing unknown unknowns.



In later questioning he demonstrated how to pluck out a terrorist's eye with your bare hands.



I think we know the source of our problem.

In a church no less.

**Update** CNN reports it wasn't the finger but rather the hand-under-the-chin "fuck-off" gesture. I guess that makes it better, he only pulled a Cheney.

And in other random news I was glad to hear that people south of the border are rejecting the privatization myth as well.

I would like this myth of private enterprise being better than public to be studied and conclusively debunked, because I know that in a side-by-side comparison between government and private industry on regulation of major utilities, government is going to do a better job. Again and again government-run utilities, or (highly regulated and licensed private companies) perform better because they have accountability measures, no motivation for price-gouging (or it is hampered by regulation), and no stockholders to enrich. Utilities always end up resembling monopolies in the areas they serve because they own the pipes, cables, wires etc., and when they're handed over to businesses, it's like giving them permission to violate anti-trust laws. They never end up innovating and creating the infrastructure that would allow the competition they always promise, and what you end up with instead is the same old system for 5 times as much.

Enough of this privatization crap already. The argument about "self-regulation" and the "invisible hand of the market" is over. Free market utilies haven't worked anywhere they've been tried, and instead have created widespread consumer dissatisfaction (like in MD, VA etc.) and the biggest corporate scandals in history (Enron). Let's go back to public utilities and well-regulated private utilities, at least those worked and didn't rip everyone off.

**Update**
In Tuesday's post there is this article describing efforts by Marylanders to seize control of their public utilities from business interests. It is well known that the deregulation campaign in Maryland has been disastrous, and the remaining regulatory committee is a joke.

Want proof? The protestors demanding control of their public utilities have lost all power to their tanning beds.

The NYT had an article this weekend entitled, Why Is Michael Steele a Republican Candidate?

This is a good question. It is also a wonder that this guy is so freaking clueless. Take for example, the first freaking paragraph of the article:

It was last spring when Karl Rove called Michael Steele, the lieutenant governor of Maryland, to sell him on running for the Senate, and to close the deal, Rove paused to put President Bush on the phone. As Steele recalls it, the president's adviser said, "Here, the boss wants to talk to you." Steele froze, then demurred. "I went, 'No, no thank you.' I was so stunned that he was going to hand the phone to the president. I said, 'That's all right, we'll have that call later.' I couldn't believe it." Other top Republicans called. Senator Elizabeth Dole. Ken Mehlman, the party chairman. One day Steele's cellphone rang, and Vice President Dick Cheney was on the other end.

Luckily a Republican consultant gives us an answer to the question in the same article, that also provides me with a new political vocabulary term:

Don't be an "outreach pawn," Steele's friend Curt Anderson, a political consultant, warned him. By that, Anderson, former political director of the Republican National Committee, meant, Don't get into the race just so the party can say it is fielding a black candidate or so it can appear to be softening its image. "I have a dim view of the typical Republican outreach," Anderson told me. "It's like: Yeah, look, we have a black guy. We have a Hispanic guy. Look over there, we have a Jewish guy. It's surface. It never bears fruit. I told him: Don't do it for the Republican Party. Don't do it for the president. Do it for yourself. He had to ask himself, Can I win? Everything else is silly."

How could he be anything less? Ehrlich's Governorship is an unmitigated failure. Everyone agrees, right and left, he has accomplished nothing, and was completely incapable of generating anything resembling consensus. Why would Steele, who's only accomplishment is being elected with Ehrlich considered a candidate by Republicans? Hmmm, "outreach pawn" sounds about right.

That, and there is his ridiculous persecution complex about being black and Republican. Like the Oreo cookie-throwing incident he fabricated to sound like he's just a poor oppressed minority black Republican trying to make his way in a cruel liberal world. For a more complete debunking of the Steele Oreo myth check out this post.

Anyway, a pathetic candidate for a pathetic party and their efforts to get "outreach pawns."

Remember, tomorrow is the day of the Abramoff sentencing, and it should be the day we find out about all the people he's bringing down with him. He's already damaging Ralph Reed's chances for GA lt. Governor as even fellow conservatives attack Reed for his role in the casino lobbying.

Then there's these fake charities he created that existed only to funnel money to specific candidates, and enrich members of Tom Delay's staff (and their wives).

