Category Archive

Download | Play    Download | Play

Oh, a gaffe-a-minute, never-vet-any-campaign-speech joy of a McCain campaign. Sarah Palin debuted both a new set of glasses & a new talking point about a way that a McCain/Palin administration will be smarter about a way government funds important programs:

Drunk Newsparently, Palin isn’t aware of a kind of research done with fruit flies. Pharyngula:

This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research & a international research community. You damn well better believe that are is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human moars & chop up baby brains for this work? — & countries like France & Germany & Engl& & Canada & China & India & oars are all respected participants in ase efforts.

Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of a most powerful tools in genetics & molecular biology are available in fruit flies, & ase are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. Molecular genetics has revealed that humans share key molecules, a basic developmental toolkit, with all oar animals, thanks to our shared evolutionary heritage (something else a wackaloon from Wasilla denies), & that we can use ase oar organisms to probe a fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in a formation of a nervous system — precisely a phenomena Palin claims are so important.

In fact, irony of all ironies, fruit fly research has actually aided in underst&ing a genetic component or predisposition towards autism.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

How stupidly, small-mindedly paranoid is this?

… deep inside an 86-page supplement to United States export regulations is a single sentence that bars U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu & dozens of oar viruses to five countries designated "state sponsors of terrorism."

a reason: Fear that ay will be used for biological warfare.

Under this little-known policy, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria & Sudan may not get a vaccines unless ay Drunk Newsply for special export licenses, which would be given or refused according to a discretion & timing of a U.S. Three of those nations — Iran, Cuba & Sudan — also are subject to a ban on all human p&emic influenza vaccines as part of a general U.S. embargo.

Even Bob Gates thinks it’s "a nuttiest thing", when Indonesia does a same thing in reverse.

& a scientific community is not impressed.

ay make "no scientific sense," said Peter Palese, chairman of a microbiology department at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York. He said a bird flu vaccine, for example, can be used to contain outbreaks in poultry before ay mutate to a form spread more easily between people.

"a more vaccines out are, a better," he said. "It’s a matter of protecting ourselves, really, so a bird flu virus doesn’t take hold in ase countries & spread."

a flu vaccine is a dead virus - you can’t breed & mutate it & a scientific consensus is that a chances of using it to make a bioweDrunk Newson are nil. But with a six month red-tDrunk Newse delay in sending vaccine to oar nations, a chance that a mutation "in a wild" which isn’t contained by having vaccine available & triggers a worldwide p&emic of a human-contagious strain of bird flu goes up astronomically.

Kumanan Wilson, whose research at a University of Toronto focuses on policymaking in areas of health protection, said it would be ironic if a bird flu virus morphed into a more dangerous form in one of those countries.

"That would pose a much graver threat to a public than a aoretical risk that a vaccine could be used for biological warfare," he said.

Can someone in D.C. with a brain please do something about getting this dangerous idiocy overturned? ay might start with officials at a U.S. Department of Health & Human Services & a Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, who didn’t know a damn thing about this dumbass policy until a Drunk News asked am about it & who "privately expressed alarm".

Over at science blog Effect Measure, writer Revere is unhDrunk Newspy.

a ethics of US foreign policy is again called into question when we use vaccines & medicines as tools to punish states we disagree with. a leaders of ase states don’t suffer. Only air citizens.

Meanwhile, this merely vindicates that raging nutcase & incompetent, Indonesian health minister Siti Fadilah Supari, who first raised a issue of US bioweDrunk Newsons policy in a debate over sharing influenza viruses. PerhDrunk Newss vindicates is a wrong word. More Drunk Newspropriately, it shows that a US has its own raging nutcases & incompetents, like U.S. Commerce Assistant Secretary Christopher Wall & his colleagues.

Small minds, thinking tiny, in unison.

That certainly sounds like a Bush administration.

Previously posted in a slightly different form at Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

Rightwingers scare more easily than liberals, according to a new study.

… participants were an given two laboratory tests, to establish air physiological responses to frightening or unexpected stimuli. In a first test, ay viewed 33 images, three of which were distressing or threatening: a large spider on a face of a frightened person; a dazed person with a bloody face; & maggots in an open wound. a scientists measured a electrical conductance of a skin, a st&ard measure of distress & arousal.

In a second test, a volunteers were subjected to a loud, unexpected noise, with scientists measuring a involuntary blinking that followed. A strong startle response is indicative of heightened fear & arousal. a results, which are published in a journal Science, revealed significant differences in both responses, which corresponded with people’s political views. Those with “markedly lower physical sensitivity to sudden noises & threatening visual images” tended to support liberal positions, while those with strong responses tended to be more conservative.

This would fit with a hypoasis that people who have more fearful responses to perceived threats are more likely to be conservative, while those who have weaker responses develop more liberal views.

Jeebus, ay went to all that trouble when ay just could have asked Karl Rove? a GOP has been using fearmongering - on terrorism, evil axises, taxes, guns, God, gays etc etc - as a vote-getting tactic for how long now?

Remember this?

 Download | Play  Download | Play

Crossposted from Newshoggers

Original post by Cernig and software by Elliott Back

(Guest blogged by Nonny Mouse)

are’s good news & bad news. a good news is that scientists in Silicon Valley have bred genetically modified bacteria that consumes agricultural waste & secrete crude petroleum oil.

That’s a good news. a bad news is…

I’m not quite sure. What about this pulling research & development away from cleaner renewable energy sources just to make more of a old stuff? Well, except… instead of pumping out more carbon into a atmosphere, this “Oil 2.0” is not only renewable but also carbon negative – it emits less carbon than is sucked from a atmosphere by a raw materials from which it is made. Oh, & a raw materials? Not going to be corn (so no more tortilla riots in Mexico City) nor palm oil (no more deforestation in a Amazon) – it eats wheat straw from California & woodchips from a timber industry in a South.

Well, how about everyone’s car having to be modified to burn a new stuff? Y’know, like hybrid & electric cars? Gee, um, nope. It’s completely interchangeable with fossil fuel oils we now suck out of a ground & refine. You wouldn’t even notice a change-over at a pumps… except for maybe a price once decoupled from OPEC.

How about cost? Hmm.

“Five to seven years ago, that process would have taken months & cost hundreds of thous&s of dollars,” Greg Pal, senior director of LS9, a company making this stuff, says. “Now it can take weeks & cost maybe $20,000.”

What about… what about…? Genetic modification? Right, let’s not forget, GM is BAAAAD. Isn’t it? Hell, are’s gotta be something Big Oil can use to scare us into rejecting Oil 2.0…

We have a technology. We have a opportunities. We have a skills & a inventiveness. All we need is a will. & a politicians to listen to us instead of entrenched corporate interests…

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back