This video has been making the circuit today.



It's worth a watch. The transcript is available via Crooks and Liars for the video-averse.

(Right) Barney Frank: potential gay committee chair.


It's official: the crazy conservatives are squirming about losing the House. The Journal ran this institutional oped today predicting doom to all good things, if the Dems are given control:

...While Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi would be a new Speaker of the House, the 19 primary committee chairmen who would dominate hearings, issue subpoenas and write legislation are agents of change only in the sense of going back to the future.

[...]

Consider the man likely to run the Judiciary Committee, Michigan's John Conyers, from the Congressional class of 1964. He recently made his plans clear...to investigate grounds for impeaching President Bush.

[...]

Over at Financial Services, the ascension of Barney Frank (1980) would mean a reprieve for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, despite $16 billion in accounting scandals. His main reform priority has been to carve out a new affordable housing fund from the two companies' profits. And forget about any major review of Sarbanes-Oxley.

[...]

We also can't forget California's Henry Waxman (1974), among the most partisan liberals and who at Government Reform would compete with Mr. Conyers to see who could issue the most subpoenas to the Bush Administration...

The entire editorial is worth a read to see how fearful the Journal is of things like congressional oversight, a gay committee chair, and the "rule of law." Ha!

Talk2Action has excellent coverage of the lies that right wingnuts are spreading about plan B. They're pretty awful.

I can't help thinking that the feminists are really right, the patriarchy hasn't diseappeared, and rears it's ugly head each time they attempt to increase control over their sexuality. He even includes our favorite misinformation about the dangers of sex predators using plan B to "hide their crimes."

The Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, president of Human Life International, is beset by visions of child rapists converging on pharmacies across the land like a pack of ravening werewolves under a full moon.

"Let there be no mistake about it, today's decision lies at the feet of President Bush and has created a lasting rift with the Catholic faithful who compromise a large part of his support base.
:::
"President Bush and his nominee to head the FDA, Andrew von Eschenbach, have turned the agency into a hand-maiden of the abortion industry and powerful pharmaceutical companies. The FDA ... has become the lead offensive against women in crisis and the innocent unborn.
:::
"Furthermore, the limitations and statutes governing OTC sales are unenforceable and provide sexual predators and rapists with a convenient method to cover the evidence of their crimes. The only explanation for such a questionable decision can be that politics and economics have trumped medical safety and moral principle."

Because no one knows strategies to hide child sexual abuse better than the Catholics. Funny theory though, sexual predators were previously dissuaded from abusing minors by lack of access to birth control? And the only way to find out about their crimes is when their victims have unwanted children?

He's a funny guy. Read his response to the criticism that he doesn't hire black people.

Chavez has found a great use for golf courses, that is, take them away and use the land to build homes for the poor.

Now, I've been the first to say we should be cautious about lauding Chavez for anything since he's one crazy Ahmedinejad-hugging lunatic, but give him credit, this is kind of awesome. It's like the political version of Caddyshack II.

We previously covered the story of Thomas Kinkade, painter of crap, and his troubles with gallery owners who he screwed out of their life savings. Now it's the focus of a federal investigation.

The FBI is investigating allegations that self-styled "Painter of Light" Thomas Kinkade and some of his top executives fraudulently induced investors to open galleries and then ruined them financially, former dealers contacted by federal agents said.

Investigators are focusing on issues raised in civil litigation by at least six former Thomas Kinkade Signature Gallery owners, people who have been contacted by the FBI said.

The ex-owners allege in arbitration claims that, among other things, the artist known for his dreamily luminous landscapes and street scenes used his Christian faith to persuade them to invest in the independently owned stores, which sell only Kinkade's work.

"They really knew how to bait the hook," said one former dealer who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the case. "They certainly used the Christian hook."
...


Former gallery owners said that after they had invested tens of thousands of dollars each or more, the company's practices and policies drove them out of business. They alleged they were stuck with unsalable limited-edition prints, forced to open additional stores in saturated markets and undercut by discounters that sold identical artworks at prices they were forbidden to match.

Some also have accused Kinkade — touted as the most widely collected living U.S. artist — of scheming to devalue his public company, Media Arts Group Inc., before taking it private two years ago for $32.7 million as Thomas Kinkade Co.

The panel ruled that the company and one of its executives, Richard F. Barnett, "failed to disclose material information" that would have dissuaded Karen Hazlewood and Jeffrey Spinello from investing $122,000 to open the first of their two Virginia galleries in 1999.

The arbitrators, in a 2-1 ruling, also found that Kinkade and other company executives used the artist's familiar Christian-oriented themes to create "a certain religious environment designed to instill a special relationship of trust" with the couple, who have since divorced.

"It was a program of lies and deception, predicated on Christian values that weren't there," said Joseph Ejbeh, the Michigan attorney who tried the arbitration case.

Norman Yatooma, whose firm Ejbeh worked for at the time, has said the $860,000 award could total $3.5 million when interest, costs and attorney fees are added.

The only sad thing is it will never convince people of how ugly those paintings are.

This post is worth a visit, Tim Lambert shows how closely James Hansen's 1988 climate models have predicted climate over the last few decades (and how the denialists like Pat Michaels have lied or tried to fudge the data).

More proof, we need to kick this Michaels guy to the curb.

Raising Kaine has unearthed evidence of George Allen's association with the hate-group the Council of Conservative Citizens.



So, Council of Conservative Citizens, sounds relatively innocuous right? Well, here's some money-quotes.

1. "Each of the three major races plays a distinct role in history. . . . The whites were the creators of civilization, the yellows its sustainers and copyists, the blacks its destroyers." (www.cofcc.org, 12/98)
   
   
2. Abraham Lincoln was "surely the most evil American in history," and Martin Luther King was a "depraved miscreant.” (www.cofcc.org, 12/98)
   
   
3. "The Jews' motto is 'never forget, and never forgive.' One can't agree with the way they've turned spite into welfare billions for themselves, but the 'never forget' part is very sound." (Citizens Informer, Winter/97)
   
   
4. "The presence [in Congress] of even one white person with our interests foremost in his mind is simply unacceptable to the issues-obsessed conservative race traitors. Texas Governor George Bush and his brother Jeb in Florida have manifested their self-hatred by embracing Hispanics ahead of whites. Somehow we must find a way to relieve whites of their self-hatred." ("Open Letter to White People,” www.cofcc.org, 12/98)]
   

Hmmm, we already knew about his confederate flag fetish and his noose-decor, now he's hanging out with these guys. Beautiful.

Why is CNN celebrating gestational diabetes? It's not exactly an accomplishment.

Alan Cooperman reports in the Post:

Yesterday [Warren Steed Jeffs] was in federal custody in Las Vegas, facing multiple charges of sexual crimes against minors, an FBI spokeswoman said.

[...]

Jeffs is known as the Prophet to an estimated 10,000 members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which he inherited from his father, Rulon Jeffs, in 1998.

Their sect broke away when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, better known as the Mormons, banned polygamy in 1890. Rulon Jeffs was excommunicated by the Mormon Church in 1941, and his son was never a member. Authorities say that both men routinely arranged marriages for underage girls with male followers.

The fundamentalist sect is notoriously secretive, but details about Rulon and Warren Jeffs's lifestyle emerged in 1999, when they sold a seven-acre, $1.9 million walled compound in Sandy, Utah, where they had lived with their wives and children since the early 1980s.

Women's bedrooms in Rulon Jeffs's main house were decorated with wallpaper saying "Keep Sweet No Matter What." Their doors were marked with red, yellow or green tags, depending on whether they were ovulating. The house had an industrial-size laundry. And there were signs of other practices shocking to Mormons: Apparently, they drank coffee and berry wine.

Reading this entry at PZ's blog I figured he'd just fallen for a hoax humor article about a Christian woman who wants her kidney back after the recipient rejected Christianity.

It's hysterical.

TUPELO — Aleta Smith, who donated her kidney to a 20-year-old college student last year, wants it back now that the student has changed religions.
Smith, a self-described "on-fire Christian," gave her kidney to Hannah Felks, a Lutheran and regular Christian camp counselor, last year after seeing Felks on the local news.
"She was going to die unless she got a kidney," Smith says, sitting on the porch at her home. "They portrayed her as this nice Christian girl who works with kids. I saw it as a great opportunity to help a sister in the Lord."
The surgery grabbed headlines and Smith was lauded for her selflessness. But shortly after the surgery, Felks embarked on a "spiritual journey" to try out other religions, and settled on a blend of Pagan and Hindu beliefs.
...
Smith was aghast when she heard of the conversion, and she quickly wrote a letter asking Felks to re-convert to Christianity or return the organ, saying it was donated under false pretenses.
"I feel helpless," she says. "Part of my body, my DNA, is stuck inside a person who's going to hell."
Smith suffers nightmares of her former organ filtering "strange Asian teas, pig blood and witch doctor brews in Africa," she says. She wonders if the Lord really wanted her to donate the kidney, or if she acted on a "triple-espresso high" she had that morning. She is also concerned that when her body is resurrected, it might be incomplete.
...
In the meantime, Smith has alerted several dozen prayer chains, and her women's Bible study group is praying 12 hours a day for the re-conversion of Felks — and Smith's former kidney.
"I'm all for spiritual curiosity," she says, "but you've got to settle these things beforehand. My kidney belongs to Christ. It will never be Pagan."

Ha!

Anyway, I start looking around this "news" site, and would you believe it, it seems legit? This isn't a joke article as far as I can tell. Holy shit! It was funny as fiction, but if this is true I might just die laughing.

Damn, it was fiction, but funny! I salute these guys, that's some wicked satire. I didn't see the right column which included chronic looser nutures job complex and Christian man unapologetic about having a beer now and then.

I'm going to have to add this feed to my RSS reader.

**Update** My god, I disabled my privoxy adblocker and viewed the site, I really screwed that one up. Once I saw the add for "Ezekial Oh's" I nearly plotzed.

Howard Kurtz writes in today's Post:

Will every anchor, correspondent and producer who shamelessly hyped the John Mark Karr story now apologize for taking the country for a ride?

[...]

This was such a sham, from the opening moments, that it instantly goes down with the greatest media embarrassments in modern history.

I'm glad someone respectable from the press has finally come out and said this. I cringe every time I see a newspaper pimping the portrait of that abused child for profit.

But if it will boost our Google Adwords...maybe it's worth a try.

The Wall Street Journal seems to have an article every week discussing conflicts of interest in medicine. These articles cover doctors who are writing scholarly articles without disclosing that their financial ties, and ones where doctors are promoting medical devices without disclosing to patients that they profit from them. Today's Journal covers Emory professor Charles Nemeroff:

The editor of the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, Charles Nemeroff, is stepping down after he wrote a favorable review of a new device for treating depression that didn't disclose his financial ties to the device's maker.

The journal, which carried the article, has published a correction citing Dr. Nemeroff's ties to the device maker and those of the article's other eight authors. In addition to Dr. Nemeroff, seven of the authors were academics who serve as consultants to the maker of the device, and one was an employee of the company, Cyberonics Inc., of Houston. The authors' relationships to Cyberonics were reported in the The Wall Street Journal last month.

All nine authors of the article had financial conflicts? One was an employee? Rev. Dr., just read the Journal for a month, and you'll begin to believe that these problems pervade science. Is it time to give up our trust in medical researchers?

It was just a matter of time. Here's minimalists comment on our animal rights discussion:

Animal-rights people have also proposed computer models as an adequate substitute for animals. Yes, really.

Apparently they base this on nothing more than their vague idea that Computar Machines these days are really really advanced and stuff. Pointing out the obvious (that such a model is only as good as our current state of knowledge, which is why we do the damn research in the first place) falls on deaf ears.

Fuck hippies, seriously.

I've been continuing this debate over at several of the scienceblogs including Pure Pedantry where I encountered this comment:

It's this kind of attitude that really bothers me. Because the suffering I am going to cause is less than the suffering of other people, it's ok for me to cause that suffering. I simply cannot agree with that. The ends never justify the means.

There are much better arguements to be made in favor of animal testing. The only reason to test on animals is when there is no alternative and when the thing being researched is life saving, not merely life altering. Fortunately, every year as advances are made in computer modelling there are more and more alternatives to animal testing.

He then proceeds to salami-slice and present false dilemmas or Hobsons' choices. But really, computer modelling? Computer fucking modeling? Where do these retards get their education? It's proof they don't understand biology or computers (or physics or math or science period), I'm surprised he can find his way around the internet without getting his hands caught in the tubes.

I guess we should have seen this coming when they removed George Coyne as Vatican astronomer last week (he is a real scientist working within the Vatican as a science advisor).

The Nazi Pope, Ratfinger or whatever his name is, is planning to embrace intelligent design.

This will mark yet another glorious moment in the history of Catholic Church. Once again when faced with the choice of joining the modern world, embracing reality, rationality and truth, they will have chosen irrationality, unreality, and a medieval view of the world. No amount of data will convince them! Next on the chopping block, they're going to retract their apology to Gallileo and reject the Copernican revolution, and because it's the Pope, he's infallible so you know it's true.

Is there any better proof that the Pope isn't in possession of a bat-phone to god than the wholesale rejection of science and reason? Condoms cause AIDS, and ID is correct? Next are they going to take Noah's Ark literally?

From the NYT, Real Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity".

In a nutshell, it's the same old yarn. With the Republicans, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.

They had the option of making a real difference in this for a huge number of Americans, they could have raised the minimum wage. But they had to poison the bill. Poor Republicans. Without their wedge issues everyone is going to see them for the greedy bastards they really are.

This weekend Reen and I went to see the Henri Rousseau exhibit Jungles in Paris at the National Gallery of art. Sadly this painting wasn't there, which I remember my parents liked and had on the wall when I was growing up.



Either way, the cheesiness and early nationalistic pandering of Rousseau has inspired me. I want to create a new breed of art that I like to call "awesome art." Examples will follow soon.

The Rev. Dr. has quite the taste for hot peppers, hot sauces, and all manner of generally spicy and practically inedible substances. He also likes science. So, in honor of his twin loves of capsaicin and Darwin, here is an article on the evolution of hot peppers.

This is a little rude. And no, this show isn't called "Worship for Shut-ins."

Here's a story of a guy who quit research because of animal rights assholes/terrorists in California. It's like I've been saying, Bush sucks for science, but as bad as he is, it's the animal rights protestors in the long run that will be worse for us.

Ringach's name and home phone number are posted on the Primate Freedom Project's Web site, and colleagues and UCLA officials said that Ringach was harassed by phone - his office phone number is no longer active - and e-mail, as well as through demonstrations in front of his home.

In an e-mail this month to several anti-animal research groups, Ringach wrote that "you win," and asked that the groups "please don't bother my family anymore."

The North American Animal Liberation Press Office, a resource for the media on "animal liberation actions," according to the group's Web site, posted a news release from the Animal Liberation Front, a separate group that sometimes engages in illegal activities, about Ringach's decision. The press release describes Ringach's research as torturous and "a far cry from life saving research." UCLA officials said that groups like ALF often misconstrue information, and that, in the interest of researchers' safety, the university is not releasing detailed information about projects being attacked by such groups.

Colleagues suggested that Ringach, who did not return e-mails seeking comment, was spooked by an attack on a colleague. In June, the Animal Liberation Front took credit for trying to put a Molotov cocktail on the doorstep of Lynn Fairbanks, another UCLA researcher who does experimentation on animals. The explosive was accidentally placed on the doorstep of Fairbanks's elderly neighbor's house, and did not detonate.

Here are some of his papers. Yeah, he's not exactly working on cancer, but 90% of basic science research is just like this, and this attitude that science isn't valuable if it isn't directly attacking a disease is not only shortsighted but suicidally stupid. Basic science is required to even begin to understand how to approach human illness. It's not clear why he got singled out for attack, but it could just as easily been an one of dozens of labs.

This is also representative of something a lot of people don't understand about biological science, we need to use animals in research. One common refrain is that we don't need to do animal experimentation, we can figure things out in cell culture, or just test drugs directly in humans (yeah right) but they don't understand how fully dependent biology is on animal products. Those cell lines we work with? Harvested from animals, especially primary lines which often have to be regularly re-derived. And what do we feed those cells with? Serum. From where do we get the serum? Animals. And those antibodies we use to detect proteins? From rabbits, mice, goats, donkeys, etc. How do we figure out what a gene does? We knock it out/overexpress it in mice. How we study a disease that affects humans? We model it in animals, then try to understand it and cure it there first. Virtually everything on our shelves and in our arsenal of techniques comes from animals, or involves direct study on animals or their tissues or proteins purified from them and there is no other ready source. To say we must stop animal experimentation is, quite simply, to say we don't need to study biology, period.

Goerge Bush has nothing on animal rights radicals when it comes to being a danger to science.

