So, Mark Foley is a pedophile and had to resign from congress. Poor bastards, they can't even hide their youthful mid-life indiscretions with senate pages any more.

Ha!

There's something in the water in DC. This is simply the worst government we've ever had. Bush is horrifically incompetent, and now, he's made the Congress complicit in his war crimes. Personally I hope that McCain, Warner (who I used to believe is an honorable man) and Graham are the first against the wall for giving him cover to allow torture.

I haven't been able to bring myself to write about it. I've never been so disappointed in my country. And the fake Democrats like Lieberman who voted right along with these assholes.

The worst is the pathetic apathy of the American people, who basically say it's ok to torture, as long as they don't have to hear about it. That's right people, if you can't see it from your window, I guess it's not a problem.

But this is Give Up Blog, and we've already accepted that it's the incompetence of these assholes that will be their downfall, and that the worst has to happen before we can be free of them. I guess I was still holding out hope that there was a larger proportion of decent humans in the leadership that such a vote would never occur.


Oh well, back to the incompetence.

First, the WaPo State of Denial coverage in which Bob Woodward appears to redeem himself as an investigative reporter. Today's topic? Rumsfeld is incompetent as all hell.

Two days after he arrived, Rumsfeld called to tell him that L. Paul "Jerry" Bremer, a 61-year-old terrorism expert and protege of Henry A. Kissinger, would be coming over as the presidential envoy, effectively replacing Garner.

"We've made three tragic decisions," Garner told Rumsfeld at their meeting.

"Really?" Rumsfeld said.

"Three terrible mistakes," Garner said.

He cited the first two orders Bremer signed when he arrived, the first banning as many as 50,000 members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party from government jobs and the second disbanding the Iraqi military. Now there were hundreds of thousands of disorganized, unemployed, armed Iraqis running around.

Third, Garner said, Bremer had summarily dismissed an interim Iraqi leadership group that had been eager to help the United States administer the country in the short term. "Jerry Bremer can't be the face of the government to the Iraqi people. You've got to have an Iraqi face for the Iraqi people," he said.

Garner made his final point: "There's still time to rectify this. There's still time to turn it around."

Rumsfeld looked at Garner for a moment with his take-no-prisoners gaze. "Well," he said, "I don't think there is anything we can do, because we are where we are."

He thinks I've lost it, Garner thought. He thinks I'm absolutely wrong. Garner didn't want it to sound like sour grapes, but facts were facts. "They're all reversible," Garner said again.

"We're not going to go back," Rumsfeld said emphatically.

Later that day, Garner went with Rumsfeld to the White House. But in a meeting with Bush, he made no mention of mistakes. Instead he regaled the president with stories of his time in Baghdad.

Isn't sweet how he didn't bother to trouble Bush's sweet little head with stories of how bad they fucked up from the first days of the invasion? It's almost touching.

Then we've got Condi's pre-9/11 incompetence.

On July 10, 2001, two months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet met with his counterterrorism chief, J. Cofer Black, at CIA headquarters to review the latest on Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda terrorist organization. Black laid out the case, consisting of communications intercepts and other top-secret intelligence showing the increasing likelihood that al-Qaeda would soon attack the United States. The mass of fragments made a compelling case, so compelling to Tenet that he decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately.

Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, from the car and said he needed to see her right away. There was no practical way she could refuse such a request from the CIA director.

For months, Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy, including specific presidential orders, called "findings," that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden. Perhaps a dramatic appearance -- Black called it an "out of cycle" session, beyond Tenet's regular weekly meeting with Rice -- would get her attention. Tenet and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action.

Tenet had been losing sleep over the recent intelligence. There was no conclusive, smoking-gun intelligence, but there was such a huge volume of data that an intelligence officer's instinct strongly suggested that something was coming.

He did not know when, where or how, but Tenet felt there was too much noise in the intelligence systems. Two weeks earlier, he had told Richard A. Clarke, the National Security Council's counterterrorism director: "It's my sixth sense, but I feel it coming. This is going to be the big one."

But Tenet had been having difficulty getting traction on an immediate bin Laden action plan, in part because Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had questioned all the intelligence, asking: Could it all be a grand deception? Perhaps, he said, it was a plan to measure U.S. reactions and defenses.

Woodward's title of State of Denial is appropriate. These guys simply refuse to believe anything they don't want to be true, and refuse to believe anything that contradicts what they believe to be true. The incompetence, it blinds me.

On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined "Bin Laden Threats Are Real."

Tenet hoped his abrupt request for an immediate meeting would shake Rice. He and Black, a veteran covert operator, had two main points when they met with her. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself. Black emphasized that this amounted to a strategic warning, meaning the problem was so serious that it required an overall plan and strategy. Second, this was a major foreign policy problem that needed to be addressed immediately. They needed to take action that moment -- covert, military, whatever -- to thwart bin Laden.

The two men told Rice that the United States had human and technical sources, and that all the intelligence was consistent. Black acknowledged that some of it was uncertain "voodoo" but said it was often this voodoo that was the best indicator.

Tenet and Black felt they were not getting though to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies.

Clinton was right to be mad in his Fox news interview, he tried and failed, but at least he tried. These incompetents who took over had a chance to do something, maybe it wouldn't have worked, but at least they could have tried.

Afterward, Tenet looked back on the meeting with Rice as a lost opportunity to prevent or disrupt the attacks. Rice could have gotten through to Bush on the threat, Tenet thought, but she just didn't get it in time. He felt that he had done his job and been very direct about the threat, but that Rice had not moved quickly. He felt she was not organized and did not push people, as he tried to do at the CIA.

Black later said, "The only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head."

Editor's Note: How much effort the Bush administration made in going after Osama bin Laden before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, became an issue last week after former president Bill Clinton accused President Bush's "neocons" and other Republicans of ignoring bin Laden until the attacks. Rice responded in an interview that "what we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years."

They asked for this fight, now they've got it. And big surprise, they were far more incompetent than Clin-ton.

The Defeatists point us to this interview with Gore Vidal. It's always interesting to hear this guy talk. Even on a pop show like Real Time, his ability to command a debate was something phenomenal, everybody would just shut up and let him talk, then sit their stunned as their credibility is irrevocably eviscerated.

Anyway, I was enjoying reading it, then I saw the end. He says to Give Up too!

Q: What can people do to energize democracy?

Vidal: The tactic would be to go after smaller offices, state by state, school board, sheriff, state legislatures. You can turn them around and that doesn't take much of anything. Take back everything at the grassroots, starting with state
legislatures. That's what Madison always said. I'd like to see a revival of state legislatures, in which I am a true Jeffersonian.

Q: Do you see any developments on the horizon that might suggest an alternative?

Vidal: Newton's Third Law. I hope that law is still working. American laws don't work, but at least the laws of physics might work. And the Third Law is: There is no action without reaction. There should be a great deal of reaction to the total incompetence of this Administration. It's going to take two or three generations to recover what we had as of twenty years ago.

Well, to be fair it's a mixture of Dean's national plan and giving up. But the absence of emphasis on the federal government is important. We can control the state governments from the grassroots, and the blue state governments in particular are powerful, rich and progressive. There's a lot of focus on taking back the house, and I admit, I enjoy watching the horse race as much as anybody, but in the end it's somewhat illusory.

An incomplete victory to take over the legislature is possibly as devastating a possibility as can be imagined. Democrats will have enough power to share blame for the trainwreck, without having significant power to avert it. If they only gain power over the house, they will be limited to an obstructionist and investigatory role. Both roles are necessary and good, but paradoxically, self-defeating. It will allow the Democrats to be demonized, and prevent them from actually showing leadership.

Leadership these days is coming from the states, not from the congress. When we start winning back bits of the federal government a piece at a time, and the people see that nothing is changing, and now the Democrats are relegated to just diggging their heels in in the face of idiocy, it's not going to lead to any future landslides. I'd almost rather have this Republican trainwreck complete itself so we can do away with the wreckless fundamentalist assholes once and for all. Then with real power, and complete control over at least one branch of this damn government we might make a difference. And even then, remember, Democrats are just as beholden to the rich and the corporate as the Republicans are. They might be less so, and less likely to totally screw the poor, but there are always enough DINOs to prevent real reform in the US.

In the meantime, we shouldn't forget about the states, which really have the power to affect our day-to-day lives. And in the case of the Blue states, often have the power to affect national policy for the better. They are far more dependent on their constituents approval than the national figures, and more likely to actually represent their interests. I still am of the belief that when our congress fails us again after a half-assed takeover (I wonder if Democrats would challenge Bush even if we held both the Senate and House too), that the real answer might be to create an unofficial confederacy of the blue states by which we use the combined regulatory and industrial power of the progressive states to force change nationally (see California). It's easier to regulate California, and force corporations nationally to play ball, than it is to try to pass national reform with our sissy national party.

Here is a Give Up story if there's ever been one.

You may remember, Schwarzenegger was having hell in Blue California. His voter referendums all went belly up, his approval ratings tanked, he was being protested by teachers and nurses and cute little puppies. It was bad.

Then, about a year ago he fired his Republican staff and hired a new Democratic chief-of-staff. He ditched his right-wing policy ideas and now has embraced ideas the Democratic legislature will get behind. Now, with this new effort to restrict global warming, he's proven his little blue state can shape the nation's policies, just by being a powerful economy that is willing to enact intelligent regulation. And here's the money quote.

"We have begun a bold new era of environmental protection here in California that will change the course of history," the Republican governor said.

The measure passed by the Democratic-led Legislature last month caps the state's man-made greenhouse gas emissions. The most populous U.S. state seeks to reduce its emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, a cut of about 25 percent.

The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 is also a direct challenge to the Bush administration -- which has opposed mandatory caps to fight climate change -- by a state that has often led the way nationally in new environmental standards.

President George W. Bush pulled the United States out of the 160-nation Kyoto Protocol in 2001, saying forced reductions in greenhouse gases would damage the economy and unfairly excluded developing nations.

"Other countries like India and China, Brazil and Mexico will join us when they see all the great work that we are doing," Schwarzenegger said. "Also our federal government will follow us -- trust me."

I agree, to hell with federal control (at least under this administration), Democrats should be as or more focused on running the states of California and New York, and forcing reforms nationwide by virtue of the power of these states' industry.

