Reality-Based Engineering: 2006/04

[Update] Finally, A Great Traditional Media Writeup Of Iraq Debacle

[Update - a month late on the link, but still good to get it]

We can all thank National Public Radio for presenting a 8 minute summary by Mike Shuster of the lead-up to the Iraq war, basically drawing a line thorugh all the bushbot claims and the utter falsehoods they actually were.

Link is here at npr.org.

Catholic Church Rejects Intelligent Design

[Note: somehow this post remained a draft from January, and I just never posted it]

There are some things to be proud of being a catholic. I think they learned their lesson with Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler. This quote:

The Church, which has never rejected evolution, teaches that God created the world and the natural laws by which life developed. Even its best-known dissident, Swiss theologian Hans Kueng, echoed this in a recent book in Germany.

Even for a skeptical Catholic, (esp. regarding it being run as a state and the Pope is sovereign), I like that they have been forceful in allowing science to be science.

Vaccine for Marburg Shows Great Promise

Marburg, a relative of Ebola, may have a new vaccine. This yahoo article describes the wild success that it's had in protecting monkeys in lab experiments.

NPR has more here - and probably more permanent. Yahoo articles have a tendency to disappear after a period of time, I've found...

Internet Neutrality: Don't Let AT&T & Comcast Get Away With This

The biggies are trying to get Congress to pass a law to allow them to control who you can log onto through their networks...if they don't control who you can telephone, should they be able to control what search engine you go to? I say no. More from Matt Stoller here. Go get 'em Ed Markey.

This is a follow-on from a previous post, below. Yes, I still owe comment.

Pelosi: Finally, Some Plain Talk

If you go to the link (above), you can get to the .wmv file from her house.gov webpage. This is some serious plain talk, not fluffed-up political language. It is refreshing. Partial transcript below:

If you want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and therefore improve our national security situation, you can't do it if you're a republican because you are too wedded to the oil companies.

We have two oilmen in the white house. the logical follow-up from that is $3 a gallon gasoline. there is no accident. It is a cause and effect. A cause and effect.

How dare the president of the united states make a speech today in april many, many, many months after the american people have had to undergo the cost of home heating oil? A woman told me she almost fainted when she received
her home heating bill over this winter. And when so many people making the
minimum wage, which hasn't been raised in eight years, which has a very low
purchasing power, have to go out and buy gasoline at these prices?

Where have you been, mr. president? The middle class squeeze is on, competition in our country is effected by the price of energy and of oil and all of a sudden you take a trip outside of washington, see the fact that the public is outraged about this, come home and make a speech. Let's see that matched in your budget, let's see that matched in your policy.

You're separating yourself from your patron, big oil, cut yourself off from that anvil holding your party down and this country down. Instead of coming to washington and throwing your republican colleagues under the wheels of the
train, which they mightily deserve for being a rubber stamp for your obscene, corrupt policy of ripping off the american people.

Keep The Internet Free

I hope to discuss this more, but for now, click on the title above to read the dailykos on the subject. Bottom line - those who hold the pipelines should not tell us where we can dial.

Saturday Night Live: Natalie Portman

Oh my goodness I saw this Saturday night and I laughed my ass off - I was going to look for this but bat girl beat me to it. Natalie totally makes fun of herself and her squeaky-clean image. The short hair helps, natch.

Energy Solutions Conference

AlterNet Articles on Status of VLWC

Two posts on the subject from AlterNet:

* overall state of the VLWC

* On how lefties need to get on cable TV to really counterbalance the righties

The Silencing of Carlos Delgado

There had been some articles on this in the past two years, but I'd not heard much about this again until tonite wuh I was doing a google search on the Vieques Caribes, a former Mets minor league team (which I can't find, BTW - they still out there?)

The biggest thing is that, at least on first glance, there was nothing else written into his contract with the trade from Fla to the Mets. I am sorry that the Wilpons have decided that nobody can speak on any subject except on why somebody couldn't hit Tim Hudson on a given night.

The Silencing of Carlos Delgado

Ooops, I misesd these articles on the subject, too:

From eurosport.com

From vibe magazine

edgeofsports.com

wikipedia.org

cantstopthebleeding.com

From The DarkSyde: Rep Miller Interview

A must read for those who understand the intimidation that govermnent scientists get from this administration when they say something that is out of step with the neo-thug agenda.

Thru AmericaBLOG: ABC News Done Good

ABC did a great story on Bush's lies about the supposed biological weapons labs we found in Iraq (we didn't). They also showed, which I didn't realize, that Cheney also lied about the labs four months after Bush (that would be four months AFTER we determined the labs were NOT labs at all).