ethics
mikethemadbiologist | July 7, 2011File this under 'heartless in the heartland.' One of the things that is so awful about the current deficit reduction fetish (well, other than at submaximal employment, increasing deficits are not a problem, so we're keeping millions of people needlessly unemployed) is that budget cuts always fall on the most vulnerable, such as people with cerebral palsy who need a great deal of help to retain some level of dignity. The unlovely ones who make us feel uncomfortable lack champions, and suffer for it. Which brings me to this horrific story, by way of Susie Madrak, from Pennsylvania:
A month…
pharyngula | July 6, 2011That last post was just too saccharine, so I have to bring you down. Balance! Balance in all things! So here's your official downer for the day: a story about greyhound racing.
One thing about greyhounds: They aren't likely to die of old age. When dogs turn 4 or 5 and are finished racing, she claims, "it's more cost-efficient for trainers and owners to kill a dog than to house and feed it."
Pro-racing folks balk at that claim, saying that today, most greyhounds are humanely retired, not killed. But in 2002, Alabama investigators found the bodies of thousands of dead greyhounds on the…
pharyngula | July 5, 2011It's a truism in our culture that Jesus, even if he wasn't a deity, was a wonderful teacher and moral being. Maybe we should consider that he was a Madman or Something Worse, though: it's not just that his teachings were abused and mangled by those who followed, but that the ethical heart of Christianity is actually a rather nasty piece of work.
(via Atheist Media Blog)
pharyngula | July 3, 2011There are so many clueless comments in this thread that Old Man PZ, grizzled veteran of the sex wars, successful lothario who has managed to reproduce three times, and champion who successfully landed a Trophy Partner in an extremely long and happy relationship, feels like he needs to step in and give some friendly advice. So here you go, the short sweet simple Decent Human Beings' Guide to Getting Laid at Atheist Conferences.
The first thing you must know is that you haven't failed when the object of your desire says "no". That's a perfectly reasonable response, and even if you do everything…
pharyngula | June 24, 2011This is a German scandal: Sylvana Koch-Mehrin was recently found to be guilty of extensive plagiarism in her doctoral thesis, such a blatant abuse of scholarship that the University of Heidelberg took the remarkable step of revoking her doctoral degree. Before that happened, she had been marching up the ladder of the European political cursus honorum, reaching the rank of vice-president of the European Parliament until her disgrace forced her to resign.
But now a very odd thing has happened: this ex-scholar, this impeached student, this deplorable fraud has been appointed as a full member to…
pharyngula | June 21, 2011Animal Aid, one of those mindless animal rights organizations, has just called on everyone in the UK to stop donating to specific medical charities, because they sponsor research that uses animals. I can sympathize with the goal of minimizing suffering in animals, but this is ridiculous: the subjects of these research programs simply can't be approached without using animal models.
The charities targeted are Cancer Research UK, the
British Heart Foundation, the
Alzheimer's Society and
Parkinson's UK. If you're in the UK, make a special effort to donate to these worthy organizations, to…
mikethemadbiologist | June 21, 2011Over the weekend, The Washington Post actually committed journalism with a report about the growing income and wealth gap in the U.S. To place it in historical context, they compared two CEOs, one from the 1970s and the current CEO. Here's the blast from the past (italics mine):
It was the 1970s, and the chief executive of a leading U.S. dairy company, Kenneth J. Douglas, lived the good life. He earned the equivalent of about $1 million today. He and his family moved from a three-bedroom home to a four-bedroom home, about a half-mile away, in River Forest, Ill., an upscale Chicago suburb.…
mikethemadbiologist | June 19, 2011Bill Mitchell smacks down some silliness from Peggy Noonan about the supposed looming insolvency of the U.S. (italics mine):
She [Noonan] should hang her head in shame for providing further myths that will certainly agitate all the ignorant - uneducated (despite long lists of credentials) - and high blood pressure conservative types who get wound up every day about their claims the US is facing impending bankruptcy. Leave them alone Peggy. Let them have a day off so they can calm down.
What does being bankrupt or almost bankrupt - on paper or anywhere else mean when you are talking about a…
mikethemadbiologist | June 12, 2011Peer review, the process in which scientific publication has to pass muster with critical reviewers, has a lot of problems. But a widely-cited report by McKinsey & Company consulting which claimed that Obamacare will result in one-third of companies dropping healthcare coverage for their employees is worth examining (italics mine):
The predictable fallout led Democrats, and several reporters, to press McKinsey for the survey itself -- a request McKinsey has declined on the grounds that the material is proprietary.
But multiple sources both within and outside the firm tell TPM the survey…
pharyngula | May 10, 2011That's a bargain price for throwing a reputation down the drain. FSU has turned over some hiring decisions to a billionaire ideologue.
A conservative billionaire who opposes government meddling in business has bought a rare commodity: the right to interfere in faculty hiring at a publicly funded university.
