Mike the Mad Biologist

Don't Know Much About Palintology

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 10:03:59 -0500

Richard Cohen recently wrote that he would like to see an "Institute for the Study of Sarah Palin" receive funding. It's a pretty good piece (which just goes to show that even the dumbest squirrel can occasionally find a nut). But I do have one quibble. Cohen writes (italics mine):

On the other hand, someone else will point out that the very week Palin is promoting her book, the current president is abroad attending meetings in Asia, including a visit with our Chinese bankers. Could those who fault Barack Obama for being callow and inexperienced imagine Palin meeting with the Chinese or, for that matter, conducting a protracted policy review about Afghanistan?

To which the Mad Biologist answers:

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Friday Links

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 16:33:21 -0500

Happy Friday. Lotsa links for your weekend. Science:

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The Republican Establishment Is Absolutely Nuts

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:22:22 -0500

Seriously. This isn't a problem of the 'fringe' of the party. By way of Oliver Willis, look at what the Layfayette County Republican Central Committee (of Missouri) has erected on a billboard:

This isn't a couple of guys or a crazy businessman--it's an official division of the Republican Party.

"Prepare for war?" Because Obama might raise the amount paid on income above $250,000 by four percentage points? Or pass a healthcare bill that's weaker than a majority of American would like (or realize)? I also like how the sign capitalizes "Beast", when using Grover Norquist's phrase "starve the beast": very ominous and biblical.

And while we're on the subject of starving the beast, if you guys really believe this horseshit, how about you dumbass motherfuckers give back the $16,219,350 Lafayette county has received from the ARRA?

It really is no different than creationism: they spout mindless catechisms that are repeated over and over, even though they make no sense. It also resembles creationism in that any sort of process doesn't matter--there is a predetermined outcome, and inconsistencies in reaching those outcomes don't matter. Because if a Democrat had said in response to Little Lord Pontchartrain's disastrous policies and his re-election, "If we can't get change through the ballot, we'll use the bullet"--which is exactly what that sign means--they would have been called traitors.

The Republican party is out of its collective fucking mind.

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Misinterpreting the Solution to the Manure Crisis and the Global Warming Problem...

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 10:23:12 -0500

...and how Levitt and Dubner fail to see that the Manure problem was not 'solved', only turned into a new problem that will also require wrenching change. First, the Great Manure Crisis of the late nineteenth century:

The standard horsecar, which seated twenty, was drawn by a pair of roans and ran sixteen hours a day. Each horse could work only a four-hour shift, so operating a single car required at least eight animals. Additional horses were needed if the route ran up a grade, or if the weather was hot. Horses were also employed to transport goods; as the amount of freight arriving at the city's railroad terminals increased, so, too, did the number of horses needed to distribute it along local streets. By 1880, there were at least a hundred and fifty thousand horses living in New York, and probably a great many more. Each one relieved itself of, on average, twenty-two pounds of manure a day, meaning that the city's production of horse droppings ran to at least forty-five thousand tons a month. George Waring, Jr., who served as the city's Street Cleaning Commissioner, described Manhattan as stinking "with the emanations of putrefying organic matter."

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Framing the Not-So-Obvious Answer, Stimulus, Theopolitical Conservatism, and the Power of Empowered Stupidity

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 10:00:47 -0500

At TPM, Josh Marshall asks an "obvious" 'framing' question about the ARRA:

Why was the Stimulus Bill called the 'stimulus bill' and not a 'jobs bill'?

To which Atrios responds with a "Pretty Obvious Answer":

Because for whatever reason, economist lingo is what people in the Obama administration are comfortable with.

I actually don't think that has much to do with it at all. I can't be certain, but someone in the Hopey Changey administration must have thought of calling the stimulus bill a "jobs bill" (if nobody did, then these guys are a lot dumber than most people think they are). They probably decided against calling the ARRA a jobs bill because they thought that would be worse than calling it a stimulus bill.

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Wednesday Links

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:31:13 -0500

Halfway through the week. Some links for you. Science:

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When Woo-ism Meets Cancer Prevention

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:14:57 -0500

Friday, the NY Times described the relatively paltry efforts in cancer prevention, compared to those for heart disease. Not that researchers haven't been busy figuring out how to prevent various cancers:

Then, in 1999, he had a chance to do another breast cancer prevention trial, this time of an osteoporosis drug, raloxifene, or Evista, which did not have the cancer drug taint. It was to be compared with tamoxifen.
The $110 million study, involving 19,000 women, ended in 2006. The two drugs were found to be equally effective in preventing breast cancer, but with raloxifene there was no excess uterine cancer and the clotting risk was 30 percent less.

