Basic Human Decency
mikethemadbiologist | May 23, 2008The New York Times has a disturbing article today about secret funds given to researchers by Big Tobacco with lots of strings attached. The whole article is worth a read, but this little paragraph makes it absolutely clear why tenure and academic freedom are not trivial things:
A tenured scientist at Virginia Commonwealth, who would not be interviewed for attribution because he said he feared retribution against his junior colleagues, called the contract's restrictions, especially the limitations on publication, "completely unacceptable in the research world."
I guarantee junior, untenured…
mikethemadbiologist | May 12, 2008Over at Balloon Juice, Tim F. writes regarding skyrocketing gas prices:
I don't feel particularly smug when I stand next to my Honda Fit watching some SUV owner near tears as she puts more than $100 of gas into a car she doesn't need. It just feels sad to think about how long it's been since it became obvious to anyone who cared to look that we won't be able to scare off problems like fuel scarcity and climate change by closing our eyes and wishing.
That lead time was an opportunity to make changes. Some would have been painful and some merely sensible, but it would prevent huge numbers of…
mikethemadbiologist | April 10, 2008The revisionist pro-Iraq war argument that 'the idea was sound, but the implementation was problematic' has always bothered me. It assumes that a 'war of choice'--that is, an unprovoked assault against another nation which does not pose an immediate threat--will work out just fine. So when it doesn't work out--and it almost never does--it's not the fault of war supporters, it's someone else's. Never mind that wars of choice almost always end in massive blowback, there's just no conceivable way anyone could have foreseen the outcome....
Glenn Greenwald, responding to Dan Drezner and Megan…
mikethemadbiologist | April 8, 2008Kay Weber, a scientist at Fermilab, has filed a sexual harassment suit against the Department of Energy. The details are pretty disgusting:
She supervised a group of about 25 male technicians and engineers. A few years later she started to experience sexual harassment. She found jock straps in her office, condoms in her mailbox, derogatory notes in her mailbox and written on public bulletin boards. As a result she was removed from her position and placed in other departments for several years (yes, she was punished). Eventually she was returned to her original department and forced to…
mikethemadbiologist | April 5, 2008In Judaism, one of the enduring symbols is Amalek, a tribe whose deceitful ambush has come to symbolize an enemy to whom one can't afford to demonstrate mercy. Gershom Gorenberg relates an interesting twist on the Amalek story that changes the call to hate the other to a call for moral responsibility for the other:
Amalek, according to the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy, is the name of the tribe that attacked the Israelites on their way out of Egypt, on the road from slavery to freedom. You can regard this as ancient history. But history is remembered as our story, and in Jewish mythic…
mikethemadbiologist | April 4, 2008Today, in 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis. This is why he was in Memphis.
mikethemadbiologist | April 3, 2008When the welfare debate was raging in the 80s and 90s, I never understood how a group with so little power--poor single women, often minority--were misperceived as having such a huge effect on society, while those who had the lion's share of power weren't to blame at all. More importantly, there was a bizarre assumption that whatever effects poor single women might have were entirely their fault.
In light of the collapsing Jenga Pile o'Shit known as the 'subprime' mortgage /foreclosure/ 'jingle mail'/ Bear Stearns crisis, blaming poor women does seem a little silly. I'm surprised the…
mikethemadbiologist | March 3, 2008In the most recent edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, there is a perspective piece by Sara Rosenbaum that bluntly describes how the Bush Administration's opposition to S-CHIP (the State Children's Health Insurance Program) is based on ideology and not economic cost (italics mine):
Why would the President veto bipartisan legislation that does precisely what he insisted on -- namely, aggressively enroll the poorest children? One might blame the poisonous atmosphere that pervades Washington these days, but other important social policy reforms have managed to get through.
One answer…
mikethemadbiologist | March 2, 2008Stephen Budiansky's The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox is a powerful and detailed examination of the widely-supported terrorism in the post-Civil War South. Because Budiansky cites a lot of primary literature, such as newspaper editorials, legal testimony, and published memoirs, the horror and the nauseating race hatred of that era are not hidden with euphemisms. Were it up to me, this book would be required reading in every high school history class. And it is relevant to today's politics.
Why?
Because the Southern Strategy is beginning to fail: that is, the bogus notions of…
mikethemadbiologist | February 28, 2008Hilzoy discusses the ceasefire between the brutal Lord's Resistance Army and the Ugandan government. Read it and weep--in a good way.
mikethemadbiologist | February 28, 2008I believe I did. And on cue, a bigot steps right up (italics mine):
An evangelical chaplain who leads Bible studies for California lawmakers says God is disgusted with a rival fellowship group that includes people of all faiths.
"Although they are pleasant men in their personal demeanor, their group is more than disgusting to our Lord and Savior," Drollinger wrote on the Capitol Ministries' Web site.
