Americans were stunned today to discover their president, George W. Bush of Crawford Texas, might be a total fucking idiot. Check out this CNN story about the new book Strategery, and the statement by Bush that, Bin Laden helped him win in 2004.

The idiot part?

President Bush said his 2004 re-election victory over Sen. John Kerry was inadvertently aided by Osama bin Laden, The Washington Examiner newspaper reported Tuesday.
...
Bush said there were "enormous amounts of discussion" inside his campaign about the 15-minute tape, which he called "an interesting entry by our enemy" into the presidential race.

Bush's comments in the Washington newspaper were excerpts from the new book "Strategery" by Bill Sammon, a longtime White House correspondent.
...
"I thought it was going to help," Bush said.

"I thought it would help remind people that if bin Laden doesn't want Bush to be the president, something must be right with Bush."

What a blockhead. He just doesn't get it. Bin Laden loves George Bush. George Bush fulfilled all of Bin Laden's fantasies about embroiling the United States in an endless war that would be perceived as being against Islam. World opinion of our country has gone to pot, our deficits have ballooned, our soldiers die, and Bin Laden is still alive. What about this makes George think Bin Laden doesn't love him? He is responsible more than any other man alive for fulfilling Bin Laden's prophecies about the 9/11 attacks, if anything, he released that tape because he knew criticism of Bush would only help him win again.

Man was the Dukester crooked. He actually had a bribe menu!

"The length, breadth and depth of Cunningham's crimes," the sentencing memorandum states, "are unprecedented for a sitting member of Congress."

Prosecutors will ask federal Judge Larry Burns to impose the statutory maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.

The sentencing memorandum includes the California Republican's "bribery menu" on one of his congressional note cards, "starkly framed" under the seal of the United States Congress.

The card shows an escalating scale for bribes, starting at $140,000 and a luxury yacht for a $16 million Defense Department contract. Each additional $1 million in contract value required a $50,000 bribe.

The rate dropped to $25,000 per additional million once the contract went above $20 million.

Holy crap! Now that's crooked.

Besides packing the Presidential Council on Bioethics (PCBE) with Catholics, Bush may also be packing it with people with ties to creationism.

In researching the attempts by Discovery Institute (DI) members to sneak their BS into scientific journals, I found something interesting. One DI author in particular, Wesley J. Smith, a senior fellow at the DI, can be tied to other members of the the PCBE. The link is in a journals published by a right-wing anti-science think tank called "First Things" published by The Institute of Religion and Public Life. Smith has written several articles using his brand of religion disguised as bioethics for "First Things", as have members of the PCBE including its former chair, that crackpot Leon Kass. In particular Gilbert C. Meilaender (a professor of Christian ethics at Valparaiso) has written for "first things."

So, who else thinks that it's fucked up everyone on Bush's committee has more ties to religion than they do to science, as if believing in an imaginary man in the sky in any way informs you on ethical behavior (doesn't seem to prevent Mosques or abortion clinics from getting bombed). And that at least two members of Bush's PCBE have had publications in this BS magazine, sharing space with creationists (Wesley Smith) from the DI?

What we end up with is ethics based on the non-scientific idea that life begins at conception. Life doesn't begin when people are born. From a scientific standpoint the discussion is ludicrous and inappropriate. Life began about 3.5 billion years ago and has not stopped since. When an embryo is conceived, a living sperm and a living egg join together to form a living embryo. Life doesn't "begin" in this situation, it merely continues.

What these jackasses are talking about is "ensoulment" of the embryo, and based on their religion, demanding that scientists treat all embryos as ensouled living beings (thus blocking all stem cell science). This topic should be out of the realm of scientific or bioethical discussion. This is theology, and it has no place on the PCBE. Further, these potential ties to creationists are not surprising. Because, if you don't believe that life began 3.5 billion years ago and that instead you are a special non-animal product of a divine creator, you would probably believe stupid shit like life "beginning" every time someone gets pregnant. Sorry, but scientifically, that's not how it works. Life is continuous, there is no "dead" or non-living stage in human reproduction. Deal with it. These people are talking about when our souls appear in embryos, and there is no scientific basis for dealing with that particular topic. The only scientifically acceptible answer to the question of when life begins is to say that it doesn't. It began a long time ago and hasn't stopped since. Maybe that's why the crooks at the DI are so afraid of evolution.

As promised I've been looking into how big the problem is of the DI sneaking BS abstracts into real scientific journals. Fortunately for us, the problem so far is not very extensive. I found a total of 4 citations that can be described as inappropriate additions to the literature through various searches through Thomson and Pubmed (aside from the 2 abstracts we previously discovered Wells snuck into the summer and winter meetings). This brings the damage to 6 abstracts/articles.

The remaining 4 are:

Author(s): Wells, J
Title: Do centrioles generate a polar ejection force?
Source: RIVISTA DI BIOLOGIA-BIOLOGY FORUM, 98 (1): 71-95 JAN-APR 2005.

(Note that this abstract is a duplicate of the one he submitted to the ASCB, that's an ethical no-no if you ask me, even if he cites this paper in the abstract)

Author(s): Nelson, PA; Ross, MR
Title: Problems with characterizing the protostome-deuterostome ancestor.
Source: DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY, 271 (2): 601-601 254 JUL 15 2004
(*snore* This abstract has never been cited again of course)

Since Darwin's time, the origins and relationships of bilaterian animals have remained unsolved problems in historical biology (Conway Morris, 2000). One of the central difficulties is characterizing the common ancestor of the protostomes and deuterostomes. We argue that an unresolved conceptual puzzle has plagued the many attempts to describe this Urbilaterian, or, in Erwin and Davidson's (2002) terminology, the protostomedeuterostome ancestor (PDA). Any organism sophisticated enough to be a realistic candidate for the PDA, with such characters as an anterior-posterior axis, gut, and sensory organs, must itself have been constructed by a developmental process, or by what we term an ontogenetic network (Nelson and Ross, 2003). But the more biologically plausible the PDA becomes, as a functioning organism within a population of other such organisms, the more it will tend to ''pull'' (in its characters) toward one or another of the known bilaterian groups. As this happens, and the organism loses its descriptive generality, it will cease to be a good candidate Urbilaterian.