The Chicago Sun Times brings us news of yet another correlative study, albeit one that is dead on, about how religion makes you fat. Specifically, protestant religion, even more specifically, being a baptist. Apparently vice, like energy, can neither be created nor destroyed. All the Baptists can do with no drinking, sex etc., is redirect their vice quota into chicken wings and Krispy Kreme. It actaully sounds like this is more than just a correlative study, Ferraro might have really done his homework here.

"America is becoming known as a nation of gluttony and obesity, and churches are a feeding ground for this problem," says Ken Ferraro, a Purdue sociology professor who studied more than 2,500 adults over a span of eight years looking at the correlation between their religious behavior and their body mass index.

"If religious leaders and organizations neglect this issue, they will contribute to an epidemic that will cost the health-care system millions of dollars and reduce the quality of life for many parishioners," he says.

Ferraro's most recent study, published in the June issue of the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, is a follow-up to a study he published in 1998, where he found there were more obese people in states with larger populations of folks claiming a religious affiliation than elsewhere -- particularly in states with the most Baptists.

So it's not surprising that Ferraro's latest study found that about 27 percent of Baptists, including Southern Baptists, North American Baptists, and Fundamentalist Baptist, were obese.

Surely there are several contributing factors to such a phenomenon, but when Ferraro accounted for geography (southern cooking is generally more high-caloric), race and even whether overweight folks were attracted to churches for moral support, the statistics still seem to indicate that some churches dispense love handles as well as the love of the Lord.
...
While some megachurches have fitness facilities and long have offered exercise classes as well as Bible studies, in most congregations you're still more likely to find a bake sale than a spinning class on any given Sunday.

Ferraro's study also found that about 20 percent of "Fundamentalist Protestants," (Church of Christ, Pentecostal, Assemblies of God and Church of God); about 18 percent of "Pietistic Protestants," (Methodist, Christian Church and African Methodist Episcopal), and about 17 percent of Catholics were obese.

By contrast, about 1 percent of the Jewish population and less than 1 percent of other non-Christians, including Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and others), were tipping the scales with commensurate gusto.

"In my mind, one of the distinctive things about Christianity, particularly American Protestant Christianity, is we don't have any [dietary] behavior codes," said Daniel Sack of Chicago, a historian and author of the 2000 book, Whitebread Protestants: Food and Religion in American Culture.

This map definitely makes a lot of sense. It's where the Baptists are. Oh, and they're still racist in Mississippi in addition to being fat.



Obesity, states with higher than national average of 21% by percent prevalence. The five states with the lowest rates are: Connecticut 17%, Rhode Island 17%, Vermont 17%, Massachusetts 16%, and Colorado at 14%.

Source: 1991-2001 Prevalence of Obesity Among U.S. Adults by State and 2001 Obesity and Diabetes Prevalence Among U.S. Adults, by Selected Characteristics. Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, 1991-2001; self-reported data. National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Available here and here.

This morning, mother nature decided to tell the naysayers to go f*** themselves, as the first hurricane of the season formed and started barreling towards Florida.

In other news, homeowner's insurance premiums all throughout the country are almost certainly going to go up to cover the boneheaded stupidity of people who keep moving into the giant bulls-eye we call the Gulf Coast.

And in still other news, my Republican-voting family, who bitch all the time about intrusive government and high taxes, are applying for federal grants to fix up a family member's house in the Keys that was totalled by Wilma last year. Of course, by 'fix up', I mean that we're all paying to have them install granite countertops, solid-wood cabinetry, and quite nice tile backsplashes. All this in a house not much bigger than a postage stamp that's gonna get totalled yet again when the next hurricane blows through.

Was it a bacon-wrapped fig or a prune? I can't remember. It was at the big wine tasting at Ft. Mason. It made me give up on vegetarianism. Eight years of it. I'm sick of animals and their advocates. Take that PETA!

Reading Kos today and he links to this essay by Bruce Schneier on our response to terrorism.

The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The real targets of terrorism are the rest of us: the billions of us who are not killed but are terrorized because of the killing. The real point of terrorism is not the act itself, but our reaction to the act.

And we're doing exactly what the terrorists want.

We're all a little jumpy after the recent arrest of 23 terror suspects in Great Britain. The men were reportedly plotting a liquid-explosive attack on airplanes, and both the press and politicians have been trumpeting the story ever since.

In truth, it's doubtful that their plan would have succeeded; chemists have been debunking the idea since it became public. Certainly the suspects were a long way off from trying: None had bought airline tickets, and some didn't even have passports.

Regardless of the threat, from the would-be bombers' perspective, the explosives and planes were merely tactics. Their goal was to cause terror, and in that they've succeeded.

Imagine for a moment what would have happened if they had blown up 10 planes. There would be canceled flights, chaos at airports, bans on carry-on luggage, world leaders talking tough new security measures, political posturing and all sorts of false alarms as jittery people panicked. To a lesser degree, that's basically what's happening right now.

Our politicians help the terrorists every time they use fear as a campaign tactic. The press helps every time it writes scare stories about the plot and the threat. And if we're terrified, and we share that fear, we help. All of these actions intensify and repeat the terrorists' actions, and increase the effects of their terror.

(I am not saying that the politicians and press are terrorists, or that they share any of the blame for terrorist attacks. I'm not that stupid. But the subject of terrorism is more complex than it appears, and understanding its various causes and effects are vital for understanding how to best deal with it.)

The implausible plots and false alarms actually hurt us in two ways. Not only do they increase the level of fear, but they also waste time and resources that could be better spent fighting the real threats and increasing actual security. I'll bet the terrorists are laughing at us.

Another thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the British government arrested the 23 suspects without fanfare. Imagine that the TSA and its European counterparts didn't engage in pointless airline-security measures like banning liquids. And imagine that the press didn't write about it endlessly, and that the politicians didn't use the event to remind us all how scared we should be. If we'd reacted that way, then the terrorists would have truly failed.

It's time we calm down and fight terror with antiterror. This does not mean that we simply roll over and accept terrorism. There are things our government can and should do to fight terrorism, most of them involving intelligence and investigation -- and not focusing on specific plots.

But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show's viewership.

The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to recognize that terrorism is just one of the risks we face, and not a particularly common one at that. And our job is to fight those politicians who use fear as an excuse to take away our liberties and promote security theater that wastes money and doesn't make us any safer.

Nothing else needs to be said.

I'll admit it: I'm into reality television. Cheaters, Elimidate, and Wife Swap are great brain candy following a long day of doing whatever it is that I do.

I’ve learned a lot from reality television. Just recently, there were two episodes of Wife Swap where one of the families was into home schooling. Now, I know a lot of home schoolers. All the ones I know are bright, motivated, and well-read. But in Wife Swap, something interesting was happening--the homeschooling mothers in both families were simply playing with the kids all day. Instruction, at most, consisted of one hour of work!

The best part of the show is where the husband from the high achieving family confronted the home schooling mom. He said, the kids did like two problems in home school, and that was it! The mother was speechless. Busted!

Ha! Does anyone have stories of homenoschooling to share?

But only for women 18 years or older. It's also outrageously expensive. 25-40 bucks for a dose of birth control that probably costs under a dollar to make?

Anyway, I'm perfectly willing to buy this for minors, not that I know any minors, but still it's the thought that counts. But wait, should I? Won't I be encouraging statutory rape?

But opponent Wendy Wright, president of Concerned Women for America, said Plan B's wider availability could give women a false sense of security, since it isn't as effective as regular birth control. Wright also worries that adult men who have sex with minor girls could force the pills upon them.

"Statutory rape is a very serious problem. This decision is going to allow statutory rapists to rely on this drug to cover up their abuse," Wright said.

That's right religious fundy, birth control causes rape. I'm sure you have some data that backs that up? No? You just pulled that out of your ass? Thanks for the input, now go cram it back up your ass.

Leonard Sax is the author of a book advocating separate education of the sexes. His argument is based on neurological differences between boys and girls that result in each sex possessing markedly different learning styles. The book has gained some traction in educational policy circles, with overblown conclusions flying hither and yon.

Anyway, Mark Liberman at Language Log has dissected some of the book's claims and found very shoddy science backing it up. Ridiculously small sample sizes, generalizing sex differences in the vision of rats (which have rather different visual systems than primates) to people, blah blah. Here's a post on the rat vision problem, and you can work your way back to posts on supposed sex differences in hearing, etc.

I'm not sure how I feel about single sex education, but I'm pretty sure that moves in that direction shouldn't be based on outlandish leaps of faith from pretty tiny and/or not very apposite exeriments. On top of that, a lot of what I'm reading about Sax seems to just reinforce dumb old stereotypes -- men are emotional children, girls should never take timed tests, blah, blah. In fact, the ACLU is currently suing a Louisiana school that moved to single-sex education partly on the basis of Sax's work. You can read the complaint here. Counts 52 through 62 are your money paragraphs. Now, this is complaint language, so it's written in a way to sound favorable to Plaintiffs, but if the school really planned to run its single sex program on this basis, they had to know that Title IX would crawl up their ass so fast they'd be excreting legislative history for a week.

One man sets his sights on Pluto. Please, oh please, Mr. Scientists, won't you let it stay a planet?

I think it should remain a planet in order to maintain the rhythmical integrity of "My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizza-Pies." You take off the pizza-pies and what the hell do you have? Nothing, that's what. A goddamn void where you used to have a deliciously icy little planet, all covered in pepperoni.

And we all know the universe could use more pepperoni.

**UPDATE** Astronomers suck.

Today I think we'll talk about this week's Nature. There are a series of articles of general interest. Enjoy!

This week's issue really is chock full of goodies. The rest I'll summarize in brief.

China may get fusion power to work first.

The world's first fully superconducting tokamak is soon to produce a discharge of ionized gas or plasma.

If all goes as planned, China's Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) project will make its first plasma in the next few weeks.

EAST uses superconducting coils to create a magnetic field that confines plasma inside a doughnut-shaped vessel known as a tokamak. The behaviour of the plasma should shed light on the potential of nuclear fusion as an energy source.

Conventional experimental fusion machines use copper coils, or a combination of copper and superconducting coils, to trap the hot plasma. But copper coils heat up and need to be cooled down regularly, thus limiting operating time. EAST has only superconducting coils so it can be operated continuously.

The mechanism for the detection of sour tastes has been explained, but also of interest in this article is this first sentence from the abstract.

Mammals taste many compounds yet use a sensory palette consisting of only five basic taste modalities: sweet, bitter, sour, salty and umami

Umami? I'm not the only one who would be confused, hence in the same sentence they explain it is the taste of monosodium glutamate or MSG. I never realized it was a distinct taste. Anyway, here's their result from the abstract:

We have used a combination of bioinformatics, genetic and functional studies to identify PKD2L1, a polycystic-kidney-disease-like ion channel4, as a candidate mammalian sour taste sensor. In the tongue, PKD2L1 is expressed in a subset of taste receptor cells distinct from those responsible for sweet, bitter and umami taste. To examine the role of PKD2L1-expressing taste cells in vivo, we engineered mice with targeted genetic ablations of selected populations of taste receptor cells. Animals lacking PKD2L1-expressing cells are completely devoid of taste responses to sour stimuli. Notably, responses to all other tastants remained unaffected, proving that the segregation of taste qualities even extends to ionic stimuli.

They also found that other areas of the body use the channel specificall for detecting a lower or acidic pH. This paper may seem to be on a silly topic, but it really is an extremely good example of a thorough and interesting piece of work.

In Nature News, Kendall Powell covers the current neurological understanding of the teenage brain. The literature suggests that while a teen brain is much like an adult's, it isn't quite there yet. Specifically, teens need to recruit a lot more brain power to restrain impulses and make decisions than adults do, possibly explaining their tendency to make obvious, and often dangerous mistakes.

The 14-year-old has a very simple decision to make. When he sees a light out of the corner of his eye he is supposed to ignore it and keep looking straight ahead. It seems extraordinarily easy — even eight-year-olds can do it correctly half of the time — but it requires reigning in a natural impulse to look. And every parent of a teenager knows that reigning in impulses is not their strong suit.

In this simple test, the teenager performs as well as adults do. But a peek inside his head reveals that he puts a lot more work into it. His brain uses a whole host of frontal regions — those involved in planning and executing actions — that adults ignoring something in their peripheral vision just don't need.

"The adolescent brain is acting like an adult brain doing something much more difficult. An adolescent can look so much like an adult, but cognitively, they are not really there yet," says Bea Luna, a neuroscientist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pennsylvania. It is her brain scans that have revealed this tendency for teenagers to 'overuse' their frontal brain regions when stopping themselves from looking at the light

Further, evidence does exist that girls brains undergo the maturation to an adult brain sooner than boys.

The NIMH research team, led by Jay Giedd, has made a movie of normal brain changes from ages 5 to 20 (ref. 3). It reveals that the grey matter thickens in childhood but then thins in a wave that begins at the back of the brain and reaches the front by early adulthood (see graphic, below). The process completes itself sooner in girls than in boys. This corresponds to a long-held assumption that adolescence sees the prefrontal cortex regions that handle executive functions 'waking up' and to the conventional wisdom that girls mature faster in this respect.

This process seems to occur through a refining and selection of neural pathways through myelination, essentially coating selected neural pathways with insulation, that facilitates transduction of signals through neurons.

As grey matter thins, white matter is being gained, as layers of insulating myelin are added to the axon connections between nerve cells. George Bartzokis, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has found that such 'myelination' follows an inverted 'U' shape over our lifetimes, peaking at around age 50 (ref. 6). The teen years are on the early stages of the steep upward curve of myelination.

Bartzokis see this as facilitating connections between different parts of the brain: if you want to retrieve pertinent information quickly to make a decision, he argues, you don't want a supercomputer "but rather a fast Internet". Information held in different centres of the brain has to be 'online' or retrievable, and retrieving lots of it quickly requires increased processing speed and bandwidth. Myelination provides this by increasing the speed of signals travelling along axons and decreasing the time to the next nerve impulse.

But that's not all, functional MRI of teen brains says some of the reason they behave as they do is that they have a lower threshold for pleasure than children or adults.

Other functional studies link changes in the brain to teenagers' increased appetite for fast cars and other dangerous thrills. B. J. Casey's group at Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York has measured brain activity in subjects who perform a simple task and then get small, medium or large rewards for performing correctly. In adolescents given a medium or large reward, a centre in the brain called the nucleus accumbens reacted more strongly than in children or adults8. That looks like an exaggeratedly positive reaction. When given the small reward, the teenage accumbens response decreased below that of children and adults — as if the small reward represented no reward at all in the teen's view.

All interesting stuff, this week's edition is worth a full read.

To non-sciencey types, there's a technology that's become very powerful in the last 6 years or so called RNA interference or RNAi. Basically, this technology involves the formation of small duplexes of RNA (called small interfering RNA or siRNA) that match the sequence of a transcript, and using machinery conserved across many species, are then able to destroy or disable that transcript thereby preventing expression of the protein the transcript encodes. Here's an image I whipped up a few years ago.



There are some funny things going on here. For one, usually people only think of DNA has forming a binary structure, but RNA, the "messenger" of the cell also forms very complex secondary structures and can form duplexes when a complementary strand is present, just like DNA. Second, RNA is getting many more roles ascribed to it than the dogma of molecular biology (the idea that DNA is transcribed into RNA which is then translated into a protein) originally allowed. We're finding out that RNA can act as an enzyme, that it forms complex structures in combination with proteins to carry out unique functions in a cell, and now that it might be regulating transcription itself through this conserved mechanism of RNAi. This has been a big deal in biology in the last few years even though people outside of biological science have heard little about it. Slowly, especially as the technology is being adapted for the treatment of disease (think about it, it allows you to destroy the gene product of a specific target - a virus, an oncogene, a genetic defect etc.) more people are finding out about it. Think of it this way, it's a little bit like a sniper rifle scientists can use to target a gene, it's pretty damned accurate (it does miss sometimes - not always 100% specific) and allows the specific destruction of a target gene product.

Further, there is evidence that RNAi, at least in lower organims like the flatworm C. elegans, is somewhat hereditary. Think about it, hereditary RNAi! Take that Mendel!

It has been shown that phenotypes induced in C. elegans by RNAi can last for two or three generations2. Because the generation time of a worm is only three days, however, it is not clear whether this effect can be explained simply by a slow dilution of the silencing factors. We have therefore investigated the heritability of gene silencing by RNAi over many generations in C. elegans and used an RNAi screen to identify genes that may influence this inheritance.

