Politics/Policy
neurotopia | August 14, 2006As every Evil Monkey knows, you've bestowed upon a student from UVA a great honor.
S.R. Sidarth, a senior at the University of Virginia, had been trailing Allen with a video camera to document his travels and speeches for the Webb campaign. During a campaign speech Friday in Breaks, Virginia, near the Kentucky border, Allen singled out Sidarth and called him a word that sounded like "Macaca."
"This fellow here over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name is. He's with my opponent. He's following us around everywhere. And it's just great. We're going to places all over…
neurotopia | August 3, 2006The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that the House of Representatives is planning on implementing legislative martial law tomorrow.
What, exactly, is this procedure?
The House leadership is using a parliamentary gambit to evade a longstanding House rule that is supposed to ensure that this kind of obfuscation does not occur. That House rule (Rule XIII(6)(a)) provides that a resolution (called a rule) reported by the Rules Committee cannot be considered by the House on the same legislative day that the rule is reported (except by a two-thirds vote of the House). This is supposed…
neurotopia | August 1, 2006The latest soon-to-be casualty to the Bush administration's attempt to break all useful government programs is 1-800-SUICIDE. Given their track record of scrubbing information oriented to LBGT youth (who happen to be a major at-risk category) from other such sites receiving government money, I think it is clear that we can't trust the Culture of Life Strife on this one. Imagine that.
Click. Read. Act.
neurotopia | July 30, 2006Inspired by Effect Measure, I thought I'd dredge up an old snarky post since the Senate is about to join the House in gutting state food standards.
The bill would stop states from adding warnings that are different from federal rules. States currently add hundreds of extra warnings, indicating the presence of arsenic in water, mercury in fish, alcohol in candy, pesticides in vegetables and more.
So what justification does the repugnican congress have for removing warnings about the dangers of mercury to pregnant women, or the lead content of your kid's candy?
"Consumers across the country…
neurotopia | July 21, 2006Today's award goes to Ralph Reed, cherubic ex-leader of the Christian Coalition, who lost his bid to be the Republican nominee for the Lt. Governorship of Georgia this week.
Apparently, Mr. Morality is blaming John McCain for calling attention to Mr. Reed's ethical lapses.
The connection was the report issued by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, chaired by McCain, that found Reed had been paid more than $5 million by two casino-owning Indian tribes -- both clients of lobbyist Jack Abramoff -- to rally Christian voters against other tribes opening competing casinos.
You must've screwed…
neurotopia | July 17, 2006A new website in the fight against the ID movement's attempted takeover of the Kansas state science standards. Check it out. Nick Matzke has more here.
neurotopia | July 15, 2006If you weren't worried about Iraq, the Middle East, and potential for War Without End, Amen before reading this post, consider changing your mind.
In one of the few comprehensive surveys of how many Iraqis have fled their country since the US invasion, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants said last month that there were 644,500 refugees in Syria and Jordan in 2005 -- about 2.5 per cent of Iraq's population. In total, 889,000 Iraqis had moved abroad, creating "the biggest new flow of refugees in the world", according to Lavinia Limon, the committee's president.
And the exodus may only…
neurotopia | July 14, 2006Last weekend there was an article in the Wichita Eagle on the situation with the Kansas BoE. Since creationists can't get their tripe published in real science journals, but instead have to rely on popularity contests elections in order to pass their shit off as reality to our kids, I thought I'd dig up one of my old posts.
Here's the a grand example of why science is not determined by consensus.
If you live in Kansas, The TruthTM which your children are taught in school is decided based upon the ideology of the current Board of Elections. This coming year, for example, Intelligent Design…
neurotopia | July 12, 2006Over at Aetiology, Tara is confused. She somehow thinks that Focus on the Family is actually anti-life.
She says:
Indeed. I'd love to see them mount a campaign against a foundation that fights horribly painful guinea worm infections, AIDS in monogamous, married relationships; and funds scientific breakthroughs for a number of underfunded illnesses. Go ahead and show us again, FoF and ALL, just how "pro-life" you really are.
I'm sorry to say that Tara just doesn't get it. The answer to the conundrum is glaringly obvious. FoF and other assorted "values" groups are most definitely pro-life…
neurotopia | July 12, 2006I'm reproducing this short essay that was posted on DailyKos today. It originated here.
Published on Wednesday, April 3, 2002 by Common Dreams
What the American Flag Stands For
by Charlotte Aldebron
The American flag stands for the fact that cloth can be very important. It is against the law to let the flag touch the ground or to leave the flag flying when the weather is bad. The flag has to be treated with respect. You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A…
neurotopia | July 5, 2006This is very strange. Convicted Enron exec Ken Lay has apparently died. I can't get to the article because it is behind the NY Times firewall but the link is here.
