Serving the people, even the assholes

I don't care who you are or what you believe. This is hilarious.

Rove to be indicted?

I doubt it. Haven't we been here before? But if you like the speculation here you go. Rove's new position outside the limelight and back behind the scenes might support the notion...or it could be all talk.

Just for reference though...another "policy advisor", Claude Allen stepped down around Feb 9th. He was ultimately arrested March 9th. So we can float the idea about for a month or two. Maybe given the way Fitzpat's been taking his sweet time we can make it 2-3. Then the trial gets scheduled to start next year, and it drags out... It's way to early to put money on this, but I'm smelling a December 2008 presidential pardon.

('Cause honestly, unless he becomes popular again, what's Bush got to lose at that point? He's about down to the die-hard life-long fans already.)

Fox News Poll

Look to your left, look to your right. Two out of the three of you don't like George Bush. It's pretty crazy to see that in a Fox News Poll. But then, it's a pretty crazy poll

Nearly half the of the public says their financial situation is "excellent" (10 percent) or "good" (36 percent), while just over half rate their situation as "only fair" (35 percent) or "poor" (17 percent).

"It is worth noting that perception of how well people are doing are tied directly to their income," comments Gorman. "Most of those making $75,000 per year are positive, while most of those making less than $50,000 are negative. Those between %50,000 and $75,000 are just about evenly split."

Explain that again? If people making 50-75k were even-steven, and under 50k earners voted bad and over 75k earners voted good....then how did they get "almost half" to vote good or excellent? Did they conduct the survey in the Hamptons?

Just a reminder folks, the 2005 median household income was 44,389. A solid majority in the Fox news poll should have been under 50k. And that's assuming Gorman's referring to household incomes, not personal incomes. It only gets further out of whack if he meant personal income.


UPDATE: My point wasn't so much that Fox had a bad survey so much as their analysis is a bit skewed. Wierd things happen when you divy up data and apply statistics- and they get even wierder if people have a particular outcome they was to press.

But I didn't scratch the tip of the iceberg on this poll. Steve got a bit further. Turns out it's a Republican push poll. Fair and balanced? Try this question:

"Do you think illegal immigrants from Mexico should be given special treatment and allowed to jump in front of immigrants from other countries that want to come to the United States legally, or not?

Hmm. Do you think a news organization should be giving special treatment to a Republican talking point and not only promoting it on air, but actually conducting push polls to directly influence the people it calls?

Wish this wasn't so easy to predict...

(written about a week and a half ago. I imagine I had a good reason for not posting it then, but I've forgotten what it was...)

So now that the Senate Intel committee isn't going to investigate the wiretapping issue, Gonzales can open up a little more about the real deal.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggested for the first time Thursday that a president might have the legal authority to order wiretapping without a warrant on communications between Americans that occur exclusively within the United States

Even if you were dumb enough not to see this coming, you should be able to read between the lines and recognize that's Gonzales for "We're already tapping domestic calls." All of sudden more conservatives with brains are starting to take notice. Here's Lee at Right-thinking:

I’ll say this: there is absolutely no way, under any circumstances, you can consider yourself a conservative (someone who believes in the principle of limited government) and support this type of operation. End of story. You can be a Republican, but you can’t be a conservative.

Welcome to the party Lee. George Will is a conservative who's been arguing that for a while. Probably in the Republican camp is Andrew McCarthy. This was his rebuttal to George Will.

Will can suggest otherwise only by misrepresenting the program as "warrantless surveillance...targeting American citizens on American soil." In fact, the program targets al Qaeda, a foreign terrorist organization with which we are at war, and which is energetically working (it tells us unabashedly) toward a strike against our homeland which would dwarf the carnage of 9/11. The program targets, moreover, only international communications by this foreign enemy, some of which cross U.S. borders.

Andrew says: Oops, sorry George. I was just, you know, hacking.

Who could have predicted the Administration would both break the law and mislead people about how they did it? (ok fine, I did) To the last vestiges of faithful and foolish who won't believe the administration can do wrong without concrete proof (or even then)...isn't it a good thing no one's been allowed to investigate? To Lee and Will, there's only one recourse: congressional Democrat subpoena power in 2007. Republicans aren't going to clean this up themselves.