I want his new book the God Delusion (example chapters from BBC).

Our Western politicians avoid mentioning the R word (religion), and instead characterize their battle as a war against 'terror', as though terror were a kind of spirit or force, with a will and a mind of its own. Or they characterize terrorists as motivated by pure 'evil'. But they are not motivated by evil. However misguided we may think them, they are motivated, like the Christian murderers of abortion doctors, by what they perceive to be righteousness, faithfully pursuing what their religion tells them. They are not psychotic; they are religious idealists who, by their own lights, are rational. They perceive their acts to be good, not because of some warped personal idiosyncrasy, and not because they have been possessed by Satan, but because they have been brought up, from the cradle, to have total and unquestioning faith.

It's about time someone said it. The problem the world really has isn't "Islamofascism", it's the literalist religious beliefs of zealots of any religion.

Anyone who is interested should read the latest (it's open to all) from James Hansen in PNAS on global warming. Here's the abstract:

Global surface temperature has increased 0.2 degrees C per decade in the
past 30 years, similar to the warming rate predicted in the 1980s in initial global climate model simulations with transient greenhouse gas changes. Warming is larger in the Western Equatorial Pacific than in the Eastern Equatorial Pacific over the past century, and we suggest that the increased West–East temperature gradient may
have increased the likelihood of strong El Ninos, such as those of 1983 and 1998. Comparison of measured sea surface temperatures in the Western Pacific with paleoclimate data suggests that this critical ocean region, and probably the planet as a whole, is approximately as warm now as at the Holocene maximum and
within 1 degree C of the maximum temperature of the past million years. We conclude that global warming of more than 1 degree C, relative to 2000, will constitute "dangerous" climate change as judged from likely effects on sea level and extermination of species.

In particular I liked this figure, because Hansen combined paleoclimate data going back 1.35 million years with data of sea-surface temperature in the Western Equatorial Pacific (Global and WEP temperatures correlate so the comparison is apt).



One of the common complaints from global warming deniers is that since we weren't around for however many millions of years, we can't say anything about the past climate of the planet. Which makes them a lot like creationist deniers because similar to paleobiologists, climate scientists have a way of measuring "fossilized" temperatures, which are referred to as temperature proxies. Using this fossil record of temperature, we can reconstruct climate in terms of temperature over a million years. The picture isn't pretty, we're about as hot now as has ever been recorded using these temperature proxies.

Another stupid denialist argument is that if we can't predict the weather, why should we pretend to predict climate? Well, it's comparing apples and oranges, and a common misunderstanding in the science of climate. Climate is not weather, it is not a prediction of the daily weather in your neighborhood, but it is a good and predictable measure of averages of weather, average rainfall, average temperature etc. To say we can't predict climate is pretty ludicrous, especially for a bunch of people living in a temperate zone. Anyway, here's how predictions have compared lately according to Hansen.



So, in case anyone was wondering what our local denialist and non-Virginia State Climatolgist has to offer to climate science?



Well, his great contribution was to fudge earlier versions of this figure by subtracting the conservative climate predictions B & C and only leaving the most extreme predictions from scenario A. (Check out other fudges of this figure over at Deltoid's Climate Fraudit)

Now that the data is out let the denialism begin!

For those of us in C'ville, the end of October brings the Virginia film festival. This year's theme is religion in movies. The schedule got released today; tickets go on sale tomorrow. The full schedule is here.

They've got good (Jesus Camp, which we've discussed here before; and Everything Is Illuminated with the director), pretentious (Seventh Seal), funny (Life of Brian and Tenacious D), plus the ubiquitous "TBAs"

Oh, and The Dark Crystal. Don't ask me how that's religious, but it has muppets!

Here's a good time waster. I wouldn't ordinarily post what is essentially a marketing campaign, but this game is pretty fun.

Basically, try to figure out the movie titles hidden as puns in a Heironymous Bosch-like painting. I got 44 of the 50 before giving up.

Should we be surprised?

Three former college football teammates of Sen. George Allen say that the Virginia Republican repeatedly used an inflammatory racial epithet and demonstrated racist attitudes toward blacks during the early 1970s.

"Allen said he came to Virginia because he wanted to play football in a place where 'blacks knew their place,'" said Dr. Ken Shelton, a white radiologist in North Carolina who played tight end for the University of Virginia football team when Allen was quarterback. "He used the N-word on a regular basis back then."

A second white teammate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared retribution from the Allen campaign, separately claimed that Allen used the word "nigger" to describe blacks. "It was so common with George when he was among his white friends. This is the terminology he used," the teammate said.

A third white teammate contacted separately, who also spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of being attacked by the Virginia senator, said he too remembers Allen using the word "nigger," though he said he could not recall a specific conversation in which Allen used the term. "My impression of him was that he was a racist," the third teammate said.
...
Shelton said he also remembers a disturbing deer hunting trip with Allen on land that was owned by the family of Billy Lanahan, a wide receiver on the team. After they had killed a deer, Shelton said he remembers Allen asking Lanahan where the local black residents lived. Shelton said Allen then drove the three of them to that neighborhood with the severed head of the deer. "He proceeded to take the doe's head and stuff it into a mailbox," Shelton said.

George Allen is an embarrassment to the state of Virginia.

Direct to Consumer Advertising (or DTCA) is an unmitigated disaster. The United States is the last nation in the world to allow this (New Zealand tried it, and is now going to ban it again after drug expenditures increased exponentially).

Basically, DTCA is what allows drugmakers to make those ads you see on the TV all the damn time that encourage everybody to take their drugs, whether they need them or not. It has been a disaster, with spending on prescription drugs increasing exponentially in this country every year since it was legalized during the Clin-ton administration. Without these advertisements, drugs might actually be prescribed based on need. No one would take that worthless scam drug Nexium (it's just omeprazole, which is over the counter, but Nexium is 8x more expensive) without DTCA. Disease mongering, as exposed by PLoS, wouldn't be nearly as big a problem, and we probably wouldn't be getting bankrupted trying to pay for old folks' drugs via medicare. If drug companies are spending more on advertising than they do on R&D (which they are), then we've got a problem.

Now the NYT reports on the Institute of Medicine's study on failures at the FDA and they come to the same conclusion. They don't outright say that DTCA should be banned, but they are advocating stricter limits on advertising of prescription drugs as well as some other excellent common-sense suggestions.

The report's conclusions are often damning. It describes the Food and Drug Administration as rife with internal squabbles and hobbled by underfinancing, poor management and outdated regulations.

"Every organization has its share of dysfunctions, unhappy staff members and internal disputes," the report said. But panel members said that they were deeply concerned about the agency’s "organizational health" and its ability to ensure the safety of the nation’s drug supply.

The report made these recommendations, most of which would require Congressional authorization:

1. Newly approved drugs should display a black triangle on their labels for two years to warn consumers that their safety is more uncertain than that of older drugs.
   
   
2. Drug advertisements should be restricted during this initial period.
   
   
3. The F.D.A. should be given the authority to issue fines, injunctions and withdrawals when drug makers fail - as they often do - to complete required safety studies.
   
   
4. The F.D.A. should thoroughly review the safety of drugs at least once every five years.
   
   
5. The F.D.A. commissioner should be appointed to a six-year term.
   
   
6. Drug makers should be required to post publicly the results of nearly all human drug trials.

The sad thing is that, consistent with Give Up teachings, it took a disaster to bring people around to the necessary reforms. Namely, Vioxx and the other Cox-2 specific inhibitors which have never been shown to be better pain relievers than classic NSAIDs, and have never been shown to be of great benefit in preventing ulcers! I remember in medical school being taught the basis of the theory, that a Cox-2 specific inhibitor should be more gentle on the lining of the stomach, but the clinical trials have never demonstrated that this effect is as strong as one would expect. The marketing, however, pushed these drugs into the mainstream, despite damage to the stomach being a relatively rare event (<5%) and the specific inhibitors showing, at best, a modest improvement in avoiding this side effect of NSAIDs.

I've been a fan of Heifer International for being a charity based on creating sustainable agricultural development in the third world while operating in an ethical fashion (lacking in most charities) that distributes more money to the people who need it, rather than squandering it in adminstrative fees (they operate at about 25% of funds going to fundraising and administration). When you see many charities with 95% administrative costs, you lose faith in the idea that giving money to charities is doing anybody any good.

Now we have a charity that ideologically I can support wholeheartedly, the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science. It's still getting off the ground, but with any luck it will be managed in a similarly ethical fashion (my criteria is that less than 30% of donations may go to administration/fundraising).

We haven't blogged about Iraq in a while, but do we really need to? Is their some surfeit of good news that's changed the validity of including Iraq in this administration's giant failures list? Clearly not. Now we hear that torture in Iraq is worse than under Saddam.

Friday I was watching Real Time with Bill Maher and as usual he had a token apologist for the administration's policies that was better for generating laughs than any joke he could come up with. One of the constant rebuttals to the liberal arguments that Iraq was a mistake was that Saddam was so bad. Sigh.

Not only is the situation we've created actually worse than Saddam, but the argument fails under the most superficial scrutiny. We oppose Saddam, fine. He was an asshole, sure. So are a lot of people though. Kim Jong Il is worse. But even more depressing, a lot of our allies in the War on Terra are about a billion times worse. I'm talking about you Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. I hear the Uzbeks boil people, and the president of Turkmenistan not only massacres dissedents but creates golden statues of himself that follow the sun and has created a religion around his cult of personality.

So, yeah, Saddam sucked (mostly in the 80s when we supported him no less), but what is truly embarrassing is that the American occupation has sucked worse. Not only is torture now reinstated, but in classic propaganda fasion we've been fudging statistics of deaths in Iraq to make our occupation appear less devastating.

We were puzzled when figures from the Baghdad morgue showed only a 15 percent drop in the number of violent deaths it saw in August. But we're not puzzled anymore. As the Associated Press reports, Caldwell was able to come up with such a low number of "murders" in Baghdad in August by simply excluding from his count people killed by "bombs, mortars, rockets or other mass attacks -- including suicide bombings."