"It was a spectacular clinical trial," Dr. Vogel said. But, he added, "Once again, the world met the result with a shrug and a harrumph."

Mind you, we're talking about lowering breast cancer probabilities from twenty percent to ten percent: this isn't some ridiculously low probability event that becomes a ridiculously low probability event divided by two. So what gives? I think it's patient fear:

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What Is the Heritability of Being an A--hole?

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:05:00 -0500

I've finished reading Richard Nisbett's
Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count, which is a wonderful counterargument to Charles Murray's (and others') genetic conservatism (my phrase, not Nisbett's): intelligence, typically ascertain using IQ, is highly heritable, so there's little point in spending excessively (whatever that means) on educating most people, since it won't make a difference.

Nisbett demolishes this argument in detail (I've also touched on some of these issues in the context of obesity), so I won't rehash the book here, except to note that when one closely examines the adopted twin studies often used to support the genetic conservatism argument, they are really weak and unduly overemphasize the role of (additive) genetic variation. (Go read the book, since Nisbett makes the argument far more cogently that I can).

What I find obnoxious whenever I listen to or read Murray and his genetic deterministic ilk is the implicit assumption that, you, Dear Reader or Listener, are part of the genetic overclass; it's those other people, not in attendance, who are the lumpen üntermenschen. Not only is this one of the oldest rhetorical cons going, it's incredibly arrogant.

Which, for me, inevitably raises a question that mysteriously is never asked:

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Stupak-Mills and the Economics of Anti-Abortionism

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:04:02 -0500

I have no doubt that the Catholic ecclesiarchy supports the Stupak-Mills amendment out of a genuine desire to ~~regulate vaginas~~preserve the fetus, which they believe is a person. But the financial incentives for Catholic Church-owned hospital systems are enormous:

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Underwater Kites and Electricity

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 10:32:05 -0500

(from here)

When you think about it, it seems pretty obvious (rising to the level of "duh!") that if one placed a wind turbine underwater it could be more efficient and, unlike wind power, ocean currents are far more predictable (of course, like most good ideas, it's obvious after someone else thought it...). A spinoff of the Saab corporation is developing such a system:

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Peter Galbraith: Others' Blood for Iraq'sHis Oil

Sat, 14 Nov 2009 10:18:52 -0500

How many lives is a $100 million oil lease worth? That's the question someone needs to ask Ambassador Peter Galbraith. Peter Galbraith was a 'liberal' hawk who advocated the invasion of Iraq, and then argued that the U.S. should maintain a strong presence in Iraq. During the Bush Administration, he was an advocate for and architect of Iraq's federalist system that ceded significant autonomy to the Kurds.

And that's where it gets sleazy (italics mine):

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Friday Links

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 16:43:28 -0500

Have a Fabulous Friday! Links for you:

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How Compulsive Centrist Disorder Cost Democrats the VA Governorship

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:42:05 -0500

If you haven't heard by now, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds got clobbered by the Republican candidate. One of the things that hurt him was the poor turnout by independents and Democrats compared to the 2008 presidential election. And why did they stay home?

Consider the answers to these three questions posed to VA Democrats who voted for Obama, but not for Deeds:

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The Biological Ignorance of Stupak-Mills

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 16:30:24 -0500

Of course, we all 'know' that the only women who get abortions are sluts, but what never ceases to amaze me is how ignorant pro-illegal, unsafe abortion proponents are about biology (let's not even get start on the ridiculous notion that sperm and ova are 'dead'). The recent Stupak-Pitts amendment doesn't appear to allow women who have a dead fetus to get an abortion (italics mine):

By broadly writing in that insurers can chose whether or not to cover "abortion services," pro-life amendments don't just affect their intended victims -- women seeking a way out of an unwanted or medically harmful pregnancy. They also affect another group of victims -- women whose pregnancies have already ended but have not yet miscarried.
I'm one of those women, and this past Halloween I had what the hospital officially termed an "abortion."

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The Great Viral Filter Shortage

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 10:02:54 -0500

It's not as bad as the Great Brooklyn Tampon Shortage, but it's just become a lot harder to study marine viruses. There are two basic ways to figure out how many viruses are in a given sample, such as a milliliter of seawater. One method is to mix a bacterial (or algal) cell with a certain amount of seawater and look for plaques--holes in the lawn:

(from here)

The number of plaques equals the number of viruses.

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