science

Fascinating.

Brazilian and Argentine paleontologists have discovered the largely complete fossil of a new species of giant dinosaur which roamed what is now northern Patagonia about 80 million years ago.

This is bad news for Republicans, because, as we all know, dinosaurs are godless liberals for having existed outside of the Dominionist-approved interpretations of the scriptures.

Too bad this comes too late for Tim Russert find another opportunity to assert his pointlessness and ask the Democratic presidential candidates what their favorite dinosaur is?

Via Think Progress, we learn this horror:

In 2005, the Kansas Board of Education received national ridicule when it rewrote public school standards to cast doubt on the mainstream evolution theories of Charles Darwin.

One of the board members who voted to teach intelligent design was Kenneth Willard, a conservative who is now the only member running as president-elect for the National Association of State Boards of Education. NASBE is a nonprofit organization of state school boards that “works to strengthen state leadership in educational policymaking.”

Willard was one of the Kansas board’s most vocal proponents of intelligent design....

With education scores falling behind the rest of the world, this is just what we need: a champion of willful ignorance in charge of a national education organization.

Apparently the Bible is now the litmus test against which all science must be measured. Never mind what we can observe in the world, religious dogma is the only truth to be taught in schools in Federal Way, near Seattle.

This week in Federal Way schools, it got a lot more inconvenient to show one of the top-grossing documentaries in U.S. history, the global-warming alert "An Inconvenient Truth."

After a parent who supports the teaching of creationism and opposes sex education complained about the film, the Federal Way School Board on Tuesday placed what it labeled a moratorium on showing the film.

That's right. Global warming is too un-"God"-ly of a concept for children.

"Condoms don't belong in school, and neither does Al Gore. He's not a schoolteacher," said Frosty Hardison, a parent of seven who also said that he believes the Earth is 14,000 years old. "The information that's being presented is a very cockeyed view of what the truth is. ... The Bible says that in the end times everything will burn up, but that perspective isn't in the DVD."

In other words, one can assume, Hardison believes global warming is a good thing. There's nothing like having people looking forward to Armageddon calling the shots in schools to scare the crap out of you.

School Board members adopted a three-point policy that says teachers who want to show the movie must ensure that a "credible, legitimate opposing view will be presented," that they must get the OK of the principal and the superintendent, and that any teachers who have shown the film must now present an "opposing view."

But not an opposing scientific view, but rather a view opposing science itself.

Let's look at some other examples where, following Federal Way's example, we should oppose science:

• The earth is round vs. the earth is flat
• The earth revolves around the sun vs. the heavens move on invisible spheres through ether
• The flu virus evolves vs. God makes the flu to punish humankind for homosexuality

Maybe it's time to buy stock in fundamentalist Christianist textbook companies.

I saw this story yesterday and just thought it was truly creepy.

The bedridden 9-year-old girl had her uterus and breast tissue removed at a Seattle hospital and received large doses of hormones to halt her growth. She is now 4-foot-5; her parents say she would otherwise probably reach a normal 5-foot-6.

That is just totally messed up -- the foot binding of Western medicine.

Her condition has left her in an infant state, unable to sit up, roll over, hold a toy or walk or talk. Her parents say she will never get better. She is alert, startles easily, and smiles, but does not maintain eye contact, according to her parents, who call the brown-haired little girl their "pillow angel."

Doesn't that sound a bit fetishistic to you? Pillow angel? Sure, parents have pet names for their children, but here it refers to a condition created by their surgical intervention.

I'm sorry, but I have to disagree with Amanda. Messing with a kid's health and disabling growth, all for the convenience of the parents, strikes me as truly wrong.

In terms of disability rights activism, the compelling case for it is the idea that having a disability doesn’t mean that your life isn’t worth living and therefore you should be accomodated and given as many opportunities as anyone else for the joys of life that other people who are considered more able-bodied have. With that in mind, I think it’s quite possible the parents of this girl are living up to that standard, if in a way that’s startlingly out of the norm. They’ve identified their daughter’s needs and pleasures—basically, those of an infant—and are looking for ways to fight social structures and even biology that would erode their daughter’s ability to have those things. It’s weird, but it makes sense.

It doesn't make sense to me. If there were a compelling health-related reason for such surgical measures, it might make sense. That can be a gray area for those hard-to-diagnose cases, but here it truly sounds like they're doing this for their own convenience -- after all, it's probably much easier to manage a smaller mentally disabled child.

The BBC carries more details:

Ashley's parents said the decision to remove their daughter's uterus and breast buds was for the girl's comfort and safety.