It promises to be an interesting day I think.

**Update**

Apparently Abramoffukah is to be celebrated tomorrow. I didn't realize it would no longer be the 28th. So, look forward to Abramoffukah on Wednesday the 29th!

So, anyone following the news this weekend saw the Iraq Civil War has really accelerated.

30 bodies were found beheaded and dumped on a highway and US soldiers engaged Moqtada Sadr's shiite militia.

Bad news for the Iraqis and our effort there, but who is surprised. Certainly not the authors of Operation Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. It turns out, remember how Bush said the generals got everything they requested for the invasion? Well, that apparently didn't include the first Cavalry, which they apparently wanted, and planned for, then good old Rummy cut out. They were on NPR this morning. Basically, Rummy screwed us royally in failing to make plans, and often sabotaging existing plans for post-war reconstruction. In his mind, it wasn't going to happen, so no need to plan for it.

Rummy reminds me of Gaius from the new Battlestar Galactica series. It seems like his whole goal in life is to just screw everything up for humanity. Everyone thinks he's smart, but he's just an egotistical lunatic who will ruin us all.

Nature brings us an excellent paper this week on creating embryonic stem cell-like cultures from adult mouse testes. Here is a lay article on the findings.

This paper is great. To sum up:
1. Spermatogonial cells were purified from mouse seminiferous tubules by digesting with enzymes, then culturing with or without MEF's and LIF (aka mouse ESC medium) to make embryonic stem cell like lines. Take home message: this is a very simple technique.
2. Cells were shown in vitro in embryoid body experiments to be pluripotent. Take home message: these cells are capable of making any type of adult cell.
3. Cells were injected into mouse blastocysts to make chimeras, which were then capable of germ line transmission of the original stem cell genotype. Take home message: this is the ultimate totipotency experiment. These are truly a powerful cell line capable of making all kinds of adult tissues and even transmission of genotype to successive generations of animals.

This is the first paper I've seen that truly bypasses embryonic stem cell ethical limitations. That bullshit about limiting ES cell potential based on making lines that lacked the ability to make embryos was just sophistry to appease those who believe in ensoulment at conception. Finally, here is a technique for making embryonic stem cells, from adults, that are syngenic with the host they come from, without destruction of embryos. Maybe we can shut the damn right-wingers up now and get ES cell research rolling in this country, but only if we can repeat this result using cells from human testicular biopsy or cadaverous donation.

Now, the downside of course, is that the ES cells are made from testicular spermatogenic cells. So, the ladies are definitely not winning out here. However, it is likely that enough ES lines could be made that most immunologic problems could be bypassed by creating lines representing all possible combinations of histocompatability, rather than making them from every single individual that needs them.

What do my fellow scientists think? Is this a good paper or what?

**update** I wrote a Diary over at Daily Kos on the paper.

Tales of Neil Bush's BS software company have been shooting about the internet in the last few days. No one is quite sure what is up with this company, called Ignite, that for some reason investors from all around the world are dumping their money into. You know, like, the House of Saud.

Well, now we know. Apparently the company exists to bilk money out of charities. The best part? Neil's mom, old Barb, even earmarked charitable contributions to go only to her son's company. If that isn't crooked, I don't know what is. It's like giving money to your kid, then writing it off as a tax deduction.

Disgusting. People who steal money for themselves in the name of charity really need their own circle of hell.

I think Ben Domenech of Redstate just had the shortest tenure at the Washington Post of anyone ever. As of 1:17EST today, he has resigned while an investigation into plagiarism claims is underway.

Wow, the vast right wing dishonesty continues. I guess we should be shocked that a 24-year-old college dropout former Bush employee is anything but a crook.

I also hear that over at Redstate they are actively censoring discussion on poor Ben and banning new members. That's a winning strategy, jackasses. I'd love to see what they think of my maps over there at "Redstate."

The good news? It will be after we're all dead.

Yes, in a hundred years we may see a 5-10 meter rise in ocean levels. Maybe it's time to reconsider this global warming doesn't exist crap.

