Fucking Morons
mikethemadbiologist | March 15, 2010Friday, The NY Times reported on Greece's ongoing financial troubles. There is something to be said for discussing whether pensions should begin at age 50--it touches on economics, social values, and so on. But then the reporter refers to some 'analysis' by the Cato Institute:
According to research by Jagadeesh Gokhale, an economist at the Cato Institute in Washington, bringing Greece's pension obligations onto its balance sheet would show that the government's debt is in reality equal to 875 percent of its gross domestic product, which is the broadest measure of a nation's economic output…
mikethemadbiologist | March 12, 2010I don't know what's worse: that Republican congressman Paul Ryan is viewed as intelligent, or that if the Democrats lose the House, he could be driving economic policy. Not surprisingly, Congressman Ryan has proposed a tax plan that would lower revenues overall (Republicans talk about lower deficits--in practice, they do the opposite); the plan slashes income taxes and institutes a value-added tax (VAT). What is remarkable is that, for 80% of the country, individual tax burdens would increase. You'll never guess which end of the income spectrum those eighty percent fall into:
Leaving…
mikethemadbiologist | February 28, 2010Or as I like to say--people have to like this crap. Two events over the last month, the reappointment of Bernanke to Fed Chairman and some Senate Democrats' new-found opposition to using reconciliation to pass healthcare reform with a public option, highlight one reason why Democrats lose elections: rather than focusing on outcomes, they focus on the process, on the 'atmospherics.' Consider the reappointment of Bernanke. It's pretty clear that he's more concerned with keeping inflation ludicrously low, which will fail to combat massive unemployment--which is one of his legally mandated…
mikethemadbiologist | February 22, 2010Apparently, if the high-profile, exhaustively peer-reviewed journal Men's Health [/snark] is to be believed, Boston is the least boozy city in the country (italics mine):
Fresno, Calif., tops Men's Health magazine's list of America's "drunkest" cities while Boston, home to the "Cheers" bar where everyone knows your name, was deemed the "least drunk," besting even Salt Lake City.
The magazine, which will publish the list of 100 major cities in i's March edition, drew upon such data as death rates from alcoholic liver disease, booze-fueled car crashes, frequency of binge-drinking in the past…
mikethemadbiologist | February 18, 2010A couple of weeks ago, The Washington Post ran a piece by Gerard Alexander about how liberals are condescending towards conservative ideas, because those ideas suck ass. With that, by way of Digby, I give you a speaker from CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference):
At CPAC this morning, Young America's Foundation spokesman Jason Mattera kicked off his speech by suggesting progressives are ugly, rambling, druggies:
MATTERA: It's always a delight to participate in CPAC. This is like our Woodstock. Except, unlike the left gathering, our women are beautiful, we speak in complete sentences…
mikethemadbiologist | February 8, 2010(from here)
By way of Maryn McKenna, we find that the Obama Administration has decided to massively cut the funding for the CDC's antimicrobial resistance and vaccination efforts. I thought this was the kind of anti-science bullshit that the Bush Administration did. From the IDSA (pdf):
Under CDC's proposed budget, the agency's already severely strapped Antimicrobial Resistance budget would be cut dramatically by $8.6 million--roughly 50 percent. This vital program is necessary to help combat the rising crisis of drug resistance, a critical medical problem that the agency deems "one of the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 6, 2010Over at DailyKos, there's a very good post about anti-vaxxer idiocy (I believe in rewarding non-science blogs with links when they take this stuff head-on). The author's motivation illustrates just how murderous this lunacy is:
Part of what infuriates me about this issue is that I'm aware of a case where a child was infected with Measles before he was old enough to be immunized against it. The source of the infection was an older child at a day care whose parents decided against vaccination.
The child's Measles progressed to subacute sclerosing panencephalitis from which his brain…
mikethemadbiologist | February 3, 2010Are Democrats intentionally trying to lose the next election? Because that's the only possible way to explain this:
Twelve Democratic Senators spent last weekend in Miami Beach raising money from top lobbyists for oil, drug, and other corporate interests that they often decry, according to a guest list for the event obtained by POLITICO.
The guest list for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee's "winter retreat" at the Ritz Carlton South Beach Resort doesn't include the price tag for attendance, but the maximum contribution to the committee, typical for such events, is $30,000. There…
mikethemadbiologist | January 30, 2010As I say often (probably far too often), ultimately policies have to help the majority of voters, and when they don't people stay home. Outsourced to Gin and Tacos (italics mine):
It is plainly obvious that Democratic candidates can't expect success without the voters who showed up in 2008, and they're not going to show up unless they're highly motivated by distaste for the GOP (which they aren't at the moment, given the results from 2006-08) or enthusiasm for the Congressional agenda. What we're seeing is not a schizophrenic electorate giving the GOP eight years to screw things up and…
mikethemadbiologist | January 21, 2010I think this is only part of the story, but it seems that the 'Democratic Machine' in Massachusetts might have slipped a gear:
"Nobody likes her" says mom. What she means is, Coakley had no friends in politics. The Democrats in Massachusetts let this happen because - "I don't know" says mom.
Maybe they weren't about to let Western Mass manipulate them. Maybe it all comes down to nothing more than who is friends with whom.
All Scott Brown did was see an opportunity and turn it to his advantage.