"Ashley has no need for her uterus since she will not be bearing children," they said, adding that the decision means she will not experience the menstrual cycle and the bleeding and discomfort commonly associated with it.

The operation also removed the possibility of pregnancy if Ashley were ever the victim of sexual abuse, they said.

The removal of the girl's breast buds was also done in part to avoid sexual abuse, but was carried out primarily so she would not experience discomfort when lying down, the parents said.

I'm left wondering why they didn't throw in a clitoridectomy, you know, for her own good.

Melinda on BlogHer writes:

The first red flag, for me, is the repeated insistence that their child brings unlimited joy and is nothing less than a blessing. This seems over-the-top to me, given that she requires life-long care and attention.

--Not to mention radical surgery and medical treatment to stunt her growth.

Another red flag is this business about calling her a "pillow angel", which, again, strikes me as making the child overly-sacred, pure, and innocent. Why is this so bad? Because it makes the girl less human and complex, and more of a cutout cartoon figure. This removes her human-ness.

It seems like Ashley became less human when her growth was stunted in order to make her more manageable.

In the Guardian (hat tip to Koan in BlogHer comments, we can read how Ashley's father tries to justify their decision, revealing something else I found disturbing:

We scheduled time with Dr Daniel F Gunther, associate professor of paediatrics in endocrinology at Seattle's Children's Hospital, and discussed our options. We learned that attenuating growth is feasible through high-dose oestrogen therapy. This treatment was performed on teenage girls in the 60s and 70s, when it wasn't desirable for girls to be tall, with no negative or long-term side effects.

No negative or long-term side effects? Are we so sure? I'd like to see a survey of incidence of breast cancer, uterine cancer and ovarian cancer of those women. Sometimes the arrogance and hubris -- and paternalistic chauvinism -- of the medical profession truly shocks me.

The fact that there is experience with administering high-dose oestrogen to limit height in teenage girls gave us the peace of mind that it was safe - no surprise side effects. Furthermore, people found justification in applying this treatment for cosmetic reasons, while we were seeking a much more important purpose.

Convenience?

On Sour Duck, Melinda links to several other posts on this.

You didn't want to eat them, did you?

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The world's fish and seafood could disappear by 2048 as overfishing and pollution destroy ocean ecosystems at an accelerating pace, US and Canadian researchers reported.

If current global trends continue, the loss of fish and seafood will threaten humans' food supplies and the environment, according to the most exhaustive study to date on the subject, published in the November 3 issue of the US journal Science.

"Our analyzes suggest that business as usual would foreshadow serious threats to global food security, coastal water quality, and ecosystem stability, affecting current and future generations," the international team of ecologists and economists wrote in "Impact of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services."

Of course, we don't want to do anything about it, do we? After all, we don't want government regulation of free enterprise, do we?

Or should Republican pollyanna sloganeering be set aside, once and for all?

"Whether we looked at tide pools or studies over the entire world's ocean, we saw the same picture emerging," Worm said in a statement. "In losing species we lose the productivity and stability of entire ecosystems. I was shocked and disturbed by how consistent these trends are -- beyond anything we suspected."

When ocean species collapse, it makes the ocean itself weaker and less able to recover from shocks like global climate change, Worm said.

The decline in marine biodiversity is largely due to over-fishing and destruction of habitat, Worm said in a telephone interview from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Oh, but global warming is a hoax! Dick Cheney and George W. Bush said so! We don't want to be premature in our judgment, do we? Better to let the fish all die and the ice caps melt before we do anything about it — just so we're certain!

Right?

I've laid off this one for a few days now, but it persists in the headlines. Here's the logic:

While researchers have long shown that tall people earn more than their shorter counterparts, it's not only social discrimination that accounts for this inequality -- tall people are just smarter than their height-challenged peers, a new study finds.

"As early as age three -- before schooling has had a chance to play a role -- and throughout childhood, taller children perform significantly better on cognitive tests," wrote Anne Case and Christina Paxson of Princeton University in a paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Here's what's missing: That taller children's confidence will enable them -- yes, empower them -- to take on more challenging tasks.

Other studies have pointed to low self-esteem, better health that accompanies greater height, and social discrimination as culprits for lower pay for shorter people.

But researchers Case and Paxson believe the height advantage in the job world is more than just a question of image.

"As adults, taller individuals are more likely to select into higher paying occupations that require more advanced verbal and numerical skills and greater intelligence, for which they earn handsome returns," they wrote.

