Away

I’m going up to NH to help one of my nephew’s move to college (UNH), so I probably won’t be posting anything for a day or two. Have a good Labor Day weekend.

Homosexuals and Anglicans

It increasingly seems that that the Episcopal church will split.  The latest action is the consecrating of two new bishops in the Kenyan Anglican Church. In one of the interesting pieces to the story, one of these bishops (William L. Murdoch of Massachusetts) has a brother who is gay and is a priest in the [...]

More Bush Interference

The more reporters look at the Bush administration, the more examples are found of interference with science.  Another example, the HHS toned down breast-feeding ads when baby formula manufacturers complained:
Plans to run these blunt ads infuriated the politically powerful infant formula industry, which hired a former chairman of the Republican National Committee and a former [...]

Greenhouse Curb Agreements

As a follow-up to this post, it seems that:
Negotiators from 158 countries reached basic agreement Friday on rough targets aimed at getting some of the world’s biggest polluters to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.
 
A weeklong U.N. climate conference concluded that industrialized countries should strive to cut emissions by 25 percent [...]

Some Science Links

IBM can store information on a single atom
Ultrasound can be used to heal internal injuries
Scientists have made a suit that will let you stick to a wall (and yet easily move)

And the race to the moon is heating up:

Russia plans manned flights to the moon by 2025 and a lunar station could be built between 2027 [...]

Music and a Poem

Hmm, another Friday rolls in.  So, to celebrate this august achievement here’s a poem:
 Hey don’t I see me calling
Methinks I am ignoring
The interlude that’s in
And the people that are out.
my random 10: 
Simple Twist of Fate Bob Dylan
Circle Sarah McLachlan
Working In The Coal Mine Devo
Revolution 1 The Beatles
Trombone Dixie The Beach Boys
Interesting Drug Morrissey
Possibly Maybe Björk
Cat’s in the Cradle Harry Chapin
Days The Kinks
Spill The Wine Eric [...]

A Poem At Last

It’s been awhile since I’ve thrown up a poem, so here’s one:
I hear the cars come crashing down
The rats as they crawl along the firmament
Glance in my direction to stop my ears
From knowing that it’s almost Tuesday.

Examples of Confusion

Here are a couple examples of how things work:

One of the arguments against single payer is that it will cause waiting lists and rationing (ignore the fact that there is rationing by ability to pay right now in the US).  Let’s look at an example of how the US system works:

For a Botox injection, patients [...]

Investigation of Gonzales

It’s good to see that the Justice Department is investigating Gonzales.  They have a lot to investigate. The main ones are:

his apparent lies under oath to the Congress
the politicization of many nonpolitical offices (Monica Goodling admitted she did this at times)

Here is what Inspector General Glenn A. Fine says he is investigating:
Mr. Fine made it [...]

Roundup of Iraq Stuff

A draft of the Government Accountability Office report on Iraq has found that at least 13 of 18 benchmarks have not been met. The administration is pushing back:
At the White House, officials argued that the GAO report, which was required by legislation President Bush signed last spring, was unrealistic because it assigned “pass or fail” [...]

The Economy

The economy from last year seems to be mixed:
The nation’s median household income grew modestly in 2006, the Census Bureau reported yesterday, even as the percentage of people without health insurance hit a high.
Experts said the rise in income was mainly a reflection of an increase in the number of family members entering the workplace [...]

How Science Works

For all the creationists and intelligent designers out there, here is an example of how science works:
Einstein’s predicted warping of space-time has been discovered around neutron stars, the most dense observable matter in the universe.
The warping shows up as smeared lines of iron gas whipping around the stars, University of Michigan and NASA astronomers say. [...]

Science Stuff

A few quickie notes:

the upturned palm might have been the precursor to language
mite harvestmen (related to daddy longlegs) help to show how the continents were joined
most interventions to help girls stay in science also help boys (and refutation of other myths)
scientists have found DNA from living cells half a million years old
we think in a [...]

Yahoo and Torture

Verizon and AT&T cooperated with the US government when the government asked them to provide help in what might have been illegal wiretapping. Yahoo did something much worse, they helped the government of China:
Earlier this year, a Chinese political prisoner and his wife sued Yahoo in federal court in San Francisco, accusing the company of [...]

The Amazon and Science

Remind me not to do scientific work in Brazil:
Marc van Roosmalen is a world-renowned primatologist whose research in the Amazon has led to the discovery of five species of monkeys and a new primate genus. But precisely because of that work, Dr. van Roosmalen was recently sentenced to nearly 16 years in prison and jailed [...]

Secrets for You, Not Me

In another sign of this administration’s hyprocisy (from my local paper even):
The Bush administration is about to demand that charities and nonprofits that receive U.S. funds to do foreign relief and development work turn over extensive personal information on their officers, board members and other key personnel.

The information sought includes name, date and place of birth, [...]

Gonzales Resigns

So the Attorney General will now resign effective September 17. It’s good to see someone who has so obviously lied to the public and under oath gone, but I’m not sure if it will change anything.  The Congress will probably cross examine the next AG (rumored to be Chertoff who made a hash of New [...]

Phone Photo Skills

To show my skills with a camera phone, here is a picture of my nephew with a frisbee.  Actually, it shows the slow shutter speed since when I pressed ok to take the picture he did not have the frisbee in front of his face.

Iraq, Iran, and Vietnam

Let me go back to the President’s comparison of Iraq to Vietnam. 
First, Larry Beinhart at Hufffington Post does a better job than I did at explaing why it doesn’t make any sense:
1. Part of the holocaust in Cambodia is directly attributable to American bombing. The 750,000 dead. (Comparable to the number of Iraqis killed by American [...]

Animal Violence

I assume this type of story is coming out because of the Michael Vick case, but it’s welcome all the same. It seems that killing livestock and other animals is on the rise.  Some people will wonder why this is news, after all they’re not people.  One of the main reasons to look at this [...]