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.

The 2008 campaign needs to end soon

Because I'm not entirely sure how much longer I can go on agreeing with people like George Will and not lose my sanity. Quoting Will's op-ed in the Washington Post on Tuesday:

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

And that sentiment seems to be borne out by McCain calling for Friday's debate to be delayed (or possibly canceled?), saying:

It's for both parties to come together to solve this problem. We must meet as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans, and we must meet until this crisis is resolved. I'm directing my campaign to work the Obama campaign and the Commission on Presidential Debates to delay Friday night's debate, until we have taken action to address this crisis.

McCain canceled his appearance on David Letterman's show (which, by the way, Letterman is really not happy about), claiming that he (McCain) had to get back to Washington because the economy is "about to crater".

Really now? Is the economy in that much trouble that John McCain has to stop all aspects of his campaign? Can McCain not, as Obama wryly said, focus on more than one thing at a time, and if not, is that really a characteristic we want in a President?

Now, I will concede that something needs to be done, though (agreeing with George Will and other conservatives once again), I'm not sure offering bailouts without any sort of oversight (as Treasury Secretary Paulson originally proposed) is the best way of achieving that. But is there anything McCain (or Obama, for that matter) can practically do over the next 36 hours other gather a few good photo ops and maybe show up to vote on whatever bill Congress and President Bush manage to work out? As a voter in November's election, I really think my interests are better served by hearing what these two men have to offer come January 2009.

Or at the very least, send in the VP candidates to debate on Friday. They are, after all, supposed to be the surrogates for their respective candidate, ready to take over when necessary. What better for a first test than this?

Getting back to the key point, though, this action by McCain is yet another example of what I think I may start calling his "erratic certainty", the sense McCain seems to convey that what he says at the moment has to be true, regardless of what factual reality may actually be; in effect, what John McCain seems to have done is elevate truthiness to a new, erratic, and somewhat terrifying level. And we've certainly seen some of the evidence of that over the past week or two, as McCain has gone from "the fundamentals of the economy are strong" to "by 'fundamentals' I meant the American workers" (how ever nonsensical that statement may be) to "well, maybe we should do something" to "the economy is about to crater".

And this isn't and shouldn't be worrying only to those who identify themselves as liberals. As George Will points out,

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?

The answer to that last question, I'm sad to say, is "probably not". And I'm worried that too few voters will realize or care enough by November 4^th to stop us from discovering the price this country will have to pay for "a dismaying temperament".

Two pieces on politics and the economy

Frank Rich's NY Times op-ed uses the current meltdown of the financial sector to discuss McCain's adoption of truthiness as a campaign strategy, a strategy which in no small part continues to contribute to my increasing distaste for that candidate (emphasis mine):

McCain has largely pulled it off so far, under the guidance of Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protégé. A Rovian political strategy by definition means all slime, all the time. But the more crucial Rove game plan is to envelop the entire presidential race in a thick fog of truthiness. All campaigns, Obama’s included, engage in false attacks. But McCain, Sarah Palin and their surrogates keep repeating the same lies over and over not just to smear their opponents and not just to mask their own record. Their larger aim is to construct a bogus alternative reality so relentless it can overwhelm any haphazard journalistic stabs at puncturing it.

And passed to me by a friend, this Bill Saporito article in Time highlights some of the ways the U.S. has become like the "semi-socialist" states many citizens claim to detest; I'm not sure I agree with all of his points, but these are definitely issues worth thinking about.

This is the state of our great republic: We've nationalized the financial system, taking control from Wall Street bankers we no longer trust. We're about to quasi-nationalize the Detroit auto companies via massive loans because they're a source of American pride, and too many jobs — and votes — are at stake. Our Social Security system is going broke as we head for a future where too many retirees will be supported by too few workers. How long before we have national healthcare? Put it all together, and the America that emerges is a cartoonish version of the country most despised by red-meat red-state patriots: France. Only with worse food.

Admit it, mes amis, the rugged individualism and cutthroat capitalism that made America the land of unlimited opportunity has been shrink-wrapped by a half dozen short sellers in Greenwich, Conn. and FedExed to Washington D.C. to be spoon-fed back to life by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. We're now no different from any of those Western European semi-socialist welfare states that we love to deride.

And yes, science will be returning to this blog. Until then, enjoy.