The argument over whether this was a mistake is now over. Saddam was an asshole, yes, but we're as bad or worse. We lose men, money, and credibility as a result of this war. We lost the initiative in actually capturing or killing our real enemies in this distraction. There is simply no good argument anymore for why this war was a benefit to anybody. Period. Let's move on.

** Corrected ** I don't know what I was thinking when I attributed the Turkmenbashi stuff to the Kyrgyz. I think I was stunned by the lack of vowels.

Here's some stuff the WSJ will never agree with.

In terms of Give Up supporting blue state federalism and regulation by their superior economies, we have California suing car companies over global warming. Go California!

The suit, filed in a US district court in northern California, alleges that vehicle emissions have contributed significantly to global warming, and argues that the car manufacturers should be held responsible for the past and future cost of combating this crisis.

"Global warming is causing significant harm to California's environment, economy, agriculture and public health," said the state's Democratic attorney general, Bill Lockyer, who filed the complaint. "The impacts are costing millions of dollars and the price tag is increasing ... It is time to hold these companies responsible for their contribution to this crisis."

This is the Give Up hypothesis in action. Basically, federal agencies have been captured by corporate interests, so the only available tools for responsible regulation are the ability of progressive states (which have the most powerful economies) to sue for change. These states are so powerful by virtue of their population size and strength of economy, that they can substitute for failed regulatory agencies and force responsible climate policy with or without hte Bush adminstration.

California is the largest car market in the US, with more than 2m new vehicles registered every year, compared with about 2.5m for the entire UK. Car sales in the state totalled $83bn (£44bn) in 2005 according to the Automobile Alliance, an industry group representing carmakers. The 29m registered vehicles in the state drive a total of 320bn miles in the year.

Even if this fails to succeed as a court case, the threat to the bottom line will force car manufacturers to pay more attention to creating more efficient cars or face the wrath of California. I love it.

I've talked in the past about my George Will Ratio which was based upon the number of times I agreed with George Will vs the times I disagreed with him, and used it as a metric of the reasonableness of any given opponent. The idea is that even conservatives, given enough time, will be right about something. Well, last week, with our blogging about da Popa's inflammatory comments generating an excessive response, we've managed to finally create an overlap with two conservative sources of opinion that I never thought would happen.

In fact, my Popa post overlapped in most major ways with both the WSJ editorial page and, of all possible freaking commentators, Charles freaking Krauthammer who I have never agreed with before. I mean, holy crap, Krauthammer? This guy previously had a ratio approaching zero.

So, does that mean I'm losing my mind? Or is the absolute disproportional response of the zealots in response to da Popa so beyond the pale that we can all agree on solidarity behind protection of freedom of expression that has been challenged by the response to Danish cartoons, the assassination of Theo Van Gogh, the fatwah against Rushdie, and now the assassination of a nun and firebombing of churches in response to a overinterpretation of comments by Ratfinger?

Deltoid makes us aware of this effort by Scientific American to bring the WSJ editorial page back to the realm of reality.

Reporters for the Wall Street Journal routinely distance themselves from the editorial page. Many of the paper's own reporters laugh or cringe at the anti-scientific posture of the editorials, and advise the rest of us simply not to read them. Nevertheless, the consequences of those editorials are significant. The Wall Street Journal is the most widely read business paper in the world. Its influence is extensive. Yet it gets a free pass on editorial irresponsibility.

As a neighbor to the paper at Columbia University, the Earth Institute has repeatedly invited the editorial team to meet with leading climate scientists. I've offered to organize such a meeting in any way that the editorial board would like. On many occasions, the news editors have eagerly accepted, but the editorial writers have remained safe in their splendid isolation.

Let me make the invitation once again. Many of the world's leading climate scientists are prepared to meet with the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, and to include in that meeting any climate-skeptic scientists that that the Journal editorial board would like to invite. The board owes it to the rest of us to make the effort to their own "open-minded search for scientific knowledge." If only for the sake of their own sweltering hometown, it's time they accept the invitation.

Reading the article, and every other damn problem identified by the science writers at the Science Blogs, it's clear that again the problem is denialism. There is no interest in knowing the truth, but only in being contrarian and denying something hard to face, that their libertarian ethos has no equipment ready to face a problem that requires government intervention, and selfless behavior on the part of corporations.

Anyway, this appeal won't work until they do something outrageous like break into the WSJ and sabotage their air conditioners, or, more legally, take out a full page ad in the WSJ attacking the editorial page and offering them an open debate. The WSJ editorial page has everything to lose and nothing to gain by having a discussion with real scientists. But someone has got to do it, they're just crazy over there.

A fun new report!

* Sen. Conrad Burns (R-MT)
* Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN)
* Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)
* Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO)
* Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA)
* Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA)
* Rep. Tom Feeney (R-FL)
* Rep. Katherine Harris (R-FL)
* Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA)
* Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA)
* Rep. Gary Miller (R-CA)
* Rep. Alan Mollohan (D-WV)
* Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-CO)
* Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA)
* Rep. Rick Renzi (R-AZ)
* Rep. Pete Sessions (R-TX)
* Rep. John Sweeney (R-NY)
* Rep. Charles Taylor (R-NC)
* Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)
* Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA)

It's about a 6:1 Republican to Democrat ratio. If all political parties demonstrated equal corruption, you might expect a little less than half to be Democrats, but the Republicans definitely seem to be significantly ahead in this respect. Maybe it's just because they are in power, but whatever the reason, time to boot them. (I also wouldn't miss any of the Democrats on this list - they're easily replaceable in safe districts).

I blogged earlier about one of my favorite television shows, Wife Swap. In it, mothers from two very different families swap homes, and experience life in a family from the other side of the tracks. There is often an interesting class divide between the families, something that doesn't receive enough attention in our discourse. And in addition to the class issues, there are big conflicts on personal hygiene, cleanliness of the home, ambition, and discipline of children.

I watched the fourth episode tonight where one of the families profiled by the show home schooled. And yes, homenoschooling was present, again:

Home schooled kid at public school: ...the days are like really long compared to home schooling...

Public school girl at home school: ...only an hour, and school's over...

Public school father (angry): ...how long is home schooling?

Home schooling mother: ...it's not about all that...

I find this interesting, in part because in a former job, I worked with home schooling organization. The organization was interested in privacy. I always thought it was because they didn't want the government learning that they were teaching crazy religious shit about jeebus. But could it be that they're hiding extreme laziness? Days of hour-long instruction followed by lunch and television? Maybe a future episode of Wife Swap will tell. Until then, will someone call child social services on the families featured by Wife Swap? The families featured are engaging in parent-sponsored truancy!

Right on the heels of our screed against denialism (once again that's using arguments of Conspiracy, Selectivity, Fake Experts, Impossible Expections, and Arguments from Analogy/Red herrings to deny scientific consensus and obvious facts), the Royal Society has written a nasty letter to Exxon Mobile asking them to please, for once in their lives, stop lying to the public about climate change.

In an unprecedented step, the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence".

The scientists also strongly criticise the company's public statements on global warming, which they describe as "inaccurate and misleading".


Royal Society tells Exxon: stop funding climate change denial

Read the letter in full here (pdf)

David Adam, environment correspondent
Wednesday September 20, 2006
The Guardian

Exxon petrol station
The Royal Society is worried about climate change lobby groups, including those funded by Exxon. Photograph: Matt Slocum/AP


Britain's leading scientists have challenged the US oil company ExxonMobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change.

In an unprecedented step, the Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence".

The scientists also strongly criticise the company's public statements on global warming, which they describe as "inaccurate and misleading".

In a letter earlier this month to Esso, the UK arm of ExxonMobil, the Royal Society cites its own survey which found that ExxonMobil last year distributed $2.9m to 39 groups that the society says misrepresent the science of climate change.

These include the International Policy Network, a thinktank with its HQ in London, and the George C Marshall Institute, which is based in Washington DC. In 2004, the institute jointly published a report with the UK group the Scientific Alliance which claimed that global temperature rises were not related to rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere.

Good for them, lets hope the US NAS is next. They forgot to mention though, the Mercatus Center at the George Mason non-University, which also specializes in blowing smoke up the publics' ass for sweet sweet oil money. If you want to track how Exxon distributes money to a network of dishonest hatchet-man groups who whore opinion for money, check out ExxonSecrets.org. The flash implementation of the money network is actually quite interesting to explore.

I'm going through my science reading for last week (I know, I'm late) and I'm shocked by this pair of articles from NEJM. The associated editorial might be clearer for some.

Basically, in the field of cardiology, the surgical intervention of choice for acute myocardial infarction (MI or heart attack) has been to stick a little tube (it's like an expandable net really) into the areas where the clot is obstructing the coronary vessel that feeds the heart muscle. This is called Primary percutaneous coronary intervention or PCI, and it usually involves stent placement (rather than plain balloon angioplasty) which is designed to reopen a clotted blood vessel and, hopefully, keep it open for the remainder of the patient's life. Here's a picture of one:



A critical problem is that the stent may open up a vessel in the short term, but over time, the cells will grow back and shrink the openining (the lumen) of the vessel again (this is called restenosis) potentially causing angina (chest pain with exertion) or another MI in the same spot. So, smart people decided the thing to do would be to coat the stents with a drug like paclitaxel or sirolimus, which ideally would inhibit the growth of cells back into the stent.

Sure enough, this worked, and studies showed that restenosis was less of a problem in these drug-coated stents. However, what has been less clear is whether or not this has actually improved outcomes. As these papers show, it appears not. From the editorial:

Thus, in the PASSION trial, nonsignificant trends in favor of the paclitaxel-eluting stent were found for target-lesion revascularization, death, and reinfarction, whereas in the TYPHOON trial, the sirolimus-eluting stent was associated with a significant reduction in the rate of target-vessel revascularization, with rates of death and reinfarction very similar to those in the uncoated-stent group. It would be dangerous to conclude from these data that one drug-eluting stent is better than the other in primary PCI, since direct comparisons of the two stents for this indication are not available. In the two studies, the design, inclusion criteria, and definitions of end points were indeed slightly different. Yet, the results seem to be in line with those of studies that have compared these two types of stents in elective procedures — namely, lower rates of restenosis and repeated intervention with the sirolimus-eluting stent without significant differences in myocardial infarction or death.
...
Because of the cost, the need for prolonged treatment with thienopyridine, and the risk of late stent thrombosis (especially after premature discontinuation of thienopyridine therapy), larger trials with hard clinical end points and longer follow-up are needed before routine implantation of drug-eluting stents can be recommended for all patients undergoing primary PCI.