Author(s): Wells, J; Nelson, PA
Title: Recovering the classical tradition in comparative embryology.
Source: DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY, 247 (2): 18 JUL 15 2002
(A nit-picking abstract suggesting we use the discredited Haeckels embryos to discredit developmental biology even though Haeckel's work has been discredited for a decade or more and he wasn't a Darwinist but a Lamarckian! Talk about beating a dead (or discredited) horse)

It is an irony of the history of comparative embryology that the flawed diagrams of Ernst Haeckel ever came to be widely adopted in biology textbooks, when historians of science such as Jane Oppenheimer knew that the diagrams were flawed and said as much in their publications. The irony deepens, however, when one considers that in 1894-over a century before the work of Michael Richardson and his colleagues reawakened interest in the problem-the embryologist Adam Sedgwick had warned that
Haeckel's representations were inaccurate at best. We argue that fresh attention should be given to what E. S. Russell in 1916 called the 'classical tradition' of comparative embryology-i.e., to such workers as Sedgwick, W. His, and O. Hertwig-to help redress long-standing imbalances in interpreting and understanding the patterns of developmental biology. There is much to be learned from these workers that is of great relevance today.

Author(s): Wells, J
Title: Second thoughts about peppered moths (as usual a nit-picking essay on a discredited example of evolution maybe not discredited example of evolution -- thanks Ricardo).
Source: SCIENTIST, 13 (11): 13-13 MAY 24 1999

Every student of biological evolution learns about peppered moths. During the Industrial Revolution, dark ("melanic") forms of this moth, Biston betularia, became much more common than light ("typical") forms, though the proportion of melanics declined after the passage of pollution-control legislation. When experiments in the 1950s pointed to cryptic coloration and differential bird predation as its cause, "industrial melanism" became the classical story of evolution by natural selection. Subsequent research, however, has revealed major flaws in the classical story. It's time to take another look.

So, the DI has succeeded in infiltrating three journals of note, Molecular Biology of the Cell, Developmental Biology and the Science-News magazine The Scientist. Hopefully we can raise awareness of this group's bullshit so scientific journals know better than to propagate their willful ignorance.

The Birmingham News has found a bunch of pictures from the civil rights era in their attic. Check out some of the pictures they found, these images are great.

We could learn a lot from the freedom marchers, rather than continually emulating the ineffective hippie-shit of the era. Check out these pictures for example:










































































Now that's how you show up for a protest! If only our side showed up to protests dressed in suits or their freaking academic robes! Now not everyone is in these shots is necessarily in a 3-piece suit, but no one is dressed up like a polar bear, wearing all black, or disguised as a member of FARC. If only we could cut out the hippie crap and start showing up for our anti-Bush protests dressed like these guys, then maybe someone would listen to us (and the cops would be more reluctant to beat the crap out of us too). Although it still probably wouldn't help since the news would still only cover the jackass with the puppets or whatever.

Apparently GM is having trouble finding musicians willing to sell the rights to their music for Hummer comercials and it's not because the car is named after a blow-job.

The Thermals, a rambunctious rock band from Portland, Ore., were en route between gigs last year when they got a phone call from their label, Sub Pop. Hummer wanted to pay them $50,000 for the right to use their song "It's Trivia" in a commercial.

Portland, Ore., trio The Thermals turned down a $50,000 licensing deal from Hummer.

Trans Am, an electronic rock band from Washington, spurned $180,000 in ad money from Hummer.

"We thought about it for about 15 seconds, maybe," lead singer Hutch Harris said.

They said no.

Washington D.C.'s Trans Am were offered $180,000 by Hummer for the song "Total Information Awareness."

"We figured it was almost like giving music to the Army, or Exxon," guitarist Philip Manley said.

They said no.

The post-punk band LiLiPUT, who broke up more than 20 years ago, could have pocketed $50,000 for "Heidi's Head" after making close to nothing during their five-year existence. But they, too, said no.

"At least I can sleep without nightmares," Marlene Marder reasoned.

For more anti-Hummer fun, visit Hummerdinger or www.FUH2.com. FUH2 is funny and all, but does not enough pictures featuring people giving the drivers the finger. I have found that is a lot more effective.

It is interesting to note that the mainstream media (MSM) is now reporting that Iraq is teetering on the brink of civil war. This is BS. The situation has not changed, Iraq has been in a civil war for months now, we are just on the brink of calling the ~1000 civillian deaths a month a civil war rather than civil unrest.

I would refer you to this figure from the IraqBodyCount.org's report on civilian casualties 2003-2005.



Note these figures are from 2004 and early 2005. I recall in recent months seeing news stories that these death rates have climbed above 1k. While these may be "criminal" killings, I think that's being a bit glib. They are killings that can't be attributed to insurgents or US forces, that's all. I am willing to bet that the killings in the last few days don't represent a great increase from the average of 30-40 deaths a day from this so-called "criminal" element. About 200 people have been killed in the last 4 days since the bombing, that's about a 20% increase from what was already being experienced by Iraqis. Why this is suddenly being called a civil war by the MSM can only be explained by the audacity of the act of blowing up the Askariya shrine in Samarra on Wednesday. It isn't the number of deaths that has changed, only the symbolic status of blowing up such an important holy building (in which no one died).