Help kill HR6845

This Ars Technica article covers efforts to push through HR-6845 ("Fair Copyright in Research Works Act") would subvert current NIH policy requiring NIH funded work be made open access within 12 months of publication (typically through PubMed Central). Quoting the article:

The House of Representatives has seen the introduction of legislation, HR 6845 that, depending on its final format, may significantly curtail or eliminate the NIH's ability to continue its open access policy. The current bill would prevent any arm of the federal government from making research funding contingent upon "the transfer or license to or for a Federal agency of... any right provided under paragraph (1) or (2) of section 106 in an extrinsic work, to the extent that, solely for purposes of this subsection, such right involves the availability to the public of that work." Those Section 106 rights include the reproduction of the work.

Although that would seem to rule out the existing NIH policy, there is a certain amount of legal wiggle room there. For example, the NIH could fund a private entity to maintain PMC, and thus have the right to reproduction transferred to an independent entity. Nevertheless, the bill would appear to directly target the prior legislation that put the NIH in the business of mandating public access in the first place.

As is seemingly typical of many pieces of legislation, these one seems to have been pushed by "special interests" (in this case, traditional scientific publishing houses) and sponsored by Representatives who really have no idea what the hell is going on. Quoting the article once:

[M]any of the representatives were clearly in need of a primer in academic publishing. Different members of the Subcommittee expressed surprise at various aspects of the current system, such as the fact that peer reviewers perform the function free (although, as noted, the process of arranging for peer review can be expensive). Also eliciting surprise was the revelation that authors are not paid by publishers for the transfer of copyright.

In fact, many publishers charge money for the publication of scientific research, even those that obtain copyright to the work in the process. Dr. Elias Zerhouni, director of the NIH, shocked Berman when he mentioned that the NIH hands out $100 million a year to grant recipients specifically to cover the cost of publishing their results. It would certainly have been possible for those testifying in favor of the open access policy to argue that the public pays part of the cost of nearly every stage of the publishing process, and might expect to have some access to the end product.

Open access is critical in helping scientists disseminate their work, not only to their peers, but to the public as well. It prevents publishers from taking publicly funded scientific work and locking it behind "pay walls" and in some sense, provides accountability for what scientists do with your tax dollars. Coturnix and revere provide more commentary and examples of letters you can send to your Congressperson or Senator.

Because I'm posting this so late, you only have until tomorrow (24 September) to get your letter in. But if you get the time, please do so. We need to stop this bill before it subverts our ability to do research work in the United States.

Thank you Bill Maher and Andrew Sullivan

Maher can be obnoxious and the occasional loon (e.g., vaccines and germs), and Sullivan may have scary foreign policy positions and maybe a slightly rose-colored version of the British response to The Troubles, but what they're saying here is fundamentally correct:

Middle America as the "real America"

John Rogers (Kung Fu Monkey) puts into words something that has bothered me for a while now, especially after watching the Republican National Convention: the inanity in thinking of rural ("small town") America as the "real America". Quoting him:

[Rural] life is not holy, it does not bless one with special insight into the intent of the Framers of the goddam Consitution or what America "should" be like. Have I lost some sort of sacred connection with the land? Maybe. But the last time I checked, the land was dirt, same dirt as the rest of the world, and several generations of my family went broke farming other people's dirt, interrupted only when easily annoyed Englishmenwould occassionally show up and burn all their shit down. Pardon me for enjoying my goddam latte.

Hell, I grew up in Massachusetts, and we didn't go around nodding and saying "This is the very birthplace of America both geographically and ideologically, those idiots in Kansas have no idea what being a real American is, like we Commonwealth bastards." One would be considered insane. Whatever connection people in rural America have to the "idea" of America is the exact same as mine -- the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. They are public documents, accessible by all (well, for now), and last time I checked the versions printed in textbooks in Kansas didn't have special magical ink and secret clauses not included in the versions handed out in the Northeast urban great city of Philadelphia where, if we remember, the damn things were actually written.

Damn straight. Yes, there are good people living in small towns, but this concept of "small town values" is, at best, a vacuous, ill-defined concept (as evidenced by this Daily Show clip) and at its worst, represents the ill-informed, fear driven, reactionary politics that so-called "liberal elites" have been battling for who knows how long. "Small town values" may a favorite social meme, but it's nothing more than a Leave It To Beaver idealization of a history that never existed.

And "small town values" aren't even all that democratic, as the latest census figures show that nearly four times as many Americans live in urban areas than the vaunted rural areas of the country.

So, for those wanting to know what "real Americans" actually belive and want, head down to the local Starbucks. You're more likely to see a "representative citizen" there than in your favorite farm in Kansas.

The phrase "EPIC FAIL"

Doesn't even begin to describe this:

Seriously, how unobservant were you as a child?! On the other hand, thank you for filling me with hope; you've lowered the bar so much that I now know that no question a student of mine may ask could ever be this monumentally stupid.