Enron Founder Kenneth Lay Reported to Be Dead
By REUTERS
Published: July 5, 2006
Kenneth L. Lay, who was convicted of fraud and conspiracy for his part in Enron's collapse, has died of a heart attack, a Houston television station reported.
Not to be a conspirasy theorist but this just a little too convenient. 20 bucks sez he was to cooperate for a reduced sentence. Not that he wouldn't have gotten a presidential pardon...
neurotopia | July 3, 2006Ever wonder how people can be impaired drivers when their blood alcohol content is under the legal limit? This group shows us why. And who can resist an experiment involving a woman in a gorilla suit?
The question the researchers wanted to answer was whether a single drink could impair one's ability to notice something completely out of place. They gave participants a drink in a bar-like setting, then watch a video clip of a basketball game. The oddity was that partway through the clip, a woman in a gorilla suit wanders out to the middle of the screen, beats her chest, and walks off.…
neurotopia | July 3, 2006According to a new computer model that accurately reproduces the dynamics of the ozone layer over Antarctica for the last 27 years, the ozone hole is predicted to close, albeit later than expected.
Following adoption of the Montreal Protocol which banned chlorofluorocarbons and other compounds that accumulate and attack the ozone layer, it now appears that we will be able to visualize reductions in the size of the hole by around 2018, with recovery occurring around 2068, almost 20 years later than originally predicted.
While the additional two decades is a bummer, it is important to remember…
neurotopia | July 1, 2006Interesting story on the AP about a Vermont dairy that uses the methane from cow manure to help generate revenue for their farm.
For the Audets, the electricity has created an important new income stream at a time when low wholesale milk prices have squeezed their margin. The utility pays 95 percent of the going New England wholesale power price for electricity from the Audets' generator.
In addition, the utility charges customers willing to pay it a 4-cents-per-kilowatt-hour premium for renewable energy and then turns the money over to the Audets. So far, more than 3,000 CVPS customers have…
neurotopia | June 29, 2006There is one simple reason why a pharmacist's personal beliefs should not factor into the dispensing of medication that, to me, takes precedence over all others.
Medications rarely, if ever, have one use. A single medication can be prescribed for a variety of reasons. This causes a problem: a pharmacist might refuse to dispense birth control pills on the religious grounds that the pill prevents conception and therefore prevents life. But what if the pill was not prescribed for prevention of pregnancy?
This is not an uncommon occurrence. There is a range of therapeutic value for birth…
neurotopia | June 29, 2006Just a couple comments on Tara's situation. Firstly, check that the pharmacist doesn't have a little Vicodin habit of his or her own. Probably not, but I've lost all faith in humanity.
Secondly, this situation is deplorable. If a veterinarian at an academic research facility intentionally withheld post-op painkillers from animal subjects larger than a rat-- especially a dog, cat, or monkey-- without a justifiable experimental purpose**, I have little doubt that said veterinarian just set in motion a series of events that would result in termination of his or her employment. I find it…
neurotopia | June 27, 2006So wait a minute... what was Rush doing with a bottle of Viagra in the DR? Was his wife with him at the airport? No mention is made of her in the article, it appears that he could have been traveling alone. He is married, right? Hmmm.
Hat tip to Rev. BigDumbChimp for stating the obvious.
neurotopia | June 26, 2006Turns out Rush's Viagra was purposefully mislabeled as being prescribed to his physician for protection of Rush's privacy, which is what tipped off the Customs guys.
Darn. There goes my first SchadenFriday material on the SEED blogs... although I do wish Rushie could take a cue from me and correct his mistakes in a timely fashion. Or at all.
neurotopia | June 26, 2006Somebody tell me why Rush Limbaugh got a free pass on this the first time around? This time it wasn't just suspected illegal possession of prescription narcotics.
Limbaugh was returning on a flight from the Dominican Republic when officials found the drugs, among them Viagra.
Yes, we can finally confirm the source of all his angst.
neurotopia | June 25, 2006No shortage of them lately, it seems, and not just regarding the state of global climate change.
US administration officials chose to ignore a CIA officer's warnings that an Iraqi defector's claims of purported biological labs made by Iraq for germ warfare were unproven.
The article is a bit more descriptive, of course. Go read the whole thing. Here's a snippet.
Sunday's edition of The Washington Post quoted veteran CIA officer Tyler Drumheller who, it said, "recognized the source, an Iraqi defector suspected of being mentally unstable and a liar.
"The CIA officer took his pen," he…