First Draft

Malaka Of The Week: Susan G. Komen Foundation

Dissing the Susan G Komen Foundation would have once seemed like shitting all over motherhood, the flag and apple pie. This week, however, the Foundation has cut off funding to Planned Parentohood for MAMMOGRAMS. This is as egregious a case of institutional malakatude and cowardice as I've ever seen. Women could die as a result of this "policy shift.'

The best thing I've read on this subject was by the fabulous Mary Elizabeth Williams who is herself fighting a virulent form of cancer:

Along the way, Komen has become the McDonald’s of cancer — an easy-to-remember brand with a logo that demands little thought or effort from the consumer. Write a check, buy a ribbon, voila! You get to feel like you’re curing cancer.

It’s not that Komen is some questionable, Wyclef Jean-esque mess. It gets high marks from both the Better Business Bureau and Charity Navigator. Yet this is an organization that has repeatedly come under fire for its extravagant promotion of itself as an organization dedicated to a “cure,” when only a small portion of its expenses go to, you know, curing cancer. Komen itself cops to portioning just 24 percent of its funds to research – and 20 percent to fundraising and administration. For an organization with reported revenues of nearly $350 million, that’s still a lot of money for research. It’s an awful lot for itself, too.

This is a problem I often have with establishment charities: only a small slice of their bounteous funds are spent on research. How expensive can all those pink ribbons be? A mere 20% for research is obscene.  What they should do is spend some money on a backbone and refuse to cave into political pressure from  crazy people who value the "unborn" more than the born. The Komen Foundation can fold one of their pink ribbons five ways and stick it where the moon don't shine...

I'll let Mary Elizabeth have the last word about the Foundation's malakatude:

Women’s healthcare is not about lace-trimmed scarves and bottles of perfume. It’s sure as hell not about some feel-good, lip-service version of what my colleague Rebecca Traister calls “infantilizing Pepto-ed advocacy.” It’s not even — for anyone still stupid enough to think Planned Parenthood is some giant fetus-killing complex — about abortion. It’s about screening. It’s about treatment. It’s just that simple. The further away an organization gets from that mission, the more women suffer. It’s just that simple too. And you don’t make good on a “promise” to your dead sister by selling out women who need you most. 

Man on Man Penguin

Via ONTD, apparently our schools are now teaching Penguin Sex [Facebook link]: 

Jeff's 6yr old son came home with a somewhat controversial book about gay penguins. Should the school have had this book in the library for kids in kindergarten and first grade? Let Deminski & Doyle know your take on it now. 1-800-283-1015

The comments to this post are full of angry parents who have lots of opinions about what should be taught in school and what should be taught at home. Spelling and grammar, for instance, is clearly something these kids are not going to get around the dinner table. : 

If my 6 yr old comes home with that book..!!! There will be trouble knocking at the school door ...!!! They can barley read at that age ... Let alone understand man on man penguin ..!!

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I think it should be up to the parents to teach there young children about homosexuality the school has no right doing it n the teachera are not yr childrens parents . Its the bama minastration doing this .i have no problem with a person thats gay i have alot of gay friends but dont let schools teach it to yr kids it schould be the parents who tells there kids

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There is a video i saw about this..is was about the goverment doing what they want with your child and taking your rights away and you dont even know it. i dont see anything wrong with the book..however a newsletter home about "hey we now have alternative lifestyle section added to our library" would have been nice and if the parents dont want the kids in that section taking out books then a form shld be signed.

I think these folks could use a few more gay penguins in their lives. 

A. 

Winning the internet, all of it

It's not often, lately anyway, that we read a story that makes us want to fistbump the whole interwebs and shout, "Fuck yeah humans!" 

But this is one of those stories. 

Video-game players have solved a molecular puzzle that stumped scientists for years, and those scientists say the accomplishment could point the way to crowdsourced cures for AIDS and other diseases.

"This is one small piece of the puzzle in being able to help with AIDS," Firas Khatib, a biochemist at the University of Washington, told me. Khatib is the lead author of a research paper on the project, published today by Nature Structural & Molecular Biology.

The feat, which was accomplished using a collaborative online game called Foldit, is also one giant leap for citizen science — a burgeoning field that enlists Internet users to look for alien planets, decipher ancient texts and do other scientific tasks that sheer computer power can't accomplish as easily.

"People have spatial reasoning skills, something computers are not yet good at," Seth Cooper, a UW computer scientist who is Foldit's lead designer and developer, explained in a news release. "Games provide a framework for bringing together the strengths of computers and humans."