Hat tip to Mike (The Mad Biologist)

Fucking batshit insane

That's pretty much the only way to describe this screed by right-wing nutjob Debbie Schlussel about why China's suppression of human rights may not be a bad thing. Quoting Schlussel:

Why is it that China is fighting islamic fundamentalists the way we should be fighting Islamic fundamentalists especially during Ramadan?

That's a great question. The answer is that China is far more fierce, these days, about protecting its country's borders and national security than we are. And perhaps the Chi-Coms have a stronger will for their nation to survive than ours.…

Oh, and also, the Constitution prohibits us from establishing a national religion or preferring one...unless it's Islam.

Now, I'm not entirely sure which Constitution Schlussel is referring to, but the version I've read says nothing specific about Islam beyond this clause:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…

You know, the same clause that protects every religion (or lack thereof) in the United States.

Schlussel quotes from an International Herald Tribune article describing some of the actions the Chinese government has taken:

They include barring teachers and students from observing Ramadan, prohibiting retired government officials from entering mosques and requiring men to shave off beards and women to take off veils. Mosques may not let people from outside the town stay overnight, and restaurants must maintain normal hours of business. (Many restaurants close during daytime hours over Ramadan because of the fasting, which is supposed to last from sunrise to sunset. Muslims observing Ramadan typically eat substantial meals at night.)

In nearby Xinhe County, the government has decreed that Communist Party members, civil servants and retired officials not observe Ramadan, enter mosques or take part in any religious activities during the month. Worshipers cannot make pilgrimages to tombs, so as to "avoid any group event that might harm social stability," according to the Xinhe government's Web site.

In her world, religious oppression and totalitarianism are bad. Unless, of course, we're talking about Islam; in that case, it's simply a matter of "national survival". Great logic there...

Not to be outdone, one of comments on this article actually calls for a constitutional amendment declaring Islam "an enemy of the United States and [prohibiting] its practice within the United States"; this proposed "amendment" also states that "all Mosques, schools and Muslim places of worship and religious training are to be closed, converted to other uses, or destroyed" and that "[t]he preaching or advocating of Islamic ideals…shall in all cases be punishable by fines, imprisonment, deportation, and death" (emphasis added). I'll leave you to read the Orwellian genius that is Article IV of this proposal.

Just how big a bogeyman do these people imagine Islam to be? We didn't have to append the Constitution to deal with Communism or Nazism, but we need one for radical Islam?! Were it not for the fact that I've actually had conversations with people who seriously think like this, I would simply call Poe's Law and be done with it; instead, I'm left sitting here, wondering how much further our national discourse can sink.

Hat tip to Ed Brayton (Dispatches from the Culture Wars)

The Universe is a dangerous place

We should all feel very lucky that our local galactic neighborhood doesn't contain anything big enough to produce something along the lines of GRB 080319B, a gamma ray burst so large that even at 7.5 billion light years away, it was "the single most luminous event ever witnessed by humans", visible (for a short time at least) to the naked eye.

Think about this for a second. Something putting out so much energy that even from half way across the known universe, you could have seen it with your naked eye. Fortunately, GRB 080319B was more than far enough away that instead of being instantly lethal to everything on the planet, it's just really freaking cool.

We now return you to waiting for imminent death by LHC, coming to you live on October 21st.

Drilling won't solve anything

Via Coturnix, one picture that succinctly illustrates why we can't drill our way out of our oil problem (click for the larger version in a new window):

Fifty years ago

On 12 September 1958, the man on the left developed that blob on the right and launched an engineering revolution.

Parallel computing explained

Via Phil Plait: one of the best demonstrations of serial versus parallel computing (actually, of CPU versus GPU rendering, but the point is essentially the same), provided by the guys from Mythbusters. I have to say, this demonstration is also one of the coolest ways I've seen someone paint.

YouTube link (in a new window)

Why developing an HIV vaccine is so hard

In an interview with Scientific American, Anthony Fauci, the director of NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), discussed why developing a vaccine for HIV/AIDS is so challenging. The short version is that unlike other diseases, HIV doesn't seem to illicit a "neutralizing antibody response"; without this response, we have no natural model of infection which can be used as a basis for building a vaccine. This really is an article worth reading, as Fauci goes to great lengths to explain why after nearly three decades of research, an effective vaccine still remains elusive.

Exactly what he said

Sam Harris in his L.A. Times op-ed, offered here with no further comment:

Americans have an unhealthy desire to see average people promoted to positions of great authority. No one wants an average neurosurgeon or even an average carpenter, but when it comes time to vest a man or woman with more power and responsibility than any person has held in human history, Americans say they want a regular guy, someone just like themselves. President Bush kept his edge on the "Who would you like to have a beer with?" poll question in 2004, and won reelection.