So, as for "teetering" on the brink of civil war I call shenanigans on the MSM. They've been in the midst of a civil war in Iraq for over a year. Everybody get a broom!

**Update**
The Washington Post reports that morgue surveys have indicated initial reporting was grossly underestimating the number of casualties. The new figures for the violence since the shrine attack is 1,300 civilians killed.

But at the morgue, where the floor was crusted with dried blood, the evidence of the damage already done was clear. Iraqis arrived throughout the day, seeking family members and neighbors among the contorted bodies.

"And they say there is no sectarian war?" demanded one man. "What do you call this?"

The brothers of one missing man arrived, searching for a body. Their hunt ended on the concrete floor, provoking sobs of mourning: "Why did you kill him?" "He was unarmed!" "Oh, my brother! Oh, my brother!"

Morgue officials said they had logged more than 1,300 dead since Wednesday -- the day the Shiites' gold-domed Askariya shrine was bombed -- photographing, numbering and tagging the bodies as they came in over the nights and days of retaliatory raids.

Now, can there be any doubt? All Sunday during the talk shows, (an entirely Republican guest list I might add) everyone on the right denied it was a civil war, it didn't meet the criteria, there wasn't mass unrest, etc. Next Sunday, I hope they actually get some Democrats on the talk shows who actually know what's happening and are willing to call it what it is, an escalating civil war.

The WP has an article on the current rebellion in Nigerian oil country. If you read the CIA factbook entry on Nigeria you can't help but to agree with the rebels. Nigeria used to be a net exporter of food, but the oil industry has polluted their land so badly that now they have to import from other nations. The rights to Nigeria's oil reserves were sold to multinationals by rotten dictators who sold out their people for personal profit. Nationalization seems to be the bare minimum of fair. If you ask me, Shell should be paying the people of Nigeria reparations for profiting from repressive regimes corruption (and for bribing the current Democratic regime to hold onto their supplies).

Good news though is that the hostages the rebels took seem pretty happy. It's bizarre:

The militants allowed one of the American hostages to speak to the journalists. Despite the weaponry arrayed around him, Macon Hawkins, 68, of Kosciusko, Tex., appeared to be in good spirits and said he and the other hostages were safe. But he urged President Bush and the United Nations to help resolve the increasingly violent standoff between the Nigerian government and the people of this restive area.

"They get nothing out of the oil, and they produce all of the oil," Hawkins said of the Niger Delta residents. "They're tired of it, so they're going to fight, and they're going to fight until death."

He added, "Tell President Bush we want to get this thing settled."

Hawkins joked with the journalists about the group's conditions in captivity, which include air-conditioned rooms to sleep in and noodles for meals. He said he had been provided with medicine to control his diabetes and that the other eight hostages were being treated so well they were getting "fat and sassy."

Ain't that something? The NYT reports that several Republican governorships are likely to fall to Democrats while most Democratic governorships aren't in any danger (Pennsylvania and Michigan appear to be the exceptions).

Among the states that could flip to the Democratic column are Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and Ohio, all general election battlegrounds carried by Mr. Bush, as well as New York and perhaps California.
...
Analysts said Democrats had a chance of picking up Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New York, Ohio and — possibly, though less likely — Alabama, California, Florida and Minnesota.

Not to mention Massachussets and Maryland should never have had Republican governorships in the first place. Ehrlich has been a total joke, and has accomplished nothing in 4 years. Romney spends his time campaigning and insulting his home state. Not exactly the type of Republicans like Bloomberg who know how to fit into Democratic territory.

Finally, the article shows there are some Democrats out there who get it.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Kansas Democrat who is favored in her re-election bid in a state where Mr. Bush won 62 percent of the vote, said ethics and competence would be among the most crucial issues for Democrats in 2006.

"People demand competence at a bare minimum," she said. "They want to believe that elected officials have their best interests at heart, not special interests."

Woohoo! That's right. This is the point of Give Up blog. You don't need to debate with Republicans about policy, they are so incompetent in managing anything the basic campaign strategy of Democrats should be to simply point out that the average Republican candidate probably couldn't run a Dairy Queen effectively.

William F. Buckley, the public intellectual who is probably regarded as the most legitimate conservative commentator in the U.S. for the last few decades has now acknowledged in the National Review that the Iraq war is a gigantic failure.

One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed.
...
Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.

The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that Americans aren't on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors. And so they join the clothing merchant who says that everything is the fault of the Americans.
...
Mr. Bush has a very difficult internal problem here because to make the kind of concession that is strategically appropriate requires a mitigation of policies he has several times affirmed in high-flown pronouncements. His challenge is to persuade himself that he can submit to a historical reality without forswearing basic commitments in foreign policy.

He will certainly face the current development as military leaders are expected to do: They are called upon to acknowledge a tactical setback, but to insist on the survival of strategic policies.

Yes, but within their own counsels, different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat.

Maybe it's just because he is an eloquent writer, but this piece really made me sad. Before now I'd considered our failure in Iraq to be caused by the hubris and incompetence from Bush and the neocons. Buckley casts it in the light of a failure (or potential failure) of American ideals themselves. I still don't believe that's right, eventually, when the religiosity of the middle east subsides and they can tolerate the various sects of Islam, different religions and even non-believers, I'm sure they'll come around to ideals of democracy and freedom. In the meantime though, maybe strongmen are the only types of leaders that can keep their relative populaces from murdering eachother in the streets. Or as Bill Maher said on Real Time this week, not joking either, Saddam was the only guy that could run Iraq. How pathetic.