In other words, these things did what they were supposed to, but when it comes to the most important outcome, repeat MI or death, they failed. As a result, the greater expense and use of drugs to allow patients to tolerate the stent may not be justified. This doesn't represent total death of drug-coated stents, but it's a major blow.

The other thing to realize is that many drug companies have been fighting viciously for marketshare for their various drug-eluting stents. One of the things about surgical procedures and materials is that they don't undergo the same FDA approval process as drugs do, so a new stent that's slightly fancier or uses a different drug-release profile can be released without an outrageous investment in clinical trials (although they still have to do basic safety and quality control testing). As a result, the market share of one stent versus another has swung wildly throughout the years, meaning billions of dollars swinging from one company to the next as they come out with the next best thing and trying to get surgeons or interventional cardiologists to jump on board.

I can only imagine the tears on Wall Street with this result (except for the non-coated stent types). That must be why last week I sensed a great disturbance in the financial force, like a million voices screaming out at once, then being silent.

Apparently in yesterday's debate with Webb, Allen went crazy when someone asked about his Jewish heritage.

"It has been reported," said Fox, that "your grandfather Felix, whom you were given your middle name for, was Jewish. Could you please tell us whether your forebears include Jews and, if so, at which point Jewish identity might have ended?"

Allen recoiled as if he had been struck. His supporters in the audience booed and hissed. "To be getting into what religion my mother is, I don't think is relevant," Allen said, furiously. "Why is that relevant -- my religion, Jim's religion or the religious beliefs of anyone out there?"

"Honesty, that's all," questioner Fox answered, looking a bit frightened.

"Oh, that's just all? That's just all," the senator mocked, pressing his attack. He directed Fox to "ask questions about issues that really matter to people here in Virginia" and refrain from "making aspersions."

Since when is asking somebody about Jewish heritage "making aspersions"?

I'm trying really hard to find the video of this, because it sounds like more bigotry from Allen. I'm sure he'll give another non-apology and say he's sorry if we were offended (he'll never admit that he gave offense or said anything wrong).

If anyone finds it comment or email me. Until it hits You Tube or Crooks and Liars I'm at a loss, the C-Span website doesn't seem to have it in an obvious place.

Pandagon linked the YouTube!


Enjoy!

Thanks to Fred for the heads up.

I've been thinking about putting together a comprehensive description of "the denialist." You know, the type of person that refuses to believe in facts when they are indisputable. Topics of denial include the holocaust, HIV causing AIDS, global warming/climate change, evolution, the necessity of animals in research, cigarettes causing cancer, embryonic stem cells aren't as good as adult stem cells, the government blew up the WTC on 9/11 not terrorists etc. Despite the incredible disparity between these areas of resolute denial and the motives behind them, the tactics used by denialists are remarkably similar. In today's Guardian, for instance, George Monbiot has an excellent description of the methods used by high-priced denialists bought and paid for by Exxon Mobile to prevent climate science from being believed.

By funding a large number of organisations, Exxon helps to create the impression that doubt about climate change is widespread. For those who do not understand that scientific findings cannot be trusted if they have not appeared in peer-reviewed journals, the names of these institutes help to suggest that serious researchers are challenging the consensus.

This is not to claim that all the science these groups champion is bogus. On the whole, they use selection, not invention. They will find one contradictory study - such as the discovery of tropospheric cooling, which, in a garbled form, has been used by Peter Hitchens in the Mail on Sunday - and promote it relentlessly. They will continue to do so long after it has been disproved by further work. So, for example, John Christy, the author of the troposphere paper, admitted in August 2005 that his figures were incorrect, yet his initial findings are still being circulated and championed by many of these groups, as a quick internet search will show you.

But they do not stop there. The chairman of a group called the Science and Environmental Policy Project is Frederick Seitz. Seitz is a physicist who in the 1960s was president of the US National Academy of Sciences. In 1998, he wrote a document, known as the Oregon Petition, which has been cited by almost every journalist who claims that climate change is a myth.

...

Anyone with a degree was entitled to sign it. It was attached to a letter written by Seitz, entitled Research Review of Global Warming Evidence. The lead author of the "review" that followed Seitz's letter is a Christian fundamentalist called Arthur B Robinson. He is not a professional climate scientist. It was co-published by Robinson's organisation - the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine - and an outfit called the George C Marshall Institute, which has received $630,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. The other authors were Robinson's 22-year-old son and two employees of the George C Marshall Institute. The chairman of the George C Marshall Institute was Frederick Seitz.

...

It was printed in the font and format of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: the journal of the organisation of which Seitz - as he had just reminded his correspondents - was once president.

Soon after the petition was published, the National Academy of Sciences released this statement: "The NAS Council would like to make it clear that this petition has nothing to do with the National Academy of Sciences and that the manuscript was not published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or in any other peer-reviewed journal. The petition does not reflect the conclusions of expert reports of the Academy."

But it was too late. Seitz, the Oregon Institute and the George C Marshall Institute had already circulated tens of thousands of copies, and the petition had established a major presence on the internet. Some 17,000 graduates signed it, the majority of whom had no background in climate science. It has been repeatedly cited - by global-warming sceptics such as David Bellamy, Melanie Phillips and others - as a petition by climate scientists. It is promoted by the Exxon-sponsored sites as evidence that there is no scientific consensus on climate change.

I think I'll have to get his book as part of my research on denialism. As far as I can tell though, no matter what their issue, the denialists share some typical features (some of the features are often cited as signs of bad science in situations like helping judges determine quality of expert testimony). I've identified 5 features which I think are most common to these types of argument and most generalizeable to the phenomenon of denialism: Conspiracy, Selectivity, The Fake Expert, Impossible Expectations, and Metaphor.

1. Conspiracy Suggesting scientists have some ulterior motive for their research or they are part of some conspiracy. The most basic example of this lie is to say that if the scientists discovered contrary findings they would lose their funding. The most severe example is to suggest scientists are engaged in some kind of elaborate "cover-up" or that they are part of the zionist conspiracy against the Aryan race. Whatever, it amounts to the same thing.
   
   Response: These criticisms reflect a total ignorance of how science, especially academic science, works from a practical standpoint. Not only do scientists love to discover things that run contrary to expectations and publish them, but it is precisely the exceptional results that generate a great deal of interest (although they also require a higher degree of skepticism). The papers published in Nature and Science aren't just essays saying "everything is fine." They are often revolutionary (and sometimes incorrect) papers describing unusual findings, powerful new findings, or things that represent a major coup of scientific diligence and work. Funding, while often rewarded to projects that don't take huge risks, is also heavily based on novelty, not maintaining some kind of party line. Further, the idea that scientists would ever work together in uniform to supress some piece of information is laughable. Scientists are in competition with eachother, and if something were being suppressed by a group it is usually only because they want to publish it first, and their competitors would love to beat them to it. Science is quite incompatible with keeping secrets or maintaining conspiracies, and to any actual scientists this is laughable.
   
   
2. Selectivity Denialists will often cite: a critical paper supporting their idea, or famously discredited or flawed papers meant to make the field look like a it's based on weak research.
   
   Response: I've noticed this is common among the AIDS/HIV denialists (who have a discredited paper from 1987 they like to wave around and they pick on Gallo for fudging the initial identification of HIV), but also is a big thing among global warming deniars as described in the Guardian article. Some creationists like Jonathan Wells particularly enjoy using examples of failed theories supporting Darwinian evolution (like Haeckels' embryos) to suggest that the tens of thousands of other papers on the subject, and the entire basis of genetics, biology and biochemistry are wrong. The biggest problem here is that science doesn't "purge" the literature when these things are proven false and they stay there forever. It is up to the researcher to read more than the papers that support their foregone conclusion, they have to develop a theory that incorporates all the data, not just the data they like.
   **Update** PZ points out I should include Quote-Mining as a typical method of the denialists. This is a good point, but I think it is an example of selectivity. Rather than being selective of data or discredited papers, the quote-miner selectively pulls quotes from scientists and uses them out of context to try to bolster an argument that scientist would probably never agree with in a million years.
   
   
3. The fake expert: A bought-scientist or scientist/expert from an unrelated field to say that their data, lack of data, proven-flawed data or their expert opinion disproves the validity of the entire field.
   
   Response: The global warming denialists have the greatest amount of money invested in the false-expert strategy but they all pretty much use this tactic to some degree. Note that creationists and other anti-science types particularly will line up behind MDs to support their crap, because a lot of doctors are graduated in this country, and even though they technically have a degree in science, they've never actually done it themselves and it's never to hard to find some quack with an MD to back up your line of bullshit. I would point you, for example, to the Presidential Council on Bioethics which is full of MDs gleaned for their ideological slant, with no real scientific legitimacy (Krauthammer being the most glaring example). I'm not maligning MD researchers who do exist, but it is a strategy used to give a patina of legitimacy to otherwise laughable ideas.
   
   
4. Impossible expectations: The use of the absence of complete and absolute knowledge to prevent implementation of sound policies, or acceptance of an idea or a theory. It's a little bit like argument ad ignorantiam, but more sinister. Basically, the suggestion is made that until a subject is understood completely and totally (usually requiring a level of knowledge only found in deities), no action can be reasonably taken.
   
   Response: This is a big one with global warming deniers. To state the problem metaphorically, it's like saying until you've figured out the exact momentum, moment of inertia, time dilation, length contraction, and relativistic position of a car in several reference frames that is speeding at you, you shouldn't jump out of the way. Since global warming is very complicated, they use this mixed appeal to ignorance and inaction to suggest until we understand climate 100%, we should do nothing. Never mind that this is impossible, but that is the expectation. A reasonable person would instead suggest that once you have enough data that suggest a change of behavior, or change of policy is warranted, it would be prudent to take that data under consideration and change things before we're all under water. You don't need to know the position of every molecule in the galaxy before deciding you need to jump out of the way of a speeding train. Just like we don't need to have a perfect model of the earth's climate to understand that all the current data and simulations suggest decreasing carbon output is of critical importance right now, and not when humans have obtained some imaginary scientific nirvana.
   