A First Draft Friendly Study

Swearing is good for you and can be a powerful painkiller.

My response: fuckin' A. It means that we're on the right fucking track. Jude is one pain free motherfucker then...

Japanese for junk shot

What is saltwater drop, Alex?

I bet Watson wouldn't have gotten this one. Sigh.

It Can Happen Here

The US nuclear industry has spent much of the week on damage control. Typically for humongous corporations, they've made some rather extravagant claims that what has happened in Japan can't happen here. Identical circumstances may NOT arise here BUT pro-nuke safety claims ring hollow right now; especially when they come from <get ready> Senator David Vitter:

 "I think we need to calm down and assess the facts and base our reaction on facts and science and not political ideology and hysteria," Vitter told Neil Cavuto Monday. "We did the latter after the BP disaster and it shut down the Gulf for months and months and we're still virtually shut down in the Gulf and we're paying the price now as the price of gas goes up and up and up. We need to base policy on facts and science and not ideology and hysteria."

Wow, Bitter Vitter is suddenly an advocate of basing policy on science and not ideology. Who knew? I wonder when his conversion took place. I bet his position on *other* issues haven't changed. Is he suddenly an advocate of stem research? I bet not. I wonder if he's read this story about the Japanese crisis in the New York Times:

Japan’s nuclear crisis verged toward catastrophe on Tuesday after an explosion damaged the vessel containing the nuclear core at one reactor and a fire at another spewed large amounts of radioactive material into the air, according to the statements of Japanese government and industry officials. <snip>

The succession of problems at Daiichi was initially difficult to interpret — with confusion compounded by incomplete and inconsistent information provided by government officials and executives of the plant’s operator, Tokyo Electric Power.

But industry executives in close contact with officials in Japan expressed extreme concern that the authorities were close to losing control over the fuel melting that has been ongoing in three reactors at Daiichi, especially at the crippled No. 2 reactor where the containment has been damaged.

In a nutshell, this is the problem with nuclear power. Over the long haul it causes less damage to the environment than fossil fuels BUT when things go wrong, they go completely haywire. I ,for one, am unwilling to let folks like that recent convert to the scientific method, David Vitter, set the agenda. It's particularly horrible that this has happened in Japan where memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki loom large. 

It's time to circle back to the post title, which is a play on Sinclair Lewis' novel and play about American fascism, It Can't Happen Here. Lewis was once a very famous and highly regarded writer whose reputation has evaporated over the years. Maybe it was a Nobel Prize jinx or something but the ironic title It Can't Happen Here still resonates. Guess that makes it both ironic and iconic:

 

One for the good guys

Every once in a long while, something goes right and victory gets pulled out of the jaws of defeat at the last minute.

Yesterday was one of those times.  After a protracted - and do I ever mean protracted - up-and-down-back-and-forth battle with developers and their political allies, the acquisition of a critical 55-acre land parcel adjacent to Jacob's Well Natural Area was finalized yesterday by the Hays County Commissioners' Court.

A few months back, the acquisition seemed like a done deal. But political maneuvering as well as concerns of those  fearful of county government involvement ground the whole process to a crawl following the recent midterm election. The 4-1 vote to finalize came after a 12-hour court session.

The acquisition, by the county and the Nature Conservancy, increases the buffer area around the preserve and critical wildlife habitat. It brings an end to the threat from plans for a residential development that would have placed 65 condominiums and a hotel within 700 feet of the Well. The developers got $1.7 million, which was at least less than what they started out asking for in what was basically a hostile shakedown attempt.

Lack of objectivity disclaimer here:  I'm on the steering committee/board for public outreach at JWNA.  It's a few blocks from my home, and since the neighborhood I live in is one of many threats to the survival of the Well, I feel it's my obligation to give as much of my free time as possible to saving the place. We all make our stands somewhere, and this is where I've made mine.

The threats are still there, too many to count. The Hill Country region is Ground Zero for the raging water wars in Texas. Quite frankly, the odds are stacked against conservation. There is the archaic Rule of Capture, and development and the scramble by water miners to suck the state's aquifers dry are not slowing down. 

But today at least, there's reason for some thanksgiving.

 

 

ass? ass! ass? ass! ass? ass! ass? ass! ass? ass! ass? ass!ass? ass!

It never fails. Just when I'm feeling completely cynical and bleak about the future of the country, of humanity — hell, of the whole planet — the intarwebz always manages to shake me out of it. 

Via Nerdist:  

So. To reinvigorate America’s waning interest in the space program, NASA has taken an inspired and admirable step; creating a freeware game called Moonbase Alpha where the player takes on the role of an astronaut working to resolve an emergency on a hypothetical moonbase in the not too distant future. 