Give Up! (MP3).

I don't know whether George Will's column today increases or decreases my internal George Will ratio.

For those not familiar with the George will ratio, it's the number of times I agree with a column vs. the number of times I disagree with one. It usually floats around 1:6-1:7 and excludes his endless fluffy bios and baseball blather.

I'm not sure if he's saying it's a good thing or a bad thing, but in his analysis of the recent study showing conservatives tend to be happier than liberals, he attributes this to conservatives remaining ignorant of the world's problems. Ignore for a minute his blather blaming FDR for all our problems, and consider how he ends the article:

But, then, conscientious liberals cannot enjoy automobiles because there is global warming to worry about, and the perils of corporate-driven consumerism, which is the handmaiden of bourgeoisie materialism. And high-powered cars (how many liberals drive Corvettes?) are metaphors (for America's reckless foreign policy, for machismo rampant, etc.). And then there is -- was -- all that rustic beauty paved over for highways. (And for those giant parking lots at exurban mega-churches. The less said about them the better.) And automobiles discourage the egalitarian enjoyment of mass transit. And automobiles, by facilitating suburban sprawl, deny sprawl's victims -- that word must make an appearance in liberal laments; and lament is what liberals do -- the uplifting communitarian experience of high-density living. And automobiles . . .

You see? Liberalism is a complicated and exacting, not to say grim and scolding, creed. And not one conducive to happiness.

So, do I disagree with this article or not? Am I such a liberal that I see this statement criticizing liberals as a great credit to our philosophy? That we actually care about something other than ourselves? We don't live for unenlighted self-interest and that's a bad thing?

For the no shit file, alternative medicines don't work.

In the 24-week study, 1,583 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee were randomly assigned to one of five groups. Some patients took glucosamine, some took chondroitin and some took both. Others, serving as comparison subjects, took a placebo or celecoxib, sold as Celebrex, a prescription drug that is approved for osteoarthritis.

No effect was found for glucosamine, chondroitin or a combination of the two. But the study found that the patients who took celecoxib had a statistically significant improvement in their symptoms.

This type of medicine is just such bullshit, and represents sloppy thinking on the part of those that think they work. The idea is, your knee hurts, so you ingest the proteins and chemicals that make up cartilage. Sorry, but it just doesn't work that way, if you have liver damage, eating liver or dried liver pills will not help. If you have Alzheimers, eating cow brains will not fix you. Sorry, you have a digestive system, it doesn't necessarily know you have bad knees.

Dr. Tim McAlindon, chief of rheumatology at Tufts-New England Medical Center in Boston, said that glucosamine traveled to the liver, which then broke it down. Almost no glucosamine that is eaten actually gets into the blood, where it can travel to the joints, Dr. McAlindon said, adding, "The amount that gets beyond the liver is minuscule."

Chondroitin, a large molecule, is digested, Dr. McAlindon said, but it is broken into pieces in the intestines and none of it gets through intact to the joints.

In other no shit news, Iraq is now pretty much in a civil war.

The WSJ has an editorial today chastising the Virginia Republican party for failing to stick to their core values and leading the state into blue territory.

Republicans in that ostensibly "red" Southern state got their clocks cleaned in November's elections after they refused to take a coherent stand on taxes, and Democrat Tim Kaine squeezed to their right on pocketbook issues. As GOP state senator Ken Cuccinelli explained, "We ran on a message of almost being for tax cuts, almost for smaller government, almost for protecting Second Amendment rights, and almost being pro-life. As a result, the voters almost came out and voted for us."

However, in typical WSJ fashion, they show that they still just don't get it.

The GOP plan would increase auto fees, the gas and diesel tax, and even taxes on batteries and tires. This is the same party that last won the governorship under Jim Gilmore in 1997 promising to abolish the very car taxes they now want to increase.

So, the WSJ prescription to the problem is to return to the failed policies of Gilmore, who bankrupted Virginia by eliminating a tax while failing to cut spending to make up for the loss of revenue. It may be one thing to say that the Virginia GOP has drifted from core values, but to hold that incompetent Gilmore up as the path to glory is just insane. He wrecked the state, put it in the red, and is directly responsible for the changeover to Warner in 2001. Not exactly the role-model they should be holding up to encourage their party.

This makes me happy, not only the news that Virginia might be deciding to join the ranks of the civilized states, but that the wackos at WSJ in trying to provide constructive criticism recommend the policies that ruined the party in the state in the first place. Give Up works, they dig their own graves with their BS conservative ideology.

In the Dover, PA creationism trial, the judge in the case chastised (PDF) the advocates of Intelligent Design (ID). The judge went far enough to write in the conclusion of his decision that:

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

Lie to cover their tracks? Disguising the real purpose of indoctrinating young Pennsylvania slack jaws into Creationism?

On tonight's Newshour (report in realaudiosucks), there was a report on the US Air Force, focusing on how Evangelical Christians are targeting the institution to force people to become Christians. They're using their rank to force people to pray!

Is it just me, or is there a trend here: Christians targeting institutions to recruit and force their ideas onto others?

This reminds me of the Christian Faculty Forum at the University of Georgia. I was always suspicious that the faculty members of that group were using their positions to recruit other Christians. I mean, how exactly do you find so many people in the same department who are Christians, and wear that fact on their chest? Come on--of four scientists in the Computational Chemistry department, two are members of the Christian Faculty Forum? Four professors in the Agriculture and Applied Economics school? Three from Biological and Agricultural Engineering? Eight from the business school? There's something fishy here.