   
5. The metaphor/argument from analogy/appeal to consequence/red herring: The metaphor, as hopefully I've demonstrated, is a useful tool in language to help communicate ideas in common sense terms. However, it isn't an argument in and of itself. Denialists will often use argument from metaphor or analogy to suggest that scientific data are wrong. For example, creationists will use as an argument the metaphor that saying natural selection leading to humans is like saying it's probable that you could assemble a jumbo-jet that could fly simply by shaking the constituent parts in a box for 5 billion years. Or that a mousetrap is too complex for evolution because if a single part was missing it wouldn't work.
   
   Response: I'm not purposefully setting up a straw man here, but this type of argument from false analogy is incredibly common as are other classic logical fallacies. One could argue many things, but it would be a waste of time because the situations described are silly and have nothing to do with human evolution. The analogies ignore the nature of evolution, suggest it's just totally random, ignore natural selection as the mechanism of evolution, ignore basic biology and create a totally artifical point of reference for a biological discussion. In short, metaphors have nothing to do with biology or evolution, but they are confusing and on the surface their logic sounds correct to many laymen. These are a hallmark of the "irreducible complexity" arguments of the creationist denialists, but other denialists have similar appeals to metaphor. But irreducible complexity arguments are all based on metaphors, while data from siRNA, knockout mice, humans with silent genetic defects, etc., indicate that cells and biological organisms are not irreducibly complex, and often can operate and adapt with less than a full complement of their ideal genetic code. There are quite a few gene knockout mice in which no phenotype has been observed, and anyone who has knocked genes out in cells with siRNA could tell you, an effect is no guarantee. Cells adapt to a number of situations and not all genes are required for healthy, viable offspring. Science is not about who has the best metaphor that makes the most sense to good ol' common folk. Data trumps metaphors every time.
   **Update** PZ points out that I should include appeal to consequence, which I believe falls under the red herring category of logical fallacies. That is creationists (like da Popa) say that belief in evolution will lead to godlessness and meaninglessness of our existence. This is a red herring, has nothing to do with the science or the data, and sheesh, since I'm not seeing a lot of Swedes and Norweigans blowing shit up, I don't think their overabundance of belief in Darwinism or secular behavior is having the negative consequences these assholes suggest.

Well, this was a long post, but if anyone can make an argument for some other really good general unifying features of the denialists I'd like to hear them.

And I do have a point in thinking about this. The ideal would be to recognize this as a strategy exploited by people who have no data or science to support their crazy ideas. Then, when these types of strategies are deployed, no thought or effort needs to go into knocking apart their arguments piece by agonizing piece (it always takes 10x more work to debunk this crap than it does to just make it up and vomit it out). Instead you can just point and say, "denialist!" There is no point arguing with denialist arguments since they are illogical and based on purposefully sowing misinformation and confusion among the targets. Even very smart people, in the face of denialists get flustered and confused, because it's like arguing with someone who refuses to acknowledge the basic rules of rational discourse. Instead of arguing with illogic, the simpler thing to do is acknowledge the illogic itself and refuse to engage in silly timewasting blather with denialist hooligans.

Hey. It's Give Up Blog. We're about minimal effort.

** Update ** Thanks to PZ for the link from Pharyngula and good discussion. It was a mixed bag however, since PZ attracts trolls like a dog attracts ticks. Oh well. PZ's suggestion of "quote mining" should definitely be included in the selectivity column since it represents selectively pulling quotes in a way that is deceptive to try to bolster an argument that if the whole quote were included it would be obviously false. And the problem of the "appeal to consequences" is a tough one. These arguments are red herrings, so I'm thinking of just expanding my Metaphor/Analogy heading to include other obvious logical fallacies like red herrings or ad hominems. For instance Chris Mooney, who wrote the excellent Republican War on Science, over at the interesection is being attacked for not having scientific credentials - as if merely being informed isn't enough to engage in debate and write excellent books on science. This is different from the "False Expert" critique of their side of course, because Mooney isn't misrepresenting himself as an evolutionary biologist working with pipettes and DNA, he's a journalist covering a political movement that is profoundly anti-science, and he does a good job.

You've seen our map on tax distribution by state. Now check out the Budget Graph "Death and Taxes" which shows where all the money in the budget goes.

All I can say? Our priorities are screwed. And notice the national debt is bigger than the whole poster at 9.3 trillion.

Thanks Republicans. You guys are freaking great.

In the difficult task of trying to figure out which religion on this planet is the worst, this current kerfluffle over Pope Ratfinger saying that Islam is bad because its followers try to spread their religion by the sword has created a dilemma for me.

In fact, the response has been just so stupid, I'm finding myself about to become a defender of da Popa. Just last week the guy was saying that Darwinism led to a secular view of the world that removed all meaning from life (and this was evil), and that we'll never understand and get along with Islamic fundamentalist terrorists until we act more irrational and religious (the West is "overly secular" in his opinion). I just roll my eyes and say, "well that's da Popa for ya." But hey, I can take criticism of my secular, meaningless existence, rampant Darwinism, and inability to incorporate irrationality for the sake of understanding the terrorists. I'm a pretty calm guy I guess and I don't really feel like my secular, meaningless existence really needs defending. But these crazy bastards in the Muslim world need to learn to let things slide off their shoulders a little better. Maybe they should take a page from the book of the meaningless secular types.

So here's the breakdown. Da Popa says something sure to incite Muslim wrath.

The Pope on Tuesday repeated criticism of the Prophet Mohammad by the 14th century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Palaeologus, who said everything Mohammad brought was evil "such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".

The Pope, who used the terms "jihad" and "holy war" in his lecture, added "violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul".

The Muslims, clearly incapable of dealing with criticism of their religion despite constantly referring to Jews as some kind of illuminati bent on world destruction and Nazi-like destruction of Muslims, then overreact like crazy. Da Popa then offers a kind-of "I'm sorry you were offended" non-apology. But sadly, that was not enough to prevent Muslims from going from 0 to crazy in under 5 seconds.

A top official of the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest Islamic political group, suggested the pope's apology was not enough. Mohamed Habib, deputy to leader Mohammed Mahdi Akef, called Benedict's comments Sunday "a step in the right direction." Habib added, "However, it does not represent a clear and explicit apology."

Egypt and Morocco recalled their ambassadors to the Holy See on Saturday.

Violence also erupted during the weekend. An Italian nun and her bodyguard were shot to death Sunday at a hospital in Mogadishu, Somalia. Yusuf Mohamed Siad, head of security for the Islamic militia that controls the capital, said the attack may have been tied to the pope's remarks.

Hundreds of people rallied in major cities across Iran. Ahmad Khatami, Friday prayer leader in Tehran and a member of the panel that has the power to choose or dismiss Iran's top leader, compared the pope to President Bush, saying the two had "united to repeat the Crusades."

Seven churches in the West Bank and Gaza were attacked Saturday and Sunday in response to the pope's comments.

Now comes what appears to be confirmation that the worst possible interpretation of da Popa's words are true.

Al-Qaeda threatens jihad over Pope's remarks

An Iraqi militant group led by al-Qaeda has threatened to massacre Christians in response to remarks about Islam by Pope Benedict XVI that have caused offence across the Muslim world.

...

Today an internet statement by the Mujahideen Shura Council, an umbrella group led by Iraq’s branch of al Qaeda, threatened reprisals against "worshippers of the cross" for the Pope's remarks.

"We shall break the cross and spill the wine. ... (you will have no choice but) Islam or death," said the statement, citing a hadith (saying of the Prophet Mohammed) promising Muslims that they would "conquer Rome... as they conquered Constantinople".

"We tell the worshipper of the cross (the Pope) that you and the West will be defeated, as is the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya. God enable us to slit their throats, and make their money and descendants the bounty of the Mujahideen."

Well now. We've come full circle now haven't we? Da Popa says something stupid but true, and the Muslim response? They prove he was right within about a week and quote Mohammed to do it no less.

Ratfinger was crazy for thinking that this was some great way of "starting a dialogue" and I kind of doubt that was his real intention. But as far as apologies go, I think he should screw the apology and restate what he said, then just quote these assholes who are calling for jihad, and list the firebombings and shooting of nuns in response to words, not deeds, against Islam.

Between this shit, the newspaper cartoon fiasco, and the assassination of Theo Van Gogh I think we should say enough already. In a civilized world you have to be able to take criticism of your ideology without fucking shooting people. Da Popa is right goddamnit and they are only proving him more right every single time there is a response like this to criticism of their religion. Never thought I'd agree with da Popa on anything, but here we are. I would like to say though, in response to his criticism of secularism, that there aren't many examples of Swedes and and Dutch going crazy and burning down churches when someone says they're too secular or that Darwin is bad. So, maybe his call for more irrationality is a bit silly in light of this week's events. But, back to my point.

No religion should have the right to kill, terrorize, intimidate, or censor the citizens of any nation over speech that is critical of them. We need to put our foot down, and just flood the airways with anti-Islamic crap if that's what it takes to show that we won't be intimidated by their bullying. No more apologies, no more backing down, no more censorship should be tolerated. They have to behave like adults in a civilized world, or they're going to get criticized for being the violent, intolerant bullies and creeps that they are.

It's infuriating! They're making me defend da Popa! What a bunch of assholes.

There is no other explanation.



How is this guy a politician? He's not even charismatic, he's just an unbelieveable fathead. Listen to him defend his confederate flag and noose collection.

Apparently the day after his little debate with Webb on meet the press Webb spontaneously got about 100k in donations.

And have people been tracking the polls on Kos? Conrad Burns, Mike DeWine, Lincoln Chaffee, etc., it looks like Dems have a good chance in November. There is only one major worry from a Give Up perspective, and it looks more and more inevitable, and that is that we'll only win back the House and not the Senate. The result could be catastrophic. Instead of the Republican train wreck completing without any Democratic responsibility (either for causing or preventing it), they'll be able to blame democrats either for being obstructionist, or not being obstructionist enough. After all, pretty much all they'll be able to do if they're in charge of the House is fight for accountability and dig their heels in in the face of stupid legislation. There is a chance government will grind to a halt, and then Dems will be blamed for the continuing catastrophe of Republicanism.

