Tag-Archive for » obama «

April 28th, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

Something terrible is supposed to happen on my birthday in 2012.  I don’t put much stock in the predictions of the Mayan calendar, but the world oil shortfall that’s predicted to occur in 2012 probably won’t have many good consequences. We are completely unprepared to transition to a non-fossil fuel based economy, so I can understand why Obama opened so many new areas to offshore drilling.

I still think it was a bad decision.  The rig that sank in the Gulf of Mexico last week is just one of many environmental disasters caused by offshore drilling.  Considering all of the other problems the oceans are facing because of climate change, we should be working frantically to keep the ocean from dying, not doing more to destroy one of our most valuable natural resources.

April 03rd, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

The rapists who don’t get caught are smart, misogynist predators, not confused young men. (via Michael Alan Miller)

Teaching teenagers about healthy relationships reduces teen pregnancy. (via OPT) Unfortunately, about the only people who get a decent sex education in the US grow up on a farm.

Thamnolia vermicularis

Thamnolia vermicularis (whiteworm lichen) on Botany Photo of the Day

Obama gives the go-ahead for offshore drilling, reneging on his campaign promise in a bid to get the Republicans to vote for climate change legislation. First of all, a potential three years of oil is NOT worth that much environmental damage.  But perhaps more importantly, shouldn’t you wait until you’ve got the votes to hand over the prize?

The Jews were never slaves in Egypt (and they were probably Canaanites to boot).  But Happy Passover anyway!

The crazies on the right think returning your census form is like the jackets from the V‘s Peace Ambassadors, but still stop efforts to model the population instead.

Ovulation

Girls are outperforming boys in school and some white guys think we should change the system because of it.  Lindsay Beyerstein has a spot on analysis of the situation: “Maybe boys are acting out and underperforming because they’ve been taught from an early age that the world should change to suit them.”

A fantastic series of lectures from a Berkeley Biological Anthropology course taught by Terrence Deacon is available online (you can also get it through iTunesU).  I’ve been listening to it on my walk to school in the mornings.

From a beautiful series by Sophia Wallace

People we “rescued” from Haiti are currently prisoners of our royally fucked immigration system because of a paperwork problem.

I’m not going to have kids and I’m happy about it. Are you?

Five ways the world didn’t end when the Large Hadron Collider turned on.

Gay marriage in the British Cavalry. Romantic!

March 27th, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

Women in Afghanistan are setting themselves on fire in astonishing numbers.  Getting child marriage banned must be higher on our list of priorities.

Think you’re not going to get into grad school this year?  Toaster Sunshine has some words of wisdom for you.

I would like this bookshelf in my house

A review of acupuncture’s effect on heart rate variability. Conclusion: bullshit.

On comparing Obama to Napoleon.

Why I always wore my best underwear to ochem lab.

I’m glad Google has finally left China. I think more companies that work in China should recognize the human rights abuses they help perpetuate.

In defense of scientists.

Nancy Pelosi gets a lot of flack from the right and the left, but I think she’s actually pretty awesome.

What would a real Christian America look like? (Probably not an America that kicks its homeless & mentally ill in the face.)

Despite a court order and reams of scientific evidence, the FDA refuses to do its job.

Where we are with migraine research: still at something happens and the brainstem (or the CNS) doesn’t like it, but we have some new drug targets.

Early women scientists were awesome, but they sure had to put up with a lot.  This description of Wanda G. Bradshaw says a lot about the times – she isn’t even allowed interests separate from her husband.

The MSM contributed too much to the misinformation about health care reform by misrepresenting poll results.

Including transportation costs would go a long way towards realistically representing housing affordability: 69% of communities are considered affordable using the standard measure of 30% of income, but only 39% are affordable (less than 45% of income) if housing and transportation costs are considered.

High fructose corn syrup makes you gain more weight than a calorically equivalent amount of table sugar.  When are we going to stop subsidizing corn so much?

Zoos aren't just for fun & education: they're absolutely essential for conservation (and unbelievably cute pictures of baby animals).

December 20th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

More evidence that our drug policies are just wrong.

Evolving to eat meat helped humans live longer.

American evangelical influence is likely to cause Ugandan gays to be executed.

How did health care reform turn into a subsidy for health insurance companies?

It makes me livid when good ideas get shut down because politicians are more interested in support from corporations than their constituents.  Pharmaceutical companies freaking out about having to become more competitive are how we lost one great cost-saver in the health care bill this week.

HIV is a tricky bastard. A promising microbicide failed to work in large scale trials.