Or so says some guy with a website.

I never know what to do with links like this. If this guy's story is true then the VP was stinking drunk when he shot his friend (making the accident a crime) and everything about the story fits together. First Cheney's admission that he had a drink (hours before of course offisher), the delay in contacting authorities (enough time to sober up) and the reports that his buddy was much closer than he reported based on ballistics.

Everything would fit, and if the Secret Service does have these documents describing the incident I wouldn't be surprised. The question I would put to all of you is how would this Doug Thompson guy be the one to break this? Why would administration insiders be talking to a guy that calls Bush Hitler and a traitor? Sounds fishy to me and little more than just a conspiracy theory, although one that fits the facts better than the bullshit the VP spews out. That is, as Stephen Colbert would say, there might not be any facts to back this up, but it feels true. So the truthiness is not in dispute, but I would like more factiness.

The South Dakota House has passed a bill banning all abortions, except in cases of endangering the health of the mother, it awaits Senate approval and signature of their governor. Abortion is already effectively banned in SD already, with only one clinic staffed by out-of-state doctors.

This will be the challenge that will probably be the end of Roe, if Alito and Roberts can flip the court or will. I somehow still believe that the Republicans are too smart to allow a ban to actually be a approved and this court won't allow total bans on abortion. We'll see though. It will be the end of them.

The Surgeon General hasn't given up on preventing underage drinking! But perhaps you can help. The top doc is requesting comments on how the government can reduce underage drinking problems.

Just think of the possibilities for ending underage drinking:

I call the government to act to lower the drinking age!

I call for the introduction of drinking to teens in their homes, where they can learn responsible consumption of alcohol!

etc

Your comments cannot exceed 500 words and are due by March 15, 2006. Send them to ctacomments@osophs.dhhs.gov.

First, why did it take 15 years after the discovery of the SrY gene to tie it to male brain development? Seems like someone should have done a whole-body in situ during after it was discovered, or hell, how about a RT-PCR on tissues, but, oh well. Anyway, the results are interesting. Apparently SrY compensates in the male brain for the lack of estrogen which plays a parallel role in females.

The study is "the first to identify a specific sex chromosome gene that has a sex-specific effect on the brain," says UCLA neuroendocrinologist Arthur Arnold (who was not involved in the study). The "paradox" of the paper is that "females are not deficient for the kinds of things Sry does" in males, he says. In other words, the Sry gene appears to compensate males for their lack of estrogen, which in females controls TH. "The results open the way to a whole new series of studies to identify the role of Sry in several brain regions," Arnold says.

Don't worry though, so far it doesn't seem to play a role in sexual orientation, it seems to instead play a prosaic role in regulation of dopaminergic neurons.

Also, what is up with conservatives and secrecy? Apparently Scalia was heckled at an AEI talk he gave. This is old news but the article reiterates that Scalia forbids television cameras or recordings of his talks (even getting a member of the press hassled by U.S. marshall once for recording him). What's up with the secrecy? Why would a member of our government be so paranoid about being televised or recorded when they give public talks? Is it because he is worried something he says will come back to haunt him? Like the bullshit pronouncement that he has a unified legal approach to SCOTUS cases last week?

Finally, it has been big in the news that the first abortion ban, on late-term D&C, is approaching the court. I actually don't think this will be the case to damage Roe as the law in this case has no provision to protect the health of the mother. Even the conservatives have been reluctant to allow such laws to stand in the past. It's just going to be a big farce and rile up the right wing just in time for next November's elections (but maybe against Bush when they overturn the law). What do the lawyers think?

I'm gratified to see that jackasses like Fred Phelps are representing to the world the full ugliness of fundamentalism, at soldiers' funerals no less. It's become such a problem that a band of motorcyclists named the Patriot Guard Riders have formed to block protests by Phelps at military funerals.

The reasoning given by the Baptist Rev. Phelps for protesting at soldier's funerals is as follows:

Shirley Phelps-Roper, a daughter of Fred Phelps and an attorney for the Topeka, Kansas-based church, said neither state laws nor the Patriot Guard can silence their message that God killed the soldiers because they fought for a country that embraces homosexuals.

"The scriptures are crystal clear that when God sets out to punish a nation, it is with the sword. An IED is just a broken-up sword," Phelps-Roper said. "Since that is his weapon of choice, our forum of choice has got to be a dead soldier's funeral."

Now, as far as right-wing hypocrisy goes, as long as Phelps and his band of jackasses are doing this, and they are not denounced by fellow Baptists, conservative blowhards, etc., it represents the total hypocrisy of conservatives. The right-wing constantly demands liberals denounce their comrades whenever one of them says something nasty and/or stupid, like there is a law that every public figure has to take a stand against every piece of jackassery from their party/group. Let's turn the tables. Why don't people like Anne Coulter consider this conservative treason? Why doesn't Rush Limbaugh denounce this as conservative comfort to the enemy? Why aren't these jackasses even mentioned by the right? Why doesn't O'Reilly make the natural comparison of this group to the Taliban? I bet they share all the same ideology all being stupid fundies.

Well, because they do exactly what the liberals do. When some jackass you're politically aligned with acts stupid, the natural response is to duck your head and hope the issue goes away. If confronted with this group, however, maybe we could get the same kind of ridiculous auto-da-fe out of conservatives where they must systematically denounce Phelps and his anti-gay anti-soldier ilk.

