We're Really Fucked
mikethemadbiologist | July 5, 2007The FTC has released a report calling for the end of net neutrality (FTC's pdf report here*). What does that mean? Well:
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to abandon net neutrality and allow telecoms companies to charge websites for access.
The FTC said in a report that, despite popular support for net neutrality, it was minded to let the market sort out the issue.
This means that the organisation will not stand in the way of companies using differential pricing to make sure that some websites can be viewed more quickly than others. The report also counsels against net…
mikethemadbiologist | July 4, 2007One of the most insidious undercurrents that has aided and enabled the modern conservatives, as well as the Bush Administration, has been the rise of what, in another era, was called malaise.
For me, the most disturbing failure of Little Lord Pontchartrain's reign was the Katrina failure, particularly the absent response following the hurricane. I always thought, that despite the politics, letting a city drown, and then not working hard to rebuild it simply could not happen in the U.S. Hell, we were the people who figured out how to go the moon and back. If we tried, and that's a mighty…
mikethemadbiologist | July 3, 2007...and are you in any way, shape, or form surprised? Has anything in the last six years suggested to anyone in the Coalition of the Sane that the Bush/Cheney Administration has any sense of shame or propriety? Of course not.
It should be clear that this administration will do anything and everything it can get away with. Bush now appears to have 'accepted' his 28% approval ratings, and won't try to do anything to raise them.
The group that I'm truly disappointed in is the Democrats. They still seem to think that if they point out El Jefe Maximo's outrageous and illegal behavior that the…
mikethemadbiologist | June 4, 2007I was watching this video of a presentation by ScienceBlogling Matt Nisbet, and he related this factoid about the NIH and scientific illiteracy:
Only nine percent of Americans could identify what the NIH was.
(on the video, it's at the 27:00 mark)
Given the public's staggering ignorance, it's a miracle any science gets done. How can people not know that the NIH stands for the National Institute of Holiness?
Kidding.
mikethemadbiologist | May 25, 2007A couple of weeks ago, after I posted about a very serious emerging bacterial threat, KPC, I received an email from a reader with an elderly relative in the hospital with a very serious case of pneumonia caused by KPC. What he* told me is shocking.
The relative, who has had repeated hospital stays and a previous MRSA infection, was in the hospital for a week before any laboratory cultures were performed. That's right, a patient with practically every major risk factor for a multidrug resistant infection wasn't tested for a week. So this patient wasn't isolated, exposing other ICU patients and…
mikethemadbiologist | May 6, 2007Another disgusting turn in Attorneygate: only politically correct--that is right wing--federal prosecutors who are murdered are worth the Department of Justice's time and effort.
Just as the justice system can not function when witnesses are intimidated (or worse), the justice system also can not function when prosecutors' death are not given high priority. That's why this letter to Josh Marshall from a prosecutor is absolutely stunning (italics mine):
I email you because I read something today about the firing of John McKay that finally put me over the edge.
Apparently during Comey's…
mikethemadbiologist | May 1, 2007...that it kills a great punchline. You see, companies are actually trying to buy the Brooklyn Bridge. That's what Business Week says, anyway.
Ian Welsh, at the Agonist, comments:
I don't understand why this is even considered. You don't put basic infrastructure like this in private hands, because it allows monopoly pricing. They will squeeze the most money out of it they can, and that will be the majority of the surplus value produced by the roads. Since they will set the cost to maximize profits, it will be above what a proportion of the population and a proportion of businesses can…
mikethemadbiologist | April 26, 2007I think the investigative power the Democrats currently wield--and the threat of subpoena--is starting to get to Secretary of State Condoleeza "Ferragamos" Rice. At a press conference today, Rice misidentified Russia (emphasis mine):
"The idea that somehow 10 interceptors and a few radars in Eastern Europe are going to threaten the Soviet strategic deterrent is purely ludicrous, and everybody knows it," Ms. Rice said before a meeting of NATO foreign ministers expected to focus on the missile-defense dispute.
"The Russians have thousands of warheads," Ms. Rice said. "The idea that you can…
mikethemadbiologist | April 23, 2007Tonight, at 6:30pm, at the Boston Public Library, there's a meeting "Preparing Boston Residents for Pandemic Flu." I'm going, but with a great deal of pessimism.
The reason I'm pessimistic, as I've said so many times on this blog, every year roughly 36,000 U.S. residents die from 'ordinary' influenza. We know how to make the vaccine. We could, if we so desired, produce sufficient vaccine. We know whom we should be vaccinating to maximize the vaccine's effectiveness (and, no, we don't routinely vaccinate those people--5 to 18 year olds). And doing all things things would be the needed…
mikethemadbiologist | April 16, 2007I found two good posts about taxes: one describes why we need them, and the other describes how much of your taxes go to pay for something you probably don't even think about.