A foundation bankrolled by Libertarian businessman Charles G. Koch has pledged $1.5 million for positions in Florida State University's economics department. In return, his representatives get to screen and sign off on any hires for a new program promoting "political economy and free…
pharyngula | May 2, 2011Here's a pair of brave women.
Twenty years after a horrific rape, Liz Seccuro pressed charges on her creepy, oblivious rapist. It was a horrible situation, and she could have run away from the conflict…but she faced her fears and got the rotten guy locked away after he tried to resume a friendly conversation, as if nothing had happened.
Amina A. is a gay woman living in Syria — and she and her father faced down a pair of thugs who threatened to rape the lesbian out of her. These were the local 'security services' who try to enforce a religious propriety on every one; just living in the day…
pharyngula | April 30, 2011It's always interesting when some god-walloper honestly follows through on the logical implications of his beliefs — he basically is compelled to admit that if you worship a tyrannical monster, you have to end up rationalizing monstrous tyrannies. The latest to enlighten us with excuses for bronze age barbarisms and brutalities is William Lane Craig, who thinks that tales from the Bible of God's Chosen People slaughtering babies is A-OK:
Moreover, if we believe, as I do, that God's grace is extended to those who die in infancy or as small children, the death of these children was actually…
mikethemadbiologist | April 24, 2011A few years back, Dick Cavett made the following observation about the misuse of the phrase "presumption of innocence":
Cast your mind back about a dozen years to Tonya Harding. For the newly born, she was the young skater who hired a goon acquaintance to lurch out of the shadows and whack rival skater Nancy Kerrigan in the leg. The attack effectively put Nancy out of commission and delivered to sportsmanship a black eye the size of Cleveland.
Despite all this, gritty Tonya's fanatical admirers remained loyal. On the TV news one of these ardent supporters -- in this case an adenoidal female…
mikethemadbiologist | April 13, 2011Last week, Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism posted a satirical letter by 'Outis Philalithopoulos' (Outis means 'nobody' in Greek) about another problem facing the economics profession--corruption of its practioners. Outis/Yves writes (italics mine):
Soon after receiving tenure, it occurred to me that we were being profoundly inconsistent. While we had correctly criticized the previous mainstream view that politics involved benevolent efforts to serve the common good, we had failed to apply the same rigor to the community of academic economists. As a result, we were modeling both economic and…
mikethemadbiologist | April 7, 2011According to Florida Republicans, these are freeloading parasites not worthy of your tax dollars (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel)
We typically think of budgets as boring, dry things, the charge of the green eyeshade brigade. But they are a profound statement of what we think is important, of who we fundamentally are. And Florida's Republican Governor Rick Scott's budget proclaims him to be a monster. Republican Gov. Scott has recently ordered massive cuts to group homes for the developmentally disabled:
Florida Gov. Rick Scott ordered deep cuts Thursday to programs that serve tens…
mikethemadbiologist | March 20, 2011Because you can policy wonk all you want, but sometimes you need a little poetry:
pharyngula | March 17, 2011I would like to propose a new law for consideration by our legislature, which I am calling The Minnesota Anti-Texan Act of 2011. I need to work on the formal language for it, but I can give the gist of it here.
If any person within the boundaries of the fine state of Minnesota exhibits any of the signifiers of a Texas origin — wearing a cowboy hat, for instance, or Big Hair, or having a drawl, or chewing tobacco — you can shoot them. You catch someone listening to Clint Black on the radio, bang, blow them away, you've got a justifiable defense. Someone says "sheeeeeee-it" instead of "uff-da…
mikethemadbiologist | February 15, 2011Last week, The National Journal broke the story, since confirmed by other sources, that the Obama administration plans to cut billions of dollars from the LIHEAP program that subsidizes energy costs for the needy (italics mine):
President Obama's proposed 2012 budget will cut several billion dollars from the government's energy assistance fund for poor people, officials briefed on the subject told National Journal....
The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP, would see funding drop by about $2.5 billion from an authorized 2009 total of $5.1 billion. The proposed cut will not…
mikethemadbiologist | February 4, 2011Robert Scheer comments on Obama's State of the Union speech (italics mine):
His references to education provided a convenient scapegoat for the failure of the economy, rather than to blame the actions of the Wall Street hustlers to whom Obama is now sucking up. Yes, it is an obvious good to have better-educated students to compete with other economies, but that is hardly the issue of the moment when all of the world's economies are suffering grievous harm resulting from the irresponsible behavior of the best and the brightest here at home. It wasn't the students struggling at community…
mikethemadbiologist | January 29, 2011Like clockwork, every time an election rolls around, Republican-leaning pundits and political operatives, in their infinite wisdom, predict that this election will be the election wherein Jews abandon the Democratic Party. And then, like clockwork, Jews overwhelmingly vote Democratic. One reason has to do with the Republican Party's exclusionary identity politics: even if Jews were disposed to vote Republican based on political ideology, the strong ties to the Christian theopolitical right are...offputting. But there's another reason too, that has to do with, well, Judaism. Being Jewish…