As a give-up issue, Fred Phelps is just about the best thing ever. I love those extra-special fundies like Phelps and Marguerite "God Warrior" Perrin who take the trouble to remind us every once in a while how truly ugly religious fundamentalism is. They're like priceless free-advertisement for left wing causes.

Nope, they're just harder on white-collar crime.

They found that of 365,000 sentences meted out between 1992 and 2001, the GOP appointees appeared to give about 10 percent more prison time for violent crimes, drug offenses and theft.

"The political orientation of the judge matters with respect to street crimes," the two wrote. "Sentence lengths for street crimes are between 7 and 9 months lower for Democrat-appointed judges."

Democrat-appointed judges tend to assign white-collar criminals higher "offense levels" -- scores that reflect the seriousness of the crime -- though the scholars said they could not detect any difference in prison terms because of statistical issues.

The "statistical issues" comment makes me a little sad because that means there just isn't that much white collar crime being prosecuted in the country. I guess that means we need more Democratic prosecutors.

I wonder how much time the Enron boys are going to get for their fiasco. Probably not as much time as a third-striker caught with 20 dollars worth of crack, despite their crimes of widespread financial destruction.

I love this story, Bush Due In Colorado Monday: National Renewable Energy Lab Visit On Agenda. If you read a little further you see that the lab was initially not to pleased to see him as they've received federal budget cuts that would require them to cut about 100 of their 930 jobs. 30 jobs had already been cut, but were "reinstated" 2 days before Bush's visit and the employees were also told not to speak to the press. Hmmm.

I'd like a follow-up on this story to see if they get cut again once our ADHD president forgets about this issue. This is probably only a one-year reprieve.

Or ride a bike everywhere, or walk, because lots of signs are pointing to worse gas prices than ever, and not because of the Middle East.

Mostly it's again due to incompetence of this administration. For one, picking a fight with Chavez and saying he's the greatest danger to the U.S. in the hemisphere was not very politic or smart. For one, it just makes him more vocal, more popular, and more influential. He's the David to our Goliath, and everyone is going to be sympathetic to the crazy little South American leader even if he is a little nuts if we start picking on him. As a result he has threatened to cut of oil exports to the US. It's just crazy enough to be possible.

Then, there is the developing story of Nigerian militants fighting to recapture their state's oil resources from foreign oil companies claiming they have been robbed of their natural resources, ruined by corruption of their government and had their land polluted and ruined by the industry. They have been blowing up oil facilities and seizing workers since Friday when they threatened to do so if all foreign oil interests did not leave by their 24 hour deadline.

So, two of the largest exporters of oil to the United States are within a hair of shutting off the pumps, this might be bad for oil prices.

**Update** Now the Nigerians are threatening rocket attacks on international tankers. I'd say oil might be going up today.

There is now an interesting conspiracy theory concerning Dick Cheney's sobriety during the shooting incident based on some pretty obvious facts.

Simply put:
1. Dick Cheney claimed he shot his friend from 90 ft away.
2. The distribution of shot actually shows he was shot from only 15 ft away.
3. Dick Cheney admitted to drinking that day, but not since noon and the shooting occurred at 4pm (honestly officer, I just *hic* had one beer and it was *hic* hours ago)
4. There was a 13 hour lag between the shooting and when local police had an opportunity to interview Cheney.

Hmmm, maybe, just maybe, the reason he presented the facts in a more favorable light on Fox was because he might have been a little tipsy. Hence not being able to tell the difference between a bird and a man at 15 feet.

I don't personally care, people are so puritannical about drinking they make everyone's life a drag. People should be allowed to drink while hunting, fishing, or enjoying any other outdoor activity. It's not any of our business what you do on private property, even if it is dangerous and stupid and results in injured hunting buddies. If you really want to irritate the Red staters, just keep harping on how it's a moral wrong to hunt drunk, because they all do it.

So, readers of technology blogs like SlashDot or boingboing will know that search companies like Google and Yahoo have been getting a raft of crap for complying with the Chinese government's censorship policies, and in the case of Yahoo, providing information leading to the jailing of dissidents like Shi Tao.

Well, they should have known better to even show up to a congressional hearing with Lantos present. Being lectured by a holocaust survivor on profiteering without regard to human rights has got to be like a kick in the balls.

"This value-free excuse truly sickens me," said Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat, who accused the four corporations of a "nauseating collaboration with a regime of repression."

"What Congress is looking for is real spine and willingness to stand up to the outrageous demands of a totalitarian regime," added Lantos, the co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. Chinese dissidents are "in the Chinese gulag because Yahoo chose to reveal their identities to the Chinese government."

Then there is this interchange with Lantos. Ouch.

Rep. Tom Lantos: Can you say in English that you're ashamed of what your company and what the other companies have done?

Google: Congressman, I actually can't, I don't think it's fair for us to say that we're ashamed.

Lantos: You have nothing to be ashamed of?

Google: I am not ashamed of it, and I am not proud of it...We have taken a path, we have begun on a path, we have done a path that...will ultimately benefit all the users in China. If we determined, congressman, as a result of changing circumstances or as a result of the implementation of the Google.cn program that we are not achieving those results then we will assess our performance, our ability to achieve those goals, and whether to remain in the market.

Lantos, to Cisco: Is your company ashamed?

Cisco: (Begins to talk about products that Cisco sells.)

Lantos: Just answer me directly. The totality of the things that you and the other three companies have done, are you proud of it or are you ashamed of it?

Cisco: The products we provide in China are identical to the products we provide worldwide...What we have done is followed very closely the policies of our government, which are informed by human rights concerns and have been for 30 years now, in terms of providing what products are appropriate and not appropriate to provide to China and which users.