We injected wild-type Bristol N2 worms with a double-stranded RNA that targets the C. elegans gene ceh-13 for one generation. The Ceh-13 phenotype, in which the worm is small and dumpy, persisted in some animals indefinitely. Inheritance was not fully penetrant: only about 30% of the progeny of Ceh-13 worms inherited the phenotype. Wild-type siblings never had progeny with the Ceh-13 phenotype, and crossing worms that had a Ceh-13 phenotype with unaffected males showed that the trait is dominant. A single episode of RNAi can therefore induce heritable silencing that is not fully penetrant and behaves in a dominant fashion.

To show that this is a general phenomenon, we targeted 171 other genes by using a single treatment of RNAi and found 13 that could be inheritably silenced.
...
We also showed that a single transgenic copy of a gene (gfp) expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP) could be silenced, and the silencing inherited. We used animals expressing GFP under the control of a germline-specific promoter and created interference by feeding them bacteria that express double-stranded RNA homologous to gfp; progeny that did not express GFP were then transferred to new plates. In all siblings, GFP expression was reduced relative to wild-type expression (Fig. 1). We detected animals that had reduced GFP expression over 80 generations.

80 generations! This is inheritance without DNA, over many generations, without a clear mechanism of transmission from generation to generation. It will be interesting to find out how these things propagate this effect, whether the siRNAs are somehow duplicating themselves, or whether they are generating a heritable DNA modification like methylation of the DNA or chromatin modification (they have data suggesting the latter). Makes you think we have to be careful not to generate germline RNAi in human experimentation (although it would be very unlikely to occur unless the reproductive tract were a target). Also, some astute readers will note that a related result was shown previously in Nature in mice in which RNA was creating a hereditary trait. However, despite being very interesting the study had major flaws in controls and explanation of some rather bizarre data. This flatworm one is much more clear cut.

I also like siRNA/RNAi because it really shoots the irreducible complexity arguments of the IDers all to shit. Scientists knock down gene products in cells all the time, and you know what? Most the time, very little happens (we'd graduate faster if more things happened). The cell is not a mouse-trap, and many cells can tolerate the loss of many functions without any adverse effect at all.

Even microorganisms can choose genetically related individuals over unrelated competitors say Natasha J. Mehdiabadi et al., in this weeks Nature.

Dictyostelium normally live as asexually reproducing, unicellular amoebae in forest soils. But when starved of their bacterial food source, they aggregate in thousands to form a multicellular, motile 'slug'. This eventually becomes a fruiting body4,5, in which some amoebae in the group differentiate to form spores and other amoebae die to form a stalk structure that assists the dispersal of these spores. Stalk cells are therefore sacrificed to aid the others.

Because multicellularity in social amoebae is accomplished by aggregation of cells, fruiting bodies could consist of one or more clones. In the model organism Dictyostelium discoideum, genetically distinct clones can mix to form chimaeras, and one clone may sometimes exploit another by contributing less than its proportional share to the sterile stalk2. However, tests with several clones of other species suggest that mixing may not be the rule.
...
Randomization tests revealed that 12 of 14 pairwise experiments showed evidence of strong kin discrimination: although different isolates aggregated together, individual fruiting bodies consisted of predominantly one isolate or the other, with significantly higher variances in the proportion of fluorescent spores than were found in randomly mixed clonal controls

Further, the researchers tested whether the organisms would be selective when it is possible of a negative outcome, that is when there aren't enough individuals to readily form a slug, and discriminating might harm the chances of the group.

Strict exclusion of non-kin carries the risk of suboptimal group sizes when kin are rare9. To determine whether kin-discriminating clones of D. purpureum would mix with non-kin if kin were less abundant, we did 11 experiments at an amoeba density low enough to make fruiting bodies scarce (about 2times105 cells per cm2). There was less sorting in these low-density experiments than in the high-density ones (WSRT, Z=-2.667, n=11, P=0.0076; see supplementary information). This effect was lost when high- and low-density experiments were done simultaneously in six pairwise mixtures (WSRT, Z=-1.572, n=6, P=0.1159); however, the more important result is unambiguous. Dictyostelium purpureum preferentially associates with kin, and this remains true even at low density when partners are hard to find.

This kin discrimination means D. purpureum should avoid the disadvantages of forming chimaeras, and indeed only one clone was consistently cheated (see supplementary information). Our findings support the application of kin-selection theory to microorganisms and provide further evidence that social microbes can show sophisticated behaviour10 previously thought to occur only in higher organisms.

Isn't evolution grand?

It's been theoretically proposed since scientists have learned to extract single cells during IVF for genetic screening that it should be possible to extract ES cells from human embryos without destroying them. This week in Nature this hypothesis has been proven. The full article here and WaPo lay article.

The authors haven't been able to generate an ES line every single time, but about 10% of the time they generated hES cell lines capable of forming multiple cell types.

Sixteen pronuclear- and multicell-stage embryos were thawed and cultured to the 8-10-cell stage in 20-microl microdrops of Quinn's cleavage medium under paraffin oil (see Methods). Six of these embryos were grade I or II (symmetrical and even cell division with little or no cytoplasmic fragmentation), whereas the remaining ten embryos were grade III (variable fragmentation), using a standard scoring system; embryos with blastomeres of unequal size and moderate-to-severe fragmentation (grades IV and V) were excluded from this study. The zona pellucida was disrupted and individual blastomeres mechanically separated from the denuded embryos using a micropipette and gentle tapping of the pipette holder. The separated blastomeres were cultured together in the same medium, arranged so as to avoid contact with each other using depressions created in the bottom of the plastic tissue culture plate, as described previously.

The majority (58%) of the isolated blastomeres divided at least once, and approximately half of these (28 out of 53) formed vesicles/clumps that produced outgrowths within two days (Fig. 1). Previous experiments in mice indicated that cell co-culture is important for ES cell derivation from single blastomeres. However, the aggregation system used in these previous studies could not be employed, because unlike in the mouse;human blastomeres do not form tight aggregates with ES cells. Therefore, microdrops containing the blastomere-derived vesicles/clumps were merged with microdrops seeded with mitomycin-C-treated mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) and green fluorescent protein (GFP)-positive hES cells. When the outgrowths reached approximately 50-100 cells, they were mechanically passaged onto fresh feeders in microdrops containing hES cell medium. Although the initial outgrowths generally contained cells of different morphologies, over a period of several days we observed a number of fates: (1) cells resembling trophectoderm took over the culture, (2) cells that initially resembled ES cells differentiated within the culture, or (3) ES-cell-like cells continued undifferentiated proliferation. All of these outcomes are typical of derivation of ES cells from human embryos, especially when intact blastocysts are plated out without the removal of the trophectoderm using immunosurgery.

Here's what they're doing looks like.



They then went on to show these cells are expressing markers indicating pluripotency, in other words, these are probably legitimate ES cells.

Two of the six grade I/II embryos generated stable hES cell lines that showed normal karyotype (line MA01, 46,XX; line MA09, 46,XX; Fig. 2h) and molecular markers of pluripotency (Fig. 2a). Both lines stain for alkaline phosphatase, and express octamer binding protein 4 (Oct-4), stage-specific embryonic antigen (SSEA)-3, SSEA-4, tumour-rejection antigen (TRA)-1-60, and TRA-1-81.

This is interesting news. The funny thing is that even though the blastocysts are not destroyed in this process, you note that only a minority of the embryos that came out of the thaw were viable (note the bolded text, only a few ES cells lines were generated from multiple embryos). It should also be noted that in actuality, it still isn't possible to generate these cells without some destruction of embryos. IVF itself requires the formation of more embryos than are implanted, and some are inevitably are of inferior quality for use in the procedure - hence the elimination criteria mentioned in the methods. However, this still might be enough to get by the ethical concerns, not because anything is really happening differently, but because the wingers against ES cell research are hypocrites. If they think IVF is ok, then this should be enough of an excuse to allow the research to go ahead. Embryos are still being created that will be destroyed, but now we can pull a little bit of material out to generate ES cells while the embryo will remain viable for implantation.

Here we demonstrate that single blastomeres can be used to establish hES cell lines using an approach that does not interfere with the developmental capacity of the parent embryo. The biopsy procedure is similar to that used in IVF clinics worldwide, and could be used without affecting the clinical outcome. Blastomeres grown overnight could be used for both genetic testing and stem cell generation, thereby allowing selection for a day-5 blastocyst transfer. Numerous reports suggest that neither the survival rate nor the subsequent development and chances of implantation differ between intact human embryos at the blastocyst stage and those following blastomere biopsy for PGD22,23,24,25. However, until remaining doubts about safety are resolved, we do not recommend this procedure be applied outside the context of PGD. Blastomere-derived hES cells could be of great potential benefit for medical research, as well as for children and siblings born from transferred PGD embryos.

The other issue is that this doesn't work 100% of the time, and formation of ES cells genetically matching individuals still is not possible. So, a great start, it will probably appease the wingers because they won't look into the problem deeply enough to see that this isn't really much more than window dressing on the fundamental problems of allowing IVF in the first place. But hey, I'm cool with that.

We've been talking about Pat Michaels, professor at UVa and ostensibly the Virginia State Climatologist, and how he's a bit like Milton, appointed 20 years ago in a position that appears to have escaped the notice of every subsequent governor.



Now Kaine has noticed, reports the Richmond Times Dispatch, and he's not too thrilled with his extracurricular activites.

The governor's office has sent a letter to the University of Virginia requesting that Patrick J. Michaels not use his title of state climatologist when conducting his private consulting business.

The state is concerned that the U.Va. professor's controversial views on global warming could be mistaken for the state's views.

Katherine K. Hanley, the secretary of the commonwealth, wrote University of Virginia President John T. Casteen III on Thursday, asking that Michaels "avoid any conflict of interest or appearance thereof by scrupulously avoiding the use of the title of state climatologist in connection with any outside activities or private consulting endeavors."
...
Hanley's letter also addressed the question of whether Michaels' position as state climatologist is an appointment of the governor or of U.Va. Hanley does acknowledge that Michaels was originally appointed state climatologist by Gov. John Dalton in 1980.

However, she said the code of Virginia "does not provide for the governor to appoint a state climatologist."

She also asserted that the university assumed authority for the state climatologist's office and title in the 2000 certification application to the American Association of State Climatologists.

"Therefore, it is the prerogative of the university to make that appointment," Hanley wrote.

The university did not directly address that issue. But U.Va. spokeswoman Carol Wood provided this statement: "We are grateful to the secretary of the commonwealth for her letter about the state's relationship to the Office of the State Climatologist. As it has since 1978, the University will continue to operate the office as an institutional program in accord with the American Association of State Climatologists, the body that oversees state climatology offices nationwide."

The governor's office said Michaels could refer to himself as the "AASC-designated state climatologist."

So to sum up. He is, in fact, kind of the state climatologist. However, he is not appointed directly by the state, instead he occupies a position designated by UVa, which should be more appropriately called the "AASC-designated state climatologist." Further, his views don't reflect the view of the state government and Gov. Kaine made sure to clarify this.

What does this do about his conflict of interest problems though? It now appears to be out of the hands of the state, but should UVa be concerned that he raises money from energy companies to criticize global warming as their "AASC-designated state climatologist"?

I'm left somewhat confused. Further, I did some Thomson searches on his articles, of the few that I have full text for online, I don't see a statement of conflict of interest or competing interests. Any subscribers to Geophysical Research Letters or Climate Research that could look into this? We're not talking very high impact journals here, so I'm afraid my institutional subscription isn't doing it.

Via Deltoid.

There seems to be something notably off about our country's anti-poverty initiatives. First, Clinton stuck it to those mythical welfare queens, and now Bush has come along with his marriage initiatives.

Such initiatives are meant to stem all the horrible economic and social outcomes that result from people having out-of-wedlock children. What gets me is that it seems like it would be a lot easier to attack the "children" part of that equation, rather than the "wedlock" part. After all, marriage is a notoriously difficult and constantly shifting relationship, but not having kids is just better living through chemistry.

However, our nation's pharmaceutical fatcats are turning the tables. Marriage will soon start looking like a cheap and easy way to build some stability into your life now that our nation's largest supplier of birth control pills has jacked its prices for family planning clinics. I love the idea of telling your kid (just before you bundle her off to the orphanarium) that she wasn't an "oops" -- she was an economic side effect. Mommy couldn't afford the pill -- and now she can't afford you!

A physics professor offers the legal profession a handy checklist for determining, in the wake of Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals, whether a piece of purported scientific evidence is, in fact, crap.

Useful for non-legal situations as well, I imagine.

Today I learned that I am relationship poison. At least according to Forbes, which warns you not to marry any woman who has a college education and/or earns more than $30,000 a year. Such women's desire to be treated like human beings can only make you unhappy.

Strangely, Forbes doesn't offer any marriage advice to women earning above the poverty line -- apparently our dastardly degrees have put us far beyond the realm of human happiness. But maybe, just maybe, we should be marrying "down" as well. After all, if we marry go-getters like ourselves, who'll pick up after our million dollar homes, and soothe our sniffles with homemade soup? Who will raise our economically-advantaged spawn and parade about our bedrooms in tiny, shiny pairs of underpants in order to please us? Not that damn attorney/doctor/professor. It's all he can do not to discover the cure for cancer when you'd rather he was dusting.

update from Rev. Check out the drama over at boingboing over this article. First they pull it, and everyone posts the cached version, now they've reposted it with a counterpoint.

Nice try Forbes. Were your editors asleep or just stupid? How many of them are sleeping on the couch tonight?

Via the Panda's thumb and The Chronicle of Higher Education (subscription) is the latest way Republicans are screwing science. Apparently in the distribution of federal "smart grants" for promoting science education most majors are covered, but strikingly evolutionary biology is absent. And not just absent, as in not mentioned, but it looks like a glaring hole in the application as if it had been excised.

Like a gap in the fossil record, evolutionary biology is missing from a list of majors that the U.S. Department of Education has deemed eligible for a new federal grant program designed to reward students majoring in engineering, mathematics, science, or certain foreign languages.

That absence apparently indicates that students in the evolutionary sciences do not qualify for the grants, and some observers are wondering whether the omission was deliberate.
...
The awards in question -- known as Smart Grants, for the National Science and Mathematics Access to Retain Talent program -- were created by Congress this year, with strong support from the president. The grants are worth up to $4,000 and are awarded in addition to Pell grants.

Recipients must be college juniors or seniors enrolled in one of the technical fields of study that the Department of Education has deemed eligible for funds. Many different topics, as varied as astronomy and Arabic, qualify.

But evolutionary biology is absent.

The department has an index of classification numbers -- referred to as "CIP codes," for the Classification of Instructional Programs -- for all academic areas of instruction,

Under that classification scheme, there is a heading for "Ecology, Evolution, Systematics and Population Biology," under which 10 biological fields are defined. For instance, ecology is 26.1301, and evolutionary biology is 26.1303.

But on a list that defines majors eligible for the grants, issued by the department in May, one of those 10 is missing. On that list, the classification numbers rise in order from 26.1301 to 26.1309 -- with the exception of a blank line where 26.1303, or evolutionary biology, would fall.

Check it out:


C'mon. You gotta admit, that's just a little bit suspicious?

More evidence for my "mathematicians are nuts" file.

My other evidence? The Unabomber, John Nash, and my entire college math department. They're not all the same kind of crazy, but they are all kind of crazy. And the beard is a dead giveaway here.

If only we could isolate the liberal gene we could test for it and create liberal babies using Gattaca-like technology! Or that's what we would do if we smoked the same crack that Arthur C. Brooks does writing for the WSJ editorial page.

Now, I know, I shouldn't be reading that damn page, it just makes me angry, but get a load of this shit.

Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated, politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given the fact that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20% -- explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.

Alarmingly for the Democrats, the gap is widening at a bit more than half a percentage point per year, meaning that today's problem is nothing compared to what the future will most likely hold. Consider future presidential elections in a swing state (like Ohio), and assume that the current patterns in fertility continue. A state that was split 50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like California) will be 54-46 in favor of conservatives by 2020 -- and all for no other reason than babies.

The fertility gap doesn't budge when we correct for factors like age, income, education, gender, race -- or even religion. Indeed, if a conservative and a liberal are identical in all these ways, the liberal will still be 19 percentage points more likely to be childless than the conservative.
...
Democratic politicians may have no more babies left to kiss.

Umm, can anyone point out the glaring flaw here? Liberalism isn't born of indoctrination from birth like some religion. It comes from higher education, compassion (the real kind - not that conservative crap), and as we note here at Give Up, empirical observation of the kind of government that works and elevates people to their potential. This is a clear case of conservatives looking at how people become conservative (isolation, ignorance, religion, traditionalism) and applying the same principles to liberalism when they're fundamentally different world views. Liberals, as a general rule, aren't indoctrinated into some church of liberalism from youth. We don't go to liberal camp. We don't get sent to vacation liberal school. Conservatives are the ones that require indoctrination and the preservation of overvalued ideas from generation to generation. Most the liberals I've met have become liberal in spite of all the Sunday school, vacation bible camp, racist preachers and family members that seek to turn one into sexists, racists, nationalists, or what have you.