Grad student fortune cookies

Lots of times grad school really sucks. I'll spare you the details. Those days when I know I'll be stuck late at work, I make sure to take a break for dinner. Usually that means Chineese food. Today I had Chineese, and I'd like to share my fortune with you:

A handful of patience is worth more than a bushel of brains

Thanks cookie. That would have been a whole lot more useful about 5 years ago.

Immigration and Korean Walls?

I haven't said much about immigration because (despite the fact that Americans are a minority among the researchers I work with) I haven't thought about it much. WaPo's Krautkammer argues for a wall along the border. I'm not opposed to a wall, but do have to call foul when he says this:

Can't be done? Israel's border fence has been extraordinarily successful in keeping out potential infiltrators who are far more determined than mere immigrants. Nor have very many North Koreans crossed into South Korea in the past 50 years.

Right. Now I don't want to give anyone bright ideas...but I'm pretty certain it's not the wall that keeps the Koreans apart, but the landmine fields. Please no one tell Lou Dobbs.

Is there a limit to power or stupidity?

Yeah, I'm late to the game in talking about Sy Hersh's article on US interests in Iran. Yeah it's long, but it's pretty informative.

The money paragraph:

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was “absolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bomb” if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do “what no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,” and “that saving Iran is going to be his legacy.”

So I don't know where to start on this one. First of all, the president should content himself with Iraq as his legacy. When the most overtly Christian president of recent times succeeds in starting 3 wars with 3 Islamic governments, that's not a legacy, that's the crusades. And the crusades went on and on and on. That will become Bush's legacy. War for the next several decades. Such an event could spread thorough all of the Islamic nations and maybe the Christian ones too. Hopefully that consultant's just a hater with a grudge, because it really sounds like Bush is developing a martyr complex and feels he has nothing left to lose.

Worse is the talk of use of nuclear weapons:

The attention given to the nuclear option has created serious misgivings inside the offices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he added, and some officers have talked about resigning. Late this winter, the Joint Chiefs of Staff sought to remove the nuclear option from the evolving war plans for Iran—without success, the former intelligence official said. “The White House said, ‘Why are you challenging this? The option came from you.’

As rankly hippocritical as it is to say "we can have nukes, but you can't because you're crazy and we don't trust you know to use them", how much worse is it to follow that statement up with "and if you try to get them we'll nuke you."? That's like, unlimited stupidty.

There's still some hope:

The matter may soon reach a decisive point, he said, because the Joint Chiefs had agreed to give President Bush a formal recommendation stating that they are strongly opposed to considering the nuclear option for Iran. “The internal debate on this has hardened in recent weeks,” the adviser said. “And, if senior Pentagon officers express their opposition to the use of offensive nuclear weapons, then it will never happen.”

So let's hope that's true. I'm not sure if the President has authority to launch nukes based on his personal convictions, but I bet he thinks he does. And then the question becomes whether the military would disobey a direct order. Scary stuff.

Stray thoughts on Civil War

I think there's a nugget of wisdom somewhere in comparing and contrasting the situation in Iraq to the civil war in Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, I can't seem to distill it into a cohesive point. So today you get information with no analysis: you come to your own conclusions.

Like Iraq, the war waged by the Tamil Tigers against the government of Sri Lanka also has overtones of ethnic genocide and terrorism. The Tigers started as a criminal/terrorist organization in the 1970's and worked their way up to a warring army with territorial control of the northern portions of the island in the 80's and 90's, and with the ceasefire a few years ago, they are now active as a political party. Some 60,000 people died over the course of the 20 years of the war (if this site can be trusted) : a long, slow war of attrition, with monthly death rates lower than current Iraqi figures.

Anyway, it's something to think about. At the minimum, when the news mentions "possible civil war", don't be expecting the Battle of Gettyburg. Expect something more like Sri Lanka.

Chick Musicians Against Bush?

I love the new song Not Ready to Make Nice, by the Dixie Chicks. It struck me as a smidge bitter, but I actually find it more moving because of the unvarnished emotional content. I went so far as to claim it might make a good gift for a Bush-hater. I missed the boat on that though. Hard-core Bush haters want the new Pink/Indigo Girls song. Surf on over to Eschaton for a listen.

Dear Mr President:

What kind of father would take his own daughter's rights away
And what kind of father might hate his own daughter if she were gay
I can only imagine what the first lady has to say
You've come a long way from whiskey and cocaine

Let me tell you bout hard work
Minimum wage with a baby on the way

You don't know nothing bout hard work

Not musically as good as Galileo or Romeo and Juliet, but grabs your attention just the same. If nothing else, it shows how genteel the Dixie Chicks have been.