It's not just image, but self-perception, which translates quite easily into self-confidence. The assumption that it must be biology or nutrition alone is simply specious. You cannot simply eliminate cultural influences simply because you see a strong correlation with physical attributes. After all, physical attributes affect cultural responses. Just ask any racial minority. Or obese person. Or woman.

And how tall are the researchers?

They are both about 5 feet 8 inches tall, well above the average height of 5 feet 4 inches for American women.

Okay okay, full disclosure. I'm a half-inch taller than the researchers. I guess that makes me smarter, so consider that as you re-read this post.

More: God is for Suckers and Culture Kitchen

The FDA has shocked me. After stonewalling their own doctors and scientists, the politicians in the agency have decided to act rationally, perhaps as a ploy to help the Republicans you've seen frothing at the mouth over the past two years whenever they talk about sex to seem more reasonable.

It's a partial victory:

Girls 17 and younger still will need a doctor's note to buy the pills, called Plan B, the
Food and Drug Administration told manufacturer Barr Pharmaceuticals Inc.

The compromise decision is a partial victory for women's advocacy and medical groups that say eliminating sales restrictions could cut in half the nation's 3 million annual unplanned pregnancies.

The pills are a concentrated dose of the same drug found in many regular birth-control pills. When a woman takes the pills within 72 hours of unprotected sex, they can lower the risk of pregnancy by up to 89 percent. If she already is pregnant, the pills have no effect.

I hope the nutters out there will note that last sentence. The fact is that Plan B prevents conception. With this "morning after" pill, there is no abortion at all. It's not even an issue.

What's at issue for Plan B opponents is whether the man's sperm can claim dibs on a woman's body, even if they're just wiggling around in there without fertilizing an egg (conception), without even an egg's being there to be fertilized. It's one of the most absurd arguments for patriarchal privilege out there.

Of course, we can expect the nutters to continue to distort and lie about Plan B. Anything that gives women power over their own bodies is bad, according to them. Just wait. You'll see them all over cable news today (if you can stomach watching that crap).

The fear and unreason is already out there:

Bravo folks! let's give our kids one more reason to have sex like rabbits!

"Yeah, it's much better to have pregnancy as punishment! And kids will have sex because the girl will then get to take a pill!"

Don't worry, though. It seems that most people see the positive side. This could reduce the number of aborted pregnancies significantly. That should be good news for everybody.

Funny how some bloggers of the the right wing is so obsessed with party colors that they cannot see green. Clinging to their delusions in spite of scientific evidence, this past week we marveled as the right wing continued to plug its ears and start shouting wild accusations of pseudo-facts about individuals rather than see what is coming down upon us all: global warming. Gotta hand it to them: these folks are very effective at their GOP-stooge role, repeating anger points generated from Dittohead Command Headquarters. (Inconvenient truths are conveniently ignored.)

In response to my piece on Peter Schweizer's inane attempt to dismiss global warming because of unsubstantiated assertions about Al Gore's personal finances and business ties, I received this email from Lisa Wade Raasch of empowerchange.com that seems to shed new light on all this.

I'll just paste it here and let you read it:

This is yet another in the long string of tactics tied back to Exxon --
the CEI ads, the YouTube penguin video, the skeptic evangelical
response, etc. etc. Exxon gave $295,000 to the Hoover Institution where
Peter Schweizer is a research fellow.

It's amazing, on one hand the global warming skeptics call Gore an
environmental extremist, and on the other they say he isn't extreme
enough to be a credible spokesperson.

[contact info removed. -mg]

Exxon is at it again.
Setting the record straight on Peter Schweizer's misleading USA Today
piece

Peter Schweizer's ("Gore not quite as green.") piece that ran in USA
Today (August 10) was a grossly inaccurate misrepresentation of the
facts.

Unfortunately, Mr. Schweizer's op-ed is the latest in a string of
attacks from organizations receiving money from ExxonMobil-in this case
an attempt to attack the messenger to divert attention from the message
of the climate crisis. Mr. Schweizer is a research fellow at the Hoover
Institution, which has received $295,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998.
(http://www.exxonsecrets.org/html/orgfactsheet.php?id=43)

PETER SCHWEIZER'S MISLEADING CLAIMS:

CLAIM: Schweizer claims that Gore receives royalties from a
zinc mine on his property.

FACT: This charge is false. Gore receives no royalties from the mine,
which shut down in 2003. Like many owners of small farms in Smith
County, Tennessee, the Gores received royalties on their mineral rights
when the mine operated. (A correction ran in USA Today on page 10A.)

CLAIM: Schweizer makes the false assertion that Gore controls stock in
Occidental Petroleum.