The apparent sensitivity of ice sheets to a warmer world could prove disastrous. The greenhouse gases that people are spewing into the atmosphere this century might guarantee enough warming to destroy the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, says Oppenheimer, possibly as quickly as within several centuries. That would drive up sea level 5 to 10 meters at rates not seen since the end of the last ice age. New Orleans would flood, for good, as would most of South Florida and much of the Netherlands. Rising seas would push half a billion people inland. "This is not an experiment you get to run twice," says Oppenheimer. "I find this all very disturbing."
...
In another approach to estimating mass balance, researchers sketch the changing shape and therefore volume of the ice sheet. In a paper just out in the Journal of Glaciology, glaciologist Jay Zwally of GSFC and colleagues use satellite radars to measure the height of the Greenland Ice Sheet's broad plateau and airborne laser altimeters to monitor the height of glaciers draining to the coast, which are too small for satellite radars to see reliably. "We have strong evidence the ice sheet was near balance [during] the last decade of the 20th century," says Zwally. "Our measures show a slight positive gain of 11 [cubic kilometers] per year" between 1992 and 2002.

Global warming contrarians have already taken up Zwally's result as evidence that nothing much is happening with the ice sheet, so there's nothing to worry about. Zwally disagrees. "There's no question there's been an acceleration of some of Greenland's glaciers over the last 5 years," after his surveys were completed, he says. "I would say that right now the current loss is 30 to 40 [cubic kilometers] per year," he says, based on his gut feeling about the most recent radar and laser observations.

That's getting close to the mass loss reported last fall using a third approach: repeatedly weighing the ice sheet. Geophysicists Isabella Velicogna and John Wahr of the University of Colorado, Boulder, reported in Geophysical Research Letters how the two satellites of the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE), flying in tandem, gauge the mass beneath them. They precisely measure the changing distance between them caused by the gravitational pull of the passing ice. Between 2002 and 2004, GRACE found a loss of about 82 cubic kilometers of ice per year.

Goodbye Florida, hello beachfront property in Charlotteville.

**Update**
In related news, Glacier National Park needs a new name.

We all know that companies violate their privacy statements all the time. Well, Eliot Spitzer, the New York Attorney General is doing what any good state AG should do, sue the bastards.

This is the way to fight spam, by forcing companies that gather email addresses for legitimate purposes to obey their own damn privacy statements. Anything else is fraud perpetrated against millions of consumers. I hope he sues these people out of business.

I say, Spitzer for NY Governor in the next cycle (Pataki is out and Spitzer is killing in the polls), then president in 2012.

Beyond just being a ridiculous jackass, the new "conservative blogger" at the post, Ben Domenech of Redstate shame, is apparently a plagiarist.

What is amusing is that they brought him on to balance out supposedly liberal reporting by Dan Froomkin. This is the level they need to stoop to at the post to bring on a conservative? They have to recruit a racist(attacking Coretta Scott King on the day of her funeral was pretty low) and a plagiarist?

Alternatively, was this an example of choosing a conservative that would be an easy target? Maybe they hired a pathetic conservative just to make it easier to dismiss his stupidity?

Are you ready for Snakes on a Plane?

I haven't been so excited to see a movie since LOTR.

Boingboing brings us news that the South Dakota Oglala Sioux are planning to offer access to clinics on their sovereign land. This is a very interesting new mechanism for the Give Up enterprise. You might not even have to leave the state, just the country to get an abortion.

Second, by popular demand, the Cato Institute paper on why DRM (digital rights management) sucks. Finally, a conservative argument from conservatives. I like it a lot. Not only because I hate cripple-ware that prevents you from truly owning your music, inconveniences lawful buyers of music, and wastes time and energy (literally, DRM'd music uses 16% more battery power than regular mp3's because the players must expend power decrypting the music). I like it because it is a conservative making a conservative argument, not just being a hack for whatever industry is paying them.

It is also a pretty good argument. Basically, it shouldn't be the government's job to ensure the profitablity of a single industry's business model. Therefore, fuck the DMCA, which is bad for consumers and wouldn't stop piracy, but probably would increase certain companies' market share.

I dunno about what's up with Nature's headline selections.

Lets stop and have a talk about Nature and what is up with these freaking British people. First of all, why did it take them years to adopt citation tracking functions for their journal. Second of all, why do they insist on using the letter "s" when a "z" or "zed" as those freaks call it, would be more appropriate. Finally, how do they get away with titling a news story, "Wonky breasts signal cancer risk."

