mikethemadbiologist

And it's free! Bob Altemeyer, whose work on the authoritarian mind significantly influenced John Dean'sConservatives Without Conscience, has released a free online book, The Authoritarians, which is about, well, authoritarians. Here's an interesting bit from the book about evolution from Ch. 4:…

At a recent National Press Club roundtable about the effect of the internet on the job of the White House correspondents, journalist Richard Wolffe had this to say about bloggers: They want us to play a role that isn't really our role. Our role is to ask questions and get information. ... It's not…

Beta test version of Conservapedia graphical interface. Isn't he reassuring? I feel bad for John Stewart and Stephen Colbert because when idiots unintentionally parody themselves, their gigs will be up. Conservapedia is going to be the gift that giving...for bloggers anyway. Here's what it says…

...El Jefe Maximo is still pushing the elimination of the estate tax because the offspring of the ludicrously wealthy need a break: If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the estimated savings to just one family -- the Walton family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune -- would be about…

Some of my fellow ScienceBloglings have written about Conservapedia's treatment of evolution. What has always puzzled me about creationists is the rather frequent denial of mutation. For example, in the section on macroevolution, titled "Is the theory of macroevolution true?"*--which should tell…

...we might want to issue them rifles. From the NY Times: "We're behind the power curve, and we can't piddle around," Maj. Gen. Harry M. Wyatt III, commander of the Oklahoma National Guard, said in an interview. He added that one-third of his soldiers lacked the M-4 rifles preferred by active-duty…

That's what the cast of the British reality TV show Top Gear asked while visiting New Orleans one year after Katrina: They also say, "A year had passed since Katrina had blown through, and we sort of assumed that after 12 months the wealthiest nation on earth would have fixed it. But we were wrong…

Can someone explain to me why the Nevada Democrats want to host a primary presidential debate on Fox News? I guess the Nevada Dems are rewarding Fox News for its fair and unbiased portrayal of Democratic...aw, fuck it. This is so stupid, you can't even mock it with sarcasm. I had thought that…

By now, you might have read this NY Times article about Senator Clinton's difficulties in dealing with her vote to go to war. While others have commented on her disturbing belief in executive authority--which gets awful close to the 'unitary executive' concept espoused by the Bush administration,…

This is only 'petting' so it's OK ...Senator and Republican presidential candidate John "Snuggles" McCain do it? For that matter, evangelicals do it--even before getting married. This makes McCain's support for abstinence-only sex education even more ridiculous. But let's talk more about sex,…

What the hell is this? ...than develop a new radiation warning symbol? According to the IAEA, the old symbol had "no intuitive meaning and little recognition beyond those educated in its significance." OK, then. But I'm going to miss this guy:

If you thought Bernie Kerik was bad, wait until you hear about Republican presidential hopeful Rudi Giuliani's new best friend: Paul Singer, a long time Republican campaign contributor who has pledged to raise $15 million for Giuliani. The phrase "vulture capitalist" might sound trite, but when…

A Merry President's Day to everyone. May our future presidents not suck as badly as the current one. Here are some science links for you: Here's a bit about an article that discusses the underuse of the word evolution in the medical literature. Bacterial illness: it's the boring bacteria,…

Chris Bowers of MyDD.com has one of the most bizarre posts I've ever read about our Glorious Progressive Internet Comrades Marching Valiantly...to somewhere. Bowers writes: Also, no matter how many presidential candidates, members of congress, Democratic Party leaders, or other national figures I…

By now, stories about how poorly returning veterans are being treated hardly qualifies as 'news' because, shamefully, it is so common. But this story from the Washington Post is shocking: Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted…

Congressman Tim Ryan (D-OH) had a great speech on the House floor yesterday: "You go to war with the President you have, not the president you wish you had." Heh heh.

Someone should tell Republican Congresscritter Don Young that if you're going to accuse Democrats of treason and call for their hanging, it would help if your own party does not accept campaign funds from backers of Afghan terrorists. From CBS News: CBS News has confirmed that Alishtari is a donor…

...and William Donohue of the Catholic League says nothing. The Family Research Council is a rightwing faith-tank and advocacy group. And at least one board member and blogger thinks it is also very Protestant. Here's what FRC board member Albert Mohler, the president of the Southern Baptist…

I've blogged before about how, for children under five, it's not the 'sexy' microbes that kill, but instead, the run of the mill ones: the bacteria that cause diarrhea and pneumonia are the culprits. One of the things I have heard a lot of recently regarding antibiotic development (and related…

There's an interesting interview with Mara Vanderslice about her attempts to integrate 'religious' people (i.e., Christian--funny how Jews and Muslims, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic aren't part of the 'religious' left according to Vanderslice) into the Democratic party. While I've ripped into…

I know, I know: dog bites man. Anyway, I received this note from a colleague who attended a Seattle screening of Randy Olson's Flock of Dodos: ...There were lots of ID folk in the audience, since the Discovery Institute is here in Seattle. So we had some pretty antagonistic questions. But what…

Having been trained as an evolutionary biologist, I've always thought that the medical literature avoids using the word evolution: instead, words like emergence, development, spread, and acquisition are used. In PLos Biology, there's an article that quantifies what I've always suspected: The…

You would think that the guys who brought you Iran-Contra would, of all people, know that governments and countries often have serious internal divisions. But I'm getting ahead of myself. By now, you may have read about the evidence presented by unidentified "senior defense officials" that Iran…

Here's some very good news about MRSA (methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus): U.S. hospitals are beginning to implement their own versions of 'search and destroy' (italics mine): Hospitals can stem the alarming spread of a dangerous and drug-resistant staph infection by screening new…

In light of El Jefe Maximo's State of the Union speech, where he discussed Social Security privatization, I've dredged from the archives this very short post about a side of Social Security that is completely ingored in the whole debate. Roughly one-third of all Social Security payouts go to the…

While I'm away, here's a post in the spirit of the "basic concepts in science" thingee that's been floating around ScienceBlogs. I received an email about a recent post that asked why pesticide resistance in insects isn't an instance of artificial selection as opposed to natural selection. The…

I'm at a meeting in D.C. about antibiotic resistance, so I've left the Blogerator 9000 to fire up this post from the archives about a drug company executive's explanation of how drugs are priced. It's remarkable--and frustrating--that nobody has picked up on the basic message: drug prices are…

By way of Effect Measure, I came across this Consumer Reports article about bacterial contamination of chicken. The short version: I'm not convinced that the bacterial contamination problem has become worse--keep in mind, I'm not saying that bacterial contamination is not a problem, only that the…

I hate being right, but I knew the Mighty Conservative Wurlitzer was going to slime Amanda and Shakes. Before I get to a detailed discussion of the NY Times article about the whole blogger kerfuffle, I have a very simple question. What if Amanda and Shakes, rather than being campaign bloggers, had…

driftglass skewers NY Times columnist David Brooks' claim that young people don't want the politics of polarization: Again, Brooks attempts to tack around the dead elephant in his Party's phone booth, so let me clarify this once again: Bobo, you people bred and perfected polarization as a means…