First, the 'mystery' budget item: servicing the interest payments on the federal debt. From hilzoy (italics mine):
Total Receipts: 2,407
Total Outlays: 2654
Total Deficit: 248
Total Spent On Debt Service: 405.9
-- Yes, that's right: had we simply paid our bills on time, more or less, we would not only not be running a deficit, we would have $157.9 billion dollars to either refund to taxpayers or spend on some new…
mikethemadbiologist | April 11, 2007No, not those hideous boots! The Ug99 black stem rust fungus, a strain of Puccinia graminis. It doesn't kill people directly, but it could wipe out much of the world's wheat crop. As always, the developing world will probably be hit the hardest. And it's a potential failure of surveillance.
First, what the Ug99 fungus is:
The disease is Ug99, a virulent strain of black stem rust fungus (Puccinia graminis), discovered in Uganda in 1999. Since the Green Revolution, farmers everywhere have grown wheat varieties that resist stem rust, but Ug99 has evolved to take advantage of those varieties…
mikethemadbiologist | March 30, 2007...or something like that. By way of skippy, comes this, erm, fascinating creationist exposition on the inertness of peanut butter:
People can't really be this stupid, can they?
mikethemadbiologist | March 24, 2007...in Stasi-controlled East Germany. An anonymous internet service provider writes in the Washington Post about the 'national security letter' he or she received:
Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that…
mikethemadbiologist | March 23, 2007The subprime loan disaster is starting to hit suburbia. And as you might guess, the taxpayer is left to pick up the externalized costs of lenders. From the NY Times (italics mine):
In a sign of the spreading economic fallout of mortgage foreclosures, several suburbs of Cleveland, one of the nation's hardest-hit cities, are spending millions of dollars to maintain vacant houses as they try to contain blight and real-estate panic.
In suburbs like this one, officials are installing alarms, fixing broken windows and mowing lawns at the vacant houses in hopes of preventing a snowball effect, in…
mikethemadbiologist | March 22, 2007The more you stare at this scandal, the more you feel like one of the proverbial blind men trying to figure out what the hell that elephant is. From ThinkProgress, here is what fired US Attorney Carol Lam might have been investigating:
To recap, the White House awarded a one-month, $140,000 contract to an individual who never held a federal contract. Two weeks after he got paid, that same contractor used a cashier's check for exactly that amount to buy a boat for a now-imprisoned congressman at a price that the congressman had pre-negotiated.
That should raise questions about the White House…
mikethemadbiologist | March 17, 2007By 'End Times', I'm not referring to the significant global decrease in food production, or the Far East trade war over sand (I'm not kidding--Indonesia has declared a sand embargo against Singapore). Putting those two news items together does have an apocalyptic feel to it. No, what I'm referring to is that mortgage foreclosures and homeowner vacancies have reached record highs (also see here).
Over at Tapped, Dana Goldstein describes a cause of the phenomenon:
The story is always the same: clever marketing campaigns prey on families in blighted neighborhoods, promising them the American…
mikethemadbiologist | March 5, 2007...high levels of resistance to cephalosporins and beta-lactam antibiotics are sure to follow. Sunday, the Washington Post covered the FDA approval of the use of cefquinome in cattle to treat respiratory pneumonia. The article provides a pretty good synopsis of what happened, so I won't summarize the whole thing, but this decision represents a complete corruption of the regulatory process by industry. It's that simple.
Here's why cefquinome use in agriculture is really stupid: bacteria that evolve resistance to cefquinome, also become resistant to cefepime, a vital drug in the treatment…
mikethemadbiologist | February 26, 2007When I heard that Republican Senator and presidential candidate John McCain spoke at the Discovery Institute, I was disappointed but not surprised. In March, there's going to be a report released about antibiotic resistance in bacteria. A major finding of the report: roughly 40,000 people die every year from hospital-acquired antibiotic resistant bacterial infections.
The problem of antibiotic resistance is, fundamentally, a problem of evolutionary biology. Species of bacteria which had very few resistant strains (or none at all) now contain high frequencies of resistance strains (e.g…
mikethemadbiologist | February 26, 2007...the man who helped bring you Iran-Contra, you know you've gone too far. Seymour Hersh has a new article in the New Yorker about the Bush Administration's Middle East 'strategy.' It's more ridiculous than Iran-Contra.
Why do I say that? Because we're backing indirectly Sunni groups in Lebanon opposed to Hizbollah that are linked to Al-Queda.
Let's replay that last sentence:
Because we're backing indirectly Sunni groups in Lebanon opposed to Hizbollah that are linked to Al-Queda.
[sound of jaw hitting floor]
I swear to the Intelligent Designer, these guys are dumber than Conservapedia.…
mikethemadbiologist | February 25, 2007What happens if you want to fight a war, and the generals threaten to not show up? From the Sunday Times:
SOME of America's most senior military commanders are prepared to resign if the White House orders a military strike against Iran, according to highly placed defence and intelligence sources.
Tension in the Gulf region has raised fears that an attack on Iran is becoming increasingly likely before President George Bush leaves office. The Sunday Times has learnt that up to five generals and admirals are willing to resign rather than approve what they consider would be a reckless attack.
"…