Month: August 2007
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Do We Care More for Animals than People?
Reading about the anger stoked by Karl Rove’s plan to go dove hunting reminded me of a recent oped by Vicki Haddock in the Chronicle, where she explores why animals sometimes receive more sympathy than people. A few anecdotes from the story are telling, and so totally California: …football star Michael Vick pleaded not guilty…
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Two conservative opinions on Global Warming from WaPo
Oddly enough, I agree with (most) of one of them. The attack on Newsweek’s article “The Truth About Deniers continues with a piece from Robert Samuelson in the WaPo. Samuelson, true to form, sees a hard problem and resorts to saying, “It’s hard, we can’t do anything about it!” His boring fatalism on any difficult…
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Skeptics’ Circle Number 67
The Giant Robot Edition of the Skeptics’ circle is up at the Bronze Blog. He has chosen a theme “cooler than ninjas, pirates, and pirate ninjas: Giant robots.” And he’s collected a great pool of fighters to defend against all kinds of woo. Good job Bronze Dog! Check it out.
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Who’s Afraid of Gay Incestuous Monkey Sex?
Sociologists are. Or so says Inside Higher Ed. Sociologists — especially those who study sexuality — have for years done research that was considered controversial or troublesome by politicians or deans. Many scholars are proud of following their research ideas where they lead — whatever others may think. But at a session Monday at the…
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Dawkins: The Enemies of Reason
It’s up on Google video – and embedded here. Enjoy! H/T Factition and Bad Science.
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Foxipedia
Remember how I said you shouldn’t source Wikipedia? Well here’s another reason. Fox News likes to edit it. Ha!
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Is the FDA responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths?
No. But the WSJ would like you to believe so. One libertarian talking point I hear a lot (Cato of course loves this story), and is repeatedly pushed by the WSJ, is that the market and consumers should decide the safety and efficacy of drugs – not dirty gov’mint bureaucrats who want nothing but death…
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How Alties read science (p values matter)
I couldn’t make it a week without talking again about Newstarget, home of Altie-med uber-crank Mike Adams. This time, they caught my eye with a surprising read of this large study of the antioxidant vitamins C and E. Jack Challem, writing for Newstarget, tells us the good, but hidden, news from this study. When Cook…
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Bring on that Army of Inspectors!
Our friends from the WSJ recently endowed us with this bit of wisdom: Unsafe products are a fact of life. The U.S. has created its own share of food- and product-safety scares over the years, from E. coli-tainted spinach to faulty Bridgestone Firestone tires. Even the best inspection regime, whether government or private, will miss…
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Prophetic words about the Iraq War
Via Pandagon we see that at least one administration official knew ahead of time the types of troubles we would encounter trying to occupy Iraq.