You can also check Lucky Dawg News (see disclaimer below first) for the full lyrics and one Rightie's take on the song.

(Disclaimer: Lucky Dawg News might or might not be within the exposure limits of some readers. The previous post at Lucky Dawg is "Sharon Stone is a real degenerate pig- STONE ADVOCATES ORAL SEX". Both the posts and the comments there are a little...charged. Don't blame me if you feel dirty, I warned you.)

UPDATE: I'd be remiss if I didn't also link to this backstory by Billboard. Link credit to Lucky Dawg News. I hope Pink and her father can keep the peace.

Have I heard this before?

Midterm elections coming soon and Republican hawks are pushing for military action against an Arab nation developing WMDs...do you think? Nah. Nevermind.

What city are you?

This one comes as no surprise. And I didn't even specify the NorthEast. The little horoscope frightens me some.

Thanks to Rebecca for the link.

You Are Boston

Both modern and old school, you never forget your roots. Well educated and a little snobby, you demand the best. And quite frankly, you think you are the best. Famous people from the Boston area: Conan O'Brien, Ben Affleck, New Kids on the Block

What American City Are You?

BBC news: from the mouths of babes

Somehow BBC news manages to write things that wouldn't appear in the US. I don't mean torture news or the Downing St memo, I mean really controvesial stuff. For instance, this piece: "Co-habitating makes women fatter". The blunt wording alone ensures that it wasn't published in the US. Pretty direct, huh? Try this:

Another study of 9,043 adults in the US found marriage itself led to women putting on weight, and moving out of marriage was linked to weight loss in women.

I guess this is a good time to point out that someone in the US thought this might be worthy of study. (A 9000 person study takes some cash too. I'd love to see the grant proposal.) Let's see what they conclude:

The authors suggested this was caused by more structured eating and less time for exercise within marriage.

Nice try US authors. Structured eating makes you gain weight...but only for women and not for men. Suuure. The Brits are a little more forthcoming, and ultimately more constructive. Here's Dr Frankie Phillips of the British Dietetic Association:

She said: "If women are finding themselves struggling with weight after moving in together, portion sizes would be one of the first things to address.

"On average men require more energy (calories) per day than women, and so having equal portion sizes could mean that women are eating too much."

Probably even among the Brits though, a man would have had to think twice before uttering those last 8 words. I guess Frankie has some constructive advice, but eating less is a step backwards for feminist equality. Just remember ladies, equal portions means equal weight.

Often the best source of truth in the US comes from stand-up comics, one of whom described this same phenomenon as: "The race is over, take off the uniform." I forget which comic it was, but BBC being BBC, I bet they would have quoted him if they'd heard it.

Almost too easy...

Let's play fill in the blanks:

Guys like [OMITTED] don't take a public demotion -- even if they retain real power -- unless they are under tremendous internal pressure. [OMITTED] is failing in [OMITTED] and knows that if it does not radically revise the tenor of its campaign it will continue to lose whatever credibility it started with when it led the charge [OMITTED]. Like any Western political party with declining poll numbers, it hopes that if it switches horses it will recover squandered popularity. Whether [OMITTED] in fact remains in charge or not is immaterial -- this public demotion is powerful evidence that [OMITTED] is not winning a battle that it previously defined as the center of its campaign.

Written by TigerHawk April 4th. Here's the original, but it almost sounds like he's talking about this guy. It's pretty much against Tiger's creed to say anything bad about Republicans. He's so consistently in favor of Republican talking points, you'd think he's on the payroll. He's a good writer too, so if he isn't paid, he should be. Anyway, my pet conspiracy theory is that he still had this on the brain when he wrote the post, but was contractually obligated not to talk about it.

Apocalypse Now?

Check out these CNN headlines: just read them one-by-one.

Don't they have a horrible kind of a otherworldly apocalyptic feel to them? The only sign of normalcy here is Eminem's break-up. (The particularly crazy-looking photo of violent Congressperson McKinney is just icing on the cake.)

Naturally, the first thing I did was check the rapture index (156 by the way).

And since I can’t resist, here’s another apocalypse site, this one skeptical and witty.

And to show I really can’t resist, here’s the above photo in negative. Repent now.