If we found other intelligent life, would we be able to communicate in any meaningful way? I recommend we start trying with octopuses.

A great story demonstrating that the pay gap is alive and well, sexism still has large effects in women’s lives, and that women are just as qualified as men.

I made these pancakes, but with whole wheat flour and extra buttermilk.  They will make any day better.  I promise.

Sexism makes you worse at math.

Bill Smith, untitle (calibreted arterial system), detail, 2006, mixed media

Bill Smith, untitle (calibreted arterial system), detail, 2006, mixed media

You aren’t funny, you’re an ass.

Dear Obama, please stop being such a failure.

September 12th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Oh so true snippets of fundie culture.

The Princeton Guide to Ecology just went to the top of my wishlist.  Yes, even above the lovely shoes I posted earlier this week.

“Government-run” health care has problems, but it still works better than private insurance:

Compared with the employer-coverage group, people in the Medicare group report fewer problems obtaining medical care, less financial hardship due to medical bills, and higher overall satisfaction with their coverage.

Conservatives freaked out about Obama’s speech encouraging kids to work hard in school, calling the action “unprecedented.”  I guess they weren’t paying attention during similar speeches given by Reagan and George H. Bush.  (Though perhaps if they’d paid better attention in school they would have developed some critical thinking skills and we wouldn’t have to deal with their craziness.)  I think the response of the right in this situation is very telling – they disagree with Obama, so they won’t listen to anything he says.  This is why Republicans have blocked health care reform at every turn, why Republicans have become the party of “no.”  I’m reminded of a child being told something she doesn’t want to hear who covers her ears and yells.

There isn’t much justice in our justice system.  How many innocent people have we executed?

The myth of overspending:

Whether families are spending more than they should according to some moral notion—consuming too much of the world’s resources or buying things they could easily live without—is not the issue at hand. These data give us no clue about the right amount of spending. But they give us powerful evidence that excessive consumption is not why families are going broke. There is no evidence of any “epidemic” of overspending—certainly nothing that could explain a 255 percent increase in the foreclosure rate, a 430 percent increase in the bankruptcy rolls, and a 570 percent increase in credit-card debt. A growing number of families are in terrible financial trouble, but despite the accusations, their frivolity is not to blame.

A lot of people claim that being queer is wrong because it isn’t “natural.” Weird how different cultures consider different sexualities “natural.”

Ecological/environmental refugees are becoming much more common.

A corporate sponsor of the Tea Party Express, many of whose members believe that health care reform is “a secret plot to kill old people”, is paying millions of dollars for killing old people.

A ton of feathers – why micro-inequities suck.

May 31st, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Lesbian stereotypes are so much fun to play with.

The conservatives on the Supreme Court think pregnancy discrimination is ok.  I don’t get it – shouldn’t they consider it double discrimination?

Fathers with daughters often become more liberal. I’d say that’s good evidence that current conservative policies hurt women.  Of course, you could also say that spending too much time with women makes men too “soft.”

Choosing Sotomayor was a pretty good political move.

A memorial day thought that made me cry.

PZ on the horrific crimes of the Irish Catholic Church: Can we stop equating religion and morality now? They never seem to have much to do with one another.

This woman deserves to go to jail for murder.  And maybe her pastor, too.

Race and terrorism.

The Sri Lankan government has been leveling all sorts of terrible accusations against the Tamil Tigers.  Looks like the pot was calling the kettle black.

How to get straight couples to understand why the right to marry is important.

The Christian god isn’t the only real god according to the Bible.  He just thinks he’s better.

Delara Darabi – if there had been more news coverage in the West, she may have lived.

To keep you up at night.

I think The Onion does a good job summarizing my views so far on the Obama Presidency:  Obama Revises Campaign Promise Of ‘Change’ To ‘Relatively Minor Readjustments In Certain Favorable Policy Areas’

April 04th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

I loved Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno on the sex lives of bugs.  Now she’s got a marine version!

Artificial intelligence and robots are getting better faster and faster.  This robot has made unique scientific discoveries – from formulating the hypotheses to running experiments. This robot has a biological brain and can learn.

On a related note, computers are doing more and more of the proofs in mathematics.

Misinformation is dangerous.  Jenny McCarthy is at least indirectly responsible for the deaths of 142 people due to the lies she spreads about vaccinations.

Worried about shit grades keeping you out of college?  Worry no more if you can pay in full for college!

