wonkabout

A new beginning

2007-01-07T19:24:00.000-05:00

Well, its a new year. Time to put the last year's date on all those cheques.

I'm putting the last touches on cleaning out the old lab, and have been lucky enough to find myself invited to teach a couple of biology classes for non majors at my old college. It doesn't pay well, but it will make for some good experience, and I hope that it will be fun. I also am going back to school to get an MPH (Masters of Public Health). I have to say, that after a good five years out of the classroom, I'm looking forward to returning. One of the textbooks is a bit bigger than I would have liked, but such is life.

That said, I'm also looking at moving the blog over to another system, adding some more blogs on the science side, some 9/11 myth debunking sites, etc. Hopefully, I should be back to writing up some entries in the next few days, maybe posting some pics from our vacation, at least after I have my syllabus written up. Until then, best wishes.

If I had a little brother

2006-12-07T17:02:00.000-05:00

This has to be one of the funniest things I have seen in a while. So glad the kid had a helmet.

New 9/11 Pentagon footage

2006-12-04T22:29:00.000-05:00

New footage of the impact of Flight 77 with the Pentagon on 9/11/01 has been released.

Of course, it was met with great fanfare from the conspiracry theory groups, claiming that there was no plane. One of the biggest problems is that eyewitnesses, ignored or misquoted by conspiracy theorists (including a friend of mine) saw a plane hit the pentagon that morning. It was a commercial airliner. The conspiracy could either be a massive, international, intercontinental, tangled web or a confederacy of dunces in DC fucked up and a bunch of terrorists pulled off an attack because of lax airport security and dumb luck.

Why keep the films out of the public realm for so long? Why let out the least visually useful ones first?

They witheld them so they wouldn't end up on Qaeda recruiting films. The thought that a handful of goons from Nowhere, Saudi Arabia could strike the heart of the most powerful nation's military is bad enough. Video would have been a major propaganda coup. Letting it out years after the fact, insignificant piece by piece, reduces the impact. A simple explanation, needing no massive hidden plot.

They could actually be investigating CACI, Titan, Blackwater, etc., but they chase a plane that crashed five years ago, and people saw it happen. Go looking for the real scandals and conspiracies. Like why our emergency forces don't have radios that can talk to each other. Why sky marshals have to wear suits and sit in certain seats. Why a bottle of mouthwash is an international threat. Who hasn't protected out ports for the last decade.

If you think you are a threat the the government by pushing conspiracy theories, you are deluded. The real threat is if you look into the real corruption and failures.

Friday Primus

2006-11-10T15:14:00.000-05:00

Tommy the Cat

Say it BABY!

Happy days!

2006-11-08T13:24:00.000-05:00

Updated! Now with 50% more snark!

A gouple gems from My Confined Space.
First, Pelosi is feelin teh power!

And Rummy is already letting himself go...

And Santorum's family, well, what can I say. It can't be easy finding out that 59% of people in the state that you don't really live in think your dad is full of, ummm, santorum. Seriously, I feel for her. Being the child of a far right has been won't be easy. Maybe she and her doll need matching hoodies.

OK, I know, I'm goin to hell for that one.

I have to say that taking the House wasn't that big of a surprise. That we have a good chance to take the Senate isn't that surprising either.

But this little bit of news is freaking me out. In a very good way.

Donald Rumsfeld resigning, according to the AP.
Update: Bush just announced that Robert Gates, the CIA Director under Bush 41, will replace Rumsfeld.

Holy Shiznits!

And in honor of him, One of Rumsfeld's favorite bands singing his favorite song.

OK, so I don't know if Rummy is big on German metal, but this song was on my rotation for level soundtracks in Quake and Unreal when I was big on FPS games. My wife always joked that when she heard this piece, she replaced the word Rammstein with Rumsfeld in her mind. It really makes for a post apocalyptic nightmare (Iraq?) when you read the lyrics that way...

Just for clarification, I think that Rummy is more incompetant and heartless idealist than sadist warmonger.

hiatus

2006-10-23T09:19:00.000-05:00

Back next week. Very busy.

Friday Primus

2006-10-13T16:08:00.000-05:00

Phantom Patriot

Les Claypool, Of Whales and Woe, Prawn Song Records

I searched long and hard to the right bit of Claypool for today. Would it be Primus, Frog Brigade, C2B3, or his solo project, Of Whales and Woe?

I thought about Tommy the Cat, almost went with it, but this new piece just kicks ass, and not all that is bass slapping is Primus.