And where did all those dirty hippies come from in the 60s? Did someone institute a liberal breeding program in the 40s and 50s and fail to tell me about it? Did someone put liberal juice in the water? Umm no, the kids raised in that time simply looked around and saw the stupidity of racism, sexism and war and said to themselves this is just totally stupid, enough!

It reminds me of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, "When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets." He was talking about the indoctrination that conservatives use to propagate their ideas and how he would use his mind and his will to reject the stupidity of a bigoted mindset. Also, don't forget, "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."

Sorry to burst the WSJs bubble, but liberalism is fundamentally unlike conservatism. Conservatism is the preservation of old, and over-valued ideas, it requires indoctrination, you don't come by it naturally (unless you're just an asshole). This is why they fear higher education so much. They have this insane conceit that college is like a church where professors repeat some litany designed to make the kids dirty liberals, but that's just not it. That's how they got their ideas, not how we get ours.

Liberalism is a constantly renewing phenomenon, because all it requires is the observation in the young and self-aware of the failure and misery of things like bigotry, sexism, and unenlightened self-interest. We don't need to breed liberals. We just need libraries, books, the internet and the occasional Give Up Blog maps. We just need to see the failures of these conservative assholes, as they mismanage our country into the ground to see that conservatism will never truly dominate for the simple reason that it doesn't work. So, don't worry about our reproduction Mr Brooks, George Bush will create more liberals in 8 years than the baby boomers could breed in a 100.

**Update** I just took another look at the picture directly beneath this post, and what could possibly have made my point better? And does anyone want to share their stories of how they became liberal? Or stories of how they avoided becoming like their racist parents like this guy? I remember how I became liberal (it wasn't indoctrination from my parents because I was more conservative than they were as part of my teen-rebellion phase), I read two books. One was Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities which taught me exactly how lucky I was, and Stephen Jay Gould's Mismeasure of Man which taught me how you must constantly look past your built-in biases to see the truth.

Is anyone else worried yet?

Via Pandagon.

He's made the definitive documentary on the Katrina disaster, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts. The first part played last night on HBO, and the second plays tonight at 9pm. Everyone should catch it if they can, it's pretty incredible, and you see Spike Lee is really an exceptional documentarian. Not a whole lot of people come out as heroes in this, with the possible exception of Lt. Gen. Russel Honore. You remember him, the guy who ended every sentence with "over."



When he comes into New Orleans he starts screaming at the cops "Get those weapons down!" he became my new hero. It was if the entire situation was under control, New Orleans was no longer an occupied state, it was back in America once he was there. If only our retarded government sent him in sooner, rather than 5 days into the crisis, it wouldn't have been such a crisis. I could be wrong, I wasn't there, but to see him take charge, you see how much of a failure Katrina was, because there were people capable of taking the situation in hand, and getting aid to the victims of the storm. Bush was just too busy giving speeches in San Diego about terrah, and slapping Brownie on the back to know that what New Orleans really needed was this guy. Or as Mayor Nagin described him, "the black John Wayne."

Sean Penn and his boat was also a sight to see.

Ha!

Remember when Buck was pissed last week over the Catholic Church's inability to accept women as equals. Well, not to be outdone, the fundamentalist Baptists are trying to one up the Catholics for sheer backwardsness.

The First Baptist Church dismissed Mary Lambert on August 9 with a letter explaining that the church had adopted an interpretation that prohibits women from teaching men. She had taught there for 54 years.

The letter quoted the first epistle to Timothy: "I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent."

This proves two things. To condemn conservative jackasses all you have to do is quote them. And, the same thing proves true for the Bible.

Now, here at Give Up blog we've mocked protesters who don't understand that the key to protesting is presenting not only your ideas but your humanity when you march. Dressing like a hippie, acting like a jackass, puppets, foul language/signs, hyperbole etc., make you look like the asshole and your message is destroyed.

Well here as an example of how one should look and behave while protesting, and how bad it looks when such a person is abused, is a YouTube of a lawyer shot while peaceably protesting in Florida.



Now watching this video what are the lessons learned?

1. Floridians should move.
   
2. These cops proved her point that they were fascist assholes.
   
3. Nothing is more sympathetic than someone in a suit being mistreated by the cops.
   

I watch this video and think that anything short of the firing, and possibly the arrest, of this entire police force will be a stain on Broward county and America. Who could disagree? What had this woman done wrong? And this is the power of the effective protest, because even when it goes wrong, you win. I had known about this story for a little while now, but the full video is pretty shocking.

Oh, and move out of Florida. Seriously.

John Kerry has decided to whip out the cajones for all to see and call JoeMentum the "New Cheney", related to the fearmongering and disloyalty he's shown to his own party in the last few weeks. And, just like the New Coke, the New Cheney is the worst marketing idea ever. Exactly what about losing a primary over your position on the war would make a politician think the solution is to call Connecticut Democrats pro-al Qaeda? And considering he's been all but endorsed by the Republican party, how can any self-respecting Democrat vote for this guy?

We have an Op-Ed in the post calling Iraq what it is - a civil war. From Daniel L. Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack on Sunday:

The debate is over: By any definition, Iraq is in a state of civil war. Indeed, the only thing standing between Iraq and a descent into total Bosnia-like devastation is 135,000 U.S. troops -- and even they are merely slowing the fall. The internecine conflict could easily spiral into one that threatens not only Iraq but also its neighbors throughout the oil-rich Persian Gulf region with instability, turmoil and war.
...
For all the recent attention on the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, far more people died in Iraq over the past month than in Israel and Lebanon, and tens of thousands have been killed from the fighting and criminal activity since the U.S. occupation began. Additional signs of civil war abound. Refugees and displaced people number in the hundreds of thousands. Militias continue to proliferate. The sense of being an "Iraqi" is evaporating.

Yet our leaders, who are either insane, deluded, or just plain liars, refuse to acknowledge the problem and deal with it. This is an excellent and very thorough article however, covering this issue from every angle to try to find a solution to the problem, rather than just mock our leadership for thier inability to come to grips with a crisis. Still the solution seems bleak.

That point is critical: Ending an all-out civil war typically requires overwhelming military power to nail down a political settlement. It took 30,000 British troops to bring the Irish civil war to an end, 45,000 Syrian troops to conclude the Lebanese civil war, 50,000 NATO troops to stop the Bosnian civil war, and 60,000 to do the job in Kosovo. Considering Iraq's much larger population, it probably would require 450,000 troops to quash an all-out civil war there. Such an effort would require a commitment of enormous military and economic resources, far in excess of what the United States has already put forth.

It's a question now of whether we acknowledge the problem and take steps to correct it (however politically unpopular that would be), or abandon this endeavor and establish a protectorate to keep the Kurds from being overrun by their insane southern countrymen. It's a tough call, clearly more than Bush can handle, since he won't even recognize the problem.

Introducing the new insignia for the Republican party.



Now this has previously been used to criticize the members of the 101st fighting keyboarders, but now I think it can be generally applied to Republicans who are behind this new "fear everything" strategy to win midterm elections. Along with the insignia, I think we should adopt this new song to describe this new Republican strategy that guarantees flying while brown or buying cell phones while brown become federal crimes. Sing along to the new Republican anthem:

Pissing Our Pants
(sung to the tune of "Staying Alive")

Well, you can tell by the way I stain my pants
I'm a patriot: just read my rants
Muslims make me want to hiss, when they come at me
I start to piss
And now it's airtight, it's inside
I have hung onto my pride
We just want to all be safe
But when I walk I tend to chafe

When you are so frightened the tension is quite heightened
You’re pissing your pants, pissing your pants
Feel the bladder leakin', everybody freakin'
And we're pissing our pants, pissing our pants
Ah, ha, ha, ha, pissing our pants, pissing our pants
Ah, ha, ha, ha, pissing our pants...

Well now, I get moist and I get dry
Sometimes in back I "bake a pie"
My body sometimes like to twist
I'm leakin' from every orifice
And now it's airtight, it's inside
I have hung onto my pride
We just want to all be safe
But when I walk I tend to chafe

Saw a brown person. Somebody help me.
Somebody help me, yeah
Saw a brown person. Somebody help me.
Somebody help me, yea. Pissing my pants.

It's good to know the terrorists haven't won or anything by making us more fearful or "terrorized" as it were. We're kept safe by our constant and reasonable vigilance against fluids or anyone failing the paper bag test. Go America!

I had a nice weekend despite working pretty much constantly. Friday night I got a chance to have some beers and see a fun little show. It was Adam and Rob from the Nice Jenkins playing a little accoustic set at the Satellite Ballroom (their album is now available through Record Theory). It was especially fun considering how they set it up like we were all at a slumber party with a big quilt tent right in the middle of the room.



I also saw Manderlay by Lars von Trier and hated it. I think I'm mostly pissed that he covers the ugly parts of our history from a state of complete ignorance and somehow garners critical acclaim as a result. I find his combination of shoddy camera work, dreary negativism, and absence of historic or social relevance really tiresome, both in this film and Dogville. I also just have a gut reaction that his criticism is just so damn limited because it's so European (and as a result cynical). For one, our history is ugly, but Faulkner gets it right, and this guy is just a amateur who's never even been to this country. Second, if people really are this awful, we might as well just all kill ourselves now and be done with it. Then he ends each film with a photo montage of the nastiness of the United States, either our poverty or racism whatever. Maybe it's just because he's a dirty furriner, but I'm starting to get pissed. Is this just a natural reaction to our Hollywood movies about the Holocaust? Or does he really believe that the US has the patent and copyright on evil®? If we want to really have a competition on this point, von Trier is seriously going to lose in a competition between which region of the world has committed more horrible acts if only because we're just a newer nation and haven't had the opportunity yet to do match all the horrible wrongs of the European nations, and we could probably blame a lot of our evils on inheriting them from the old country.

Anyway, enough bitching. Anyone else do anything fun?

Nationwide, teen pregnancy is still trending downwards, but aberrations such as this school in red Ohio make you worry all over again about abstinence education (which has never empirically been proven to be as effective as sex education).

CANTON, Ohio -- An Ohio school board is expanding sex education following the revelation that 13 percent of one high school's female students were pregnant last year.

There were 490 female students at Timken High School in 2005, and 65 were pregnant, WEWS-TV in Cleveland reported.

The new Canton school board program promotes abstinence but also will teach students who decide to have sex how to do so responsibly, bringing the city school district's health curriculum in line with national standards.

Sounds like the Give Up effect in action. They try the stupid abstinence education technique, then holy shit! All the girls in the school get knocked up! How'd that happen? Hmmm. Maybe this is why.

The Rev. David Morgan served on a committee that developed the lesson plans.
...
The Ohio Department of Education doesn't require schools to provide sex education, particularly when it comes to using contraceptives. The state curriculum calls for venereal disease education, which often is taught along with nutrition and the effects of drugs, alcohol and tobacco.
...
According to the Canton Health Department, statistics through July 2005 showed that 104 of the 586 babies born to Canton residents in Aultman Hospital and Mercy Medical Center had mothers between the ages of 11 and 19.

It's not clear from the language of the article whether this priest worked on the old curriculum or the new one. I'm guessing the old one. And why are priests designing curricula period? If Ohio keeps this up, they'll end up in this map.




Menacker F, Martin JA, MacDorman MF, Ventura SJ. Births to 10-14 year-old mothers, 1990-2002: Trends and health outcomes. National vital statistics reports; vol 53 no 7. Hyattsville, Maryland: National Center for Health Statistics. 2004.

Amanda at Pandagon sounds like she's Given Up. It's a great post, read the whole thing. It pretty much summarizes how I feel about conservative politics.

You can make a long list of arguments that are basically bad faith arguments from conservatives.

1. Opposition to abortion rights is about saving babies, not oppressing women. Biggie on this blog, of course, so I won't bother to drag out the long list of examples of how the anti-choice leadership monolithically opposes contraception and advocates a return to female subservience.
   
2. The Iraq War is part of an international effort to stop terrorism. Upon finding out that BushCo deliberately lied about Iraq having WMDs, the ability of any thinking person to think that "terrorism" was anything but a cover story should have evaporated.
   
3. Tax cuts for the wealthy stem from an ideological opposition to "big government". Unlikely, coming from the party that thinks nothing of flushing billions of dollars down the toilet in defense contracts to move cheesecake around Iraq.
   
4. The very existence of opposition to the idea of "big government". Get the fuck off my phone line and out of my bedroom if you actually oppose intrusive government action. Sitting in on phone calls is more damaging to freedom than restarting the WPA, by even Bizarro World measures.
   
5. Christians are "persecuted". This lie comes up any time Christians want to persecute someone and the government or society gets in their way.
   
6. Opposition to universal health care is based in fear of losing "choice". Only believable if you spin until you're dizzy and think that an umbrella organization that touches all doctors would have less doctors on it than an complex HMO that only has half the number of available doctors on it, or having no insurance and no doctors at all is more of a "choice" than having access to all the doctors in a universal plan.
   
7. We want to privatize Social Security to help people! Yeah, to help the very rich who will enjoy the huge redistribution of wealth upward that taking Social Security and spiking everyone's stock prices upwards would result in, so they could liquidate before the market crashed and left the rest of us without retirement savings.

So on and so forth. One could say the entire existence of the right wing noise machine is to endlessly apply lipstick to a pig. There's a lot of hand-wringing on the left about how we just can't spin like they can, but I think the ugly, fundamental problem is that we don't have anything to spin, and that handicaps us, motivation-wise.

We usually use the analogy of the shit sandwich to describe this phenomenon. That the Republican agenda is just a big shit sandwich. Any time a Republican policy is empirically evaluated, tested, etc., it comes up as a failure. Just look at the last 6 years of Republican-dominated government. What exactly have they done correctly? Their entire agenda is just one big shit sandwich, and to distract their constituents, whom they routinely screw via these policies, from the taste of that sandwich they use the wedge issues of abortion, gay marriage, the ten comandments etc. Lipstick on a pig, shit sandwich, we're all talking about the same thing. When people actually experience Republicanism, they can't fail to see that it's a hopeless failure (unless they're willfully obtuse, distracted by gays/abortion/wedge issues or just hopelessly fanatic).

The Give Up effect doesn't even require one to read Give Up blog, of course. All it needs is actual experience with Republican/conservative policy. Such policies are fundamentally flawed, they can not succeed.

In related news, the deficit is projected to be 1.76 trillion dollars over the next decade, 3,400 people died in Iraq last month, a CIA contractor has been convicted for beating an Afghan prisoner to death, and Bush's wiretap program has been determined to be illegal for about a billion different reasons. Add to that:

1. The loss of New Orleans
   
2. a bankruptcy bill designed to screw the poorest of citizens
   
3. 2600 troops lost in a pointless war
   
4. A loss of our nation's credibility worldwide (I think a certain Brit cjust called Bush "crap" - an understatement for sure
   
5. An absence of leadership on the environment and failure to join Kyoto
   
6. Politicized terror alerts - see Keith Olberman's take
   
   
7. Torture committed in the name of the US at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo
   
8. A whole host of crooks and cronies running critical departments in government from FEMA to NASA to EPA to FDA to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to shoplifting presidential advisors.
   
9. The politicization of the FDA in regards to plan B
   
10. The capture of regulatory agencies like the FDA and EPA by industry
    
11. The largest debt in human history
    
12. The failure to adequately armor and supply our troops in combat
    
13. A failure from the start to maintain order in Iraq
    
14. The loss of billions of dollars in war profiteering to their defense contractor pals Halliburton (and KBR)
    
15. Hopelessly failing to address North Korean brinksmanship
    
16. Ignoring terror warnings then refusing to support the 9/11 commission.
    
17. Lying to us about the cost of the war in Iraq, ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq, and WMDs in Iraq, the preparedeness of Iraqi troops, etc., basically every time they mentioned the words Iraq in a sentence, a lie followed.
    
18. Letting Osama Bin Fucking Laden get away with attacking our country (and instead going to Iraq)
    
19. Leaking information on CIA agents for political payback
    
20. Tax cuts for the wealthy
    
21. Failure to increase the minimum wage (by sticking a poison pill in the bill)
    
22. Failing to control oil/gas prices
    
23. Failing to pass an energy policy
    
24. Failing to reduce our dependence on foreign sources of fuel.
    
25. The unfunded mandate of No Child Left Behind
    
26. The PATRIOT act
    
27. Fearmongering about everything, and in doing so, letting the terrorists win.
    
28. Lying to congress about the cost of the Medicare bill
    
29. Directing NASA expenditures to a stupid mission to Mars and directing focus away from study of the earth and global warming.
    
