When you flush your toilet, and your house is connected to a larger sewage system, your shit will merge with other shit. Shit attracts shit, as it were. Therefore this news is not a surprise (warning: this goes to a crappy politico link that auto-launches audio that may kill some of your brain cells): Ralph …
Early Morning Open Thread: Firmicutes!
SamKitten demonstrates the best way to deal with the East Coast’s current triple-H (hot, hazy, humid) weather. You do good work, RedKitten. And last night’s dinner here involved the first of this year’s basil crop and the end of last year’s slow-roasted tomato sauce, so there are some consolations to weather more typical of the …
Tyranny of the scientifically illiterate
A few years ago, I remember reading a Nick Kristof column where Kristof mentioned wanting to do some simple mathematical calculation — it might have been taking a derivative — and finding no one on his floor at the Times who was able to do so. To his credit, Kristof found this troubling. It wasn’t …
Tyranny of the scientifically illiteratePost + Comments (207)
The sweetest taboo
Racial supremacy is a fairly taboo topic in the media. That’s why William Saletan thought it was exciting to tell liberals that they were no better than creationists if they failed to accept the “studies” done by white supremacist J. Philippe Rushton. It’s also why Andrew Sullivan and George Will thought it was exciting to …
Freeze, baby, freeze
There’s an interesting back-and-forth between Ross Douthat and Michael Kinsley about stem cell research. Douthat writes (in a somewhat “sneery” reply to an earlier Kinsley piece on the issue, as Kinsley puts it): As should be clear from other examples, at home and abroad, most pro-lifers would like to heavily regulate fertility clinics, and would support efforts to give every …
Trent Lott Resigns
As usual, The Onion gets it right! Trent Lott, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, announced that he would be leaving office at the end of the year. What do you think? Angel McCaskey, Book Seller “See, you don’t have to wait for a public disgrace before quitting. You can do it two, or even …
Michael J. Fox Update
Two points worth mentioning: * According to the NIH, Parkinson’s could be one of the first diseases treated by the product of stem cell research. That makes Michael J. Fox incontrovertibly right to let America witness his agonizing physical decline, and it makes Rush Limbaugh even more of an addled gasbag. * [via Kos] Focus …