North Korea

2006-10-09T11:25:00.000-05:00

Are we safer now?

Rude Pundit has it right

2006-10-07T10:30:00.000-05:00

The Rude One nails the whole prank meme that the far right is trying to push onto the media re Foley/Predatorgate. 10 ways to prank a child predator. My fave...

6. You can ask him to open a can of peanuts in the Rotunda. When cloth snakes come springing out and make him scream, he will still be a child predator.

Love it.

Friday Primus

2006-10-06T23:17:00.000-05:00

Southbound Pachyderm

Double meaning here...

The GOP is going down, with the double anchors of Foley and Hastert, while the original purpose of the song is to point out the plight of endangered species.

Update: Time Magazine agrees with me...

Sci Fi Friday

2006-10-06T22:09:00.000-05:00

If you didn't see Doctor Who, then, well, you are either unlucky, like my wife (stuck dogsitting in a house without cable), or you suck. I'm loving the new story arc. If you watched much of the original Doctor, you know that the Doctor was a friend of the crown, working with the UN organization called UNIT. Now the Doctor is an enemy of the UK, with the Torchwood Institute turning this on it's head.

And if you missed the Season 3 starter of Battlestar Galactica... Wow. Suicide bombers. Torture. Arrests in the night. An Abu Ghraib like prison No Habeus Corpus. No charges. Summary executions. Fundamentalists. Anybody working as security forces were called collaberators. Security forces having to live in secret. Puppet regimes where uncooperative presidents can be replaced. High placed government insiders working with the insurgency.

Every occupied territory from 1940s Paris to Iraq. No punches pulled. I bet the it won't make Pretzel night at the White house this year either.

Incredible. Americablog's thoughts here. Here's a good rundown if you missed it.

Primus, one day late

2006-09-30T10:36:00.000-05:00

Too Many Puppies

After this disheartening week, wherein we have lost our rights against cruel and inhumane treatment, and right to a trial by jury, this little ditty was the best I could come up with. What? You didn't think that those rules were passed just for terrorists, did you? If the government says you are a terrorist, you don't get a trial to prove them wrong. And they certainly aren't going to waterboard a guy who bombs abortion clinics, are they?

Why the hell is Comedy Central the best place to get news these days?

Update
Thanks to another law passed by congress this week, likely to be signed by the Chimperor, only the rich can protect their civil and constitutional rights against the government in a court of law. The rest of us have to hope to find a pro bono lawyer.

Friday Primus

2006-09-22T15:58:00.000-05:00

Laquer Head

Banned by MTV for it's drug content (and perhaps violence) despite being an anti-huffing song and video. Regardless, check that bass line.

ARRR! Ye be knowin what day it be!

2006-09-19T08:48:00.000-05:00

Multiblogurality

2006-09-15T21:07:00.000-05:00

From a post by Pam at the Blend,

Quite frankly, bloggers of color aren't always on the radar of the well-known bloggers either. Linking is powerful, and if it's concentrated among an inner circle of folks who all look the same, with few exceptions, it's going to be tough sledding to get in the mix.

From this ofay, Y level blogger, this rings true. I've been an outsider for ages. Being the kind of guy who didn't care for team sports (I can throw a mean spiral, and have saved a couple of ball games with good catches, but am too lazy to put any serious time in practicing) and had poor luck with girls, I was tagged as a fag. Ya have to love rural Ky. I grew up hating gay people until I met a few and realised that they weren't the hellbound monsters that they had been painted as. Just people.

Racism wasn't a big problem for me, even with some pretty racist people in my family, I had some pretty good role models in my very unracist mother and brother. Unlike most white guys in my town, my mother made way for me to be accepted in the black community, at least as a welcome outsider. I don't pretend to be completely non-racist. Nobody is. But I'm tryin real hard to be the shepherd.

My current blogroll ended up decently diverse, and not really by design. I like learning about people different from myself that share the goals of equal rights along with other liberal causes.

Although there are some Hispanic/Latin(o/a) bloggers in the list (mostly in group blogs), I lost a good one when Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez (La Queen Sucia) left Blogger for a private myspace account, and it looks like a squatter has moved in. I was going to keep her on the list, hoping that she would keep her old site open as a mirror, but it didn't fit in with her plans. I don't want to give some squatter running a crappy search engine any traffic, so I had to delist her.

If anyone can suggest a replacement with a tenth of her writing ability, I would appreciate it.

Thanks

Friday Primus

2006-09-15T10:29:00.000-05:00

So, I don't have any new pics of the cats, so I decided to try something new.

