http://www.lettersfromtexas.com/2012/02/redistricting-status-in-texas-from.html

Somebody ought to look for the actual flag of the state before making comments like this.

Via Crooks and Liars, where an interesting video commentary can be seen.

Transcript from an online chat.

So far this has cost us several hours and probably a few customers.

Friend 1: We’re going to count birds  tomorrow.

Me: Where I come from, counting birds is very easy this time of year.

Friend 2: Because there are so many of them?

For those who follow this sort of thing, there is a slowly building “outcry” by some corners that Butterballs Turkeys are Halal. For those unfamiliar with the concept, it means that they are permissible for consumption by religious Muslims. Some people have found this offensive. The thing is, this is not the first time that the person behind this has tried to raise a firestorm about evil, nasty Halal. She did so almost exactly a year ago. At the time, her target was Cambell’s soup. I found the entire thing shocking, and wrote a little something.

…

When I was in elementary school, our bus driver was a religious Muslim named Ahmed. Ahmed may have been the best driver we had. One of our favorite things about Ahmed was that after a half-day on Sunday he’d let us stop at the Kosher pizza store on Amsterdam and get slices. This was a huge treat, since there was no Kosher pizza where we lived. When we were there, he’d always get a pie to take home. Like me, Ahmed couldn’t just walk into any pizza store. If his kids wanted pizza, or any food, he had to seek out special stores. Not Hallal stores – I don’t think there was any in the Bronx back then other than a butcher or two. No, Ahmad sought out Kosher. Under Hallal, Kosher certification is reliable. Not just for dairy, but meat as well. If a Muslim in New York wanted a pizza, his options were limited to the same places mine were. Not just Pizza. There may have been a Hallal burger joint somewhere, but I never knew of it.

…

Indeed, Hallal may be the *least* radical thing possible about traditional Islam. … It’s an example of people wanting to be able to eat what everyone else eats. If anything, it’s about assimilating into American culture, not setting apart. … This is the sort of “watering down” of Islam that the people who [hate] American culture hate. This is what they don’t *want*.

Campbell’s being Hallal is not a loss for a world slowly being “Islamafied”, but a victory for people who want to sit down and eat and be part of the same American food culture as their neighbors, their friends, and possibly even their grandfathers.

It seems to me that charging people to be part of clinical trials is the sort of corrupting influence that you want to keep away from people doing, or acting as if they are doing, scientific research. So regardless of whether the said clinic is or is not investigating a valuable therapy, it seems to me they should not be entitled to charge for it until its efficacy is demonstrated.

I note this partly as an example where money really has the capacity to corrupt science, and partly because the clinic is Texas-based, making it local science news.

Via quackometer. If you’re interested, check the Wikipedia article as well. The balance of the article is unfavorable toward Burzynski, but it is interesting to note that he has an MD, has been faculty at Baylor, and holds fourteen patents.

Pharyngula has more.

Click image to de-fuzz.

Via Eric Fischer on Flickr

Some Rights Reserved CC-BY

Saved for future reference. David Shankbone, CC-BY

This seems almost a tautology. Moments in history where this is not true are rare – they are the true tipping points.

The question is the nature of the status quo and of the power. Responsible power perceives itself as a balancing act between chaos on one hand, and perfidy on the other. Disruption or corruption, with a narrow space between.

How narrow? An interesting question, obviously dependent on many things.

But balanced on this narrow ledge, you will always find the ancien régime. Who else would you expect to see there?

Whatever the status quo, it defends itself, and very rarely fails completely. It is very risky for those outside the status quo to overturn it, and the effort often makes matters worse. But sometimes the situation becomes too ridiculous to put up with much longer.

Some dude once said:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

I think that might be worth it.

This blog is moving to http://init.planet3.org Please reset your bookmarks and feeds (http://init.planet3.org/feed/). That site and feed are now live. Updates about the shutdown of this site will appear on this article.

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10/16 Most of the archive successfully moved over to WordPress. The first few months don’t show up for some reason.

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Comments are welcome on the new site.

Recall that the original purpose here was to examine how scientific communication had failed and what to do about it. Planet3.0 is the result of that thinking. It’s my attempt not only to do something about it, but to encourage others to do something about it as well.

Trying to be both editor and reporter at a site with at least the intent of reaching a broader audience than this one has already been revealing. The nature of a site is, to some extent, as much about what it excludes as about what it includes. The blogger just writes whatever he pleases. The editor has to consider what will build the community and what will splinter it.

What’s more, for the first time ever, I have information on “background”; that is, a source really wanted to tell me something, on condition that I not explicitly tell the audience. It’s hard to explain why they would do that. I find it sort of weird, really. And now there is the question of whether to betray the source and my reputation, or to tell only half the story, or to let the story drop. This changes journalism from an exercise in nonfiction writing to an exercise in politics.

The editor’s temptation not to rile people is pretty palpable. I find myself suddenly inclined to “safe” stories. The key to making Planet3.0 work is to improve the quality of disagreement. So being a chickenshit won’t work.

On the other hand, I see plenty to criticize on both “sides”. This is also a problem! Criticizing mainstream science makes you a tool of the denial industry, and ultimately an instrument of the decline of civilization and the biosphere. Avoiding that is the whole point. Refusing to criticize it makes you a voice in a tame chorus, incapable of saying anything that isn’t explicitly in the interest

The point of view of the scientist is to advance the truth. It’s really hard under the circumstances when politics and science get tangled up. My guiding light will continue to be to get the maximum amount of truth visible to my intended audience. I think it may be the case that doing this will lose me more friends among my allies than it gains me respect among my enemies. This is a sign, I think, of how low we have sunk. I will have to brace myself for it.

Much as I do not want to give attention to the ridiculous obsessions of the bunkosphere, I also don’t think that making Planet3.0 into another also-ran pop science site is enough.

There are basically a bunch of approaches around today:

• tell everything that makes the future look scary, and nothing else
• tell everything that makes the people looking scared ridiculous, and nothing else
• tell all the above without choosing any of them
• science and engineering fandom, repeating press releases
• get into the thick of the policy, trivializing or ignoring science and engineering

If we’re going to get anywhere, we need to close the loop. The venue we need is not afraid to draw the big picture.

In It will continue as my base for half-baked speculations about economics and for introspection about how to make public communication work. News about the move will appear shortly.

Also, it looks like Rick Perry is no more serious about becoming US President than Sarah Palin.

I am ALMOST as far as this:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI_P3pxze5w]

But it is tempered by something clever somebody said at SXSWEco last week. Something like:

We don’t need a movement chasing down the White House to make them do the right thing.

We need a movement that is strong enough that the White House needs to chase it.