However, in what amounts to the Internet equivalent of forgetting to convert to metric, they assumed, in their naiveté, that people would actually use it for its intended and extremely boring purpose.

(best when viewed in full screen mode) 

Religious Nuts: They're All Cut From The Same Cloth

Learn some goddamned geometry!

So. Apparently, a bunch of fanatics in Saudi Arabia have decided that GMT needs to be superceded by Arabia Standard Time.  And what passes for logic with these guys is really, really appalling. 

Really, check this out.

As Mohammed al-Arkubi, manager of one of the hotels in the complex, put it: "Putting Mecca time in the face of Greenwich Mean Time. This is the goal."

According to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, an Egyptian cleric known around the Muslim world for his popular television show "Sharia and Life", Mecca has a greater claim to being the prime meridian because it is "in perfect alignment with the magnetic north."

This claim that the holy city is a "zero magnetism zone" has won support from some Arab scientists like Abdel-Baset al-Sayyed of the Egyptian National Research Centre who says that there is no magnetic force in Mecca.

"That's why if someone travels to Mecca or lives there, he lives longer, is healthier and is less affected by the earth's gravity," he said. "You get charged with energy."

Western scientists have challenged such assertions, noting that the Magnetic North Pole is in actual fact on a line of longitude that passes through Canada, the United States, Mexico and Antarctica.

What in the hell is that all about?  These dolts need to team up with the Institute for Creation Research and the Insane Clown Posse.  They're all just as ignorant and proud of it. 

To begin with--every single point on earth is in perfect alignment with the magnetic north.  If you take any two points anywhere on this little rock, you can draw a straight line between them.  Really.  Try it some time.

Also--how, exactly, would a lack of magnetism, even if such a thing existed in Mecca, mean that you're less affected by gravity?  Gravity is, of course, not completely understood, but, you know, F=GMm/r2 and all.  It affects people in Mecca just as it does everywhere else at that altitude (minor variations due to topography and geology aside).  You don't see a term for magnetism in that equation, do you?  I didn't think so.

Additionally, someone might want to tell Abdel-Baset al-Sayyed that, if there's no magnetic force in Mecca, you'll probably want to stay away from there.  Holes in the magnetosphere would lead to bad outcomes for organic beings, seeing as how the solar wind would, you know, kill everything there if the magnetosphere weren't protecting us--even those of us who are willfully stupid.

GMT is an arbitrary standard.  It wasn't chosen because Greenwich is in line with the magnetic pole, or because there's no magnetism there, or because the Druids liked it.  It was chosen because England was the dominant maritime power when the standard was set, and that's where the Royal Observatory was, which was where they measured longitude relative to that giant hot gas ball we circle every year.  It's not even the standard anymore; UTC is, and that's determined by International Atomic Time--and that's a weighted average of the time on a network of hundreds of atomic clocks in dozens of locations around the world.  Which, to be fair, is a far more accurate way to do the task at hand than worrying about where a spot on earth is relative to the apparent position of said giant hot gas ball.  You're not even bitching about the right thing here, morons.

I'm not picking on them because they're Muslim--as stated, I think that these dolts and the ICR people and, well, all of the blind faith yo-yos around the world are all cut from the same cloth.  (Get it?  Man, my jokes are wasted on you people.)

What will happen to them in October, BP?

A whooping crane in the wild is an astounding sight. If you're lucky to be close enough to view one without binoculars, the first thing that strikes you is the size. An adult whooper stands 5 feet tall and has a wing span of 7.5 feet, blindingly white body plumage, black wingtips, a striking red and black mask, and large dark beak. They are magnificent animals and getting to watch them in their winter habitat at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge, near where I grew up, made an indelible impression on me as a kid. Without a doubt, that's one of the reasons I became a naturalist. It made a difference in how I saw the world, to see these birds, knowing there were literally just a handful left on the planet, that an animal so majestic and large (bigger than me at the time) was so vulnerable, that we humans had been so careless with such a treasure. 

The population has grown since then and the establishment of a second flock and eastern migration led by ultra-light aircraft is a monumental success story in wildlife management. Still though, as of January this year, there were only 398 birds alive in the wild,150 in captive breeding programs. Less than 600 on the planet. 

Of those in the wild, most will winter at Aransas, and the others in Florida. That will be in October.