Lantos: I am asking a direct question. Is there anything you have done in the whole period you operated in China that the company ought to be ashamed of?

Cisco: We think that is a positive thing that we do throughout the world including China...My answer is I feel that our engagement is consistent with our government's goals.

Lantos, to Microsoft: Is your company ashamed?

Microsoft: We comply with legally binding orders whether it's here in the U.S. or China.

Lantos: Well, IBM complied with legal orders when they cooperated with Nazi Germany. Those were legal orders under the Nazi German system...Do you think that IBM during that period had something to be ashamed of?

Microsoft: I can't speak to that. I'm not familiar in detail with IBM's activities in that period.

Lantos: You heard (Rep. Christopher Smith's) speech. Assuming that his words are accurate, is IBM to be ashamed of their action during that period?

Microsoft: Congressman, I don't think it's my position to say whether IBM should be ashamed.

Lantos, to Yahoo: Are you ashamed?

Yahoo: We are very distressed about the consequences of having to comply with Chinese law...We are certainly troubled by that and we look forward to working with our peers.

Lantos: Do you think that individuals or families have been negatively impacted by some of the activities we have been told, like being in prison for 10 years? Have any of the companies reached out to these families and asked if you could be of any help to them?

Yahoo: We have expressed our condemnation of the prosecution of this person, expressed our views to the Chinese government...We have approached the Chinese government on these issues.

Lantos: Have you reached out to the family? I can ask it 10 more times if you refuse to answer it. You are under oath.

Yahoo: We have not reached out to the families.

Via Boing Boing.

For those of you who love listening to new music and just don't want to support organized crime have a look at this site. It is a search engine to determine if that album really is safe to buy. If it isn't, then the site kindly offers to suggest similar safe (non-RIAA) albums to you. It is a great way to stick it to the man and find new music at the same time. Enjoy.

This Science article on Greenland's glacier melt suggests that the so-called tipping-point in global warming may have already been reached. Here is a lay article on the result.

Greenland's mass loss therefore doubled in the last decade, well beyond error bounds. Its contribution to sea-level rise increased from 0.23 +/- 0.08 mm/year in 1996 to 0.57 +/- 0.1 mm/year in 2005. Two-thirds of the loss is caused by ice dynamics; the rest is due to enhanced runoff minus accumulation. Ice dynamics therefore dominates the contribution to sea-level rise from the Greenland Ice Sheet.

In other words, using satellite imaging Rignot et al. have shown previous estimates of losses in the ice sheet and acceleration of loss have been underestimates, largely because satellite imaging allowed the evaluation of parts of Greenland that are unaccessable. So, buy mountain real-estate.

This unfortunately sucks as a Give Up issue since most of the blue states are on the coasts and blue state environmentalism, while superior to that of the red states, may be inadequate to slow global processes caused by countries like China and India. Oh well, hopefully all the other crap the Republicans pull will get them kicked out in time so that we can start reducing global climate change.

Apparently Larry Flynt has been sending a complementary issue of Hustler, every month, to every member of Congress.

Ha! What a jackass. I love it. And because the public has a right to send anything short of anthrax to congressmen, some right of public redress, they haven't been able to stop it.

The EFF brings us news that the RIAA considers burning CDs to your computer/iPod etc to be a potential violation of copyright. In other words, where we used to be able to make mix tapes, and transfer music from one medium to another legally under "fair use" now the RIAA is trying to say that we should have to pay for every format individually if they change their minds about what fair use is.

This could mean that in the future they will install DRM on CDs and Mp3s so you would have to buy a CD to play in your car/stereo, and seperately buy an mp3 to play on your iPod/computer.

I say, fuck these people. You should too.

A Harvard study released this week (link to the story here) suggests that when kids in white, middle class districts fail their government-mandated standardized tests and fail to live up to the federally-dictated standards, nothing happens to those districts. On the other hand (of course), when kids in poor, minority districts do the same, their districts get penalized. No big surprise.


In one example the study cites, states in rural Midwestern regions were granted extensions on deadlines to meet requirements on teacher qualifications that were unavailable to poorer rural regions with greater numbers of black Americans and ethnic minorities in southeast and southwest states.

And the response? Well, what else would you expect?

Chad Colby, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education, called Harvard's study "misinformed" and "flawed". "We leave it up to the states to determine how they are going to get there. It's exactly the opposite of one-size-fits-all."

Blame the messenger? Check. Obfuscate the facts? Check. Lie outright? Ding-ding-ding - we have a winner! Give Mr. Colby a Kewpie doll!

Oh wait, never mind. They're more organized and professional than ever.

It is now clear that bloggers are taking the wrong approach to this administration. Instead of focusing all our time on all the blatant untruths they tell us day after day, we should start focusing on the times they are not lying. I think that may be easier, as it seems more infrequent. The lies are definitely outpacing the truths.

Seriously, can you guys remember the last time we heard them say something that was objectively true? Other than obvious shit like the Earth is round?

O, Old Dominion, your wackjobbery knows no bounds. Although patriotic warriors against prostitution have for millenia managed to prosecute the oldest profession without, you know, actually paying for its services, Spotsylvania County says you: nay!

You could look at it as progress -- I mean, how can you haul someone in as a lady of the night just for, you know, having a price list and agreeing to come back to your place? Unless you actually bone her yourself, she could just be a feisty young trickster, full of innocent shenanigans, who just happens to like hanging out in dark alleys and taking rides at night in skeevy guys' cars. And unless you actually pay her for her services, she could be like some kind of sexy angel of charity, willingly opening the doors of Venus to the lonely and saddened, as well as to the thin blue line that protects us from . . . um . . . I don't know. Is there anything going on in Spotsylvania County except police officers knockin' das boots with glamorous ladies?