30. Opposing ES cell research, harming US science and slowing the development of potential therapies for disease.
    
31. Opposing sensible public health measures to fight AIDS and instead pushing abstinence around the world.
    
32. Not fulfilling 15 billion dollar promise to fight AIDS in Africa
    
33. Am I forgetting anything?
    

You start to see why you don't need to argue with conservative management of government. All you have to do is describe it.

I hate celebrity news. I also hate news about long dead child beauty queens. It's not news, it's just easy filler for lazy networks.

But the news that Haley Joel Osmont got arrested for crashing his car while drunk and high caught my eye. Not because another Hollywood celebrity got caught misbehaving but because the car Osmont was driving.

Authorities said Osment was driving home alone about 1 a.m. when his 1995 Saturn hit a mailbox and flipped over.

Now what kind of Hollywood star drives this car?



I feel really bad for the kid. Maybe we should put together a charity site to buy him a better car. If our child celebrities are reduced to driving 1995 Saturns, it's just a matter of time before they're holding up liquor stores and starring in terrible reality shows. Heartbreaking, really.

Well Duh.

In a 44-page memorandum and order, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor struck down the NSA program, which she said violates the rights to free speech and privacy.

The defendants "are permanently enjoined from directly or indirectly utilizing the Terrorist Surveillance Program in any way, including, but not limited to, conducting warrantless wiretaps of telephone and Internet communications, in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Title III," she wrote.

She declared that the program "violates the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III."

Her ruling went on to say that "the president of the United States ... has undisputedly violated the Fourth in failing to procure judicial orders."

The lawsuit, filed January 17 by civil rights organizations, lawyers, journalists and educators, "challenges the constitutionality of a secret government program to intercept vast quantities of the international telephone and Internet communications of innocent Americans without court approval."

The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, based in Detroit. Plaintiffs included branches of the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, the Washington and Detroit branches of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Greenpeace.

The question is, now that the ACLU has won this victory against the Bush administration, will it hold up in front of the Bush-loving Supreme Court? I'm thinking there are only so many laws even a Bush-loving Supreme court will allow him to break. This is a pretty strongly worded opinion that says Bush is not allowed to rewrite laws without the consent of congress. I kind of doubt even this Supreme Court would be so unAmerican and antidemocratic as to suggest otherwise.

The Times this morning has an article on the explosion in biological research (and ES cell research in particular) in Singapore. They're pouring billions of dollars into building the 'biopolis', a huge multi-building research complex, and likely millions more into salaries to attract top talent. Of course, this is the perfect give up argument - research going to places that will support it, with the idea that the intellectual property and subsequent royalties will follow. But what I love about the article is the first picture. Look! They're doing science! The posing (especially the second researcher, with flask in hand) makes it totally awesome.

Some fun stuff from around the internet this morning.

Orac discusses the Starchild Cherrix case. Of particular interest he discusses the methods of this new quack oncologist this kid has chosen. If you ask me this guy should lose his license for unethical experimentation on humans, but, there it is.

Does anyone remember when Vox Day suggested we use the Nazis as a model for shipping the illegal immigrants out of town? Well, it turns out that the man with the minge haircut comes from a long line of crazies. Pandagon point out that his real name is Theodore Beale, and his father is the crazy libertarian Robert B. Beale whose argument against paying his taxes is something along the lines of "Jesus didn't pay taxes, so neither do I." Daddy is on the run from the law now for tax evasion. Ha! Anyway, Pandagon makes fun of them for being libertarians, and since libertarians are my least favorite people, I salute them for their anti-libertarian worldview.

Finally, anyone else read about how this country singer Troy Lee Gentry shot a tame bear but edited the video tape of it to make it appear as though he hunted it? Everyone is having a good old time with this one, mainly by pointing out, what kind of tough guy kills a tame bear? Certainly not Teddy Roosevelt. Jesus' General writes a letter.

Starchild Abraham Cherrix has won his appeal and may choose to take alternative medicine to treat his Hodkin's lymphoma.

To those unfamiliar with this case, it's pretty straightforward. He's a 16 year old kid, relapsing from previous allopathic treatment of his cancer, that wanted to instead try using a completely debunked alternative treatment called the Hoxsey method.

This generated a good bit of discussion over at respectful insolence one of several excellent blogs over at scienceblogs. Now Orac, who wrote the post, favored the original decision, in which the state decided to take custody from the parents and create joint custody with child protective services so the kid would be forced to take chemo. I didn't, and think it violated existing ethical guidelines on consent in minors. There's a lot of room to disagree here, but I'm curious to think what other Give Upers think.

My reasoning is simple.

1. 16 is old enough to make medical decisions for oneself - supported by the ethical guidelines for pediatricians on this one.
   
2. Making a stupid decisions is not enough of a reason for the government to come and take away your self autonomy, otherwise 90% of the population would be forbidden from making decisions.
   
3. No one would question this kid's decision if he were choosing not to go through with another round of chemo and wanted to die with dignity. They're angry not because he chose to die, but because he chose to die at the hands of quacks. I don't see the difference.
   
4. The broader implications of taking consent away from kids of this age are terrible for treatment of STDs, for reproductive rights etc. Kids this old are old enough to make decisions for themselves, and that means letting them make decisions we don't like (otherwise it isn't a decision is it?). Anything less is basically saying they can only choose to agree with their doctor, otherwise they're crazy and wrong and should lose their patient autonomy.
   

This kid will certainly die from this quack cure. That's his decision, I'm fine with it. He's old enough, and the decision only hurts himself. Anyone else have an opinion? And am I the only one who sees this as the natural outcome of hippies raising kids and naming them things like "starchild"?

Someone with an amazing sense of humor, design, and a vast Lego collection just put together a full, 3-D Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster made out of Legos. All hail His noodly appendage!

Reason #101 why Lieberman should lose his seat:

...Mr. Lieberman had supported an emergency bill asking a federal court to consider reinserting Ms. Schiavo’s feeding tube days before she died in March 2005...

Charlottesville City Counselor Kevin Lynch asks if there really is such thing as a "Virginia State Climatologist", and if the position is real, the conflict of interest Pat Michaels has taking money from oil and energy interests.

So, the backstory here is that at UVA we have a professor who is a global warming denier and who has the title of Virginia State Climatologist. Recently he made the news when he ran into funding trouble and was soliciting money from energy interests to continue his "research" into the fraud of global warming science.

Now he's got a problem. Our very own City Counselor has done what the press never seems to do well, he started checking facts rather than taking them for granted. And we're learning some interesting things.

Does Virginia really have a State Climatologist?
And if not, why are taxpayers spending $91,530 a year for the Virginia State Climatologist Office?

As reported in the Progress a couple of days ago, there is a difference of opinion between the University of Virginia and the Governor's office as to who is responsible for the Office of the Climatologist. According to the Governors office, the Climatologist is not a gubernatorial appointee, while according to the University the position of State Climatologist is a gubernatorial appointment.

This matters of course, because using his Office of State Climatologist, Dr. Patrick Michaels publishes some rather controversial opinions on global warming and associated phenomena - opinions that seem to be very closely related to those he promotes as a private consultant to coal and power industries. This would appear to be a conflict of interest, however at this time, neither the University or Governor's office will claim responsibility for Dr. Michaels' actions as State Climatologist. Thus the determination of whether or not a conflict exists is left to editorial page writers.

The lack of oversight by the Governors office or University raises a much more serious question: If the State Climatologist is accountable to neither, than who appointed him and by whose authority has his office been drawing approximately $2.5 million dollars of taxpayer money over the past 26 years?

Having reviewed the documentation available thus far, I believe that the Governor's office is right - the Climatologist is not a gubernatorial appointee. He was in fact given a letter of appointment by Governor Dalton in 1980, but his appointment does not appear to have been legitimate, nor was it ever recorded with the Secretary of the Commonwealth or with NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC).

Now this is bizarre. He's the Virginia State Climatologist because 26 years ago a governor gave him a letter of appointment, and he's held that as a lifetime position, with no oversight ever since.

In 1980, the University recruited the current Climatologist, Dr. Patrick Michaels, to become the permanent State Climatologist. On July 8th, 1980, Governor Dalton sent a letter of appointment to Dr. Michaels in which he states: "It is my pleasure to appoint you as State Climatologist." Note there is no "acting" designation. This is the letter for which the University bases its claim that the Climatologist is a Gubernatorial appointment. However, no action establishing the State Climatologist Office had been taken (nor has such action been taken since). Thus I do not believe Governor Dalton had the statutory authority to issue the letter. Furthermore, only the University seems to have had a copy of this letter. There was no copy at the Secretary of the Commonwealth's office, nor was there any copy in Governor Dalton's personal records of appointments and memos. Unlike the previous appointment, no copy of the letter was filed with NCDC. The result of this is that even if there were some possible legitimate basis for the letter of appointment, no Governor since Dalton has had any inkling that there ever was an appointment, and thus there has been no reappointment of the State Climatologist in 26 years.

There is also the mention that our very own bigot George Allen may be responsible for this guy maintaining this totally non-existent position, despite no good statutory reason for it. Very interesting no? The conflict of interest story is also very interesting, and I think, raises questions that may be relevant to an honor code inquiry. Professors have to obey it too right? I guess we can give him the benefit of the doubt that maybe he's just confused about how his job exists, and that he hasn't just been riding a single appointment for 26 years with no statutory basis. Who knows, maybe it will turn out his appointment is somehow a crazy, unlikely loophole in state appointments. Either way, it's time to replace him if Kaine has the authority, and if he's just a UVA professor giving himself a title, and claiming government authorities authorized it, then, well, time to have a talk about how honest that is.

Finally, who else has been thinking about Office Space throughout this story? Doesn't this remind you of Milton? The guy who was laid off years before but just kept showing up to work?


Caption: Virginia State Climatologist Pat Michaels

I'm sorry, but when sees this headline in the Washington Post, one wonders about the relevancy and appeal of the Catholic Church:

Woman Leads Catholic Service Despite Risk

How, in 2006, can this still be an event worth debating, or celebrating? Seems like barring women from leading a religious service is a great way to relegate your belief system to only the most backwards countries.

Not because he would win, of course, but because he can't win. As we've mentioned before, George Allen is an atavism, a throw-back to the days of the Republican party being a bunch of closet racists...oh wait. Well, it hasn't been long enough yet to call it atavistic yet as Mehlmen only apologized for Nixon, Reagan and Bush's "Southern Strategy" about a month ago. The party without a single black representative in congress is still struggling to get away from the bigots like Allen and Trent Lott..wait a minute. Are they? I can't tell, they are talking about Allen like he's a front runner. Hmmm.

Can't seem to find anything really positive to say about Republicans trying to separate themselves from their recent racist past. It just doesn't seem like so long ago that Reagan started his campaign in Philedelphia Miss, or George Bush yanked out Willie Horton to scary whitey. Then they've got this Allen character, making fun of the only non-white guy at one of his rallies by calling him a Macaque? Or was it Macaca? Either way, from a guy who loves the confederate flag, spray painting racist slogans on schools, and decorating his office with nooses, you have to wonder whether his intent was racist.

"This fellow here over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere. And it's just great. We're going to places all over Virginia, and he's having it on film and its great to have you here and you show it to your opponent because he's never been there and probably will never come."

After telling the crowd that Webb was raising money in California with a "bunch of Hollywood movie moguls," Allen again referenced Sidarth, who was born and raised in Fairfax County.

"Lets give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia," said Allen, who then began talking about the "war on terror."

The Republicans have found him, the only politician in the country dumber than George W. Bush. I love it. I hope he wins the nomination. He's got enough skeletons in the closet you can guarantee no minorities will vote for him, and only a minority of women (you should hear what his sister has to say about him). So, let's hope George Allen gets the nod from the party, and let's see if they can play that southern strategy one more time. Somehow, I doubt it. I think the only reason they finally apologized for it is they realize it will no longer help them, and that they need the blacks, latinos and women that the strategy doesn't appeal to to win.

This time it's Republican Gary Miller of California, who's been hiding millions in income from property sales by claiming they were eminent domain sales. The problem? Each time he sold them willingly, sometimes even begging the government to buy his property from him.

Lying to the IRS to hide your income is a crime congressman. As McJoan at Kos has pointed out, this is why Dean's 50-state strategy is awesome. Every district, no matter how Republican, needs a Dem challenger. You never know when good criminal malfeasance is going to crop up with these Republicans, so you gotta be ready.

At least that's what I've always said. now Dermatologists are starting to say it too and the indoor tanning lobby is starting to sound exactly like the cigarette lobby 40 years ago demanding proof beyond all doubt before any kind of precaution is taken.

There must be a name for this flaw in logic that you always encounter with libertarians, global warming deniers, creationists etc., that a preponderance of evidence isn't enough, you need absolute and total proof of some problem before anything should be done (and even then they still deny it because they don't want to believe in science). Complete and total understanding from the bottom to the top of any issue before a precautions can be taken or a decision can be made. The sad thing is that it is rare for humans to completely understand anything, let alone a complex disease process like melanoma or any cancer (it took 50 years to find definitive proof of the mechanism for cigarettes causing cancer after all). If we had this standard of evidence for any action we'd be locked in indecision all the time.

To me it's obvious, UV radiation, even the longer wavelength stuff used in these beds is still ionizing radiation. Even if less harmful, intense, prolonged exposure will increase your risk, just maybe not as fast as sunlight. It's pretty obvious, and with the increases in melanoma among young women there is more than correlation, there's a good explanation. It's also disturbing to see how much faster melanoma asserts itself, compared to cigarette use tanning seems much more dangerous, as these cancers are popping up in people under 30. Probably because your exposure to UV in total begins from birth.

What do the other scientists think? Time to condemn tanning beds or not?

It's official, blogging has become ridiculous. It's only downhill from here.

Iranian president Ahmedinejad has a blog. Uggh. Via boingboing.

Also, in terms of ugliness in blogging, Jenny Price writing for LA Times has discovered freepers. I'm starting to understand why Pandagon goes to all the trouble to publish actual freeper quotes. It's very Give Up of them. All you have to do is quote these assholes to damn them. Price goes too far and actually mocks the freepers. She should have just stopped at quoting them.

PLoS medicine has two articles worthy of discussion this week.

The first, a debate on the ethics and practicality of using medicine to improve on "normality". The first debater, Arthur Caplan, uses the annoying terminology of 'meliorist' to describe one who would attempt to strive for perfection using technology. It's not a terrible argument, that there is nothing inherently wrong with using technology to improve human life, even if unnecessary. I'm tired anyway of people making the argument that things are unnatural as if it's a bad thing to act unnaturally. As if anything humans do is natural. The problem is he uses argument by analogy and straw men to debate his point. I think you could come up with a much better argument for justifying a future in which we all have robot monkey bodies. Mine would have the strength of five gorillas.

Anyway, his terrible arguments make the arguments of Carl Elliot look much better. His arguments are simple, believable, and backed up by data. It's simple. Melioration is a mistake because there isn't any real way to improve yourself in a meaningful way. It's much more likely that you'll just be buying into some drug company's bullshit diseasemongering and try to fix something that isn't really defective due to the perception of a flaw built into you by constant marketing. He's got a good point, and one that PLoS has extensively documented.

However, I would argue that if real opportunities to improve ourselves, genetically, chemically, surgically, etc., avail themselves there isn't anything inherently wrong with utilizing them. We've already come to accept things like breast augmentation, rhinoplasty, liposection etc., even if over-utilized (or abused in the cases of body-dysmorphic disorder-aka Michael Jackson), what's wrong with a robot monkey body? Or even the Barbobot?



The second story of interest is on bias in scientific reporting. It's ok, but I would rather they would focus more on the awful, stupid reporting of nanny-science that we've mocked again and again.

Oh well, maybe I'll write them a letter.

By the way, has anyone else seen the Confederate States of America? This is the most Give Up Blog movie ever. I totally plotzed.

My god. It was great. Everyone must see it.

A while ago we published this map of the top 15 states for toxic waste dumping compiled from the toxic waste inventories available from the EPA. Of particular interest in this map is Texas, which is fifth in the country for total toxic waste release (~240 million pounds per year) after Alaska Alaska (~550 million pounds), Nevada(~500 million pounds), Arizona(~330 million pounds), and Ohio(~210 million pounds). Contrast to California, at ~45 million pounds per year the most populous state releases about 1/5th the amount of toxic sludge and chemicals than Texas.