Four months, with a hurricane season between then and now. Where will the oil be then? What will happen between then and now to the brackish marshes and estuaries this species is dependent on for survival? Last year, the drought in central Texas so impacted the flow of the Guadalupe River that the salinity of San Antonio Bay increased, and 23 Aransas whoopers died of malnutrition from the lack of blue crabs, wolfberries and fresh water. That's how delicate their supporting ecosystem is already, without BP's oil destroying it. The situation in Florida is even more dire, threatening to destroy two decades of work toward establishing the eastern migratory flyway between Florida and Wisconsin.

Ever since the first instant I heard about the Deepwater Horizon blowout, I have had a couple of recurring thoughts that won't go away.  First, selfishly, I am truly grateful that my father is dead and can't see what's happened to the Gulf, his real home as well as his workplace. (He ate and slept at the house, sure, but he couldn't wait to get back out on the water every day.)

Second, and more urgently, what will happen to the whooping cranes? What happens to us if we let them be destroyed?

Sadly not real

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"Only in the last moment of human history has the delusion arisen that people can flourish apart from the rest of the living world." *

After four decades, the Brown Pelican was taken off the endangered list last year. Pelicans currently nesting on Gulf Coast barrier islands are right in the bulls-eye for the oil spill as it drifts shoreward.

Brown pelican, Caspian tern, royal tern, Sandwich tern, least tern, laughing gull, black skimmer, American oystercatcher, Wilson's plover, snowy plover, reddish egret, roseate spoonbill, mottled duck, clapper rail, black rail, seaside sparrow, red-cockaded woodpecker, sandhill cranes, and all other species of plovers, sandpipers, ibises, herons, egrets, warblers, orioles, buntings, flycatchers, swallows, marsh-dwelling songbirds, ospreys, hawks, eagles.

Those are just the birds. 

All other animals in the marine, estuarine, riparian, and terrestrial habitats along the Gulf Coast are at risk from the oil and spill-related pollutants: plankton, marine invertebrates, sea turtles, all fishes, crustaceans, reptiles, and amphibians. Alligators, river otters, manatees, dolphins, whales.

Something you can do right now:

text "WILDLIFE" to 20222 to donate $10 to the National Wildlife Foundation.

Or donate to other rescue and volunteer efforts:

Audobon Society

International Bird Rescue Research Center

Lousiana Gulf Response

Sierra Club

Mobile Baykeeper

Matter of Trust (hair and nylon collection)

You can find other resource, rescue, and volunteer organizations here.

*E. O. Wilson

They Got the Band Back Together

I didn't find out this was happening until about an hour beforehand, otherwise I would have been SO THERE:

CHICAGO – Surviving Apollo 13 astronauts and several flight directors reunited on Monday to remember a failed moon mission 40 years ago this week that they managed to turn into one of the greatest triumphs in the history of space exploration.

Those who gathered included Apollo 13 commander James Lovell, fellow crew member Fred Haise and NASA's legendary flight director, Gene Kranz — all three of whom were immortalized in the 1995 movie "Apollo 13," which starred Tom Hanks as Lovell.

"There's truly a unique bond. There is a brotherhood," Kranz said about how the crisis forged a lifelong bond between everyone involved.

The Adler Planetarium, where the reunion took place, is holding a series of events this month commemorating the Apollo 13 flight. One exhibit includes a lunar helmet and gloves that Lovell was supposed to wear on the moon had the mission gone as planned.

A.

"I'm reading it from your book, dude."

This interview with prominent ex-gay Richard Cohen is bound to get a lot of play in the coming weeks, and if you haven't seen it, I gotta say it's fairly epic. Maddow takes him apart. Watch his body language get twitchier by the minute. He definitely needs a hug by the end.

Side note: Last night @maddow live-twitter denizens (think Crack Van on estrogen) were primed for this like a pay-for-view boxing match. Watching it as it aired, though, I felt myself getting weirdly uncomfortable as Maddow pressed on toward the takedown. Now, this might get taken out of context but bear with me (we lesbians do like to process our stuff). In short, I first felt like she was taking it too personally, that it made her seem less credible. For the record, of course she did obviously show she took it personally but what I had to remind myself was that this was beside the point. One, because the show isn't a straight (no pun intended) news show, it's commentary. Two, and more importantly, what she charged Cohen with is - sadly - accurate. 

I bring that up because I've had that reaction before, not just regarding GLBT issues in the media, but with respect to other instances where progressive or liberal views are brought forth in the mainstream, usually when countering someone like a Cohen, or a Palin, or a Bachmann. For me, it's a sign of how, despite my conscious efforts otherwise, I've internalized the false framing regarding the primacy of balance. Note to self, Chuck Todd, David Gregory, and others: some shit is just inherently UNBALANCED. Keep that thought front and center as we move toward 2012 and more of the weird turn pro. 

