Policy
razib |
William Saletan has a roundup and commentary on the ruckus surrounding circumcision and HIV transmission. There are two issues here,
The health & public policy
The cultural angle
The think the evidence is pretty clear from individual studies and cross-cultural comparisons: all things being equal, circumcision cuts down on the rate of HIV transmission (especially from female-to-male). On the other hand, there are the important cultural issues that are often not mooted with clarity, especially in the United States. You see, the USA is one of the few nations where adult circumcision…
Here's some interesting articles I pulled off the internets for you:
Publius argues "The fact that Iraq was so incompetently executed is actually the least of its problems. The bigger problem is that the idea of it represented a staggering failure of vision and judgment in terms of anti-terrorism policy. It's simply not possible to devise an anti-terrorism policy more at odds with the nature of the threat facing us."
An interesting NY Times magazine article by Michael Young on how Hizbollah relates to the Lebanese political scene (as opposed to the War on Terra).
Neil the Ethical Werewolf…
stcynic |
Talk2Action has an interesting expose` on Paul Weyrich, the most important religious right leader you've likely never heard of. Weyrich has had an astonishingly busy and effective career in politics. He's probably the single most important figure in the religious right, though nowhere near as well known as Dobson, Falwell, Robertson and others. He's the power behind the throne, the prime mover behind the scenes. Among other groups he has founded: the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, the Council on National Policy, and the Free Congress Foundation. More than any other man, he is the…
clock |
This - "Apart From Being An Idiot, Horowitz Is Also An Unwiped Anal Orifice With Hemorrhoids" - is the worst and nastiest blog-post title I ever used. But I was furious. See why.... (first posted here on March 05, 2005, then republished here on December 10, 2005):
Chris is so nice. Way too nice. And naive. He actually contacted David Horowitz and offered to do a study that has a potential to PROVE Horowitz's claim that conservatives are discriminated against in the Academia. Read the whole episode here.
As you can see, my title is just an euphemistic version of what Horowitz called Chris!…
clock |
My first post guest-blogging on Echidne Of The Snakes, cross-posted under the fold.
I did not know that Dr.B is just a little bit younger than me. Her wisdom makes me feel like a child.
Usually when I see that a post already has 170 comments I don't even start reading them, but the comments on this recent post of hers are worth your while (as well as people who commented on their own blogs and spawned their own comment threads, e.g., . Aunt B, Brooklynite and Steinn).
While the post is primarily about bringing a young son into the female locker-room to change, it is really about several…
I'm swamped with work, and I plan on linking to this post from the old site, so I've resurrected this from the archives of the Mad Biologist.
I go away for a meeting and vacation, and the most important court case regarding evolution in a decade is decided. Of course, I liked the outcome, so maybe I should go on vacation more often...
Anyway, there's no point in rehashing the Dover decision: it was exceptionally well-written. An added advantage is that it was written by a laywer (obviously). Since our political system is chock full o'lawyers, having a laywer restate the arguments…
cmooney |
Next Tuesday I'll be appearing at the following event at the Century Foundation:
Drop It Like It's Hot: The Politics of Global Warming
SUMMER POLICY BROWN BAG LUNCH FORUM FOR NEW YORK CITY INTERNS*
Featuring:
Brenda Ekwurzel--Climate Scientist, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Union of Concerned Scientists
Emily Figdor--Director, Clean Air and Global Warming programs, U.S. PIRG
Chris C. Mooney--Author, The Republican War on Science; Senior Correspondent, The American Prospect
Robert B. Semple--Editorial Board Member, The New York Times (moderator)
When: Tuesday, August 8, 2006 12:30 p.…
Because that's what it will come to if the medical establishment fails to confront the hospital-acquired infection problem head on.
In 2004, 90,000 in the U.S. died from hospital-acquired infections, and two million had a hospital-acquired infection--and in my opinion, those are conservative estimates (the reporting issues are very complex, but the short version is that many infections are simply never reported).
At some point, a clever class-action attorney is going to figure this out, and then everything will go sideways. You do not want the courts creating public health policy (they did…
I was going to write a post about the Lamont insurgency in Connecticut, but thankfully, the NY Times editorial staff pretty much covered everything I wanted to say. Instead, I'll discuss something else that's going on here: the beginning of the end of single-issue politics in the Democratic Party. Mark Schmitt describes this well (italics mine):
They aren't looking for the party to be more liberal on traditional dimensions. They're looking for it to be more of a party. They want to put issues on the table that don't have an interest group behind them - like Lieberman's support for the…
stoat |
I made it into a recent article in The New Yorker. Predictably enough its not about science, but about wikipedia. Whats interesting about it is how hard internal wiki "politics" are for outsiders to understand. Despite talking to the author several times, and a fact-checker, the overall tone of the piece is wrong, as it concerns my bit. I doubt I can explain...
