Ruining childhood stories

And in the process, teaching children the cruel realities of life (from the 18th Dec. 2009 edition of "The Now Show"):

It isn't, of course, remotely surprising that we are so sentimental about animals and that we project our own emotions into them. "Oh, I don't like sitting the rain, so seagulls probably don't either." It's not surprising that we think like this because we're conditioned to it right from childhood.

[Cue cutesy music]

Winnie the Pooh looked at Christopher Robin...then ran forward, jumped up, and tore out his throat, biting off great lumps of his flesh.

"Serves him right for not realizing what bears do," said Eeoyre. "Now, where's Owl?"

"Killing mice," said Rabbit. "That's what he does. He's not wise about anything. He's just an anthropomorphic fallacy."

Just then, they heard a terrible squeal, and Piglet was lead into the slaughterhouse to be turned into sausages. "Oh, I knew we shouldn't have sold Hundred Acre Wood to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall," said Rabbit.

It's finally over

Almost two years since the long slog we called the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election started, it's finally ended, and Barack Obama is the President Elect. Other blogs can fill in the praise and the analysis, but I'll leave a few comments here.

First, I thought McCain delivered a conciliatory and gracious concession speech; kudos to him. Second, what the hell was wrong with the McCain crowd? Yes, your candidate lost, but come January 20th, there will be a new President. Booing the President Elect (more than once, no less) is not putting "country first".

Kudos to fivethirtyeight.com for being remarkably good at poll aggregation. With Alaska, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, and North Carolina still to be called, the electoral college breakdown is 338-156 for Obama, and the popular vote is 51.3%-47.4% for Obama. This is pretty much in line with fivethirtyeight.com's predictions of 348.6-189.4 for the electoral college and 52.3%-46.2% for the popular vote. Well done indeed.

Finally, to the Democratic Party. You now have control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress. Given the lackluster performance of this party over the last eight years, I ask of you now: please, please, don't screw this up.

Oh Hugo!

Where would U.S. political humor be without Mr. "Crackers from Caracas" (as The Bugle calls him), Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. Quoting him:

"I saw the vice presidential candidate, there she was talking about 'the dictator Hugo Chavez.' The poor thing, you just feel sorry for her.…She's a beauty queen that they've pulled out to be a figurehead. We need to say as Christ did: Forgive her, she knows not what she's saying."

Invoking Jesus (Luke 23:34) to take a verbal swing at Sarah Palin — you stay classy, Hugo.

Run for the hills!

Armageddon is coming! On Fox News Sunday, Bill Kristol said this of John McCain's campaign:

It's a stupid campaign. It's not a horribly mean spirited or racist or disgraceful campaign. But it's...it's really become a pathetic campaign, in the sense that there's no strategy. They're flailing around. They do things that don't work and keep on doing them. They're out of sync with their own candidate now...

To which McCain campaign spokesperson Nancy Pfotenhauer replied on Fox News yesterday (emphasis mine):

Well, you know Bill is entitled to his perspective. And I used to work for Bill. And I can tell you personally sometimes he’s brilliant and sometimes he’s not. And this is one where it’s the latter category. You know, I think unfortunately he has bought into the Obama campaign’s party line.

Yes, Bill Kristol, a co-founder of Project for the New American Century (you know, the geniuses who thought the Iraq War would be a really good idea), is now accused of being "in the tank for Obama" (to borrow Keith Olbermann's words).

To John McCain or whoever it is that's running your campaign: please stop this insanity. Please stop wildly accusing people of "wrongly" supporting Obama. Better yet, please stop driving people with whom I generally have vehement policy disagreements from actually endorsing Obama. Otherwise, I'm going to have to keep on agreeing with Bill Kristol, and that can only lead to horsemen, rains of fire, and the end of days.

Hat tip to Think Progress for the video links.

Did I miss something?

I'll confess — I didn't actually watch the entire VP debate. I gave up after about 30 minutes and realizing that Biden and Palen weren't actually debating, but were rather just trying to squeeze in sound bites (to put an overly simplistic view on things). Blame it on the silly "debate" format.

