Mike Dunford
tqa
Posts by this author
February 5, 2008
It looks like there's definitely going to be a little bit of good political news for everyone tonight - a statement released by leading theocon James Dobson:
"I am deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a Constitutional amendment to protect…
February 5, 2008
Yesterday, I wrote a post about Casey Luskin's misuse of the ResearchBlogging.org "Blogging about Peer-Reviewed Research" icon. Today, Casey removed the icon from his post, and provided an explanation for his actions. I'm glad that he decided to cease his misuse of the icon, but his explanation…
February 5, 2008
It's Super Tuesday, but the primaries aren't the only political action in town. My kids came up with an election of their own. They created, and are both running for, the position of "President of the House." Both of them have been putting up posters, and each of them has independently discovered…
February 4, 2008
Casey Luskin has a post up over at the Discovery Institute's website that discusses an article that was recently published in PLoS Biology. The post itself is nothing particularly remarkable - Casey takes a paper that says that current hypotheses don't adequately deal with all of the problems of…
February 4, 2008
Over the weekend, ScienceBlogs was treated to a view of how at least one European views American politics. Archaeologist Martin Rundkvist looked at our spectrum of political belief and compared it to normal politics in his native Sweden. From his perspective, all of American politics is right-wing…
January 30, 2008
It's safe to say that 2007 wasn't the best year of US Army 1st Lt. Elizabeth Whiteside's life. She started off the year with a bullet wound to her torso that damaged, among other things, one lung, her liver, and her spleen. She ended her year as an outpatient at Walter Reed, waiting for her…
January 27, 2008
Very early this morning, the Discovery Institute's Rob Crowther posted an article over at the DI's "why's everyone always picking on us" blog. I'm not exactly sure what inspired Rob to get some work done late on a Saturday night, but the result is an article that's so chock full of hysterically…
January 24, 2008
Over at Evolving Thoughts, John Wilkins has a post that criticizes a recently-published journal article. Normally, I agree with John - in fact, if it's true that the best measure of someone's intelligence is how often their views match yours, then John Wilkins is an absolute genius. But even…
January 23, 2008
Over at the Discovery Institute's blog, Rob Crowther is playing up the "Dissent from Darwinism" list. Again. The list is nothing new. They've been working on it for several years now, and have managed to accumulate "over 700" signatures from around the world. Given the number of scientists on the…
January 19, 2008
Unlike many of the denizens of ScienceBlogs, I'm not in North Carolina for the 2nd Annual ScienceBlogging conference. I figured that any party that PZ Myers isn't at isn't worth attending. Now, I find that he's gone and snuck down there behind my back. (Apparently after one hell of a makeover, too…
January 18, 2008
Via today's Daily Kos Cheers and Jeers, I learned about a story in yesterday's Denver Post that details allegations that the Army is deploying troops who should be left at home (I missed Olbermann's take on it last night). According to the article, commanders are deploying soldiers who don't meet…
January 18, 2008
It's been a couple of days since I posted on the New Hampshire recount. At the time, I fully expected that I wouldn't do another post on the topic, but a couple of things that have happened since then changed my mind. First, Scibling Chris Chatham included me in a list of people who he thinks…
January 16, 2008
In the week since the New Hampshire voting, a number of people have become increasingly concerned about some of the things that they've seen in the results. Two things, in particular, have gotten a lot of attention. The first is the difference between the pre-election polling, which had Obama…
January 14, 2008
Today's big science news is the Messenger flyby of Mercury. The Messenger spacecraft is scheduled to do a flyby of the planet about four hours from now, en route to it's final destination - Mercury - which it will reach in 2011, after completing additional flybys of the planet Mercury in October,…
January 11, 2008
There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one's safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy…
January 9, 2008
As the dust settles in New Hampshire, people are starting to talk about the winners and losers, and what it all means in the grand scheme of the election. Some are looking for excuses reasons why Obama didn't actually pull off a win when every poll conducted in the known universe last week said he…
January 8, 2008
Over the last couple of decades, a great deal of research has been done on the effect of global warming on coral reefs. The vast majority of that research has focused on the currently observed and potential future effects of climate change on reef-building corals. Coral, however, are not the only…
January 8, 2008
Today is the 185th anniversary of Alfred Russel Wallace. He's best known, of course, as the young(ish) scientist who, while recovering from malaria somewhere in Indonesia, independently came up with the same ideas about evolution that Darwin had been working on for three decades, wrote them up,…
January 7, 2008
Chris Mooney's recently-published article in Seed magazine has stirred a bit of discussion about the role of the Presidential Science Advisor, and just who would be a good choice for that position. Of the two questions, the first is probably the more important, but the second is more fun to argue…
January 7, 2008
Today's Wall Street Journal has a page A1 article (and accompanying blog post) about John Edward's decision to invoke the Nataline Sarkisyan case in his campaign-trail discussions of health care. Sarkisyan, you may remember, was the 17-year-old California girl who died a few weeks ago, shortly…
January 7, 2008
I haven't been blogging much over the last couple of weeks, for a variety of reasons. But it's a new year, a couple of side products that were sucking away my will to live have been wrapped up, and the kids are heading out the door and back to school. It's definitely a good time to get back into…
December 28, 2007
The Democratic Congressional "leadership" apparently thought that they could get the defense bill passed and signed into law if they caved in and gave President Bush everything he asked for. As it turns out, they were wrong. The smirking sub-simian and his Merry Band of Machiavellian Men just…
December 17, 2007
One of the first pieces of legislation on the United States Senate's agenda for today will be the revision of the FISA wiretapping bill. The Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, is planning to move forward a bill that would retroactively grant immunity to the telecommunications companies who…
December 16, 2007
When Richard Dawkins and Bill O'Reilly are on the same side of an issue, it's a surprise. When it's an issue that involves religion in the public sphere, it's quite possibly a sign that the apocalypse is drawing nigh. Nevertheless, that seems to be the case at the moment.
Bill O'Reilly's views…
December 12, 2007
Terry Pratchett just announced that he's been diagnosed with a rare form of early-onset Alzheimer's. He's at least somewhat upbeat, though:
PS I would just like to draw attention to everyone reading the above that this should be interpreted as 'I am not dead'. I will, of course, be dead at…
December 11, 2007
I took two years of German not all that long ago, but I can't really say I learned the language. I can pick out words here and there, make it to the bathroom, and say "I'm sorry, but my German is terrible". That last bit was the one that came most in handy when I was there for a couple of days…
December 11, 2007
Last night, in Oslo, Al Gore delivered a simple, powerful message. It's a familiar message to anyone who has watched him speak since 2000, or watched his movie, or read his books. It's simply a call for nothing more or less than the need for all of us to accept responsibility for the effects of…
December 10, 2007
Why - and when - do bridges fail? How and why does veterinary usage of some medications pose a risk to humans? How important is it to be absolutely certain that global warming is causing an increase in hurricane strength before taking action on the issue? How important is space exploration? How…
December 7, 2007
John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated eleven years, four months, and one day before I was born, but I miss him. There are issues today where his voice is needed even more than it was needed in 1960. But Kennedy is dead and buried, but the issues of religion he had to confront are not. And his…
December 6, 2007
Poor Rob Crowther seems to be having a bad week. First, his big Iowa press conference turned out to be a total non-event. Then, it turned out that some of the people who did mention the press conference didn't quite manage to spin it the way he was hoping for. The Ames Tribune, in particular,…