tqa | January 23, 2007In his State of the Union Address tonight, Bush will announce a new "plan" to address the need for more affordable health care insurance. After reading the White House "Fact Sheet" on the plan, a phrase quickly jumps to mind - "dead on arrival." That one is quickly joined by others - "smoking crack," "bloody stupid," "give me a break," and "what mentally defective chimpanzee came up with this one?"
The funniest thing about this particular proposal is exactly how stereotypically Bush it really is. Stripped down to its bearest essentials, there are two parts to this health care plan. One part…
tqa | January 22, 2007Earlier today, I noted that an unusual alliance consisting of representatives from both heavy industry and the environmental movement has released a report calling for mandatory action on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The list of participating industries is impressive, particularly since all of them are directly tied in one way or another to GHGs - this isn't a case of non-polluters making suggestions to polluters; these are companies who will absolutely be affected by the legislation that they are proposing. Ordinarily, I would be extraordinarily skeptical about any proposal to fight…
tqa | January 22, 2007The United States Climate Action Partnership has just released a report calling for mandatory greenhouse gas emission cap legislation and suggesting a specific set of mechanisms for achieving cuts in the near future. There are a number of noteworthy items in the report, but the most remarkable thing is who wrote this report.
The United States Climate Action Partnership (US-CAP) is a coalition of groups that includes both major corporations and major non-governmental organizations. On the corporate side, the group includes Alcoa, BP America, Caterpillar, Duke Energy, DuPont, FPL Group,…
tqa | January 18, 2007It looks like we here at Scienceblogs are not done talking about Dawkins and The God Delusion just yet. The latest skirmish, which I am about to plunge into, started with a post on Pharyngula, which was responded to at Stranger Fruit. The Stranger Fruit article, in turn, just received a counter-response at EvolutionBlog. The disagreement (this time) is over the relevance of expertise in discussions about the existance (or lack thereof) of a god or gods. PZ and Jason don't think that any sort of special expertise is needed to discuss the question of whether or not there is/are god/s. (They…
tqa | January 18, 2007In a post earlier today, I discussed a case where an astroturf group is attempting to stir up popular objection to a clause in a bill before the Senate that mandates disclosure of this type of lobbying activity. In a comment to a post over at Bora's blog, MattXIV raises a point that requires a more detailed response than I could make in a comment there:
The point of restricting direct lobbying of congress is to prevent quid-pro-quos being worked out between lobbyist and congresspeople. I don't see how attempts to influence the views of individuals independent of direct lobbying of congress…
tqa | January 18, 2007Via Bora, I found a somewhat alarming article. Apparently, it's being claimed, the Lobbying reform law currently in the senate will require bloggers (among other people) to register and file quarterly reports with congress or face possible jail time, "the same as the big K Street lobbyists." Calling it "the most expansive intrusion on First Amendment rights ever," the article in question hopes to stir a grassroots swell of oposition to this particular portion of the law.
Being a blogger, this naturally caught my interest, so I went and looked at the law. Then at the source of the article. It…
tqa | January 18, 2007Over at the "ID is nothing but science, we really mean it" Uncommon Dissent blog, there's an interesting little biblical discussion going on right now. In this case, DaveScot's remarkable response to a comment on the After the Bar Closes discussion board does an amazing job at evoking that Ghostbusters kind of feel.
Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions.
Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"?
Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Exactly.
Dr Ray Stantz: Fire and brimstone coming down…
tqa | January 17, 2007Actually, there are two quotes today - one from fiction, and the other from the US Government. The first comes from that all-time classic movie, The Princess Bride:
Vizzini: Inconceivable!
Inigo Montoya: You keep using that word. I do not think it means, what you think it means.
The second quote comes from The Hill:
"We are fully committed and it is in our best interest to have a U.S. attorney that is confirmed by the Senate," DoJ spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said. "It is inconceivable for a member of Congress to believe that use of an appointment authority to fill a vacancy is in any way an…
tqa | January 17, 2007On January 12th, President Bush signed the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act of 2006. As he so often does, Bush attached a signing statement to the law, reserving the "right" to ignore certain parts of the law he had just signed. I won't pretend to understand everything in the signing statement, but there is one clause in the statement that makes it clear that the President is reserving the right to appoint political hacks for positions that require some knowledge of science:
Subsection 505(a) of the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972, as enacted by…
tqa | January 16, 2007It is rare that I find myself at a loss for words. Anyone who knows me can tell you that. Right now, though, I'm having a very, very hard time coming up with family-friendly language that covers the way I feel about President Bush right now. Why? Because I just saw that half-witted, sneering little lower primate say this:
MR. LEHRER: Let me ask you a bottom-line question, Mr. President. If it is as important as you've just said - and you've said it many times - as all of this is, particularly the struggle in Iraq, if it's that important to all of us and to the future of our country, if not…
tqa | January 14, 2007In this 60 Minutes interview, President Bush explained why he brought up mistakes that had been made in his recent speech to the nation asking fordecreeing that more troops be sent to Iraq:
PELLEY: You mention mistakes having been made in your speech. What mistakes are you talking about?