At Give Up Blog, we celebrate a Dem return to power, but at the same time, there is no better cure for Republicans than for them to experience unmitigated Republicanism. We worry that, while Dems getting elected in record numbers will be great, less than complete control of at least one branch of government has the potential for disaster. We won't have enough power to direct the legislative agenda, and we won't have enough power to really stop the stupidity of the executive (or their appointments). We're pretty much electing ourselves to become whipping boys and targets for scapegoating.

On the other hand, if we won the House and the Senate, then Americans might be able to see the true difference between a conservative and liberal agenda, and see that while they have nothing to offer but stagflation, endless war, and corporate welfare, we might have something significantly better.

It's a concern, but hey, I've seen projections now of a 50/50 split in the Senate. A few "mavericks" might make that a serious chance at a unity government.

Oh, and that reminds me, to those who have seen this picture:



And the caption usually reads something like, "Warner, McCain and Graham are bucking the White House over interrogations." Ahem. They wouldn't be able to do that if it weren't for the fact that they're effectively joining the Democratic side. If you just voted Democrat in the first place, you wouldn't need "mavericks" to stand up for human decency.

Because it can't be emphasized enough.

Here's a color-coded chart that gives us better idea of the actual risks we face in our lives. Here's the 10 year figures on deaths for a variety of causes (the Oklahoma bombing is included).



That's right, the cops are definitely more likely to kill you than the terrorists.
From Wired Magazine and via boingboing.

Does anyone else find it funny that this E. Coli outbreak was caused by a company named, "Natural Selection Foods"?

The Christian Madrasses story is back in the news as the movie "Jesus Camp" is about to be released.

You guys might remember our previous conversation about this last month in which we had a troll indicate that Christianity was a religion of peace, so it was impossible for them to truly incite hate by brainwashing children to worship George Bush (he then proceeded to say the real problem in Ireland wasn't Catholics v. Protestants, but mere nationalistic hatred for the English - can't it be both?).

Anyway, as a pre-emptive strike against a similar innane argument that any religion lacks blood on it's hands, here's some choice quotes.

"It's an absolute, straight-up us-against-them," Sandler said. "It's, you're either with us or you're against us. ... Not only are you a sinner, but you are working for the enemy — the enemy being Satan."
...
One child in "Jesus Camp" goes so far as to say, "We're a key generation to bringing Jesus back."

And we all know the pre-conditions for that occurring (in the horribly misunderstood book of revelations which describes the freaking Roman empire damnit).

Second, I think I can cite Pope Ratfinger's behavior over the last week. La Boheme says, and I agree, that La Popa could not possibly have "accidentally" referred to Islam as a dirty violent religion and insulted Mohammed purely by chance.

He probably meant to do it, after all, we're not under the illusion that he's stupid, he's just theologically misinformed like all religious people. In other words, we think he might be picking a religious fight with the Muslims, and it sounds like he's succeeded. They've got muslims throwing firebombs at churches in Jerusalem (hitting the Episcopalians no less), and hardliners calling for la Popa's assassination. Maybe he's realized he'll never be as popular as J2P2 and is going for the martyrdom route?

Benedict want's to be remembered for more than this:

I'm sure a religious war will do it. Religion of peace my ass, he's thrown down a gauntlett.

So, we're walking around Manhattan on Saturday, and suddenly Jeff says, "look, a stealth bomber!"

Being an idiot, I actually looked where he was pointing, only, he was right. It was a freaking stealth bomber.



I should have refused to look assuming he was screwing with me, but luckily I'm gullible.

Thanks to the gothamist for proving we weren't crazy.

It seems this is the morning of bad science/everybody panic news. First we've got BoingBoing bitching about bacteriophage treatments of food to eliminate potential contamination with strains of E. Coli and Salmonella.

Intralytix also has two other applications waiting approval of the FDA to spray for E.Coli and Salmonella. Oh boy, can you imagine the cocktail we'll be eating? And if people start getting sick, the lovely pharmaceutical companies will gladly sell some miracle drug to treat it.

Then you've got CNN talking about the deadly, deadly E. Coli poisoning our spinach.

E. coli can cause diarrhea, death

E. coli causes diarrhea, often with bloody stools. Most healthy adults can recover completely within a week, although some people -- including the very young and old -- can develop a form of kidney failure that often leads to death.

Anyone who has gotten sick after eating raw packaged spinach should contact a doctor, officials said.

Other bagged vegetables, including prepackaged salads, apparently are not affected. In general, however, washing all bagged vegetables is recommended. Thorough cooking kills the bacterium.

Oy. I don't know where to begin. It's like these news stories you get every month about how some new thing has been tested for "bacterial contamination" and found to have more bacteria on it than a toilet seat (which tend to be the cleanest things in your house). Quick, is anyone in the room a microbiologist? No? Well, I'll have to do my best.

First of all, we are not sterile. We are dirty creatures covered with bacteria. We have bacteria growing on our skin, in our mouths, and throughout our GI tract. In addition we are full of other organisms, from the tiny arachnids that cover our skin to the trillions of viruses we hold in our gut, we are not, by any means, sterile. Yet there is this expectation in the news that we should be, or that bacteria and viruses of themselves are deadly. Sorry, but a bacteriophage that kills E. Coli and Salmonella will probably save lives, and do no harm to humans. But don't get me wrong, I'm not agreeing with CNN that E. Coli is a deadly evil bacteria (salmonella might be but not E. Coli). If that were true we'd all be dead from the amount of E. Coli we're all carrying around all the time.

There are many strains of E. Coli, most of them are harmless but one known as O157:H7 can be deadly because it carries a gene for a shiga-like toxin allowing it to directly attack the cells of the gut. While children are more likely to suffer from the illness it's actually worse when adults get it.

Uggh. Crap like this makes me tired all over. Pretty much everything in the CNN article is either wrong, exaggerated, or just not informative. Like telling people who have "gotten sick" after eating raw spinach should go see a doctor. Sick with what? A UTI? A fever? Maybe you should tell people instead that becomming ill with diarrhea after eating a suspected source of contaminated food are signs that you may have consumed the toxic form of E. Coli.

I would advise reading a good article on HUS rather than this CNN bullshit.

Just because I love the guy.

Here's an obvious one. Catch the the Nice Jenkins at the Satellite Ballroom in Charlottesville.

The Satellite is rapidly becoming my favorite venue. Not just for the obvious reason of having a nice big bar stocked with plenty of people serving drinks, but damn, it's getting some good shows. Of interest in the next month, Jenkins Thursday the 14th, Rogue Wave the 15th, Mates of State the 25th, Of Montreal the 28th, and Islands (I can definitely recommend) on the 14th of October.

Here's the Jenkins practicing at the ballroom the night before their show.



This is a damn good band (If you're not a C-Villian you can buy their music here - I have no conflicting interests in recommending it, I just like it) Tickets for their show are available at Plan 9 and I'm sure you can show up and drop 5 bucks to get in and drink and hear some good music Thursday night. And the other stuff at the ballroom is shaping up to make this a fun fall music season. I'm afraid I'm leaving town tomorrow (making GiveUpBlog a little more quiet for the next week) but I'll try to keep updating, and if you're a C-Ville dweller, there's no excuse for missing this. In the meantime expect me to be at some of these other shows.

This guy is going to have the longest beard in the world.

Oh, and congratulations on Buck for living in Blue California, they're adopting a living wage. I also love how Schwarzenegger was performing terribly, with horrible approval ratings and a series of embarrassing policy failures, and then he fired all his Republican staff, hired a Democratic Chief of Staff, and now is essentially a Democrat. Now his approval ratings are soaring and he's getting Cali back on track. It just goes to show, people just don't want Republican policies. They may want Republican daddy to protect them and keep the gays away, but when it comes to running shit? They want a Dem.

So Pope Benny the Ratfinger or whatever his name is, you know, the Nazi pope, has come out with his solution for all the problems of the world. It's a little complicated, I'll just quote it:

Pope Benedict XVI weighed in Tuesday on the delicate issue of rapport between Islam and the West: He said that violence, embodied in the Muslim idea of jihad, or holy war, is contrary to reason and God's plan, while the West was so beholden to reason that Islam could not understand it.

Nonetheless, in a complex treatise delivered at the university here where he once taught, he suggested reason as a common ground for a "genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today."
...
But the section on Islam made up just three paragraphs of the speech, and he devoted the rest to a long examination of how Western science and philosophy had divorced themselves from faith - leading to the secularization of European society that is at the heart of Benedict's worries.
...
"The world's profoundly religious cultures see this exclusion from the divine, from the universality of reason as an attack on their most profound convictions," he said. "A reason which is deaf to the divine and which relegates religion into the realm of subcultures is incapable of entering into the dialogue of cultures."

Hmm, our problem is that the West has too much reason and the Muslims have too little. I guess he's saying that the only solution is the middle ground, Catholicism, the perfect mixture of superstition and reason? Why am I thinking of Goldilocks and the Three Bears?

I don't know if you're going to convince me on that one Benny. I don't exactly see the Swedes crashing planes into buildings or Belgians strapping bombs to their chest. Maybe, just maybe, there's a connection there you don't want to admit to? Basically, he's saying we've become too unlike the terrorists blowing shit up to understand them, so we need to become more irrational and religious so we can connect with our jihadist brethren (like they did in the Crusades).

Yeah, that's not happening. Keep working on that argument Benny.

My latest scientific experiment:



I've got about 12 gallons of juice from chardonnay grapes, and I started fermentation yesterday (the picture is from before adding the yeast, it's bubbling away now).

Anyone else have any fun with home winemaking?

I can't believe I missed this. I was reading the Scientific Activist and a saw that an article was published last week in Science indicating a striking decrease in RO1 funding over the last few years. What is shocking isn't that RO1s are successful in acquiring funding, but how rapidly the rate of funding RO1s has dropped.