Did someone get confused and think they were writing for the Weekly World News? I don't want to be too hard on them, in the end I find it mostly funny. But "wonky?" I mean, really. That's a hell of an adjective to use on breasts, like women don't have enough to be self-conscious about, you've now got millions of women looking at their breasts and worrying about wonkiness. Finally, has wonkette been informed?

In case you haven't heard about the president of Turkmenistan yet, he is totally nuts.

I've heard stories about this guy over the years, about his 100-ft-high golden rotating statue of himself, his banning of Tolkien books etc. Now he's claiming to be some sort of new Muslim prophet (dangerous considering Mohammed was supposed to be the seal of the prophets).

Turkmenistan's president-for-life Saparmurat Niyazov announced on state television that anyone reading his philosophical work three times would be assured a place in heaven.

"Anyone who reads the Rukhnama three times will find spiritual wealth, will become more intelligent, will recognise the divine being and will go straight to heaven," Niyazov said Monday.

The Turkmen leader said he had "called on Allah" while working on the two-volume book to ensure that enthusiastic readers would be given quicker access to heaven.

Now, lately I've been talking about Bush's cult of personality, and I'm not trying to compare these two, this Niyazov guy is really in another league. However, that "called on Allah" quote really sticks in my mind. Doesn't that sound a little bit like how Bush says he thinks his presidency is by the will of god and how he consulted with a "higher father" rather than his own dad before starting the Iraq war?

I dunno, I guess I just had a moment of clarity. Bush really does have a god complex.

Part of Giving Up is realizing that a lot of the ideas that we are fighting for on the left are really mainstream ideas that can stand to be attacked because it will bring people to our side. Like the idea that women should not be forced to maintain a pregnancy by their government. People take these rights, like reproductive rights, for granted until the Republicans screw with them. That's when the shit hits the fan.

So, tell me guys, what do you think this polling trend in South Dakota indicates? Could it be anything other than the ban? We'll keep an eye on the progress of this trend, but can you call the ban anything other than political suicide?

These guys are making the biggest political mistakes of their lives. Don't get too upset here, these changes will only last until the electorate smashes Republicans in the coming two elections for screwing with the majority. This issue was only a loser for Democrats as long as people could vote Republican and tell themselves that reproductive freedoms weren't really under any serious kind of threat. Well, those people won't be able to do that any more.

In a highly unusual move, a former Army major general who was responsible for training the Iraqi military, has written an op-ed for the NYT describing Rumsfeld as horrifically incompetent and called for his resignation.

In sum, he has shown himself incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically, and is far more than anyone else responsible for what has happened to our important mission in Iraq. Mr. Rumsfeld must step down.
...
Only Gen. Eric Shinseki, the Army chief of staff when President Bush was elected, had the courage to challenge the downsizing plans. So Mr. Rumsfeld retaliated by naming General Shinseki's successor more than a year before his scheduled retirement, effectively undercutting his authority. The rest of the senior brass got the message, and nobody has complained since.
...
Last, you don't expect a secretary of defense to be criticized for tactical ineptness. Normally, tactics are the domain of the soldier on the ground. But in this case we all felt what L. Paul Bremer, the former viceroy in Iraq, has called the "8,000-mile screwdriver" reaching from the Pentagon. Commanders in the field had their discretionary financing for things like rebuilding hospitals and providing police uniforms randomly cut; money to pay Iraqi construction firms to build barracks was withheld; contracts we made for purchasing military equipment for the new Iraqi Army were rewritten back in Washington.

Donald Rumsfeld demands more than loyalty. He wants fealty. And he has hired men who give it. Consider the new secretary of the Army, Francis Harvey, who when faced with the compelling need to increase the service's size has refused to do so. He is instead relying on the shell game of hiring civilians to do jobs that had previously been done by soldiers, and thus keeping the force strength static on paper. This tactic may help for a bit, but it will likely fall apart in the next budget cycle, with those positions swiftly eliminated.

This type of attack on former civilian commanders by a retired general is somewhat extraordinary. I suggest everyone read it, it is a damning indictment of Rumsfeld's incompetent management of the Dept of Defense. Finally note the bolded sentence. Yet another example of why there are certain things that should never be privatized. Army operations are clearly one of them. At great expense these jackasses are outsourcing military operations to crooks like Halliburton (and KBR), just so they can make it look like they are doing their job on paper. If you ask me that's just fraud.