BUSH: You know, we've been through this before. Abu Ghraib was a mistake. Using bad language like, you know, "bring them on" was a mistake. I think history is gonna look back and see a lot of ways we could have done things better. No question about it.
OK, let's see what's wrong so far. First of all, Abu…
tqa | January 12, 2007When people hear the word Drosophila, the image that pops most readily to mind (for those who know what Drosophila are) almost certainly involves scientists working in the lab. There's good reason for that, of course. Lots of Drosophila are used in the lab. Go to any university in the world that has a research program in the life sciences, and you will probably find at least one lab that works with these cute little dipterans. In the last year alone, xx papers have been indexed in PubMed with the word Drosophila in the title.
Given that, it can be easy to forget that Drosophila might have an…
tqa | January 10, 2007Over the last few years, I've become an increasingly more reluctant supporter of this war. Initially, I am ashamed to admit, I really didn't think that the administration would use classified information to lie to the American public, and I really did believe their claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. I listened carefully to Colin Powell's UN speech, and I believed him. Based on that, although I did not think that Hussain would give his weapons to terrorists, I did think that he was too unpredictable and dangerous to be allowed to continue to have those weapons. Obviously, I was…
tqa | January 10, 2007In Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, the universe runs on narrativium - the element that ensures that things follow the demands of the story. It's narrativium that mandates that the little old lady in the woods is a witch, narrativium that demands that a third son, attempting a task that killed two older brothers, succeed, and narrativium that ensures that the million-to-one chance succeeds 99% of the time. In The Science of Discworld 2, Pratchett and co-authors Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen point out that storytelling is a key characteristic of humans, and that it has been essential to our…
tqa | January 9, 2007Earlier today, I visited Westminister Abbey for the first time. It's an interesting place, and despite the fairly steep (10 pound) admissions charge, well worth the visit. It takes a while just to walk through, and on the way you go past some truly remarkable bits of history. Right near the end of my visit, I found myself standing in front of a very plain, white marble tombstone. Unlike many of the stones there, this one was very simple. Just a name - Charles Robert Darwin - a date of birth, and a date of death. Nothing more - no record of the accomplishments that gained him the honor of a…
tqa | January 8, 2007Mike the Mad Biologist has some thoughts about some things that Nancy Pelosi said on Face the Nation over the weekend. In particular, Mike is concerned about Pelosi's declaration that the Democrats support increasing the size of the military:
Do we really need to expand the military? If we weren't bogged down in Operation Iraqi Clusterf**k, we wouldn't need 30,000 additional troops.
[Emphasis in original; minor edit for family-friendliness mine]
Actually, we'd need the troops even if we weren't involved in Iraq. Following the end of the cold war, we massively decreased the size of the…
tqa | January 8, 2007Just in case either or my readers was wondering, the lack of posts recently has been due to travel - I'm writing this in the lounge in a hotel near Paddington Station, and won't be back to my usual haunts for another week or so. I'm taking copious notes about this trip, and I've been doing a fair bit of reading, so volume should go up again after I get back to Honolulu. I'm going to try to schedule a few posts tonight so that there are things going up over while I'm gone.
tqa | December 30, 2006Here's a good New Year's quote, from the first season of The West Wing:
Toby: It's not the new millennium, but I'll just let it drop.
Sam: It is.
Toby: It is not the new millennium. The year 2000 is the last year of the millennium, it's not the first year of the next one.
Sam: But the common sensibility, to quote Stephen Jay Gould--
Toby: Stephen Jay Gould needs to look at a calendar.
Sam: Gould says this is a largely un-resolveable issue.
Toby: Yeah, it's tough to resolve. You have to look at a calendar.
tqa | December 28, 2006On the First Day of Christmas, I did the "Yes, Virginia" quote. On the Third Day of Christmas, I did Terry Pratchett's take on the same question. Today is the Fifth Day of Christmas, and it's always been my favorite (mostly because of childhood memories of Miss Piggy adding the "BA DOMP BOMP BOMP's" to the song). Hopefully, the quote for the Fifth Day will tie the last two quotes together. This bit's from Hogfather, too.
"Thank you. Now . . . tell me . . ."
WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF YOU HADN"T SAVED HIM?
"Yes! The sun would have risen just the same, yes?"
NO.
"Oh, come on. You can't expect…
tqa | December 26, 2006This is a follow-up to the Christmas day quote - the Terry Pratchett take on the same question:
"Susan," said Twyla, from somewhere under the blankets.
"Yes?"
"You know last week we wrote letters to the Hogfather?"
"Yes?"
"Only . . . in the park Rachel says he doesn't exist and it's your father really. And everyone else said she was right."
There was a rustle from the other bed. Twyla's brother had turned over and was listening surreptitiously.
Oh dear, thought Susan. She had hoped she could avoid this. It was going to be like that business with the Soul Cake Duck all over again.
"Does it…