Uganda legislating to kill and imprison gays is unbalanced. The C Street Family tinkering with policy in Uganda and elsewhere abroad is unbalanced. Persisting in attempts to refute scientific fact with subjective belief is unbalanced.

I'm not going to delve too much into the underpinnings of the pray-the-gay-away and/or ex-gay movement, as I think they speak volumes all by themselves. However, something the ex- and prayed-away gays don't like to focus on, and Maddow notably does here, and in the preceding interview, is that it's a big business. I do wonder whether Cohen et al would make this their life's work if there wasn't a percentage in it?

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The Finger

When I was in my grad program, I started feeling pain in my groin. I didn’t remember doing anything stressful to it and it sure wasn’t due to an overabundance of sex. I had no real insurance to speak of, so I went to the student health center on campus, where I described my symptoms to the very nice man who was there to help me.

He wrote down some things, looked up a few things on his computer and said, “It might be an infection or it might be a problem with your prostate. We’ll need to do an exam.”

Unfortunately, I knew what that meant: bend over and wait for The Finger. I reassessed this very nice man and noticed that his hands looked like he was wearing two baseball gloves. His fingers looked like they were made of radiator hose and his nails looked like Freddie Krueger had lent him some apparel. Still, the thought of a tumor growing in my ass had me face down on a table, feeling the cool touch of KY.

“You’re going to feel some pressure,” he explained. That was putting it mildly. I realized at that moment that if I were gay, I would need to be celibate or at least always be the giver. This was, by far, the least pleasant experience of my life and if there were any other options to avoid this, I totally would have taken it. In fact, when I recently went to the doctor and asked about when I’d need to have another prostate exam, (I was told by several friends I was “of that age” where I’d need one) he said we could avoid it for another five years. I gladly did so.

I thought about this experience when reading about the recent study on mammograms and how a panel of experts now thinks that women between 40 and 49 shouldn’t be getting one as a matter of course. Then, it should be every two years. Of all the experiences I’ve heard women complain about, mammograms and pap smears are the two that come up most often. “The car jack” as The Missus calls it, is apparently uncomfortable and obnoxious, but it pales in comparison to the breast pancake.

The magic of science coupled with the tender touch of the Marquis de Sade means you get flattened, squished and yanked around by the boob. In the old days, you had to panic for a few weeks until they came back with the results. Digital technology means that you no longer have to wait forever for the results, but the women I know who have been screened tell me they start panicking a couple weeks before and probably about up to a week after. In short, this is not like a John Mayer concert: people aren’t lining up for tickets around the block.

When I was a kid, my mother was a smoker. She made the argument that she only smoked seven each day and that it wasn’t going to kill her. When she had her first mammogram at the age of 40, they noticed abnormalities. They weren’t enough to kill her, but they did tests to make sure she didn’t have cancer. She ended up being cancer-free, but the experience was enough to make her quit smoking. Say what you want about that, but I’d argue that the mammogram added years to her life without actually doing anything.

Friends who have gone through this have said they probably wouldn’t do this unless it was required. In short, by giving people the option to avoid something unpleasant, we pretty much assure they will take that option. Insurance companies that say now “Oh, there’s no WAY we’d not cover something like this if women want them” are a) banking on the fact that fewer women will have them if they are not required and b) staying out of the shit storm until this all dies down and they can quietly start to erode the benefits when no one is looking.

People believe doctors. It’s in our nature in a lot of ways. When the doc says, “Here take this pill,” I take it. I don’t ask a whole hell of a lot of questions. When he says, “You need this,” I get it. The man went through medical school while I’m only a “doctor of paper” (as The Missus says). When you’ve got a panel of doctors saying that in a cold, simple calculation of how there’s likely cancer in some of these cases caught in the 40s, but the stuff won’t grow fast enough to kill people, that borders on criminal. People will hear the sound bite: “You don’t need this if you’re in your 40s” and believe it.

How many of these women will die before another panel says, “Yeah, sorry. Bad call” and moves the marker again?

Science is real. Just ask one of those nice atheists over there with the dinosaur bones

First there was this:

Five things that would make atheists seem nicer

linked to by PZ, who of course quite gracefully pissed all over it:

I especially appreciate the word "seem," because Lord knows there's nothing that could make us actually nice, and obviously we need the suggestions of a Christian, since we're all such not-nice people. I should make a counter-list of "five things that would make Christians seem intelligent"

That begat this.

All of which I can only reply to with this:

And don't miss this. Or this.