There is no deeper national implication. This is not a death knell for the Democratic party or Obama…
mikethemadbiologist | January 20, 2010These will have to be some quick hits, since I'm at a meeting; I'll try to revisit them later this week:
1) The absolute numbers indicate that Democrats lost this election:
In 2008, Obama received 1,904,097 votes; in 2009, Coakley received 1,058,682.
In 2008, McCain received 1,108,854 votes; in 2009, Brown received 1,168,107 votes.
This is a massive defection by Democrats--it's nearly a 50% drop for Democrats versus the Republicans holding steady in absolute numbers. 20% of Obama voters crossed over to Brown.
2) Following on #1, the entire active rank-and-file warned the Democratic '…
mikethemadbiologist | January 16, 2010...that Lieberman and Snowe were not acting in good faith on healthcare. First, TPM on Republican Senator Olympia Snowe:
Hindsight's 20-20, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid now thinks he and leading Democrats, at the behest of the White House, flushed months down the toilet courting Sen. Olympia Snowe's (R-ME) support for health care reform.
"As I look back it was a waste of time dealing with [Snowe]," Reid is quoted as saying about the White House in a forthcoming New York Times Magazine piece, "because she had no intention of ever working anything out."
And Lieberman:
In a preview of…
mikethemadbiologist | January 14, 2010Many grants have what are known as milestones: dates by which certain activities are supposed to occur; with some grants, failure to meet these milestones (or does one pass milestones?) can ultimately result in withdrawal of the grant. There is a lot of grantsmanship involved in milestones. For obvious reasons, you don't want to set lots of impossible-to-reach milestones. Likewise, you want some low hanging fruit in there too (to confuse images and metaphors).
For example, let's say a Mad Biologist were to sequence a bunch of bacterial genomes. Here are three milestones:
1) Get all of…
mikethemadbiologist | January 13, 2010To follow up on Tuesday's post about Massachusetts' healthcare, it bears repeating: healthcare reform has to make people's lives better. In other words, people have to like this crap. And this isn't cutting it (boldface mine; italics original):
When it came time to renew my own insurance, I asked the insurance broker, what it would cost to buy good insurance in New York State. She said, "sit down". I held my breath in anticipation, she said, "$1300 a month."
When it came time for me to renew my health insurance which was a barely adequate policy with a $500 deductible, the new premium…
mikethemadbiologist | January 12, 2010One of the claims that has been going around is that healthcare in Massachusetts is affordable; in fact, MIT economist Paul Jonathan Gruber, who has come under fire for conflicts-of-interest, has made this claim:
In considering affordability for a group, we need to establish a sensible benchmark whereby insurance is considered affordable if "most of" a group can afford it. We can disagree about what "most of" means, but it would be wrong to define "most of" only as "very close to 100%."
Well, that's good to know. Because most humans, as opposed to MIT economists, would think, when it comes…
mikethemadbiologist | January 9, 2010Driftglass has a list of "some expressions to be put down like sick dogs in 2010". My favorite:
"Impactful" -- The go-to word for illiterate executives who dare not admit that they made it all the way into a corner office with ever learning the difference between "affect" and "effect".
Thank you! I hate the misuse of the word "impact" when people actually mean "affect." If I taunt you, I am affecting you. If I punch you in the head (for misusing the word impact), I (or, more accurately, my fist) am impacting you.
I'm not sure this misuse has as much to do with illiteracy, as it does…
mikethemadbiologist | December 31, 2009Add this to the list of symptoms of post-partisanship depression. Do you remember Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH), who was originally nominated by Obama as Secretary of Commerce because he was viewed as a moderate? Well, 'moderate' Gregg (did I mention that he almost joined the Obama Administration were it not for opposition from we Dirty Fucking Hippies?) has this to say about recent legislation:
American government changed last night. "We are now functioning under a parliamentary form of government," says Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.) in a conversation with NRO. "An ideological supermajority in…
mikethemadbiologist | December 19, 2009With some sadness, we read that GM is killing off Saab, although spare parts will still be made. The BBC's Jorn Madslien explains how a well-engineered car line died (italics mine):
When its owner GM bought Saab, it was seen as a brand that could become the US automotive group's European luxury brand.
But the quirky cars did not attract a broad enough following, so it failed to make money.
GM's solution was to cut costs by sharing ever more parts with Opel while, at the same time, toning down their design.
Such moves alienated traditional Saab customers without gaining new ones. New product…
mikethemadbiologist | December 17, 2009I've stayed away from the CRU Swifthack brouhaha, largely because the experts are far better at debunking this denialist crap than I am. But, if there were such a thing as 'genomic denialists', they would probably have a field day if they were to get their hands on what we say.
For example, I'm involved in the Human Microbiome Project and we sometimes use phrases like 'bad data' or 'mediocre data.' I'm not talking about when something goes obviously wrong (i.e., controls fail), but the recognition that the technologies can fall short: technologies designed for genomics where every…
mikethemadbiologist | December 9, 2009Both Digby and Amanda Marcotte have been asking why global warming seems to be driving much of the right wing berserk. While I agree that part of the reason is the ever-present desire to punch a hippie in the face, I think Fred Clark at the Slacktivist hits on a key point in these two posts: "It isn't intended to deceive others. It's intended to invite others to participate with you in deception."
In the two posts, Clark describes the fervent belief by a considerable number of evangelicals in the belief that the Proctor and Gamble corporation (P&G) was involved in satanic cults, which…