This is one of the many points at which narcissism becomes indistinguishable from masochism. Let me put it plainly: If you want someone just like you to be president of the United States, or even vice president, you deserve whatever dysfunctional society you get. You deserve to be poor, to see the environment despoiled, to watch your children receive a fourth-rate education and to suffer as this country wages -- and loses -- both necessary and unnecessary wars.

Hat tip to James Hrynyshyn (Island of Doubt)

We're going to need a bigger clue bat

Via Coturnix: last week's Science Friday had an interview with Dr. Paul Offit about the increasing refusal by parents to get their children vaccinated and the corresponding re-emergence of vaccine preventable diseases such as measles and mumps. For those who aren't familiar with this story, the short version is that an appallingly large number of people (including one person I know who went to medical school) have become convinced that vaccines are somehow responsible for the rising number of autism diagnoses in children; for further details, I defer to Orac over at "Respectful Insolence".

Early in the interview, Dr. Offit identifies the root cause for this anti-vaccine insanity, namely the age old problem of bad science communication:

Ira Flatow: Why do you think the science [behind vaccines] is not compelling?

Dr. Offit: I think we're not very good at explaining it. I think that scientific literacy isn't great. I think people tend to see science as just one more opinion in a sea of opinions. I think that the media certainly can be confusing; I think the Internet can be confusing. So I think it's disappointing.

Dr. Offit goes on to properly distribute blame for this situation. He blames anti-vaccine propagandists for constantly moving the goal posts and offering increasingly ludicrous hypothesis about the causative link between vaccines and autism. He blames today's media, who seem obsessed with the notion that stories, especially those involving science, must have at least two equally valid sides — the same notion that gives creationism the same footing as evolution or "alternative medicine", such as homeopathy, the same footing as conventional, evidence-based medicine.

Dr. Offit also notes that today's young parents don't truly know how to assess the risks of not vaccinating, primarily because they haven't had to live with outbreaks of diseases such as smallpox or polio or measles-induced encephalitis.

The last 11 minutes (of this 18 minute piece!) was a pointless argument with a caller named Shantal (sp?), who basically had me banging my head on the desk and lead to the title of this post. Over the course of her call, Shantal managed to run the gamut of anti-vaccine hysteria, starting from too much aluminum in vaccines (ignoring the fact that environmental doses are much higher) to too many vaccines at once (ignoring the fact that a cold presents a much greater immunological challenge) to truly looney tunes conspiracy theory mongering (you know, "no independent studies" since Big Pharma bought the FDA and Dr. Offit off). Her entire stance can be succinctly stated by two of her own words; when asked whether anything Dr. Offit could say would change her mind, Shantal replied, "Absolutely not."

Dr. Offit correctly points out that Shantal and people like her (i.e., the kind who are immune to even the clue bat equivalent of a tactical nuke) are not the type of people that we scientists should be trying reach; they're already too far gone. Instead, scientists need to focus on those parents "who are concerned but are re-assurable with good science."

Unfortunately, I don't entirely share Dr. Offit's optimism that this is entirely doable. Referring back to Robert Krulwich's commencement address, I suspect that the stories anti-vaxers have to tell, no matter how logically and experimentally flawed they may be, are far too alluring and far too easy to believe. In an era where smallpox and polio are dim memories (at least in the developed world), I simply don't see the stories of Jenner and Salk being quite as attractive as those about the big uncaring bogey man (in the form of doctors, the FDA/CDC, or Big Pharma — take your pick) coming to get you. I only hope I'm wrong about this, before we as a society learn the hard way why vaccines are currently required in the first place.

File this under "WTF?!"

Ed Brayton brings us this story about the Richland County (S.C.) Sheriff's Department's acquisition of an armored personnel carrier, complete with a .50-caliber machine gun, which they've thoughtfully called "The Peacemaker". Seriously, what the hell is going on in South Carolina that requires a police department to have a weapon capable of penetrating an inch of concrete from nearly a mile away?

Pete Guither offers great commentary on the source of the name (Matthew 5:9):

You know, I was raised studying the Bible and had a special interest in the Sermon on the Mount. In all my reading of the beatitudes, I never once imagined Christ astride an Armored Personnel Carrier complete with a turret-mounted .50-caliber belt-fed machine gun, surrounded by apostles in SWAT gear, as he said to the crowd "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God."

Fortunately for them, the Richland County Sheriff's Department still doesn't win the contest for "most ironic use of the term 'Peacemaker'"; that dubious honor still belongs to SAC (Strategic Air Command), who used that moniker (or a derivative thereof) for a bomber and an ICBM.