H/T to forgetomori for the post on TMBG's new Here Comes Science.

Science To The Rescue. Again.

Fuck you.

Hells yeah.  Mosquito repellent improvement?  Bring it on.

You can thank the good people at the USDA for this--a mosquito repellent that, apparently, works better than DEET, and won't mutate you into some kind of hideous monster. 

Cookouts will no longer end in B-grade tragedy.

Now, why don't we ever hear about this kind of government spending?  When the Republicans start talking about "Bear DNA!!!11one!" and all of their brain-dead followers laugh along (It sounds kind of like this: Hur hur guh derf derf derf.  It's disturbing.), why doesn't someone step the fuck up and say:  Mosquito repellent, bitches.  You want the pleasure of scratching, or the joys of malaria/west Nile/dengue fever/yellow fever/etc?  Fine.  The rest of us will be over here, living in the 21st century, enjoying our picnics courtesy of the scientific method and judiciously spent Federal dollars.  Enjoy the itching, dingus.

For the record, I know that DEET isn't the best shit for you, but I use the fuck out of it, anyway. 

Finally, I would remind everyone that there are people in this country--millions of 'em--who think that the little bug up there is proof of God's wisdom and intelligence.  Because, you know, if we didn't have something to spread malaria, the world wouldn't be perfectly designed for us to marvel at the Almighty.  Somehow, it's also proof that he loves us.

Don't ask me to explain that.  All I can say is thank God for science. 

Grave philosophical questions, or Having a Dark Night of the Gumbo

I need your help folks. I supplicate myself to your experience and wisdom, particularly our friends from Lousiana.  I seek your feedback for help dealing with a failure, of imagination, of technique, of logistics, I know not what else.

Here's my confession:

I don't know what I did with the gumbo recipe but I looked everywhere and couldn't find it. It was on a stained index card that I'd kept for 20 years, through moves between residences, crosscountry from south to east and back again.  That's really where things first went off the rails, was losing the recipe. It was my dad's recipe and his gumbo was always reliably soul-startingly good. Yes, my emotional memory of meals past may distort a bit, but this I know: it was damn fine gumbo, every one of the hundreds of times I ate it over the years. Every single f*cking time. Dark, thick, spicy and smoky but not to the extent that the taste of the shrimp and crabmeat were overpowered.

I consider myself a good cook with a good intuition, so, other than pastry and baking, I usually succeed at what I try.  I've been cooking a lot lately, trying to train myself to make food with fresh ingredients, different new things every week, not just purchase crap on the fly or rely on the couple of staple quick meals I can throw together with my eyes closed. I joined the food coop and have been reveling in fresh local produce, meat, and eggs. So, I had a handsome fresh mess of okra, some tomatoes, onions, and a lovely plump free-range chicken. Gumbo just entered my mind and I couldn't shake it.  I blame that okra.

Go for the Moon

Go read Echidne.

A.

How Buzz Aldrin Does Things

Okay, I'm not normally a proponent of violence, but this is pretty awesome.

A.

Time to Watch the Right Stuff Again

Far as I'm concerned we can send Buzz Aldrin back up anytime. Sally Ride, too. Let's go colonize Mars so we have someplace to go when President Palin drills too deep and makes a hole in the world. I have a total five-year-old's reaction to this stuff. I know it costs bazillions of dollars, but all I can think is ooooh shiny.

Also: NERDGASM.

A.

Two sides to the fight

The Texas State Board of Education enjoyed its fair share of bad press lately, and rightly so. 

Strike 1: In Friday night's Worst Person in the World segment, Keith gave the finger to Goodhair for considering Cynthia Dunbar as a leading candidate to head up the SBOE. Not just any old run-of-the mill religious conservative, Dunbar is in the Obama-is-Hitler cult and also thinks (when she thinks at all) that public school is a “tool of perversion,” “unconstitutional,” and “tyrannical," choosing to homeschool her own offspring rather than subject them to actual education.  So naturally, our august governor thought she'd be a grand choice to chair the SBOE! 

Strike 2: Actually, Olbermann was a step behind since Perry had just chosen conservative Cynthia Lowe as chair of the board. Arguably, Lowe's a few degrees better than Dunbar, but not by much. 

In 2004 Ms. Lowe opposed requiring that publishers obey curriculum standards and put medically accurate information about responsible pregnancy and disease prevention in new high school health textbooks.

In 2008 Ms. Lowe voted to throw out nearly three years of work by teacher writing teams on new language arts standards. Over the strenuous objections of teachers and curriculum specialists, Lowe instead voted for a standards document that the board’s far-right bloc patched together overnight and slipped under hotel doors the morning of the final vote.