FACT: This claim is also false. Gore has never owned stock in
Occidental. His late father, Albert Gore Sr., did work for a number of
years at Occidental. At the time of his death, he owned stock in the
company, all of which was sold almost six years ago. The former Vice
President's mother had a small number of shares in her own name at the
time of her death; that stock was also disposed of by the trustee of her
estate. Mr. Gore is not the trustee.

CLAIM: Schweizer attacks Gore for not using green energy alternatives
at his home.

FACT: Gore was already in the process of adding photovoltaic solar
panels to his home before this scurrilous attack. The Gores have signed
up for every "green power" option their utilities make available.

CLAIM: Schweizer asserts that Gore does not offset his carbon
emissions because Paramount Classics pays for the offsets.
FACT: The Gore's personal carbon offsets are achieved independently of
and in addition to the carbon-neutral leadership shown by Paramount
Classics, Participant Productions and Rodale.
(more)
An Inconvenient Truth: "An Inconvenient Truth" is the first carbon
neutral documentary ever. Paramount Classics and Participant
Productions have worked with Native Energy to offset 100 percent of the
carbon dioxide emissions from air and ground transportation and hotels
for production and promotional activities associated with the
documentary (http://www.paramountvantage.com/blog/?p=35). In addition,
with the book "An Inconvenient Truth," Rodale became the first publisher
to produce a carbon-neutral book. The offsets for "An Inconvenient
Truth" will support New Native American and Alaskan Native wind turbines
and new family dairy farm methane energy projects will deliver clean,
renewable energy to the power grid and displacing power that would
otherwise come from burning fossil fuels.

Generation Investment Management: In addition, Gore co-founded
Generation Investment Management, which invests in companies that are
part of the climate solution. Not only does Generation offset the
carbon emissions of its London and DC offices and business travel
through purchases on the Chicago Climate Exchange to permanently retire
carbon credits, it also offsets the personal home and travel emissions
of all its employees through the CarbonNeutral Company. These offsets
support two projects: 1) a dam-less, "run-of-river" hydro power project
in Bulgaria forecast to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by as much as
10,000 - 13,000 tons per year, and 2) a rural solar electrification
project in India and Sri Lanka to replace the use of dangerous kerosene
lamps that produce high levels of CO2 emissions to light homes with
solar powered lighting systems that produce no CO2.

Current TV: Current TV (www.current.tv), an independent media company
co-founded by Gore that features viewer created content, approved going
carbon neutral at the beginning of 2006, while still in its first year
of operation, and will have completed the process by the end of the
fiscal year.

Reducing CO2 Emissions: Recognizing that we all inevitably emit CO2,
Gore sees offsets as one way to keep total global CO2 emissions in check
and to support alternative "green power" programs in the process. That
said, he believes that the first line of defense is to reduce carbon
emissions as much as possible. Gore works to reduce his overall energy
use by: switching to compact florescent light bulbs, driving a hybrid
vehicle, using green power, adjusting the thermostat a few degrees,
using clock thermostats to make sure no portions of the house are kept
warmer or cooler than needed throughout the day, installing sensors to
ensure that no lights are inadvertently left on in rooms that are not in
use, making a point of flying commercially whenever possible, and
telecommuting when he can.

Al Gore has worked for 30 years to raise awareness about global warming
and to advocate for meaningful solutions. In addition to the very
important role that government (at all levels) and companies must take
to cut emissions of pollution that cause global warming, he urges each
of us to take individual responsibility for our carbon dioxide
emissions. However, he has not asked more from the public than he is
willing to do himself.

Al and Tipper Gore are donating 100-percent of the profits from both the
"An Inconvenient Truth" book and movie to fight against global warming
pollution.

For a bit more context, I recommend David Roberts' post in Grist Magazine.

We have yet another case of corporate experimentation with food genetics has been released into the food supply.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced late yesterday that U.S. commercial supplies of long-grain rice had become inadvertently contaminated with a genetically engineered variety not approved for human consumption.

They say that genetic modification of foods is so that agriculture companies don't have to use so many pesticides. That's not quite true, is it?

Johanns said he did not know where the contaminated rice was found or how widespread it may be in the U.S. food supply. The agency first learned about it from the company, he said, after it discovered "trace amounts" during testing of commercial supplies.

The variety, known as LLRICE 601, is endowed with bacterial DNA that makes rice plants resistant to a weedkiller made by the agricultural giant Aventis.

And this is not an isolated case.

Bayer said in a statement it is "cooperating closely" with the government on the discovery. It added that the protein conferring herbicide tolerance "is well known to regulators and has been confirmed safe for food and feed use in a number of crops by regulators in many countries, including the EU, Japan, Mexico, U.S. and Canada."