So it was interesting to see on Fark this weekend the Toxic Texas website describing the types of waste being dumped in Texas at dumps like Sierra Blanca. Companies are dumping sludge (usually imported from blue states) with absolutely no regard for local residents' health or quality of life. When the residents try to appeal to the state government to protect them from the damage to their health and property, they're ignored and dismissed of course because these governments don't care about their constituents. It's too bad the page isn't more updated unlike the national PEER site but it's still a good demonstration of the Give Up phenomenon. The lack of protection of red state citizens by their governments is contributing to an exploitative system in which blue states are benefiting from unregulated and inappropriate use of resources and land at a direct cost to the citizens of these states. Reading the articles on many of these dumps you also see they're a direct legacy of George W. Bush and his complete disregard for his constituents, not that we should be surprised.

What's the solution? To wait until red staters go through the laborious process of learning from scratch that libertarian governments offer no protection to citizens or sensible preventative measures to prevent damage to the commons? Or should you just move to the blue states and send them your waste? I don't know, but one thing is for sure, I'd never buy land in Texas. It's just not a good investment if someone can build an illegal toxic waste dump next door without consultation with or consent of local citizens.

Giving up makes you feel pretty sorry for people who are abused by their states like this, but what else can be done to convince them that Republicans won't protect their interests? Maybe it takes a toxic waste dump next door to convince people that environmental protection and sensible regulation are in their best interest? Or that having a powerful federal EPA is more sensible than entrusting corrupt state politicians of any party to protect you?

Map source, Environmental Protection Agency, Toxic Release Inventory 2002 (www.epa.gov). Total Onsite Releases of toxic chemicals by state.

In an earlier post, I ranted about the animal rights movement. In sum, I argued that the animal rights groups have given up on human rights, that the resources devoted to protect animals said something about the neglect of human rights. They've chosen to prioritize care for emotional sponges over ordinary humans, who are not always easy to love, forgive, etc.

Reen commented that my argument was a false dilemma; that animal rights activists could care about human rights too. These groups are just doing what they're supposed to do, and they're effective. She's right, of course.

So, let me explain why I'm beginning to believe that animal rights activism is a sort of escapism, an abandonment of more difficult problems like human rights.

I'm doing some work for a low-income legal clinic, and in the process, have become familiar with the process and politics of expunging criminal records. It turns out that two types of crimes are particularly difficult to clean from a criminal record: DUI offenses, and animal cruelty. This is because well-organized and vocal interests write to our elected judges when people are forgiven for these crimes.

I'm sorry, but there are more serious crimes than animal cruelty. No one is writing letters when former gang members seek forgiveness for weapons crimes, crimes that terrorize entire neighborhoods. No one is writing letters in domestic violence and other crimes that affect millions of Americans.

One response might be that there is social science research showing a link between animal abusers and sociopathy. But these people aren't sociopaths. They've had an extended period of lawful behavior. Chances are, these are animal neglectors--when young, they bought pit bulls and the like and simply didn't take care of them properly. They weren't actively torturing the animals, which is a sign of depravity.

Anyway, the priorities are screwed up. I find the intensity and resources devoted to protecting animals distasteful in a world where so many humans don't live as well as our stupid pets.

Turns out, Lieberman has been keeping secrets from us. Dark, hidden, inner secrets dealing with the very nature of his divided soul. Little did we know, that late at night, Lieberman, dressed as his alter-ego, patrols the depths of the terrorist underground, looking for clues, preventing terror plots, and keeping us safe while we sleep in our beds.

I didn't know before yesterday when Dick Cheney told us the Al-Qaeda types were going to celebrate a Lamont victory. Little did I know that Joe Lieberman's super-powers are fueled by the heated debate of the Senate. Without his daily recharge in his bicameral fortress of deliberation, he can't face our evil foes at night.

I've been trying to imagine what Joe looks like in his super-garb, here's some of my initial ideas.

Maybe Joe just dons a cape over his usual senatorial garb.


Alternatively, Joe might be in charge of a powerful starship that he uses to monitor the terrorists. Joe says, "engage!"


Then again Joe might just be a kick-ass tough guy like the Punisher, taking on the terrorists with superior firepower.


Shit! Maybe he's Wolverine and we just can't see his claws!


Maybe not. Either way, one thing I now know for sure, there's no way I can sleep at night until I know Lieberman is safely ensconced in his Senate office for another term. He is all that lies between us and total chaos.

Last December, we published photos showing the poster of Jonathan Wells, the DI-affiliated creationist moonie who says that centrioles (small structures found in mammalian cells that are involved in cell division) are turbines. Because they're turbines, he says, they must be designed.

The problem? He actually proposed a hypothesis that can be tested. And though he showed no interest in testing it (and admitted as much to me at the meeting), others did.

Their findings? His hypothesis is wrong.

Now I don't like to gloat about people finding out their hypotheses are wrong. It's a heart-wrenching, soul-crushing feeling. But as this is the only testable hypothesis proposed out of at least 10 years of DI existence, it feels a little good. Just a little.

No, I'm not shitting you this is what Republicans and Lieberman himself are saying about Lamont's win.

The attacks came in searing remarks from, among others, Ken Mehlman, the chairman of the Republican National Committee and Vice President Dick Cheney, who went so far as to suggest that the ouster of Mr. Lieberman might encourage "al Qaeda types."

"It's an unfortunate development, I think, from the standpoint of the Democratic Party, to see a man like Lieberman pushed aside because of his willingness to support an aggressive posture in terms of our national security strategy," Mr. Cheney said in a telephone interview with news service reporters.

And Lieberman:

"If we just pick up like Ned Lamont wants us to do, get out by a date certain, it will be taken as a tremendous victory by the same people who wanted to blow up these planes in this plot hatched in England," Mr. Lieberman said at a campaign event at lunchtime in Waterbury, Conn. "It will strengthen them and they will strike again."

Some people are understandably upset by the assertion that you're a terrorist if you don't like Lieberman, and that's fine. But I love this statement. Can't you just smell the desperation? You know that these guys aren't stupid, they don't actually believe what they say, that no one but Joe Lieberman can represent Connecticut, and election of someone who represents the district better is an Al Qaeda victory. But they are desperate, and when they get desperate they whip out the fear card. That they've had to whip it out so early? Good sign. They don't have any ideas, all they can hope to do is distract from their failures on the economy, the deficit, Katrina, Iraq, Afghanistan, the environment, on energy policy, etc. They simply don't have a leg to stand on. They're toast, and they know it. Besides, Lamont can defend himself just fine.

"Wow," Mr. Lamont said, after asking a reporter to read Mr. Lieberman's remark about him. "That comment sounds an awful lot like Vice President Cheney's comment on Wednesday. Both of them believe our invasion of Iraq has a lot to do with 9/11. That's a false premise."

That's right Ned, don't let it upset you. And you're right to point out that no Democrat should sound so much like Dick freaking Cheney.

This figure represents what portion of each industrialized country's population accepts evolution.



This reminds me of a saying I hear from our contributor born in Georgia, I believe it's "thank God for Alabama" or some such thing, the humor being that if it weren't for Alabama Georgia would be dead last in every measure of progress.

Well, in America I think it's thank god for Turkey. If they weren't included as an industrialized nation we'd be toast, and I don't think this is the first time the US has enjoyed an "Alabama" effect from Turkey, I believe in the UN healthcare rankings and progressive income taxation we're nearly dead last but for Turkey.

I love this statement from the study author:

"American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalist, which is why Turkey and we are so close," said study co-author Jon Miller of Michigan State University.

Ha! He's going to get some hate mail for that one (and about half a dozen other statements in his paper).

Via Stranger Fruit, based on this paper in Science: Jon D. Miller, Eugenie C. Scott, and Shinji Okamoto (2006) "Public Acceptance of Evolution" Science Aug 11 2006: 765-766.

If only I had unlimited time and craft skill, I'd make a costume like this one for next Halloween.



The picture of Bender in Vegas is priceless.

"Give Up" is a funny theme, but in all seriousness, we shouldn't give up on certain principles. Human rights, for instance, are not abandonable. Increasingly, I think that the animal rights movement has made abandum of human rights. Let me explain...

The Journal reported yesterday that Chinese authorities have killed 50,000 dogs in rural Moulding in response to a rabies outbreak. The rabies outbreak killed several people and sickened hundreds, but the cold overreaction of the government has attracted criticism:

Even Communist Party-backed newspapers attacked the Mouding move as "extraordinarily crude" and "cold-blooded." With the Internet spreading news of the killings around the world, the animal-rights group PETA called for a boycott of all Chinese products, and tens of thousands of surfers signed an online petition urging the U.S. ambassador to China to recommend widespread rabies vaccinations across that country.

Okay PETA. Let's think about this. We're going to boycott China because some rednecks killed a bunch of dogs? What about all the people who are killed in China? What about the hundreds of thousands of people killed in Darfur? You know, humans. People like you and me, with spouses and children and dreams and memories and meaning in life. Why don't we boycott for them?

In light of the horrific human abuses that just seemed to be ignored by PETA features on China, I'm beginning to have contempt for the animal rights movement. What does it say when one cares so intensely for the welfare of cute, cuddly animals while glossing over incredible human rights abuses? Maybe its members find it more comfortable to care about cute animals than humans, who aren't always furry and cuddly. Maybe it's that the dogs clearly have done nothing wrong, while we're not so sure always about the humans. Doesn't it suggest that the animal rights movement has given up on human rights?

For those who really care about animal welfare, I'd suggest that they'd start by ensuring fair treatment for humans. A lack of respect for human rights is an impediment to reaching the goal of humane treatment of animals. If we can't agree that human rights are sacred, if we can't boycott China for abuses against citizens, how can we reach a point where other animals' rights are respected?

This week, the Times reports on a series of product testing that the Federal Trade Commission has performed on gasoline-enhancement products. These products promise gains in fuel efficiency:

THE federal Environmental Protection Agency maintains a full laboratory where it will gladly test a miraculous fuel-saving device for $30,000. But so far, the biggest customer of the lab has been the Federal Trade Commission, which uses it to debunk false advertising claims.

[...]

Why do people who have spent tens of thousands of dollars on a well-engineered car believe that the $100 Fuel Genie, the $198 Platinum Gas Saver or the $70 TornadoFuelSaver might reap huge benefits?

DUH! Aren't there a hundred more difficult problems faced by consumers than these obvious frauds? Okay. Some psychobabble:

Dr. Carl Haugtvedt, a social psychologist who is an associate professor of marketing logistics at Ohio State University, said that the kind of faith that draws consumers to gadgets like these was actually important to human mental health. Part of the attraction stems from hopefulness and a willingness to trust that something can improve a painful situation. Another factor is self-delusion, which protects the ego by letting a person overlook bad decisions.

"You could admit to yourself that you were wrong, you wasted this money, you burned this money, say 'I'm an idiot,' " Dr. Haugtvedt said. "That's very tough on the self."

People who are hopeful enough to try out a fuel-economy enhancer will look for any positive sign they can find to convince themselves that they made a good decision. They may put the device in their car and, at the same time, get a tune-up — something suggested in the installation instructions with many devices. Or, because the owners are paying more attention to their cars, they may realize that their tires are underinflated and add some air. Then, each time they add fuel at the gas pump, they attribute any mileage gain to the device.

Maybe the FTC's resources would be better allocated to making people more skeptical generally of advertising, rather than spending all this money and effort debunking specific products that obviously are bogus.

Two articles of general Give Up interest should be studied to understand the coming elections.

The first is an article from the Washington Post describing a generalized anti-incumbent feeling among voters. This is of particular interest because again and again, when we discuss the inevitability of voter dissatisfaction with Republican incompetence, the response is that people end up voting for their local guy from the illogical belief that he/she is somehow different from all those other dirty Republicans/Democrats. Well, the anti-incumbent feeling isn't just restricted to Lieberman.

Most Americans describe themselves as being in an anti-incumbent mood heading into this fall's midterm congressional elections, and the percentage of people who approve of their own representative's performance is at the lowest level since 1994, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

As attention turns to Connecticut for Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman's Democratic primary showdown today, the poll found some of the same political currents that have buffeted his campaign flowing through the national electorate. The public has soured on politicians backing the Iraq war, which Democrats consider the most important issue of the election.
...
Especially worrisome for members of Congress is that the proportion of Americans who approve of their own representative's performance has fallen sharply. Traditionally, voters may express disapproval of Congress as a whole but still vote for their own member, even from the majority party. But 55 percent now approve of their lawmaker, a seven-percentage-point drop over three months and the lowest such finding since 1994, the last time control of the House switched parties.

Might be time for a revolution.

The second article is confirms a critical foundation of the Give Up hypothesis. That Republican wedge issues are not generalizable to any sustainable majority of people. That is, more people disagree with Republicans' radical ideas on abortion, gays, war, civil rights etc., it's just that the Republican base is more rabid, leading to an overrepresentation of their power among the electorate. Enter this Reuters article describing how the culture war is overblown. Americans simply aren't as conservative as the crazies that occupy right-wing radio are.

On five prominent social issues -- abortion rights, stem cell research, gay marriage, adoption of children by gay couples, and availability of the "morning-after" pill -- most Americans did not take consistent stances.

Just 12 percent took the conservative position on all five issues, while 22 percent took the opposite stance on all five. The bulk of Americans had mixed opinions.

On the subject of gay unions, 56 percent opposed giving gays the right to marry, but 53 percent favored allowing gays to enter into legal agreements that provide many of the same rights as married couples.

There has been an increase in recent years in the proportion of Americans who believe homosexuality is innate -- 36 percent, up from 30 percent in 2003. Similarly, 49 percent believed homosexuals cannot be changed to heterosexual, compared to 42 percent in 2003.

The poll's findings on stem cell research -- which preceded
President George W. Bush's veto of a bill to expand federal funding -- showed 56 percent favored the research even though human embryos would be destroyed, while 32 percent were opposed. Most of the gains in support of stem cell research occurred prior to 2004 and has been stable since.

The Democrat/progressive position tends to be the majority position in America, it's just hard to get moderates pissed. Well, that's what Give Up is all about. It takes someone like George Bush to get the moderates pissed, and that's what's happening. The proof? L-A-M-O-N-T.

I swear, every week we some some stupid shit like this.

Whether it's hip-hop, rap, pop or rock, much of popular music aimed at teens contains sexual overtones. Its influence on their behavior appears to depend on how the sex is portrayed, researchers found.

Songs depicting men as "sex-driven studs," women as sex objects and with explicit references to sex acts are more likely to trigger early sexual behavior than those where sexual references are more veiled and relationships appear more committed, the study found.

Teens who said they listened to lots of music with degrading sexual messages were almost twice as likely to start having intercourse or other sexual activities within the following two years as were teens who listened to little or no sexually degrading music.

Time to whip out the Give Up Blog patented Bad-Science Ass Whupping Stick.

For the last time. CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION.

How many different ways could this data be consistent with a non-causative theory? Let us count.

1. Parents who let their kids listen to this shit may be more permissive.
   
2. Kids who want to listen to this shit may be more interested in sex, hence their interest in the music.
   
3. This shit may instead identify a peer-group that is more sexually adventurous.
   

Can you think of any others? Despite these obvious flaws in this conclusion, the shit science writers at CNN and other news sources buy into this stupid nanny science like it's sweet sweet candy. They just love anything about sex, drugs, alcohol, whatever, that confirms their silly puritanical worldview. Video games cause violence, drinking in adolescences causes alcoholism, dirty music causes promiscuity, etc., same story, different day. And it's all obvious bullshit. Why do we put up with it?

I never understood why Special K (aka Ketamine) was abused, but now interesting reports from the field of psychology indicate it might be a revolutionary anti-depression treatment. Of particular interest, it's not the acute effects of ketamine, but the persistent good feeling created by the drug that indicates the potential for the drug as a treatment for depression.

In the study, 18 patients were injected with a drug called ketamine, which has been used for a long time as an anesthetic. Patients briefly experienced a well-known side effect of the drug -- a mild feeling of dissociation, where they felt disconnected or found it difficult to put thoughts into words.

Ketamine is a controlled substance and can produce mild euphoria.

But the dissociative symptoms disappeared within a couple of hours, and shortly afterward patients and physicians reported a dramatic improvement in mood. Half the patients had a 50 percent decline in depression symptoms after two hours, and by the end of the first day, 71 percent reported a similar improvement. More than a third continued to report such a benefit after seven days, and nearly a third reported a complete end of symptoms. Conventional antidepressants approach those kinds of numbers only after eight to 10 weeks of treatment.

Here is the article

Results Subjects receiving ketamine showed significant improvement in depression compared with subjects receiving placebo within 110 minutes after injection, which remained significant throughout the following week. The effect size for the drug difference was very large (d = 1.46 [95% confidence interval, 0.91-2.01]) after 24 hours and moderate to large (d = 0.68 [95% confidence interval, 0.13-1.23]) after 1 week. Of the 17 subjects treated with ketamine, 71% met response and 29% met remission criteria the day following ketamine infusion. Thirty-five percent of subjects maintained response for at least 1 week.