Yes, as a matter of fact. According to the FBI's statistics for 2000, Spotsylvania County boasts a wide array of criminal activities, including some lovely violent ones, like murder, rape, and arson, that the fuzz could deal with when, you know, they're not doing the horizontal mambo with masseuses. Strangely, a glance at the old statistics shows that prostitution doesn't seem to be big on the Spotsylvania crime blotter. But maybe that's just 'cause back in 2000, them durn cops weren't doing their jobs. Their hard, hard, (oooh, so hard, that's it . . .) jobs.

Roses of the Prophet Mohammed. Ah, but will a danish by any other name taste as sweet? Via Feministe.

Sen. Russ Feingold has written a succinct editorial(registration, blah) concerning Democrats that have been rolling over and letting Bush trample our constitutional rights. He brings our attention to the fact that the "improved, more respectable" Patriot Act is anything but. He says that it still has many of the same problems that were riddled in the original, and has gaping loopholes allowing even more transgressions.

I think, as the Rev. suggested earlier, these people who claim to hold our rights dear during election season, need to have a good kick in the ass through the door in 2006 and 2008. I can't believe that anyone would court the liberal vote, and still support this act.

Of all the creepy crap with Lieberman and his Republican love this is the worst, and occurs appropriately enough on Valentine's day.

For the second year in a row, President Bush and his wife spent the lovers' holiday formally entertaining about 100 friends and associates at the White House.

Singer Michael Feinstein capped the romantic evening by serenading the crowd, which included new Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, actor Chuck Norris _ wearing black cowboy boots with his tux, of course _ singer Wayne Newton and Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Joe Lieberman, D-Conn.

Lieberman faces some serious heat over his ridiculous Republican-love and may be facing a serious primary challenge from Ned Lamont. You can donate money to unseat Lieberman and other traitor Democrats here.

Via Kos.

And in the incompetence file, another Katrina-related pathetic story has emerged. Emergency MRE rations that were directed to Katrina victims are being sold on EBay. Now there's a great use of taxpayer dollars.

I guess this means we can go ahead with Bush's plans for mass extinctions on earth.

New mathematical techniques for interpreting the patterns of fossils in geologic strata indicate that previous rates of speciation following mass extinctions may have been over-estimated. In other words, in response to the opening of ecologic niches due to extinctions, evolution may occur at a much more rapid pace than the 5-10million years for each new species as was previously thought.

Does this sound like punctuated equilibrium to anyone? I'm surprised the article didn't mention the late great Stephen Jay Gould although they do mention his mentor Normal Newell.

Massachusetts is leading the way in forcing these jackass pharmacists to do their fucking job already.

The state board that oversees pharmacies voted Tuesday to require Wal-Mart to stock emergency contraception pills at its Massachusetts pharmacies, a spokeswoman at the Department of Public Health said.

The unanimous decision by the Massachusetts Board of Pharmacy comes two weeks after three women sued Wal-Mart in state court for failing to carry the so called "morning after" pill in its Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores in the state..
...
Dan Fogleman, a spokesman for Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart, said the company hadn't heard about the decision, but would comply with any order.

Wal-Mart carries the pill in Illinois only, where it is required under state law. The company has said it "chooses not to carry many products for business reasons," but declined to elaborate.

Go Blue states! Stick it to Wal Mart for trying to tell women what to do with their own freaking uterus. Jackasses. Now, lets hope more than just Illinois and Mass will get around to passing similar regulations so the Give Up theory is further substantiated.

I love Willie Nelson, a fact Reen will probably never understand. Now he's come out, ha ha, with an ode to gay cowboys.

"Cowboys Are Frequently, Secretly (Fond of Each Other)" may be the first gay cowboy song by a major recording artist. But it was written long before this year's Oscar-nominated "Brokeback Mountain" made gay cowboys a hot topic.

Available exclusively through iTunes, the song features choppy Tex-Mex style guitar runs and Nelson's deadpan delivery of lines like, "What did you think all them saddles and boots was about?" and "Inside every cowboy there's a lady who'd love to slip out."

The song, which debuted Tuesday on Howard Stern's satellite radio show, was written by Texas-born singer-songwriter Ned Sublette in 1981. Sublette said he wrote it during the "Urban Cowboy" craze and always imagined Nelson singing it.

He says of this song that he didn't write it for BrokeBack Mountain and that, "It's been in the closet for 20 years."

Ha!

A group of Israeli cartoonists have decided to respond to the Iranian newspapers campaign to publish anti-semitic cartoons by holding their own anti-semitic cartoon competition.

Now that's an interesting response, imagine, a religion mature enough that it can mock itself and respond to hate with maturity. No riots, bombings, arson, or killing here, they're going to beat the Iranians to the punch and show the bigots that words can't hurt them. If you ask me this is Judaism 1, Islam 0.

To further infuriate the Muslims and make sure this stupid fight never dies, an Italian minister has announced he will distribute t-shirts featuring the Mohammed cartoons.

Now, rather than burning down the Italian embassy I think the Muslims angered by this move should consider instead having their own t-shirt competition to mock Berlusconi, perhaps featuring a photo of him saying, "I'm Like Jesus!" while he receives a bribe from some mafioso.

**Update**
Along with Mohammed, the Iranian Football Team is now sacrosanct as well. I shit you not, Iranians are now protesting over a negative depiction of their football team. Talk about screwed up priorities, now they're ransacking buildings over football? Soon they'll end up being negatively compared to British hooligans.