Dr. Isis writes about the DREAM Act and responds to people who accuse illegal immigrants of stealing our middle class lifestyle:

I would like to apologize on behalf of immigrants everywhere to the American middle class for stealing their jobs.  Especially the investment bankers, attorneys, physicians, research scientists, and CEOs who have recently lost their jobs to illegal immigrants.

Why Obama should consider legalizing marijuana.

Fantastic advice on being an ally at Little Lambs Eat Ivy.

This guy says he’s got the joy of the lord, but he’s just crazy or scamming people (wait for the sales pitch at the end) or crazy and scamming people.  I wonder if the lord has rewarded this woman with his joy after she killed her son for him?  Wouldn’t it be great if religious people applied the “outsider test” to their own religions?

Iraq is about to execute a lot of people for “gay crimes,” and it looks like they’re implementing the death penalty for anything and everything lately. via 3QD

Things like this make me embarrassed for our country.  No wonder the British Ecological Society is worried about opposition in the US to action on climate change.

Spain is prosecuting Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, Douglas Feith, William Haynes, John Yoo, and Jay Bybee for torture at Guantanamo. I only wish we were doing it ourselves.

March 28th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

What gender expectations do to people.

Settlers of Catan really is the perfect board game.  I should buy my own soon.

China refuses to participate in an important awareness raising climate change action in order to celebrate “Serf Liberation Day” – when the Dalai Lama was kicked out of Tibet. Oh propaganda.

If the Obama Administration does go ahead and officially identify climate change as a threat to public health, the US will have to take more action on the issue.  Unfortunately, we’ve got a lot of idiots in office who may make significant changes very very difficult.

There are so many awesome education tools and resources on the internet.  Youtube EDU is my new favorite resource. (Did you just call me a nerd for watching lectures on youtube?  Because I think this is way nerdier.)  Also, I think writing/editing/correcting wikipedia entries for classes is something that should be done more often – especially in grad classes.

One & two freaking awesome data visualizations from Flowing Data.

Just two recent examples of sexism in lower and higher education.

Many people think we should deport all of our illegal immigrants and support immigration raids (which target legal immigrants, too).  But they don’t understand what those immigration raids do.  They make a joke of our legal system, are unnecessarily cruel, and hurt EVERYONE in the community.

PZ has an awesome post up about the chronic underfunding of our nation’s universities and an important admonition for voters:

Why do you keep electing cretins to your legislatures who despise the “intellectual elite”, who think being smart is a sin, who are so short-sighted that they care nothing for investing in strengthening the country in ways that take ten or more years to pay off? Stop it! Your representatives should be people who value education enough to commit to at least maintaining the current meager level of funding, but instead we get chains of ignoramuses who want to demolish the universities…and simultaneously want to control them to support their favorite ideological nonsense, via “academic freedom” bills. This is also a long-term goal: we have to work to restore our government to some level of sanity. It’s been the domain of fools and thieves for far too long.

March 20th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

Science was not taken very seriously at all by the Bush administration, and Obama is working hard to restore scientific integrity in the executive branch.  Last week, the White House issued a memorandum as part of its effort to correct the ignorance and manipulation of science to fit ideological goals.  It stated that

Political officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions.  If scientific and technological information is developed and used by the Federal Government, it should ordinarily be made available to the public.  To the extent permitted by law, there should be transparency in the preparation, identification, and use of scientific and technological information in policymaking.  The selection of scientists and technology professionals for positions in the executive branch should be based on their scientific and technological knowledge, credentials, experience, and integrity.

I’m so glad that our country is moving in the right direction on this issue, but like EcoTone points out

This memo should be reassuring to the scientific community. Yet the fact that it was necessary to explicitly state these seemingly obvious expectations is disconcerting.

We have a lot of work to do.  It isn’t just isolated species or “sensitive” animals like frogs and salamanders that will go extinct, it’s likely that climate change will render our ecosystems unrecognizable.  An administration that listens to what scientists have to say about challenges like climate change is necessary.

January 29th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona
Coffea lemblinii

Coffea lemblinii

This week’s extinct plant was a relative of coffee.  Coffea lemblinii sounds like it was lovely plant.  According to wikipedia, it was a small, very branched shrub with white flowers growing in the forest understory.  I wonder if its fruits were as tasty as those of its more familiar cousin C. arabica?

You’d think that with the disappearance of so many species, we’d be doing more to protect them.  But, at least in America, we’ve been doing quite a lot to destroy species.  In his last 100 days in office, Bush pushed through a lot of environmentally UN-friendly decisions.  Why don’t you write our new and improved president and suggest he undo those dangerous changes?