In 2003 and 2009 Ms. Lowe supported dumbing down the state’s public school science curriculum by voting to include unscientific, creationist criticisms of evolution in science textbooks and curriculum standards.

Strike 3: Conservative members of an "expert" curriculum advisory panel appointed by equally conservative members of the SBOE recommended that Texas social studies curriculum standards be altered so that certain historical figures — deemed by said conservatives to be poor examples for Texas schoolchildren — receive less focus. Among their targets: César Chavez, Thurgood Marshall, and Anne Hutchinson.  Ms. Lowe offers context: 

“Certainly those are historical figures that students should be aware of, and their goals and their place in history, but it needs to be in the context of what those people were known for. And so if the example is someone of good civic involvement, then there may be a different type of historical figure and leader that would be more appropriate.” 

Hear that Texas schoolkids?  "Good civic involvement" means conformity. Shut up, stay in line, pick those grapes and don't bitch about your living conditions, vote with the majority, don't think independently, and don't diss the preacher and run off to Rhode Island. That kind of thinking is just not appropriate. Also, when possible, be white. 

But rather than the  "So ... What Did my Asshat Dickhead Idealogue fill-in-the-blank? post that I am wont to do from time to time (and probably could do at least once a day) in response to the conservative and/or religious right trying to drag Texans back to the 19th century, I'm gonna change it up today.  I'm going to shine a bit of light on some good guys in this fight, the Texas Freedom Network.

TFN is one of the examples I offer when otherwise intelligent people dismiss Texas as a bleak cultural wasteland devoid of strong progressives.  TFN has one simple mission: "The Texas Freedom Network advances a mainstream agenda of religious freedom and individual liberties to counter the religious right." They fight the godbags* on many fronts throughout the state but education is a major battleground. Their site, and the TFN Insider blog, are the first places I turn to when I want to know the latest on the antics of the SBOE. Of particular interest are the annual State of the Religious Right reports. Bookmark TFN, learn from them, send them donations if the spirit moves you. 

Lastly, those of you in the immediate area, make a difference and do something. The SBOE is formidable but it can be changed, from within. Next week, TFN offers a SBOE Candidate Training workshop for those interested in running as a candidate in the SBOE elections in 2010.

* "godbag" ™, courtesy of Twisty Faster

Fuck The Fuck Yeah--This Fucking Shit Is What The Fuck I'm Fucking Talking About. Fuck.

Fuck yeah, motherfuckers.

So, it turns out that swearing fucking kicks ass.  No, really, there's fucking SCIENCE and shit backing this the fuck up.  So take note, assorted cocksuckers, motherfuckers, bitches, bastards, and dickheads:  Swearing can make you feel better.

I must be the best-feeling motherfucker on this whole motherfucking bubble.

No wonder David Broder and Cokie Roberts walk around with permanent sticks up their priggish asses.  They think that saying the word "fuck" is a crime against humanity.  Chill the fuck out, assholes!

That's right.  This motherfucking post gets the motherfucking "science" tag.  Fucking believe that.

Way Cool

Watch the whole thing.

Via Plush Life.

A.

How much does it cost to kill a jaguar anyway?

Macho B., thought to be the last wild jaguar in the US, died Monday in Arizona.  The 118-pound animal was 16 years old and had been fairly recently collared by researchers.  In the middle of February, he was accidentally captured in an Arizona Game and Fish Department trap. After  discovering that he was suffering from irreparable kidney failure, wildlife authorities euthanized Macho.

Whether Macho's capture and collaring contributed to his death or whether his illness was due to age will be known soon enough. Either way, the loss of this big cat is a tragedy for all of us.

I am privileged to work with some very gifted field biologists and I know that scientists do not tag and collar animals frivolously. Such actions are usually done so that we can better learn how to help species survive. Sometimes it's just too late, there aren't enough animals left, extinction is certain, and all we can do is learn what not to do next time.  I have a friend who spends a great portion of his time studying a single species of toad, the last few of which survive in only one or two places in Texas. Pollution and development have slowly killed off, will soon completely extirpate, this species.  Unfortunately, others will soon follow. Because of the their complex respiratory systems, amphibians are, as described by the overused but accurate phrase, canaries in our coal mine. The state of amphibians is a living, actually dying, picture of our air quality.  And it's not good, not at all good, that so many of them are disappearing right under our noses.  Not just within our lifetime but within this decade.