Fate of unamended (unsolicited) R01 research grant applications
Fiscal year	Number submitted	Number awarded	Total $ awarded (millions)	Success rate (%)
Type-1 grants: new submissions
1999	8957	1761	456	19.7
2000	8626	1736	503	20.1
2001	8284	1590	501	19.2
2002	8560	1556	510	18.2
2003	9605	1477	493	15.4
2004	10624	1288	438	12.1
2005	10605	970	351	9.1
Type-2 grants: continuation (renewal) submissions
1999	3214	1772	554	55.1
2000	3233	1708	563	52.8
2001	3100	1637	583	52.8
2002	3153	1555	559	49.3
2003	3767	1697	627	45.0
2004	3773	1530	580	40.6
2005	3896	1262	496	32.4

One should fear for any country that fails to maintain its investment in R&D. I can only hope when it comes time to try to get my first RO1 this situation will have reversed itself (in other words, we will have elected competent leadership).

Everyone has to go to George Allen's campaign website and see the pictures from his ethnic rally.



I love how the "Ethnic Rally" pictures are juxtaposed next to his 11th annual Hoe Down. I also can't help but be amused by the similarity between these pictures and this one:



Colbert is a freaking genius. He's really captured this great tendency for the right wingers to surround themselves with brown people whenever they've made a racist gaffe as if to say, "Look! I can stand to be in the presence of minorities!"

He did it again yesterday.



This guy needs a promotion.

In today's Washington Post, you'll find this article covering the killing of a pit bull, which was off leash in Dupont Circle. An officer shot it, claiming that the dog charged him. Boo hoo. Like, there's a leash law in DC. It isn't the coutryside. And pit bulls kill people, so I don't know how unreasonable it is to shoot at them when they're off leash and charging you. The article has 267 words.

On the next page, you'll find an article about two killings of people, you know, humans (Page B4, 2 Separate Homicides Investigated, 186 words). And an article about a sexual assault (Page B4, Woman Sexually Assaulted, 71 words). The dog article gets more ink than both articles concerning crimes against humans, combined.

Give Up blog is going to go on vacation as a majority of our contributors are out of town. Look for regular posting after Thursday the 21st.

In the meantime, ponder this Rasmussen polling indicating that the number of self-identified Republicans is at a 2.5 year low of 32%.

The number of Americans calling themselves Republican has fallen to its lowest level in more than two-and-a-half years. Just 31.9% of American adults now say they're affiliated with the GOP. That's down from 37.2% in October 2004 and 34.5% at the beginning of 2006. These results come from Rasmussen Reports tracking surveys of 15,000 voters per month and have a margin of sampling error smaller than a percentage point.

The number of Democrats has grown slightly, from 36.1% at the beginning of the year to 37.3% now.

Those who claim to be unaffiliated have increased to 30.8% this month. That's the highest total recorded since Rasmussen Reports began releasing this data in January 2004.

Hmm, maybe it has something to do with incompetence, but it may also be corruption, waste, partisanship, and a borderline-retarded president.

My primary avenue for human behavior research, Wife Swap, has provided even more evidence of homenoschooling.

Public school teacher mom: So you guys make your own schedule basically?
Home school student: No, we go from 10 till 1.
Public school teacher mom: That's like only 3 hours. Three hours of schooling?

Use headphones etc., for this post. But if anyone needed an additional reminder that religion is no guarantee of morality, and if anything, literal interpretation leads to immorality, here's Fred Phelps to tell us why Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are evil.



And, to help get that out of your system, here's a gospel song to help wash Phelps out of your mind.

Medicine is just one of those things that conflicts with market-based systems. Nature reports this week that drug companies are reluctant to pursue pharmacogenomics and instead have been eliminating drugs that are effective in minorities of patients from further study.

In other words, a genetic profile may identify a population, maybe 20% of those afflicted with an illness, that would greatly benefit or be cured by a drug under investigation. These drugs are said to be tailored, or pharmacogenetically developed for specific patient populations. The problem? Drug companies want blockbuster drugs that will maximaize profit, and don't want to spend millions developing a drug that won't help everybody, even if it could cure a minority of patients.

A July report based on dozens of pharmaceutical company documents and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission says companies often abandon drugs that would benefit only a genetic subset of people, and even obstruct research on genes that would predict drug response.

"There's lots of hand waving about how big companies are going to develop pharmacogenetic drugs," says Adam Hedgecoe, coauthor of the report, published by the UK Pharmacogenetics Study Group.

"But companies are using pharmacogenomics to weed out drugs at an early stage," he says. "[They] don't develop a drug that's only going to work for 20% of the population."

In one example, a leading drug company refused to provide its product to academic researchers for a clinical trial assessing genetic and lifestyle factors that predict response to a drug for Alzheimer disease. The company only agreed after the researchers threatened to sue. Companies have also prevented scientists from publishing data that stratified drug responses by genetic factors, he says.
...
The success of the tailored cancer therapies Herceptin and Gleevec has also shown industry that such drugs can earn significant profits, he adds.

In the absence of tests that can single out people who would most benefit from a drug, however, most drugs continue to be prescribed indiscriminately. Some biotechnology companies such as Third Wave Technologies in Wisconsin and Massachusetts-based Genzyme Genetics are trying to develop tests that can be marketed along with drugs.

Huzzah for the free market. In spite of examples of pharmacogenomic or tailored drugs that make a profit (not a huge profit, but a profit) they refuse to pursue pharmacogenomics since it won't give them "blockbuster" drugs. It's a damn shame.

I'm not sure why exactly I scored so high. Probably my ability to spot names of elements and a unnaturally large amount of math and physics training.

Senators Specter and Durbin are giving Advanced Cell Technologies a raft of crap over their paper in Nature last week demonstrating that hES lines could be derived from single cells.

The problem is, because human embryos are exceedingly difficult to come by, the researchers maximized the probability of getting lines by taking all the cells out of the embryo thereby destroying it. It was clear to anyone who read the article that the embryos were destroyed in the process. However, the researchers, despite not making this abundently clear to the press, did show two important things.

1. That hES cells could be derived from this earlier-stage blastocyst. This was not clear before.
   
2. That hES cells could be derived from single cells. I was confused by this as well since they were destroying the embryos, but now I see it was a practical issue to get as many cells as possible from a limited source.
   

Now, the problem is that they didn't do in the paper what was reported by the lay media, which is create ES cells without affecting viability of the embryo. I am guilty of this myself, I guess because I assumed no one would have a problem with this being a "proof-of-principle study." Basically, it would have been expensive, difficult, time-consuming, and possibly unethical to remove cells from embryos destined for implantation into humans for this scientific study, and I think it is quite reasonable to say this was beyond the scope of their study. They merely wanted to show it was possible to derive hES cells from single cells at this early stage. They performed an experiment to maximize the possibility of this happening, and it isn't ACT's fault that the entire media establishment over-interpreted their results (although it really isn't much of an over-interpretation).

Now I understand why the Senators are irritated about this kind of research, it is kind of a pointless distraction designed to appease rightwingers who will never be satisfied no matter what we do. But I really don't think the authors were purposefully dishonest, and it really isn't their fault the paper was over-interpreted, because, after all, they did prove it was possible to generate hES cells from single cells that were equivalent to genetic screening samples used safely in IVF. The fact that they didn't then implant the embryos to prove viability is besides the point. That ability isn't in question.

Anyway, everyone is a loser here. The Senators for being jackasses, ACT for having their integrity impugned for coverage that wasn't their fault (and isn't really inaccurate if you think about it), and the public for having valuable research delayed to satisfy the pointless ethical concerns of a vocal religious minority.

Jim Lehrer said it: On the Newshour tonight...a media unit look at the cult of personality in the news business...



All this business about Katie Couric caused me to have a Society of the Spectacle moment a few months ago. I had flown into the ATL on the redeye, and all of the televisions were on, singing a collective praise for all news because CBS promoted Katie Couric. The newspapers had pictures of her. "Oh how wonderful we are--a woman is going to present the news." It reminded me of this passage by Guy Debord:

The spectacle presents itself as something enormously positive, indisputable and inaccessible. It says nothing more than “that which appears is good, that which is good appears. The attitude which it demands in principle is passive acceptance which in fact it already obtained by its manner of appearing without reply, by its monopoly of appearance.

The basically tautological character of the spectacle flows from the simple fact that its means are simultaneously its ends. It is the sun which never sets over the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the world and bathes endlessly in its own glory.

I think I'm going to cry. LiebesBush is having a tough time back in school because those bully Democrats seem to think that primaries matter. Poor, poor LiebesBush.

In related news, Rhode Island is seeing a primary fight between Republican incumbent Lincoln Chaffey and Club For Growth Wacko Stephen Laffey. Funny, in this case no one is calling it undemocratic and evil to oppose an incumbent who is out of touch with the electorate. Could it be (dun dun dun) media bias? I doubt it actually, LiebesBush just got so much attention because he was a VP and Presidential candidate just a couple years back.

I'm sure everybody has heard already, but the newpapers today are full of news about Bush admitting the existence of secret prisons.

Ah, remember those innocent days, just a few months ago, when they were denying these prisons existed? Back when we had honor and faith in the office of the presidency? Oh wait, we never believed him, because Bush is a liar.

Luckily the army at least is instituting rules against torture in their manual dealing with the handling of detainees. I think it's because the army is run by professionals who care about the institution that they have served. Whereas our civilian leadership has never evinced anything but contempt for government, civil rights, and the ideals on which our country was based. But hey, their time is short. I can't wait until we get Conyers in their to beat their asses into line in November. Time for some freaking accountability already.

Hey, did anyone hear about these church lady murderers that were arrested a few weeks ago? They were called "hit-and-run grannies", but more appropriately they should be called the church ladies of death or something. Anyway, what they did is they met homeless men through their church, then obtained life insurance on them, drugged them, and ran them over with their church-lady mobile. I don't know why but I have a little bit of trouble not laughing about this, maybe because I was watching the coverage of this over the memorial day weekend and thought one of the ladies was a dead ringer for Maude Flanders.



Am I bad person? I just can't help thinking about evil Maude Flanders running people over in her church-lady car. It's like a Simpsons Halloween Episode.

Joementum is back! After taking only a freaking month to fix a "denial of service attack" (**cough** Bullshit **Cought**) Joe2006 is back on line and gotta say, I'm excited. You know why? Because they have comments enabled on their blog and my very favorite JC Christian, Patriot, Jesus' General himself has decided to take up residence and mock the sore-loosing Bush kisser.