Johanns acknowledged that the discovery could have a significant impact on rice sales -- especially exports, which are worth close to $1 billion a year. Many U.S. trading partners have strict policies forbidding importation of certain genetically engineered foods, even if they are approved in the United States.

Those restrictions reflect a mix of science-based fears that some gene-altered foods or seeds may pose health or environmental hazards; cultural beliefs about food purity; and political wrangling over trade disparities.

Is it any wonder? These companies are playing with fire, and have pressured the federal government into prohibiting the labeling of these Frankenstein foods.

If other countries cut off imports, the political and economic impact could rival or exceed that of the last such major event -- the discovery in 2000 that the U.S. corn supply had become contaminated with StarLink corn. StarLink, which was engineered to be insect-resistant, was approved for use in animal feed but not for humans because of its potential to trigger allergic reactions.

That's right. The world is a science project for corporations looking for bigger and better ways to make money off of what we eat.

Do the modifications make the food more nutritious? No.

Do the modifications make the food more tasty? Quite the opposite.

Do the modifications make the food prettier? Oh yes, packaging is everything.

Do the modifications make the plants more durable to stand up to even more massive sprayings of toxic pesticides? That's the point.

Don't worry. The Bush Administration is on the job. Doesn't that make you feel better?

Methinks Peter Schweizer doth protest too much. The Republicans have enjoyed a nice political bubble over the years when it comes to the environment. "Global warming? What global warming?" has been typical of their responses.

That's been changing since Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth (directed by Davis Guggenheim) hit the screens. Since then, the film has enjoyed some remarkable documentary-level box office. As a result, the American public is seeing what the rest of the world has for years: that when it comes to the environment, the Republicans and the Bush Administration have no clothes.

Yet one more area where right-wing fantasies failed to convince the prevailing facts to change themselves. Reality's a bitch. And people realize that Al Gore, whom the wingnuts ridiculed in the 2000 campaign, was right all along.

Those stale old jokes no longer stick. And the Republicans are scared.

Now the right-wing fictioneers who so expertly dismantled Michael Moore's public image with loud and repeated falsehoods, distortions and outright lies of their own are now turning their sights on Gore. Why? Maybe because they are finding the truth just a tad too inconvenient.

In today's USA Today, we get an early shot -- intended to be a barrage, but which comes off more as a bb-gun sniper attempt: right-wing Hoover man and dittohead-industry author Peter Schweizer has a petty little piece nitpicking Gore's life.

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

Smell a little envy there? This is a typical smear by the right, attacking Gore based on class. "He's not like you folks," Schweizer is saying to us "peasants" (a popular word used in right-wing power circles to describe us non-special folks born without silver spoons in our mouths). I don't know what Schweizer's lifestyle is like, but his Republican and corporatist allies live much fatter lives. Besides, this is about global warming, not about a real estate crunch.

Schweizer then goes on to talk about the apparent fact that Gore's estates have not yet switched to alternative energy options in their areas, and that Gore owns stock in Occidental Petroleum. Apparently these are to be considered glaring character flaws and indications of some big great hypocrisy. He also goes after the Democrats, who also have not signed up for alternative energy.

Then, in a well-practiced move of non-sequitur pseduo-logic -- a speciality of Schweizer and Coulter and the other writers in the alternate-reality books genre -- he suggests:

Maybe our very existence isn't threatened.

Not exactly stellar reasoning from a defender of the ruling class, is it?

Ironically, Schweizer doesn't acknowledge that us non-ruling-class Americans are already struggling with energy prices. We aren't cashing in on big trade with mass-polluter China, or raking in record profits from oil speculation, or laughing all the way to the bank with 10-figure government checks for no-bid contracts. The men in power are screwing over America big time, and we're supposed to get mad at Al Gore?

The issue here is not simply Gore's hypocrisy; it's a question of credibility. If he genuinely believes the apocalyptic vision he has put forth and calls for radical changes in the way other people live, why hasn't he made any radical change in his life? Giving up the zinc mine or one of his homes is not asking much, given that he wants the rest of us to radically change our lives.

In other words, if you can't refute the scientific evidence, then shoot the messenger. Global warming, according to Schweizer, is not a scientific theory with evidence in our faces every day. No, global warming is just what Al Gore wants. Get it? Our response to global warming should be tempered by the right wing's approval of Al Gore's politics and financial investments.

My own guess is that Schweizer is accusing Gore of simple class betrayal. After all, being rich and powerful, Al Gore should be a Republican, right? How dare he!

Inconvenient indeed.