I think about my friend and his toads, and the other good folks I know studying other wild animals and the environment, every single time I hear the bullshit, anti-science, conservative screed about liberals wanting to spend millions to fund someone doing something with some animal, the "how much does it cost to control a beaver anyway?" crap. Some of the scientists studying Macho B the jaguar, and now grieving his death, had been doing so for their entire careers. How do we quantify this work, how do we count the money spent versus the death of a species and its impact on our culture and our ecosystem?  

Compare this also to the billions being spent on that destructive boondoggle, the Border Wall, still being built on our new president's watch.  Whatever the toxicologists discover in Macho's post-mortem, we know that his territory was bisected by that goddamned wall. We know that the wall is having devastating effects on the jaguar and ocelots, on the antelopes, javelinas, deer and mountain lions trying to survive along the US/Mexico borderlands, not to mention, of course, the humans struggling to carry on with their own lives. 

We know that back in 2008, when Congress gave  DHS Secretary Chertoff authority to waive all legal requirements necessary to expeditiously install additional  barriers and roads at the border "to deter illegal activity," they pretty much signed off on Macho's death warrant.

"The department remains deeply committed to environmental responsibility, and will continue to work closely with the Department of Interior and other federal and state resources management agencies to ensure impacts to the environment, wildlife, and cultural and historic artifacts are analyzed and minimized," said Chertoff.

And of course, the Department of the Interior, the agency tasked with protecting our wildlands, went right along.

The DOI has a legal obligation to manage and oversee Interior lands consistent with laws such as the Wilderness Act and the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act, and the agency said in a statement Tuesday that it cannot approve the border fences and walls and still obey these laws.

As a result, the DOI said it sees the need for the waivers.

"We will continue to work with them closely to protect environmental values and mitigate impacts," the DOI said. "Among other actions, we look forward to finalizing an agreement with DHS that documents their commitment to fund mitigation projects for threatened and endangered species valued up to $50 million.

The photo below is Macho B back in 2006. This was before the collar, before the wall.  This was the last living wild jaguar in the country. 

Put a price tag on this, Senators.  Mitigate this, sirs.

Transparent and Connected. Can We Handle It?

Something very interesting happened over on the Obama transition team's Change.gov site a week ago.  It was the day before Thanksgiving, so it didn't make as big of a splash as it might otherwise have.  An invitation was issued to Join the Discussion and tell the Obama team "What worries you most about the healthcare system in our country?"  Transition team members Dr. Dora Hughes and Lauren Aronson opened the discussion with a video request for feedback.

"Today we're trying out a new feature on our website that will allow us get instant feedback from you about our top priorities. We also hope it will allow you to form communities around these issues -- with the best ideas and most interesting discussions floating to the top."

Making use of a system created by Intense Debate, the threaded discussion grew into 3,701 comments. Six days later, comments were closed, followed by an video response yesterday from Aaronson and HHS Secretary nominee Daschle.

I know I've done my share of Obama cheerleading but that's not what motivates me to find this chain of events pretty damned impressive. First, it'a a helluva change from what we're used to.  As noted on techPresident.com

Ordinarily, you wouldn't get too excited about reading those words on a website. But when they are on the official blog of the President-elect, things are a little different. In fact, this is a big deal. When you consider that for the last eight years, the occupant of the White House has essentially told the public "you get input once every four years, after that I'm the decider," this is huge.

Second, I think it's fair to say that it signals that Obama and Co. want the electorate to believe they are serious about those campaign promises regarding enabling citizen access to the process of government via technology. 

I'm optimistic but still a bit cynical, or at the very least cautious. I am fascinated at the prospect of an actual meaningful exchange, but I use the word "signal" deliberately.   We obviously aren't yet able to take full measure of the true extent of the interactivity, from both sides. The Daschle response video was short and shallow,  mostly intended to get the point across that "We're listening!"

The signal's been received, noted, and appreciated, but now what? What happens to that input? Having a forum makes a difference to the citizens but will it make a difference to the policy makers?  How do we know and what will we see as proof of follow-through? There's a good argument made here that a more wiki-like approach would greatly enhance the conversation. It's also likely that some system of revision control/notice will have to be put in place to demonstrate transparency. 

Change.gov took another encouraging step on 12/1 by switching the site's content over to a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license, which in effect, says that the content on the site is free to the American public to take and use as they want.  Imagine that...

We can assume that other issues will be opened to a forum on Change.gov. I think we can also count on the White House website morphing into something much more Change.gov-like after the transition of power.  Ideally, if promises are kept, this will bring information access, interactivity, and greater transparency into the daily business of governance. And what about us? Will we respond accordingly and participate?