The American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a group that produced a "blacklist" of American professors who criticized "civilization" shortly after 9/11, has had a massive victory: Iran has adopted their policy goal of purging schools of liberal teachers. From the Times:

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called Tuesday for a purge of liberal and secular professors from Iranian universities, the IRNA news agency reported.

"Today, students have the right to strongly criticize their president for the continued presence of liberal and secular professors in the country’s universities," he told a group of young conservatives on National Youth Day, according to the news agency.

ACTA should be proud. They wanted the same approach in the US, but thus far, it hasn't been very successful. I wonder whether this development will cause Senator Lieberman to rejoin the organization's board...

Screw blogging, let's all just watch Battlestar Galactica shorts available at SciFi. Apparently they're going to run a bunch of these before the season starts in October.

Give up! The incompetence of our leaders is their weakness.

We have news that opium production is way up.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime, said in Kabul that the record harvest of 6,100 tons was "staggering" and "very bad news". The southern part of Afghanistan, where Nato took control from US-led troops on July 31, was "displaying the ominous hallmarks of incipient collapse, with large-scale drug cultivation and trafficking, insurgency and terrorism, crime and corruption", Mr Costa said in a separate statement released by his office.

In addition, listening to NPR the elections we've held for the Afghanis are a joke, corruption is rampant, and the democracy we've exported is viewed with contempt by the populace. Further, Pakistan is allying itself with the Taliban despite word from our generals that they are not.

Polls are showing that anti-incumbent feelings are at a maximum and every day reading Kos the signs are the Republicans are in a state of total collapse with signs that if the elections were held today we could take the house and possibly the senate.

Our incomptent leaders say that we're safer but not safe". I think that's called covering all the bases. Most Americans think we're not safer and losing the war on terror. Oh, yeah, and UBL, that guy hiding in a cave? Yeah, he's Hitler now. Is it a Godwin's law violation if the president does it? Considering this guy is in a cave should he be compared to a guy who took over most of Europe?

George Allen is showing that beyond being a racist, he's a general scoundrel. Apparently he's too lazy to introduce his own amendments so he just plagiarized the Democrats' one.

Is there any reason at all to trust these guys any more? I wouldn't put them in charge of security at a highway rest stop.

He got caught astro-turfing his own articles. Ha! What an idiot.

To those who don't remember why you should hate Lee Spiegel, James Urbaniak (of all people), probably has some of the best documentation of the problem. Basically, he was a New Republic blogger that spent all his time calling bloggers fascists and Jon Stewart a traitor. He also started calling people pedophiles for no clear reason.

Anyway, we're glad that he's lost all legitimacy as a writer, and look forward to him never being employed again, because he's a dishonest hack.

Science has a must-read article this week on racial achievement and how expectations fuel results (perspective article here). It's based on research on the stereotype threat, a phenomenon discovered about a decade ago that blacks tend to perform more poorly on aptitude testing when stereotypes about their academic performance are emphasized or implied before being tested. The WaPo has an article discussing this research both in racial and gender stereotype threats, and here is a more sciencey one. Basically, the stereotype threat exists when blacks or women or other susceptible groups are made to feel they will perform badly before they are tested, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. But the performance gap can be reduced, or even eliminated as in the case in studies on women, when you bolster the confidence of the subject before they take the test.

This new article in Science shows that not only does the stereotype threat exist, but it can be corrected by merely having black 7th graders write a "self-integrity" essay before being tested. The authors describe the procedure.

Following standard procedures, the affirmation and control exercises presented a list of values (such as relationships with friends or family or being good at art) (12). In experiment 1, treatment students were asked to indicate their most important value, control students their least important value. In the replication study, treatment students were asked to indicate their two or three most important values, control students their two or three least important values.

Treatment students in both studies then wrote a brief paragraph about why their selected value(s) were important to them. Control students wrote about why the chosen value(s) might be important to someone else. To reinforce the manipulation, students indicated their level of agreement with statements concerning their chosen value(s) (such as "I care about these values," in the treatment condition versus "some people care about these values," in the control condition). Upon completion, students placed the exercise packet in its envelope, sealed it, and returned it. Envelopes were collected and forwarded to the researchers. Teachers immediately resumed their lesson plan. One exercise was completed during the academic term in the first study, two in the replication study

The amazing thing was that this relatively simple intervention of making students think about their values or "self-affirm" as they describe it, reduced the academic acheivement gap between whites and blacks by a significant amount, especially among "low-performing" or "moderately performing" students (little or no improvement was seen in students that were already performing well). The affirmation or self-integrity assessment had no effect on whites' performance (ostensibly because they lack a stereotype threat). Here's the second figure from the paper.



It's truly amazing to see that the performance of students can improve so dramatically, simply by counteracting the their negative expectations of themselves based on racial stereotypes. I think this demonstrates two things. One is that institutional racism is still a problem, and second that those Bell Curve-believing idiots are just studying institutional racism. What do my science readers think?

Civil War in Iraq is being more widely acknowledged and suggested by the letter from Democrats calling for the ouster of Donald Rumsfeld. More disturbing is the news that Ayatollah Sistani, the moderate leader of Shiite muslims in Iraq, is saying civil war is inevitable, mainly because of lack of support from the administration means he can't keep followers from following more radical leaders.

The most influential moderate Shia leader in Iraq has abandoned attempts to restrain his followers, admitting that there is nothing he can do to prevent the country sliding towards civil war.

Aides say Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani is angry and disappointed that Shias are ignoring his calls for calm and are switching their allegiance in their thousands to more militant groups which promise protection from Sunni violence and revenge for attacks.

"I will not be a political leader any more," he told aides. "I am only happy to receive questions about religious matters."

It is a devastating blow to the remaining hopes for a peaceful solution in Iraq and spells trouble for British forces, who are based in and around the Shia stronghold of Basra.
...
However, the extent to which he has become marginalised was demonstrated last week when fighting broke out in Diwaniya between Iraqi soldiers and al-Sadr's Mehdi army. With dozens dead, al-Sistani's appeals for calm were ignored. Instead, the provincial governor had to travel to Najaf to see al-Sadr, who ended the fighting with one telephone call.

He said a series of snubs had contributed to Ayatollah al-Sistani's decision. "He asked the politicians to ask the Americans to make a timetable for leaving but they disappointed him," he said. "After the war, the politicians were visiting him every month. If they wanted to do something, they visited him. But no one has visited him for two or three months. He is very angry that this is happening now. He sees this as very bad."

A report from the Pentagon on Friday said that the core conflict in Iraq had changed from a battle against insurgents to an increasingly bloody fight between Shia and Sunni Muslims, creating conditions that could lead to civil war. It noted that attacks rose by 24 per cent to 792 per week – the highest of the war – and daily Iraqi casualties soared by 51 per cent to almost 120, prompting some ordinary Iraqis to look to illegal militias for their safety and sometimes for social needs and welfare.

Wow, so that line Bush always gives that a timetable for withdrawal will embolden the terrorists sounds like more bullshit, big surprise. Instead of emboldening the terrorists it would have given moderates more credibility and possibly prevented a civil war. We'll just chalk that one up there with the hundreds of other mistakes these jackasses have made.

Daily Kos has an excellent post on what the Conservative Citizens Council really is, and how damning this picture is for George Allen.



Basically, with careful searching of hate groups' websites they have found that the CCC is a group well recognized by other hate groups as a white supremacist organization, and it shares membership with members of neo-Nazi and KKK other racist/supremacist groups.

Further, Allen can't pretend he didn't know who these guys were when he posed with them, he went out of his way to ally himself with the CCC as described by this article from the Nation.

In 1996, when Governor Allen entered the Washington Hilton Hotel to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual gathering of conservative movement organizations, he strode to a booth at the entrance of the exhibition hall festooned with two large Confederate flags--a booth operated by the CCC, at the time a co-sponsor of CPAC. After speaking with CCC founder and former White Citizens Council organizer Gordon Lee Baum and two of his cohorts, Allen suggested that they pose for a photograph with then-National Rifle Association spokesman and actor Charlton Heston. The photo appeared in the Summer 1996 issue of the CCC's newsletter, the Citizens Informer.

According to Baum, Allen had not naively stumbled into a chance meeting with unfamiliar people. He knew exactly who and what the CCC was about and, from Baum's point of view, was engaged in a straightforward political transaction. "It helped us as much as it helped him," Baum told me. "We got our bona fides." And so did Allen.


Descended from the White Citizens' Councils that battled integration in the Jim Crow South, the CCC is designated a "hate group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center. In its "Statement of Principles," the CCC declares, "We also oppose all efforts to mix the races of mankind, to promote non-white races over the European-American people through so-called "affirmative action" and similar measures, to destroy or denigrate the European-American heritage, including the heritage of the Southern people, and to force the integration of the races."

Macaca is not an isolated incident, Allen has been cultivating and exploiting racist feelings in Virginia for political gain for over a decade. Let's hope James Webb (contribute) can knock this racist, confederate flag-waving, noose-loving creep out of the Senate.

He's out of town, but while screwing around on YouTube this weekend I found this classic video and favorite of AAP.



Enjoy!

On the West Coast, Labor Day weekend brings Burning Man, a celebration I do not frequent because of the lack of hotels. But on the East Coast, there's Dragoncon: a conference for scifi fans that occupies three hotels in downtown Hotlanta and is attended by 30,000 weird people. Yes, it's like nerd prom. I love it. Check out some costume goodness.

A drunken Pooh (with the Thought Police).



An advice booth (to critique your costume).



Ghostbusters.



More weirdness is at Flickr.

Especially when good stuff is available. The Decemberists, Dresden Dolls, and Jenny Lewis are all coming to DC in the next month and a half. Rogue Wave, the Flaming Lips, and M. Ward will be in C'ville. Tickets should be available for all of these shows. Woohoo!

Oh, and the remaining members and siblings of Lynyrd Skynyrd are coming to Charlottesville, too. It might be fun to yell "FREE BIRD" at a show where it would actually be appropriate. Then again, the Rebel Flag Tattoo/Original Teeth ratio of the crowd might be a little off-putting.