The comments drew immediate fire from others in the capital, including the Republican lawmaker who sponsors Drollinger's Bible study group.
Drollinger said "progressive religious tolerance" is…
mikethemadbiologist | February 25, 2008And shifts much of the other aid packages over to grants:
Brown University is eliminating tuition for students whose parents earn less than $60,000, after decisions by fellow Ivy League universities to bolster financial aid as their endowments grow.
The university, in Providence, R.I., said on Saturday that it also planned to substitute grants for student loans in the financial aid packages of students whose families earned less than $100,000 a year. The new program cuts reliance on loans for all students regardless of family income, the university said in a statement posted on its Web site.…
mikethemadbiologist | February 20, 2008By way of maha (and also Roger Ailes the Good), I came across this screed from the conservative National Review's website (italics mine):
... Obama and I are roughly the same age. I grew up in liberal circles in New York City--a place to which people who wished to rebel against their upbringings had gravitated for generations. And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but…
mikethemadbiologist | February 9, 2008If you can afford it, please consider kicking in a few dollars to help the tornado victims. Via Monkeyfister:
While everyone else was busy watching the Primaries, or "American Idol," the storms that ripped through Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee were busy killing.via ReutersLITTLE ROCK, Arkansas (Reuters) - Tornadoes and thunderstorms ravaged several states in the American South overnight, killing at least 26 people, injuring dozens and causing widespread damage, emergency services and local media said.The violent storms swept across Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and…
mikethemadbiologist | January 31, 2008...and conservatives still don't like him. Boo fucking hoo. Here's how Straight-Talking, honest McCain is sliming the Mittster:
"I'm calling with an urgent Mitt Romney [unintelligible]"
"We care deeply about traditional values and protecting families. And we need someone who will not waver in the White House: Ending abortion, preserving the sanctity of marriage, stopping the trash on the airwaves and attempts to ban God from every corner of society. These issues are core to our being.
"Mitt Romney thinks he can fool us. He supported abortion on demand, even allowed a law mandating taxpayer-…
mikethemadbiologist | January 30, 2008Conservative blogger Ben Domenech, in a stereotypical display of rightwing 'humor'*, writes an imaginary speech for Fred Thompson's withdrawal announcement (italics mine):
I have never seen such a bunch of pansies strutting about pretending to be leaders.
Rudy Giuliani? Slick cheater. Mike Huckabee? Jesus freak. John McCain? Crazy. Mitt Romney? Woman.
That says everything, although 'insecure, pencil-dick weenie' probably wouldn't be superfluous.
*There are funny conservatives (Christopher Buckley often cracks me up), but among movement conservatives, much of what passes for humor would be…
mikethemadbiologist | January 28, 2008Say hello to the Office on National Drug Control Policy and to faith-based drug overdose prevention. One public health intervention that saves lives is the distribution of Narcan nasal sprays to drug users:
The nasal spray is a drug called naloxone, or Narcan. It blocks the brain receptors that heroin activates, instantly reversing an overdose.
Doctors and emergency medical technicians have used Narcan for years in hospitals and ambulances. But it doesn't require much training because it's impossible to overdose on Narcan.
The Cambridge program began putting Narcan kits into drug users'…
mikethemadbiologist | January 22, 2008Olivia Judson describes what it would take to prevent almost all rabies deaths from Africa (rabies currently kills around 55,000 people annually):
To eliminate the disease from humans, therefore, it needs to be eliminated from dogs. And the way to do that is through dog vaccination. (At first, it may seem perverse to vaccinate dogs rather than humans, given that it's humans we want to protect. But because rabies is spread by dogs, not people, we can't break the chain of transmission unless we vaccinate the animals that spread it.)
The crucial factor in predicting the spread of an infectious…
mikethemadbiologist | January 21, 2008One of the things that is often neglected on Martin Luther King day is his dedication to economic justice. What is forgotten--often willfully--is that he was an advocate for racial and economic justice. From a speech he gave to striking sanitation workers in Memphis on March 18, 1968 (italics mine):
My dear friends, my dear friend James Lawson, and all of these dedicated and distinguished ministers of the Gospel assembled here tonight, to all of the sanitation workers and their families, and to all of my brothers and sisters, I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be in Memphis…
mikethemadbiologist | January 15, 2008John Aravosis demonstrates once again why I refuse to call myself a progressive (italics mine):
Seriously, any plan to bail these people out had better include a test to prove that they were hoodwinked by their mortgage broker. Otherwise, they gambled and they lost. Lots of people bought homes and did what it took to make their payments, and did make their payments, and others opted not to buy at all until the market settled down. We should not be bailing people out for being idiots, or for trying to make a fast buck, especially when it means the rest of us will now have to pay more for…