Eschatological ecologists

Sullivan links to a scary Drudge article and discusses a new type of apocalyptic aficionado, the ecologist. The link itself is a bit sensationalized and may be a hatchet-job. One rebuttal is written here. For those who don't like links, a scientist (appears to be an evolutionary biologist?) named Pianka gives doomsday speeches predicting the end the world as we know it (wiped out by ebola). He was reffered to the Dept of Homeland Security for investigation of his pro-doomsday rhetoric by a fellow with questionable motivations himself. My thoughts on the matter:

1: Even assuming this Pianka is a horrible person who wishes an epidemic would occur, that doesn't mean he's likely to personally bring it about. Some scientists do have a different perspective on things. I met a paleobotanist (who btw, looked nothing like Laura Dern in Jurassic Park) on a train once. She wasn't at all concerned with ecology. In her view, the earth has been through numerous periods of mass extinction, and it's just one of those things. I don't believe she advocates human extinction, but it's still interesting for somone who makes a living studying plants to not care about the loss of current plant species. Just the same, there's a big difference between not caring and burning down rainforests herself.
2: What separates doomsday epidemiologists from other eschatological types is that the epidemiologists don't believe they will be among the chosen few to be elevated or to survive. They know they run the same risks as everyone else. That makes a big difference. Knowing it's their ass too makes them less likely to try to bring the apocalypse, not more likely. You might even expect them to warn others and try to heighten awareness.

3: A final nit-pick. Pianka claims it will be years before AIDs decimates the human population. The term decimate comes from a practice among Roman soldiers in which one out of ten were killed for cowardly behavior. AIDs already decimates Africa. In some countries over 20% of the population is afflicted with this terminal disease. It's a bad scene.

But in the context of Pianka's talk, decimation is nothing more than a speed bump. A 90% fatality rate, on the other hand, would be if you decimated a population, then decimated what was left, then another decimation, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another. If I honestly thought something like that was going to happen in my lifetime, yeah, I'd probably be outspoken about it too.

I don't oppose sending an agent by to inquire what viruses Pianka might stock in his his lab (I don't object to this practice in general), but if they're the garden variety laboratory research viruses, Pianka's been slandered. No one's suggested that the FBI go search the premises of RaptureWatch or specifically prohibited Rapture believers from having nuclear launch codes.

Global warming engineering

Reading this article gives yet one more data point in global warming. We really shouldn't need more data by this point.

For me it really hit home that global warming was real when I learned that throughout the early 1900's the Cornell Hockey team used to play a full season of ice hockey on Lake Cayuga. This is the same lake that rarely froze over for the four years I was there. On one hand there's a full season of hockey on >6 inches of ice, on the other hand there's an unfrozen lake. That's a pretty striking difference. (To those few left in denial: it might be the lake is polluted, or the waste heat from the power plant could keep the whole lake thawed. You're welcome to do the math.) (Of course, if you're in the "global warming is unfounded" camp, math probably isn't your bag.)

Anyway, I wanted to point out a few thoughts. First, increased heat from loss of reflection at the poles is a pretty big deal, however it is mitigated some by the angle of the Earth and the fact that the poles don't get that much light intensity to begin with.

Second, just tossing this out as a cheap and easy start, we could recover some reflection by requiring all new pavement (hundreds of square miles annually) be white instead of black. Maybe not a huge effect compared to melting poles, but it's cheap, easy and in our control.

One scientist's take on Intelligent Design arguments

I may have gotten off to a bad foot with DarkSyde. That tends to happen when you call people stupid (living up to my pseudonym yesterday, I guess). I think there's an important point here, so I'll try again (hopefully more persuasive and less snide). To preface this post, yes, I'm a scientist and work with DNA everyday, no, I'm not an evolutionary biologist, who would presumably be an expert on ID issues.

My issue with Intelligent Design theorists (henceforth IDers) is not their underlying claim that some superior being designed life. I encourage people to believe what they will there, and don't have a horse in that race. What concerns me abut IDers is their pet theory requires them to attempt to refute scientifically characterized phenomena with scientific misrepresentations. It bothers me that they try to discredit valid results obtained by the scientific method with philosphical hand-waving arguments devoid of scientific merit. The process and methodolgy of their argument is scientifically unsound, and worse: if such arguments are permitted to count as science without following the scientific method, then all science suffers a loss of credibility. Already we're at the point where people latch onto any excuse to replace scientific judgements with what they want to believe (try this one). Science needs to stick to its objective and pre-defined standards.