Conclusions Robust and rapid antidepressant effects resulted from a single intravenous dose of an N-methyl-D-aspartate antagonist; onset occurred within 2 hours postinfusion and continued to remain significant for 1 week.

Aside from the small sample size this is a promising article. I now feel better about using ketamine as an anesthetic for survival surgeries in animals. If this becomes a standard practice, to administer ketamine for symptoms of depression, you could worry that one easy way to get your special K fix would to visit your doc and act depressed, but then, who cares? If this holds up in a larger study this would be a very valuable drug for transition towards other antidepressants that require a longer time to build up effective drug levels.

Lamont has won.

With 90% of the vote in Lamont leads by a 3.2% margin.

667 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 89.17%
Name Party Votes Pct
Lamont, Ned Dem 127,786 51.60
Lieberman, Joe (i) Dem 119,867 48.40

Not the smashing success we were hoping for but it's safe to say LieberBush has lost the primary. Now let's hope that his attempt to run as an independent generates enough scorn that he loses the general election.

with 81% in Lamont is looking like a winner, he's increased to 3.5%.

608 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 81.28%
Name Party Votes Pct
Lamont, Ned Dem 116,387 51.71
Lieberman, Joe (i) Dem 108,683 48.29

While the lead has shrunk, with 72% in Lamont is still holding on to a 3.3% lead.

537 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 71.79%
Name Party Votes Pct
Lamont, Ned Dem 100,425 51.61
Lieberman, Joe (i) Dem 94,148 48.39

404 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 54.01%
Name Party Votes Pct
Lamont, Ned Dem 74,396 51.98
Lieberman, Joe (i) Dem 68,718 48.02

And it's narrowing a little bit in Connecticut.

Lamont is holding on with an 9% lead.

The server keeps on crashing, but I'll tell you, 4 counties are in and Lamont is ahead 918 to 535 (63% Lamont, 37% Lieberman).

Gotta keep an eye on this one, if these keeps up, it's going to be looking bad for LieberBush.

**Update**

The website doesnt have explanations for the numbers, This one is better.

With 17% Reporting the pattern is holding, about a 13% lead for Lamont.
U.S. Senate - - Dem Primary
128 of 748 Precincts Reporting - 17.11%
Name Party Votes Pct
Lamont, Ned Dem 30,219 56.34
Lieberman, Joe Dem 23,414 43.66

Watching the Lieberman primary pretty closely today, otherwise a quiet day.

This race I think is important overall for giving up, because it means the inevitable changeover from Republican politics is fully underway.

Lieberman, however, is not going down in a sportsmanlike way. He complains of Rovian tactics in crashing his campaign's webpage.

Kos, who is no novice to the Denial of Service (DoS) type of attack analyzes this complaint by checking into his hosting service. Simple reporting tactic really, go to the source. Turns out, Lieberman is just a sucker. He pays these retards (or is it these retards) to run his campaign webpage and the guy sets him up with a $15 a month hosting service after charging him a $1500 fee. He's just over his bandwith (or didn't pay his bill), it's not DoS since other sites on the server are up.

I hope he apologizes to the blog community after this is all over, and what kind of idiot has a campaign website on a $15 hosting account with restricted bandwidth? Everything about this just shows how incompetent his campaign has been.

I'm a bit tired of articles that frame the Lieberman-Lamont race as one over the Iraq war. Lieberman supports the death penalty. He has supported litigation award caps. He helped create the Department of Homeland Security (and he wanted it named after himself).

If he's so liberal, why did he serve on the board (with Lynne Cheney) of the right-wing American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a neo-fascist organization that published a blacklist of students and professors who spoke out against the government after 9/11?

He panders to the right with bogus criticism and regulation of films and other cultural products. For instance, Lieberman waged a battle against Marilyn Manson, calling him, "perhaps the sickest group ever promoted by a mainstream record company." I'm sorry, but N'Sync, the Backstreet Boys, etc were far sicker.

Anyway, Lieberman's going down. And it's not just the war, Joe.

Bob Ney is out, taken down by Abramoff allegations.

Half of the US population is functionally retarded

That fifty percent definitely includes Bush as he doesn't understand the difference between a Shiite and a Sunni (and a Kurd).

Detroit is determined to self-destruct by bringing out the Camaro again a 400hp gas guzzler.

California is like a preview of Democratic control of Congress with legislation being enacted to "fight against global warming, break the near-monopolies of cable companies, cut prescription drug prices and boost the minimum wage."

Bush's idiotic war is turning Arabs around the world against even moderate governments that support the US. Instead they are putting their faith in the leader of Hezbollah. So, Bush has created a civil war in Iraq while making the entire Arab world more militant. Spreading democracy indeed.

The boing boing headline of this story was just priceless, "David Byrne on Jesus Camps: like Madrassas, with less literacy"

But seriously, these sound scary.

There were some perfect sound bites - at one point Pastor Fischer instructs the little ones that they should be willing to die for Christ, and the little ones obediently agree. She may even use the word martyr, which has a shocking echo in the Middle East. I can see future suicide bombers for Jesus - the next step will be learning to fly planes into buildings. Of course, the grownups would say, "Oh no, we're not like them" - but they admit that the principal difference is simply that "We're right."

In another scene a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush, with his trademark smirking smile, is brought out and the children are urged to identify - many of the little ones come forward and reverently touch his cardboard hands.

I kept saying to myself, "O.K., these are the Christian version of the Madrassas (those Islamic religious instructional schools in Pakistan and elsewhere, often financed by Saudi oil money)...so both sides are pretty much equally sick, there's a balance." (Although it must be said the Madrassas provide some regular education and literacy where no other option is available, they do community work that is non-religious...and they take in aimless troubled youth.)

They want to turn the U.S. into the "Christian" version of Iran or Saudi Arabia. A theocracy. The separation between church and state, already shaky with Bush in charge, is under full frontal assault by this bunch - and they are well organized, too. The megachurches tell their parishioners who to vote for, what judges to support, letters to write, and where they should stand on the issues. Well, we all do this to some extent - even in casual chats with friends we attempt to deduce and arrive at a consensus of opinion; a sloppy democratic give-and-take on any number of subjects often gives way to agreement. But this is top-down messaging - no discussion allowed. There's a scene in the Colorado Springs megachurch run by the Preacher who talks with Bush once a week - same deal as with the kids, only most of the attendees are pliant adults.

What is it about Colorado Springs? Littleton is right next door to these megachurches. I think they are 2 sides to the same coin. One breeds the other. The dissatisfaction and alienation that leads folks to join this weird non-"Christian" Christianity (much the same has been said about fundamentalist Islamic groups, that they are a perversion of the Islam of the Prophet) leads down a road to both Littleton and Colorado Springs - and in the sense that they allow the mind to be pleasantly emptied, they are identical.

Between this and Darksyde's science Friday post on the burning of the Library of Alexandria (and murder of Hypatia) I'm beginning to wonder how well armed should I be if I want to remain a proponent of science and godlessness.

It also makes me wonder about how we can be so critical of Saudi Arabia's madrasses that indoctrinate children into believing that America is the great Satan, when we can't even control a similar form of bigoted indoctrination in our own, supposedly tolerant country.

The LA Times has a profile of Girls Gone Wild founder Joe Francis. Again, this is one for the obvious files, Joe Francis is scum. However, the shocking thing from the article is when the reporter doing the story more or less observes Francis rape an 18-year-old girl.

Szyszka says the more shots she drank, the cloudier her judgment became. She says she agreed to join Francis and his crew on the "Girls Gone Wild" bus. "I thought 'Girls Gone Wild' was like flashing, and I thought I would flash them and be done. And so when I'm walking to the bus, that's all I'm thinking is going to happen."

At first she felt comfortable, she says. Inebriated and excited, she says she was led to the back of the bus, to a small bedroom. The double bed, with its neatly folded iridescent purple sheets, takes up most of the room. A flat-screen TV faces the bed, and cabinets are filled with remote controls, lubricants, condoms, sex toys in plastic bags, baby oil, a DVD called "How to be a Player" and a clipboard full of waivers for girls to sign. A small bathroom is off to the side, with a half-sized shower with faux marble tiling, and on the floor of the shower is a crate holding cheap and fruity-flavored rum, whiskey, tequila and Kool-Aid.

Footage from that night shows a close-up of Szyszka's driver's license, proving she's not a minor. The camera then captures Szyszka lying on the bed. Her nails are chipped, her eyes coated with makeup. Following a camerman's instructions, she shows her breasts and says, "Girls Gone Wild." She seems shy but willing. She smiles. The unseen cameraman asks her to take off her shirt, her skirt, then her underwear. She sprawls on the bed, her legs open. At his suggestion, she masturbates with a dildo, saying repeatedly that it hurts but also feels good. Francis enters the room at certain points and you hear his voice, low and flirtatious, telling her, "You are so adorable." When she says she's a virgin, he responds: "Great. You won't be after my cameraman gets done with you."

When I talk to Szyszka seven days later, she says she "didn't quite realize" she was being filmed. "But I didn't care because I was drunk and who cares?" Then she adds: "It didn't feel good to me at all, but I was totally faking it because I was on 'Girls Gone Wild.'"

Eventually, Szyszka says, Francis told the cameraman to leave and pushed her back on the bed, undid his jeans and climbed on top of her. "I told him it hurt, and he kept doing it. And I keep telling him it hurts. I said, 'No' twice in the beginning, and during I started saying, 'Oh, my god, it hurts.' I kept telling him it hurt, but he kept going, and he said he was sorry but kissed me so I wouldn't keep talking."

Afterward, she says, Francis cleaned them both off with a paper towel and told her to get dressed. Then, she says, he opened the door and told the cameraman to come back, saying, "She's not a virgin anymore."

Szyszka says Francis told her that what happened had to stay between them. She says she agreed, and they walked to the front of the bus. Szyszka remembers that one of the crew returned her driver's license. Another asked if she wanted to hang out on the bus. She declined, she says, but asked for three pairs of "booty short" underwear that Francis had promised her for appearing on camera. "They gave me a weird look like that was too much," Szyszka recalls. "They were, like, 'Three of them?' and I was, like, 'Yeah, three.'"

Within days, Szyszka says, she told her father, who was angry about what she said had happened but kept quiet at her request. A month after the incident, she says, she told her sister and mother.

She's confused, she admits, about what happened. She feels guilty, she says, for getting herself into the situation in the first place. She says she never would have undressed for the cameras if she hadn't been completely drunk. And she is adamant that she said "no" to Francis. She says she's haunted by that night.

"I feel like it was planned," she says. "Sometimes I'm driving along, and I think about it and all of a sudden feel weird."

It's kind of sad, I think the girl in this case hasn't quite realized yet that this was indeed rape. When you're drunk, say "no", and a guy has sex with you anyway? Yep, rape. And the LA times reporter saw it all, interviewed the girl afterwords and everything. It's a pretty damning article.

It's also a pretty good argument, oddly enough, for the regulation of the porn industry. Part of the reason that someone like Francis, who appears to be a serial abuser of women, is able to operate this way is that he is running a fly-by-night soft-core operation. You'd never be able to pull this kind of crap in the Valley. The regulations protect women in hardcore porn, maybe not from their bad decisions, but clearly from unprotected sex, nonconsensual sex with sociopathic assholes.

Sorry Mel.



SF Gate reports the obvious, alcohol is a disinhibitor, not a confabulator. Is that correct usage?

I don't care. You know what I mean.

The No Child Left Behind legislation worked so well (ha ha) that the Bush administration is advocating similar standards-based regulation of medical care in the US.

Now, that may sound fine and all and pushing for electronic records is a definite good idea, but I'd direct you to read our post on a recent NEJM paper describing the effect a similar program had in Britain. While they aren't talking about rewards based on provision of care, this type of monitoring of care will result in the same effects as observed in the British system. Namely, doctors that serve more patients, poorer patients, less educated patients, older patients, etc., end up penalized while doctors seeing the educated, rich, young patients are not. Further, the doctors that did the best were the ones that inflated their stats by manipulating the reporting system.

Wait a minute, what does that sound like again? Oh yeah, No Child Left Behind.

Face it, some populations are harder to provide services for, and all these standards-based reforms do are penalize well-meaning people facing a tough situation.

The solution to providing medical care isn't looking over doctors shoulders and penalizing them for seeing tough patients (or conversely, encouraging them to falsify records to make their stats better). Standards-based reforms aren't reforms at all, as we've mentioned previously, they're a cynical effort to make it appear as though reform has occurred. Inevitably, when such systems are put in place the learning curve of the affected professionals makes it appear as though dramatic improvement occurs in the first few years. Then in subsequent years the schools, hospitals whatever, learn to deal with the testing or reporting in such a way that they don't get nailed (teachers teach to the test for instance) and politicians get to claim they're responsible for huge improvements in whatever was monitored when it really is just a flaw in measurement.

Anyway, nice to see the Bush administration stretching their incompetent management in yet another direction.

E.J. Dionne says we've won! I agree, there was nothing more damaging to conservatives than to actually have all their ideas tested at once. Usually we could support one or two of their stupid-ass ideas on top of sensible government, but the complete and total tidal wave of idiocy we've faced in the last 6 years will be the death of modern conservatism.

President Bush, his defenders say, has pioneered a new philosophical approach, sometimes known as "big-government conservatism." The most articulate defender of this position, the journalist Fred Barnes, argues that Bush's view is "Hamiltonian" as in Alexander, Thomas Jefferson's rival in the early republic. Bush's strategy, Barnes says, "is to use government as a means to achieve conservative ends."

Kudos to Barnes for trying bravely to make sense of what to so many others -- including some in conservative ranks -- seems an incoherent enterprise. But I would argue that this is the week in which conservatism, Hamiltonian or not, reached the point of collapse.

The most obvious, outrageous and unprincipled spasm occurred last night when the Senate voted on a bill that would have simultaneously raised the minimum wage and slashed taxes on inherited wealth.

Rarely has our system produced a more naked exercise in opportunism than this measure. Most conservatives oppose the minimum wage on principle as a form of government meddling in the marketplace. But moderate Republicans in jeopardy this fall desperately wanted an increase in the minimum wage.

...

The episode was significant because it meant Republicans were acknowledging that they would not hold congressional power without the help of moderates. That is because there is nothing close to a conservative majority in the United States.

Yet their way of admitting this was to put on display the central goal of the currently dominant forces of politics: to give away as much as possible to the truly wealthy. You wonder what those blue-collar conservatives once known as Reagan Democrats made of this spectacle.

...

On immigration, the big-business right and culturally optimistic conservatives square off against cultural pessimists and conservatives who see porous borders as a major security threat. On stem cell research, libertarians battle conservatives who have serious moral and religious doubts about the practice -- and even some staunch opponents of abortion break with the right-to-life movement on the issue.

On spending . . . well, on spending, incoherence and big deficits are the order of the day. Writing in National Review in May, conservatives Kate O'Beirne and Rich Lowry had one word to describe the Republican Congress's approach to the matter: "Incontinence."

...

Political movements lose power when they lose their self-confidence and sense of mission. Liberalism went into a long decline after 1968 when liberals clawed at each other more than they battled conservatives -- and when they began to wonder whether their project was worth salvaging.

Between now and November, conservative leaders will dutifully try to rally the troops to stave off a Democratic victory. But their hearts won't be in the fight. The decline of conservatism leaves a vacuum in American politics. An unhappy electorate is waiting to see who will fill it.

Unhappy is right. That last ditch effort yesterday to try to send a few hundred billion dollars to the ultra-rich last night is just a classic example of why when it comes to conservatives, familiarity breeds contempt.

They're going to have to regroup and come up with a whole new line of bullshit to get back into power after the next couple of elections. We've tried their ideas, and as Give Up Blog predicted, the best cure for these retarded ideas was experience with them. No one thinks things are all sunny and happy in this country. The economic picture is horrific, debt up to our eyebrows, foreign wars, capture of regulatory agencies, failure to protect citizens from disasters, etc. There just is no cure for conservatism better than actually experiencing it. I love it.

His dirty trick of trying to become a citizen of Virginia has failed and a judge has ruled he must stay on the November ballot. It might be hard to explain to his constituents why they should elect him when he seemed by all reports ready to start a new life as an inside-the-beltway fink. All that talk about how DC is evil and those fatcats in Washington all those years, and when he finally retires, does he return to his district to live a simple happy life in the middle of nowhere? Nope, he goes for the cash, because he's the hammer, and his morality is for sale. Same with all the wingers.

Which of them has been found to have integrity by the way? I can't think of one. They all seem to have this penchant for sniffing out scams to enrich themselves at the cost of their constituents and common decency.