It would be Superman!

For proof, see here, here, and here.

It's all from the first one. Quite amusing - Superman taking on slum lords, lobbyists, and pesky bureaucrats...

Well, aside from those members of the right wing that are deeply imbedded in the Bush cult of personality, there are quite a few stories about non-cultist right wingers showing disatisfaction with Bush's performance. Meanwhile, the Iraqis have more or less started calling it a civil war.

In terms of domestic failures of the Republicans it looks like Kanye West was right Republicans (and Bush) hate black people. All that anti-welfare crap in the 90s seems to have created just about the worst case of racial divergence in history. I think this is more evidence that affirmative action is still needed to fight institutionalized racism in this country.

Finally, more evidence of incompetence in the Gulf Region. When are we going to learn that private companies are not more efficient than government? This myth of businesses being more efficient than government has never been shown to my satisfaction, and seems to be disproved every single day. From the cost of administrating Medicare (before Bush) compared to private insurance, to the criminal gouging of consumers from energy deregulation (Enron) in California and now Maryland, to the costs associated with having Halliburton mismanage the rebuilding of Iraq, when are we going to learn that this privatization myth is ruining our country?

I'm starting to think about tactics for how to deal with people that still stick up for Bush, since at this point, it indicates a complete detachment from reality. Take as an example, Cheney says the insurgency is in its death throes. All these successful bombings and strife mean they're on the outs, that death rattle the administration was talking about two years ago is still continuing, in the most drawn out death scene ever.

How does any rational human being believe these jackasses?

The answer is that none do. I'm not saying the Bushbots are fundamentally irrational people, they are capable of dressing themselves, going to work etc. The problem is that they have unwittingly become members of a cult. Bush supporters, and I distinguish them from conservatives as a whole who are abandoning Bush left and right (George Will, William F. Buckley Jr., Francis Fukuyama, and now Kevin Phillips of "The Emerging Republican Majority"), are fundamentally irrational members of Bush's Cult of Personality. It's no longer about ideology, differing views of government, social policy or economics, it is now solely about whether or not you agree with Bush. If you don't agree with Bush, you are a liberal pinko traitor. Bush is their "dear leader" and nothing else needs to be said, he is right, right or wrong.

So, the question I put out to the believers of Give Up is this: how do we deprogram these cult members?

Part of the reason I believe in the philosopy of Giving Up is that it is impossible to argue with irrational people. You might as well try to convince a raving schizophrenic that the FBI hasn't implanted a microchip in his brain. Given that it is impossible to convince irrational people of a problem if they are not predisposed to listening to you, what then is your strategy? Mine has been, simply, to Give Up. Republicans have to experience for themselves the train wreck that is the modern Republican party, we can't talk them out of it. At this point it seems we're as close as we ever have been to destroying the party once and for all, because the incompetence of Republicanism has never been more in the spotlight. But what do we do about the remaining 30% of the country that are members of Bush's cult of personality? They will follow him no matter how wrong it is, no matter how much of the outside world, science, news and media they have to ignore. He is their dear leader, and their confidence in him is absolute.

Do we have to let them hit absolute rock-bottom before they'll realize they've been had by a cult leader? Will referring to Bush as "dear leader" (The leader is good, the leader is great, we surrender our will as of this date! na na na na na na na na leader!) have any effect? Is there a way we can speed up the give up process so we don't actually have to experience a worldwide depression from our 9 trillion dollar debt?

I'm worried the answer to all of these is no. Give Up is an ok defense mechanism against these cultists, but it's not exactly a proposition to save the world.

This is a strange way to hear about this, but apparently 26 new episodes of Futurama have been ordered according to Billy West.

Kick ass! What was your favorite Futurama? I was partial to Tales of Interest.

You've watched it...you can't un-watch it!

via /.

** Update **

Billy lied!

Why is he doing this to us? Why must he taunt us with promises of more Futurama?

Anyway, it sounds like they're not making new episodes but they are planning on making several movie-length Futurama's. As long as I get my Bender fix I'll be ok.