So... I wasn't a victim of an edit war, it was various articles that were the victims. Curiously enough, it was the greenhouse effect article that ended up as the chief battleground, and quite bizarrely not over any kind of…
The current "Ask a ScienceBlogger" opens a big can of worms:
I heard that within 15 years, global warming will have made Napa County too hot to grow good wine grapes. Is that true? What other changes are we going to see during our lifetimes because of global warming?
I waited until the last minute on this one, because the more I thought about it, the broader my answer became. So, where to begin?
For want of a nail, the kingdom was lost...
Does a little grape relate to the changes of an entire planetary ecosystem? Of course. Slight changes in temperature will affect the producers, before it…
Yesterday, the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee released a report entitled Drug Classification: Making a Hash of It?, which challenges the logic behind current drug classifications in the UK, especially when tied to legal penalities. The report discusses specific cases where drugs were misclassified or their classifications were changed for political, rather than scientific, reasons. The report is particularly critical of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) for not doing enough to push for a more scientifically based drug classification system.
The…
...the neocons had to betray it? Granted, Rolling Stone also published crap by RFK, Jr. But there are some public-domain facts to back up the Rolling Stone article's claim that several neocons tried to prevent a detente with Iran by leaking classified information to Israel (including several indictments). From the Rolling Stone:
At the far end of that room, on the morning of February 12th, 2003, a small group of eavesdroppers were listening intently for evidence of a treacherous crime. At the very moment that American forces were massing for an invasion of Iraq, there were indications…
Image source.
A published author who now is a friend of mine after I reviewed his book sent me some words that he found in a top-secret copy of the Republican-English Dictionary. He noted that these words and their definitions are useful for those of us who have been recently experiencing difficulties deciphering speeches and news reports delivered by the current administration.
But it's top seekrit, so don't tell them that we know! Shhh!
Words stolen from the top-secret Republican-English Dictionary;
alternative energy sources n.
New locations to drill for gas and oil.
bankruptcy n…
tlambert |
Andrew Dessler sent me a copy of his book The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change. So far I've read a couple of chapters and they've given a pretty good summary of the issues.
Dessler has also started a blog on Climate Change. In the latest entry we learn that the AEI is offering $10,000 for a "review and policy critique" of the 4AR.
Hat tip: John Fleck.
Them's, as they say, fighting words.
The National Journal has a cover story on the Politicization of Science by Paul Starobin, and there is simply no way in the concievable Universe that this is not going to cause a ruckus.
In part, this is because in his desire to equally indite indict the Right and the Left in the politics of science, he utters some things that are outright incorrect. He repeats the "girls bad at math" meme that if I have to spend the rest of my life trying to debunk I will. (There is evidence that men and women have on average different cognitive strategies, not…
terrasig |
I very rarely post directly on issues of politics outside of science policy, biomedical research funding, or political interference in the scientific process.
However, the came in last night from frequent Terra Sig commenter and all-around kool lady, Anjou:
This is great...
THIS IS A MUST WATCH...
Here is a powerful and amazing statement on Al Jazeera
television. It is the most powerfully articulate statement on the
senseless bloody conflict in the middle east I have heard. The woman
speaking (there are English subtitles) is Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American
psychologist from Los Angeles…
clock |
Here is the second part of the introduction to SEED sciencebloggers, the next eleven (check out the first part if you have missed it yesterday). I hope you like them and appreciate the breadth and depth of writing here (so, yes, if you have a blog, and you are registered with Technorati - which if you have a blog you should be - please make scienceblogs.com, as well as any or all individual blogs here that you may like, one of your favourites)
Have you checked Digital Biology Fridays on Discovering Biology in a Digital World yet? Sandra Porter shows you how YOU can do molecular biology at…
jfiore |
The other day I picked up the September issue of Running Times and noted an item concerning the ACLI Capital Challenge. The Capital Challenge is a three mile road race open to teams representing the three branches of the federal government and the media. The proceeds benefit the District of Columbia Special Olympics. This year they raised a record $16,800. My reaction to this is two-fold. First, I think it's great that senators, congressmen, judges, etc. can get together and raise money for a worthy charity. Second, I am amazed at the miniscule amount they raised when compared to the sums…
Since I was just griping about the false claim that the political left is as anti-scientific as the right, I will mention one exception where I think the argument has some merit: alternative medicine. I am not a fan of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), which had a 2005 budget of 123 million dollars—123 million dollars that was sucked away from legitimate science and placed in the hands of quacks. The latest issue of Science has two articles, pro and con, on NCCAM, and you might be able to guess where my sympathies lay.
A major goal of NCCAM has been to…