Wynona's Big Brown Beaver

Les Claypool is one of the greatest bass players ever.

Primus sucks

And the making of for shits and giggles.

Victory

2006-09-11T09:40:00.000-05:00

Just a quote from a friend, today.

"I won the War on "Terror" September 12, 2001."
Jami

Say it isn't so

2006-09-04T10:22:00.000-05:00

Conservationist, animal welfare activist, beloved entertainer Steve Irwin has been lost. Via Blah3, the story at news.com.au

Irwin, 44, was killed almost instantly when the stingray stabbed him in the heart with its poisonous 20cm barb as he snorkelled off Port Douglas, in north Queensland, yesterday morning.
His American-born wife, Terri, was trekking in Tasmania's Cradle Mountain and Lake St Clair National Park when the news broke of her husband's death and was last night being raced back to Queensland with her two children Bindi, 8, and Bob, 2.

We send our best to the Erwin family, especially Bindi and Bob, who we have watched as they grow up, especially amazed at Bindi's fearlessness. And to the extended family at Australia zoo.

Abuse of science

2006-08-13T18:09:00.000-05:00

I've been spending quite a bit of time over at Aetiology, a recent addition to my blogroll, where quite a bit of discussion has gone towards rebutting deniers of the Germ Theory of Disease, specificly deniers of the connection between HIV and AIDS. Rather than get into the details, if you have several free hours, you can go through the comments and see the differences between the two sides. Some even deny gravity. (Gravity has ignored the challenge, and has continued to act as before)

Does this kind of science abuse actually hurt anybody? Yes.

Should you go to read up on this discussion, you can learn quite a bit about AIDS and HIV, and why the vast and overwhelming majority of scientists agree that HIV causes AIDS. You will also see how one side responds with citations of peer reviewed research, logic, etc. The other responds with quote mining, attacks, rhetorical tricks. The connections to how creationists debate is only too clear.

I mention all this, in order to send you to to Scienceblog's 16th International AIDS Conference blog. I don't think it is in any way an official blog of the conference, but you should be able to read some pretty interesting posts. And the commentary will range from enlightening to infuriating.

Churchill on Iraq

2006-07-30T17:40:00.000-05:00

Bush often likes to be seen as a new Winston Churchill, a laughable prospect at best.

(image from Encyclopedia Britannica)

So what did the great statesman Churchill have to say about Iraq?

A few choice quotes from Joe Klein's piece in Time, taken from a letter from Churchill to PM David Lloyd George (August 1920).

"Week after week and month after month for a long time we shall have a continuance of this miserable, wasteful, sporadic warfare marked from time to time certainly by minor disasters and cuttings off of troops and agents, and very possibly attended by some very grave occurrence."

and

"Why are we compelled to go on pouring armies and treasure into these thankless deserts?"

Now ask yourself one simple question. Do either of these sound a damn bit like Bush?

Next question, two parter, a bit more complex... Why can't Bush learn from history? Especially that of the man he supposedly models himself after?

Found at Culture Freak.

I can do science, Me.

2006-07-30T13:45:00.000-05:00

(this post has almost nothing to do with Brainiac)

Jason Rosenhouse of EvolutionBlog has an excellent write up on how the differences between Intelligent Design hucksters respond to a scientific challenge as opposed to actual scientists, who approach the problem *gasp* scientifically! It is a bit of a dense read for the non-scientist, but stick with it. (this post has almost nothing to do with Brainiac)

Howard Stern in politics

2006-07-30T13:04:00.000-05:00

Several days ago, Gary Dell'Abate (BaBa Booey), said that he was going to vote for Ned Lamont. Atrios jokingly sugested that this was the only endorsement that Lamont would need (original link to DKos, where some of the response was positive). Most of the response was negative at Eschaton. Extremely negative. A few days later, Atrios mentioned that Howard Stern and crew were for Lamont (w/ link to C&L). There wasn't much to say, but it was still negative.

My thoughts on this... as posted on the Eschaton site...

Whaaaa! I don't like Stern! He's too popular! He's crude! I can't let anybody know that I giggle at fart jokes, or they might take away my liberal membership card!

Get over yourselves. The real deal here is that an insanely popular and successful broadcaster, with an audience of 4 million people and growing, is against Lieberman and Bush. Those listeners like him enough to pay for his show.

Sure, Stern's screwed over our side a few times, and he pulled for Bush in 2000. Why? Partly because Tipper Gore and Joe Lieberman were big on curtailing 1st ammendment rights of musicians, artists and broadcasters. With a bit of radio in my background, I had to push myself to vote Gore Lieberman in 2000 for that reason (not that Bush was ever an option).