The particular claim in question yesterday, that mutations cannot add function is a difficult hypothesis to prove scientifically (difficult to show there is no mutation that adds functionality). However it is easy to disprove (one must only find a single mutation that adds functionality). And we've disproved it, repeatedly. Not in a hypothetical maner, but in concrete empirical reality. That's proof. If someone argues that the moon is made of Swiss cheese, I don't argue back that the moon cannot be made of cheese because it would have been eaten by space hamptsers, I march the person down to the Smithsonian and show them the rocks we lifted off the moon. If someone argues that genetic information cannot be added through mutation and selection, I march them down to a lab that has created novel proteins and explain how they did it through a mutation and selection process called "directed evolution". Concrete scentific evidence.

What I wouldn't do, is reduce the debate to a thought-experiment. Because that's not how you find scientific reality. Also that reduction implicitly denigrates the scientific merit of actual experiments.

My objection to ID is not that their premise is wrong. It's that none of their claims are scientifically proven, some of their claims are scientifically disproven, their methods are not scientifically valid, and frankly most IDers don't have the background to truly comprehend what they're discussing. Viral integration, homologous recombination, alternate splicing, and reintegration of pseudogenes all add genetic information where none was before. Unfortunately the majority of scientists aren't interested in explaining these phenomenon to the ID crowd (beacuase they're too occupied to argue with the uninformed).

So my question to those who would argue against ID talking points, is if you're going to provide a counter-example, then why not illustrate how we've already accomplished that which IDers claim is impossible? Wouldn't that be better than conceeding how much we supposedly don't know and participating in a pseudo-science defense that itself amounts to a bastardization of scientific methods?

I'll agree with DarkSyde's point that scientific validity is not always enough to persuade the courts or society. That's why Galileo died in prison and witches were burned at the stake. But unlike popular societal beliefs, scientific facts are based on natural laws and tend to stand the test of time. That's why Galileo ultimately got a Papal pardon and the garden variety heretic did not. So maybe scientific fact is insufficient in the political battle being waged, but when science is already on your side there's no excuse to actively diminish it in the course of your argument. I would hope we could at least agree on that.

Stupid arguments for and against Intelligent Design

Slumming it at Daily Kos today. Found possibly the most obtuse argument against intelligent design that I've ever read.

If you read creationist literature or get to know their followers, it doesn't take long before one of them will tell you with absolute confidence that 'natural selection/mutation cannot increase genetic information'. It's an intimidating sounding claim. You probably don't know the definition of 'information' and the creationist isn't about to offer one. Most likely because s/he doesn't have the faintest clue what it would be. But it's actually an easy claim to counter because it's like saying you can only reduce the magnitude of a number with arithmetic.

Simply put, if a mutation decreases genetic information, then reversing that mutation, a so-called back mutation, will increase the information by the same amount. This flatly falsifies the claim that all mutations decrease genetic information without anyone having to so much as define what genetic information means. It's true for any metric of genetic information that follows well defined rules. See the trivial proof in comments.

Or, you could say that protein engineers use directed evolution to improve protein function all the time. You know, whichever strikes you as more reliable and easier to explain.

DarkSyde goes on to say:

We deal with informational conceptually and intuitively. It's one of those things we can do without knowing how we do it. Tissues, organs cells, genes, and words make up larger structures the way components make up a circuit. It's not just the presence of the components, but how they're wired together that makes the device operate as it does. Good luck measuring any of those with a metric of any kind.

I'll let the circuit analogy slide, because it has a smidge of validity. However there are thousands of metrics to be measured in cells. There are thousands that have been measured. There is a wealth of knowledge on the subject, that obviously isn't understood by DarkSyde . It doesn't require luck to measure cellular interactions. It requires a background in molecular biology and good lab techniques.

This is the problem with intelligent design becoming a political issue. Now we have the ignorant arguing with the stupid. (Take your pick for who is who.)

The reality of evolution doesn't hinge on political views, thought exercises, or "the elementary topological concept of a set". It hinges on experimental results and the scientific method. I know you're trying to help, but please stop now.

Clever spyware

I use Ad-Aware to cut down on the amount of spyware and malware my computer picks up. In the past few weeks every time I try to run Ad-Aware my computer spontaneously reboots. Maybe there's just a glicth in the software...but more likely something put a glitch there.