In response to a letter demanding an end to seal killing in Canada by a prospective American tourist, a Canadian MP responded to the Americans by demanding an end to Iraqi killing (and the death penalty, and widespread gun sales etc.) Anyway, read it for yourself.

Coming to the defense of Canada's seal hunt, a Liberal senator has lashed out at the United States' foreign policy, the Iraq war, the death penalty and the country's gun culture in an

email to an American family considering cancelling a vacation because they are opposed to the "horrific" annual cull.

"What I find 'horrific' about your country is the daily killing of innocent people in Iraq, the execution of mainly black prisoners in U.S., the massive sale of guns to U.S. citizens every day, the destabilization of the whole world by the aggressive foreign policy of U.S. government, etc.," Senator Celine Hervieux-Payette wrote in an email response to the McLellan family of Minnesota.

Via Fark.

Remember everybody, we don't torture.

Also, in lighter news, try playing the Patriot Act Game where he who retains their civil liberties longest, wins!

Back to serious news, Scientific American is reporting that hotter global temps are making hurricanes more severe.

Finally in absolutely hysterical news, some retarded Somali pirates attacked a US guided missile cruiser and a destroyer. How stupid do you have to be? I can just imagine the scene on the decks of those ships as the Americans scratched their heads and wondered which of the weapons at their disposal would be the most fun to use against these pirates. Would the admiral be mad if we blew up their speedboat with a $500k piece of ordinance?

There's a bunch of interesting Science news in Science Magazine and NEJM this week.

First, truly wonderful, fantastic, kick-ass anti-corporation news as the Data Quality Act has been struck down by a federal court. From the article:

In May 2003, the Salt Institute and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed a DQA petition to obtain unpublished data from DASH-Sodium, a study funded partly by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) (Science, 30 May 2003, p. 1350). The study found that eating less salt lowered participants' blood pressure, and NHLBI has cited these findings in recommending that all Americans lower their salt intake. But DASH researchers had failed to break down the data for subgroups (such as white men under age 45 without hypertension), argued the industry group, which demanded that NHLBI release these data for independent analysis. After NHLBI rejected the request, the groups sued the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NHLBI's parent agency.
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In November 2004, a Virginia federal district court turned down the suit, a decision upheld on 6 March by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Alexandria, Virginia. The panel of three judges found that the DQA "does not create any legal right to information or its correctness," and for that reason, the plaintiffs lacked legal "standing" to pursue their case.

The DQA has been a terrible law, pointed out by many opposing the Republican War on Science as a evil tool to suppress public-interest government funded research by industries who profit from human misery. If this law had existed for the last 50 years, there still would be no publicly accepted health policy on cigarettes because Phillip-Morris would just challenge every governmental agency who studied it so no reports on the ill effects of tobacco would ever be known. Ding Dong the DQA is dead!

There is also an interesting article on the rapidly approaching $1000 genome. I'm rooting for 454 Life Sciences.

In geek science news there are new methods for generating artificial muscle fibers and tricorders. One day we will have robots, and tricorders, and robot tricorders. I promise.

Finally, a free full-text from NEJM on how black or white, rich or poor, our health care universally sucks. I would like to see a similar study done on other countries so we can finally put this "american medical care is the best in the world" shit to rest. So what if you can't get an MRI on demand in Canada, I'd rather have free primary care and preventative medicine! You'll need those things more than you'll ever need an MRI. Anyway, just another nail in the coffin of the free-market medical system that is rapidly draining the United States of all of it's money via entitlement programs.

At the same time Evangelicals are demanding Republicans be more conservative you see wonderful quotes like this one:

"Right now, I wouldn't vote Democratic if Jesus Christ was running." Judy Deats, a Texas Republican, who is standing by Rep. Tom DeLay in his re-election bid despite the fact that his association with lobbyist Jack Abramoff has made him vulnerable to political opposition for the first time in more than 20 years.

Looks like some people will always just hate Democrats no matter what, but hey, politics has always been like that. Voting against Jesus is a little bit extreme though.

I assume that this would also fall under your rule of 'inefficient protest'?

That's Bush's response to a questioner in Maryland who demanded he answer her query about how seniors should figure out his catastrophically defective health benefit. So, our future of taking care of our parents includes not only fixing their computers during our periodic visits, but also figuring out their medicare. It's a good thing that all old people have access to their children to solve theses problems for them.