Add on top of it all how badly Bush's years have screwed up the nation, this god awful war, the economy (which cuts down how many people can afford to buy into Sirius), Bush's stance on LGBT rights, abortion rights, free speech, screwing over NYC and the city's finest... Lieberman is always with Bush, regardless of what it does to the US.

One of the most influential people in the media is on our side this time, and you all can't deal with it because you don't like his style?

Stern's number one issue is the FCC. I agree with him (most of the time) and have to say, his Sirius show is better than ever.

Wonkabupdate

2006-07-30T08:50:00.000-05:00

Hola friends. I have been mostly absent from blogging for a bit. Things have been extremely hectic, with life put upside down. Great joys, with the birth of a wonderful baby boy to one of our favorite couples. Great sadness, with the death of a friend, colleague, and mentor. Basic burnout from trying to write article after article, with nothing left to put towards blogging.

In the meantime, I have updated the links sections with new blogs, webcomics, etc, and removed some that had gone completely silent, some that I culled as redundant. I have added several blogs from the scienceblog community, giving PZMyers some company.

Hopefully, in the next month, we will see a light at the end of the tunnel, and I will get to relax a bit.

Take care, friends.

AFA makes the baby Jesus cry.

2006-07-04T09:57:00.000-05:00

I got an AFA email this morning about an ongoing case regarding a memorial at a cemetary . You would be amazed at the ridiculous lies they trumped up . A quote from the "action alert."

In fact, an activist judge has already ordered the city to remove the cross from the memorial or face a fine of $5,000 per day. That case, now 17 years old, is still being fought in court.

If the ACLU wins, it will mean that every cross in every federal or state cemetery will eventually be removed. Don't let it happen! Under Section Three, Article Two of the U.S. Constitution Congress can pass a law prohibiting federal judges from having any jurisdiction over federal cemeteries.

If the ACLU is allowed to pursue this anti-Christian bigotry unchecked, the 9000 white crosses at Normandy Beach could soon disappear. The words on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington will be open for removal: "Here rests in honored glory an American soldier known but to God."

Doesn't the Bible say something about bearing false witness? Their email doesn't show the Mt. Soledad memorial. Why? It looks like stacked cinder blocks. It is ugly (at least in pictures). Nobody wants to protect something that is ugly. Its the same reason PETA fights to keep monkeys out of medical research, but doesn't blink at nude mice and rats.

The ACLU has released this statement:

The ACLU is not pursuing, nor has it ever pursued, the removal of religious symbols from personal gravestones. Personal gravestones are the choice of the family members, not the choice of the government. The ACLU celebrates this freedom to choose the religious symbol of your choice.

The ACLU doesn't want to bet rid of tombstones. That is insane! If someone wanted to get rid of cross tombstones, they would be challenged by the ACLU. They support freedom of religion, and for religion to be free from government interference.

On the other hand... this is what the fundies want the US to look like...

Michael Weiner (Savage) verifiably insane.

2006-06-13T17:21:00.000-05:00

OK, so there isn't anything new about Weiner being toys in the attic crazy...

but when you tell a Jewish man that people like him "brought about the Holocaust," you have crossed the line into the realm of WTFland. The nerve to say that a rich Jewish man who involves himself in politics is an acceptable reason for the slaughter of a race... well, it's pretty much what the Nazis had to say. Ironicly, Soros himself predicts this kind of insanity, saying that he contributes to the thought "that Jews rule the world."

MMFA documents Weiner's latest demonstration that he is a nutcase at the above link, as he rants against George Soros (I'm being lazy, and lots of these links go to different parts of the same wikipedia article). Why is Soros so hated by the right? Perhaps because he gives money to their opponants, when everybody knows that the ultra rich should stick together, and work to amass wealth for wealth's sake. I'd suspect that some of it dates back to his setting up scholarships for black South African students at the University of Cape Town. For some odd reason, some on the right wanted to protect Apartheid. cough cough. Dick Cheney. cough cough.

What did Weiner say?

You're the people -- people like you give Jews a bad name, Soros. It's people like you who brought about the Holocaust, Soros. I stand by those words. I stand by those words. I would debate you tomorrow, Soros, on any platform, anywhere. I'll debate you anywhere. It's people like you who brought about the Holocaust, Soros. That's why I need you to shut your mouth and understand the damage you're doing to this world and to the Jewish people, George Soros.

So when does Weiner get fitted for his straightjacket?