Well, first the LA Times, then Harry Reid, now it sounds like even the Pentagon is ready to acknowledge it's a civil war. Even Bush is going to curtail his vacation this year. I wonder if he'll still go down in history as the president that took the most vacation time.

It may seem crazy to harp on this point, but I feel as though we need to make them admit to the truth before we get anywhere. The entire time Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush have been looking at Iraq through rose-colored glasses. It seems like a major victory just to get them to see what they've done, or what the real situation is. With 50-100 people being killed a day it's just incomprehensible that they're unwilling to acknowledge the problem they face, and instead just dig deeper into the lie that things are getting better or will magically fix themselves on their own.

Dems have blocked the estate tax repeal but had to sacrifice their minimum wage hike. That's ok, the Republicans were just trying to hijack it and the cost of the estate tax repeal in the face of 400 billion dollar (or is that 3.5 trillion dollar) deficits.

It will be fine, it looks like we're going to rock the House in November and then we can get this kind of legislation passed without bending over for the ultra-rich.

Science is reporting this week on disgusting, self-interested publication of advertisement in the name of science. Let's hear it:

Last month, a group of scientists published a review of research on vagus nerve stimulation (VNS), a controversial treatment for depression. But the article, published in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology, omitted an important detail: All the authors are paid advisers to the company that manufactures a device for VNS that was approved last year by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

...

Nemeroff, chair of the psychiatry department at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, says he and his co-authors informed the journal about their ties to Cyberonics in Houston, Texas, manufacturer of the device. He says the failure to mention those ties in the article, as required by journal policy, was a simple "oversight." A prominent depression researcher with his thumb in many commercial pies, Nemeroff heads the "mechanism of action" advisory board at Cyberonics.

Some observers find this episode particularly troubling because not only is Nemeroff the journal's editor but also the first draft of the paper was prepared by a professional writer, hired by Cyberonics, who was not listed among the authors. (She was named in the acknowledgements.) The matter attracted considerable press coverage in late July, thanks in large part to the efforts of Bernard Carroll, former chair of psychiatry at Duke University and now at the Pacific Behavioral Research Foundation in Carmel, California. Last month, Carroll broadcast an e-mail to colleagues and the press accusing Nemeroff of running a "slick public relations disinformation campaign," hiring a "ghostwriter," and "incestuously" placing the article in his own journal.

I think Carroll has it about right. They didn't even write the paper themselves!

It's too bad there isn't a science licensing board, these guys should all have their credentials revoked. From PLoS and the lay press I hear this happens with great frequency, possibly 50% of papers regarding clinical practice are ghostwritten by drug companies. Then they put famous authors on the byline to give it credibility, sometimes paying them extravagantly for the service and simultaneously failing to mention the conflict of interest.

Any scientist who puts their name on a ghost-written paper for money should be banned, for life.

The Journal reports on the newest technology that will subjugate women at a home near you: a camera that takes high-resolution images of women's faces to show all their imperceptible imperfections!

Consumer-products companies are trying a new strategy to hawk their beauty wares. In the past, they relied on images of beautiful models to sell the fantasy that women could look that good by using the companies' products. Now, they are exposing and magnifying women's hidden flaws to scare them into buying the products.

[...]

P&G's new SIAscope, short for Spectrophotometric Intracutaneous Analysis Scope, was adapted from an instrument used by doctors to detect skin cancer. In its test, P&G's beauty expert passed a wand over Ms. Coxall's face that emitted pulses of light. The light penetrated the skin and bounced off three molecules found there -- hemoglobin, melanin and collagen -- measuring the amount of change in them by the way the light bounced.

Changes in those molecules can make skin look dull and aged, the P&G expert told Ms. Coxall.

I personally would like to thank the men who developed this technology. It's the best invention since that little indicator light on the vacuum cleaner that says the carpet is imperceptibly dirty and needs to be cleaned even more.

The inventors are contributing to the gains in my combined mutual fund for the control of women--the Anti-FemFund, which has had glorious 5 and 10 year returns. The Fund is heavily principally comprised of Proctor & Gamble, magazine publishers, cosmetics companies, and the production company that made the movie Pretty Woman. Ha!

The newest Quinnipiac poll is out on the Lamont-Lieberman race.

Lieberman is now getting spanked.

Momentum for Ned Lamont, the anti-war Connecticut U.S. Senate candidate, increases as he rolls to a 54 - 41 percent lead over incumbent Sen. Joseph Lieberman among likely Democratic primary voters, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

This compares to a 51 - 47 percent Lamont lead among likely Democratic primary voters in a July 20 poll by the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University.

In this latest survey, 5 percent of likely Democratic primary voters remain undecided, but 85 percent of voters say their mind is made up.

Among Lamont supporters, 65 percent say their vote is mainly against Lieberman.

Lieberman's support for the war in Iraq is the main reason they are voting for the challenger, 44 percent of Lamont voters say, with 50 percent who say the war is one of the reasons.

Lamont now has a 13 percent lead. Hopefully when Lieberman gets soundly trashed in this primary he'll do the right thing and retire rather than turn on his party once again and win by attracting Republicans, rather than Democrats. Who wants a Democratic Senator who has to win by recruiting college Republicans to campaign for him? He's no Democrat.

Max Boot has a George Will ratio that is astronomically small, so I usually see that byline and keep on going. But today the headline was just too idiotic to pass up, "Max Boot: Messed Up Are the Peacemakers: Nowhere is the dismal record of peace processes clearer than in Israel's case."

That's right, Jesus said "blessed are the Peacemakers" (or was it cheesemakers) but what he meant was you should only bless them as long as peacemaking remained easy. Once making peace gets hard the son of god understands it's ok to commence carpet bombing. Then he goes on to say the real problem isn't placing blame for warmongering but failing to place blame on failed peacemaking.

You might not want to read this article in its entirety or risk your face melting like that Nazi at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Listen to what this congressional staffer has to say about every citizen of Connecticut.

"Connecticut should have its statehood taken away from it. The foolishness of its pampered residents should be demonstrated to others by a government program to bulldoze the entire state, salt the land and construct a windfarm to supply NYC with electricity. And its residents should be relocated to Guantanamo Bay where they can take a number behind the 3 who hung themselves this weekend, since they seem so intent on suicide."

Damn. Republican staffer advocates genocide in Connecticut. You don't even need to exaggerate what he said, he digs his own grave. Does anyone still fail to understand why we don't like it when Lieberman enables these guys?

Via Mike the Mad Biologist.

Vanity Fair has an interesting article based on tapes from NORAD which record the response of the military to the crisis of 9/11.

While it is clear they were institutionally incapable of dealing with such a novel threat (and they tried their best), what is not clear is where the leadership of our country was during this debacle. In fact, I found most interesting the proof that our leadership not only was out of contact, but subsequently made up stories to make it sound like they were more involved than they actually were.

In his bunker under the White House, Vice President Cheney was not notified about United 93 until 10:02—only one minute before the airliner impacted the ground. Yet it was with dark bravado that the vice president and others in the Bush administration would later recount sober deliberations about the prospect of shooting down United 93. "Very, very tough decision, and the president understood the magnitude of that decision," Bush's then chief of staff, Andrew Card, told ABC News.

Cheney echoed, "The significance of saying to a pilot that you are authorized to shoot down a plane full of Americans is, a, you know, it's an order that had never been given before." And it wasn't on 9/11, either.

Wow, they totally just imagine they're heroes of 9/11, rather than just as mystified by the attack as everyone else (except the passengers of flight 93). Cheney finds out about the flight being hijacked one minute before it crashed, but in his mind he was there, keeping things together in "decider" mode and subsequently lies about his role in the events of that morning.

Do their lies ever end?

First, they can't keep the ladies down in South Dakota, now it turns out they can't get their anti-evolution agenda supported in Kansas.

Kansas voters on Tuesday handed power back to moderates on the State Board of Education, setting the stage for a return of science teaching that broadly accepts the theory of evolution, according to preliminary election results.
...
With just 6 districts of 1,990 yet to report as of 8 a.m. Central time today, two conservatives - including incumbent Connie Morris, a former west Kansas teacher and author who had described evolution as "a nice bedtime story" - appear to have been defeated decisively by two moderates in the Republican primary elections. One moderate incumbent, Janet Waugh from the Kansas City area, held on to her seat in the Democratic primary.

If her fellow moderates prevailed, Ms. Waugh said last week, "we need to revisit the minutes and every decision that was 6-4, re-vote."

This is the thesis of Give Up Blog. They can rile up their base only for so long before the normals wake up and get pissed about their children being taught anti-scientific BS on behalf of religious radicals.

Seriously, if the creationists can't stay in power in Kansas, and the pro-lifers can't pass an anti-choice law in South Dakota, it's big trouble for their movement. Looks like freedom of conscience prevails.

And



Via Pandagon

It's funny that everyone has been celebrating Castros surgery like he's already dead. The man is indestructible. Of course he survived his surgery. He will outlive us all. Give Up.

For the biggest jackass in congress award. It's a tough competition, lots of people vying for top spot, but there can be only one (cue Christopher Lambert).

Well Conrad Burns may have taken the lead, not just for his ties to Jack Abramoff, but now with his barrage of attacks on firefighters. But Burns doesn't just attack those lazy-ass city firefighters who twiddle their thumbs and play switch all day, he attacks forest firefighters who flew in from around the country to help put out fires in the midwest.

Tom Roach, a division group supervisor on the Bundy Railroad fire, wrote he was walking on the airport tarmac past Burns, who "was staring at the NRIMT logo on my shirt." NRIMT stands for Northern Rockies Incident Team.

"He began following me as I passed and began yelling at me, 'Are you from Boise? Are you from Boise?' " Roach wrote. "I replied, 'No, sir.' He responded, 'Good, your life has been saved.' " Roach wrote that he walked away from Burns.
...
The report contained an account by Gabe Templeton, one of the Augusta Hot Shots, describing what happened to him and fellow team members Jeff Cleek and Jude Waerig. It said the three men were sitting in the Billings airport waiting for their flight when Burns approached them with an outstretched hand and asked if they were firefighters.

"I shook his hand and replied yes," Templeton wrote. "He shook my hand introduced himself and then replied, 'What a piss poor job' we were doing. I replied, 'Have a nice day.' The senator mentioned that we were 'wasting a lot of money and creating a cottage industry.' He also told us that we needed to listen more to the ranchers. I replied that 'we are pretty low on the totem pole.' Then he walked off."

Wow. Now, I have no doubt that it's possible for the wildfires to have been mishandled (although that doesn't sound like the case) or for their to have been some bureaucratic SNAFU that upset him about management of the emergency, but what does that have to do with attacking the grunts who were doing all the hard work? And it is hard work, it is probably the most physically challenging type of firefighting work there is. Just think about the joy of combining the jobs of clearing brush, digging, heavy lifting and firefighting all performed in heavy fire gear next to all the smoke and heat of a wildfire. It's a blast.

So, huzzah for Burns! I think he's blown his competition out of the water, and that's tough to do. After all he's up against Ted "the Internet is a series of tubes" Stevens, Cynthia "Cop Slapping" McKinney, William "Cold hard Cash" Jefferson, Bill "The Insider" Frist, Joe "Bush Smoochies" Lieberman, Rick "the Fetus Fondler" Santorum, James "the Denier" Inhofe, Bob "Representative no. 1" Ney, Virgil "MZM Whore" Goode, Katherine "Unsupported by her own party, staff" Harris, Jerry "The Earmarker" Lewis...Am I forgetting anyone?

These guys make Clin-ton's BJ look like public service.

In today's Federal Register, one finds this Presidential Proclamation on our "National Motto, 'In God We Trust.'"

Isn't it time for a motto change? And what's up with this capitalized "His." Is the president just trying to piss off women? "Divine Plan?" "God's mercies?"

A Proclamation

On the 50th anniversary of our national motto, ``In God We Trust,'' we reflect on these words that guide millions of Americans, recognize the blessings of the Creator, and offer our thanks for His great gift of liberty.

From its earliest days, the United States has been a Nation of faith. During the War of 1812, as the morning light revealed that the battle-torn American flag still flew above Fort McHenry, Francis Scott Key penned, "And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust!' '' His poem became our National Anthem, reminding generations of Americans to "Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.'' On July 30, 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower signed the law officially establishing ``In God We Trust'' as our national motto.

Today, our country stands strong as a beacon of religious freedom. Our citizens, whatever their faith or background, worship freely and millions answer the universal call to love their neighbor and serve a cause greater than self.

As we commemorate the 50th anniversary of our national motto and remember with thanksgiving God's mercies throughout our history, we recognize a divine plan that stands above all human plans and continue to seek His will.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim July 30, 2006, as the 50th Anniversary of our National Motto, "In God We Trust.'' I call upon the people of the United States to observe this day with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this twenty-seventh day of July, in the year of our Lord two thousand six, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-first.

I've been following the doping scandals in biking for the last few days, not because I give a crap about sports, but because I thought the testing standard, the testosterone/epitestosterone ratio seemed a little bit arbitrary as a means of identifying steroid abuse. That is, it seemed as if normal biological variability and fluctuation might explain the discrepancies in Landis' abnormally high results for several reasons. One, the idea of taking steroids late in the race (all his earlier tests were negative) seemed foolish. Anabolic steroids are not going to help a bicyclist acutely, although there are suggestions it might help recovery. Blood doping would have made more sense than steroids at that stage of the game. Second, he knew he was going to be tested, and since very high doses are required for the effects of anabolic steroids, there would be no benefit to a slight increase in his testosterone levels. Third, you would just have to be a total and complete idiot, in a million ways to try to get away with this.

A good primer on the science behind the testing also led me to believe that the ratio is arbitrary and should be ignored. Further it shows that it isn't too extraordinary for some people to naturally have a ratio outside the legal bounds (alhtough historical tests should also have been higher), so I don't think the ratio test itself will ever truly be conclusive.

It turns out that I'm the jackass now becausethe doping result has been confirmed by identifying the testosterone itself as synthetic. The isotope testing is much more believable to me so I'm now convinced that it's a closed case unless another sample shows this to be a false-positive.

However, I still have to ask, how much could this have helped him? Why be so stupid? And what about this Gatlin guy? Are these guys afflicted by extreme stupidity as well as dishonesty?

There's still one more great part of the story. My favorite part is how they're rushing to get the tests done because otherwise the French go on vacation and everyone would have to wait until September for confirmation. Ha!

McQuaid said the cycling union then asked the lab to analyze Landis’s B sample, which he said was allowed under the organization’s rules, so the test could be concluded before the lab closed for a two-week vacation this Friday. If the tests cannot be finished before then, the results may not come until late August or early September, he said.

Lucky friggin French.

Complain about the Logan act all you want, but it won't stop the governator from striking deals with foreign nations to combat global warming.

Who needs a blue federal government when you've got California?

Some interesting religious news this week, first I would direct you to this first-ever RRPG, that is, a Rabbinical Role-Playing Game. Only you can use Rabbi conversation methods and fighting talents to discover the true meaning of Hannukah, or something. Via boingboing.

What do you think Mel?



I don't think he likes it.

The New York Times had interesting coverage this weekend of a fundamentalist minister of a St. Paul megachurch who believes religion should stay out of politics.

Before the last presidential election, he preached six sermons called "The Cross and the Sword" in which he said the church should steer clear of politics, give up moralizing on sexual issues, stop claiming the United States as a "Christian nation" and stop glorifying American military campaigns.

"When the church wins the culture wars, it inevitably loses," Mr. Boyd preached. "When it conquers the world, it becomes the world. When you put your trust in the sword, you lose the cross."
...
And Mr. Boyd has a new book out, "The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church," which is based on his sermons.

Now that's my kind of fundamentalist. He has realized that the only way to save religion is to Give Up. After all, history has shown again and again that mixing religion with state just leads to contempt for both. While at Give Up we predict the attempt to regulate everyone's life by the morals of fundamentalists will be the end of the religious right (I keep waiting for them to ban the pill and sign their political death warrant), he has seen this coming and wisely advocated that his church preemptively Give Up to save themselves from ruin. Either way, Give Up is the way!

Finally, a sign that the above paragraph isn't just wishful thinking, I bring you news of the imminent end of South Dakota's abortion ban.

The vote is whether to uphold the state's draconian anti-abortion law. A "no" means the ban is rejected.

No 47
Yes 39
Undecided 14

It appears as though SD's ban is about to be invalidated (unless every undecided voter votes pro-life - unlikely). What does this mean? Surprise surprise, a majority of peope in this country are pro-choice, and do not want the morality of the minority shoved down their throats. After all, if this ban can't survive in South Dakota, exactly where are they going to find a state to enact a ban? It doesn't make Roe v. Wade seem so undemocratic after all.