What I want to know is this: did I miss something in the candidates' replies when they were asked about whether the United States should or would ever use nuclear weapons in a first strike capacity? Palin seemed have started off saying about Iran and ended up talking about how to fight the war in Afghanistan (and nothing about nuclear first strikes); Biden seems to have taken a circuitous route to end up talking about the non-proliferation and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

However, neither one of the candidates seems to have answered the damn question. How hard could it possibly be? When asked whether the U.S. would consider a nuclear first strike, just say no!

Addendum: Yes, I'm aware that low-yield tactical nuclear weapons exist. But, I'm also aware of the moral and political stigmas against emploing any sort of nuclear weapon. So, using even one low-yield weapon would lead to opening a can of worms that we simply could not contain.

Oh wow...

When asked about what happens when democracy (meaning "elections, free or otherwise") leads to results that aren't exactly favorable to the United States (in this context, Hamas winning elections in the Palestinian Territories), Palin gave this response:

She completely ducked the question, but I'll at least give Governor Palin points for pronouncing "Ahmadinejad" correctly. And to be fair, she can't actually see Gaza from her house; come to think of it, she hasn't exactly seen Russia, either. So much for foreign policy "experience".

Not sure whether to laugh or cry

Ed Brayton writes about the U.S. government losing a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) case and being required to turn over images of prisoner abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan. Mr. Brayton has the legal analysis, but I want to draw attention to this portion:

When the case was filed, the first argument the government offered - and this is stunning chutzpah even for the Bush administration - was that turning over the photos would violate the privacy of the detainees pictured in the photos.

Say what now?! You claim that these detainees are so bad that they should held in legal limbo and denied the protections of the U.S. Constitution and the Geneva/Hague Conventions, but all of a sudden, you're worried about protecting their privacy? Are you kidding me?

The really galling part is that this isn't the first time this bizarre argument has been tried: while trying Gitmo prisoners, the government denied the media access to parts of a prisoner's testimony (mostly regarding psychotropic drugs he may have been given), claiming, of all things, that doing so would be a violation of HIPAA.

Welcome to Guantanamo Bay. Sure, you'll have no rights to challenge your detention; but dammit, at least your medical records will be safe.

January 20th can't come soon enough. A few more leaps of logic like this, and my head is likely to explode.

Life finds a way

Ed Yong (Not Exactly Rocket Science) has two interesting posts on tiny life forms with interesting adaptations. The first post deals with the ability of tardigrades (commonly called water bears) to survive the vacuum of space (Current Biology paper here). They do so by replacing water in their bodies with trehalose (a type of sugar) and entering a dormant state; this allows them to survive conditions, including dehydration, vacuum, extremely low temperatures, and in rare cases, large doses of ultraviolet radiation.

The second post deals with the compact genome (~160-kb) of the bacterium Carsonella ruddii, which is found in specialized cells (bacteriocytes) of a group of sap-feeding insects called the psyllids. This bacterium is very organelle-like, both in its role producing nutrients (mostly) absent in the host organism's diet and in its inability to survive outside of the host cell (since Carsonella lack many of the genes required by free living organisms). More importantly, the sequencing of this genome lends further credance to the endosymbiotic theory for the origins of mitochondria and chloroplasts. Take that, all you Creationists — evolution works!

Science funny

In case you're wondering about the status of the world:

Say what now?!

Yesterday, I agreed with George Will. Today, I'm agreeing with Wick Allison, a self avowed conservative who was the former publisher of the National Review after being personally recruited by William F. Buckley, Jr. Writing in D magazine, Allison offers his reasons why John McCain isn't really all that conservative (and yes, I'm aware it's bordering on, if not flat out is, the "no true Scotsman" fallacy):

But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask. Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth. This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.

And in a step that left me confused for a few seconds, Wick Allison goes on to endorse Barack Obama for President:

I disagree with [Obama] on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

So, yes, this may be a WTF moment, but at least it's a moment that offers hope that there still are people out there who are willing to set aside party labels to do what is right for the country. And more importantly, it offers hope that some of those calling themselves "conservatives" aren't the foaming at the mouth, right-wing reactionary caricatures liberals and libertarians imagine them as being.