Facebook is one of the greatest tools with which the Internet Age has supplied us. One in every 14 people in the world use it; 90% of those in Indonesia have accounts. It is the reason I can talk about Mark Zuckerberg without linking to who he is. Facebook has become a part of life – whether young or old. And speaking of the latter, Queen Elizabeth has joined up.
Britain’s Queen Elizabeth has joined Facebook, adding a presence on the world’s most popular social network to the royal family’s accounts on Twitter, photo-sharing site Flickr and YouTube.
The British monarchy’s Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/TheBritishMonarchy) does not allow users to “friend” the Queen or to send her messages, but offers updates on royal news and diary events.
By midday on Monday, a few hours after the page went live, 60,000 people had clicked to signal they liked it, meaning they will receive updates on the royal family’s activities in their Facebook news feeds.
The page does not display personal details such as the Queen’s relationship status, interests or political views.
Britain’s royal family prides itself on keeping up to date with new technologies.
I’m not sure the royal family can point to joining Facebook in 2010 and say they’re really on the technological ball, but I am glad to see more and more people joining the site.
There is an article up at the pro-conservative FrumForum which talks about how the GOP did extremely well during last week’s elections among general voters, but when it comes to well-educated young people, they failed horribly.
The blue line is the trend for Tompkins county (see link for chart; Cornell University is in Tompkins County). Again, a negative score implies that Republicans do better than they do nationally, a positive score that the Democrats to better. In 1960 – admittedly an odd year – Nixon beat Kennedy by 33 points in what was nationally a tied election. In 2008 Obama beat McCain by 42 points, 35 points more than the national average. The trend is not quite linear – apart from the 1960 election, there is a relatively flat trend between 1964 and 1980 – on average, Republicans do a little bit better than Democrats relatively. Then there is a new level between 1984 and 2000, where Democrats are up by 20 points compared to the national average. Finally, there is a jump in the last two elections, with Democrats up around 35 points. This implies a swing of 40 points from the 1970s – and a whopping 68 points from 1960.
And even this second chart (see link) understates the Republican problem with top students.
It isn’t any surprise that the GOP does poorly with young students. There’s a social and economic disconnect. Students tend to be more socially tolerant of others than the GOP in general. The GOP’s base is made in large part of an older generation that didn’t need higher education at the rate required today, so there is an education gap there that negatively impacts things such as women’s rights and civil rights for gays. This older generation then further negatively impacts the things that matter to young voters by voting in favor of social programs which are in need of fiscal retooling; a lack of retooling is fine for now, but will become an issue later – when these older voters are mostly dead. (The U.S. really needs a version of the Australian law which says everyone must vote or face a fine.)
But it isn’t just that the GOP absolutely does not serve the financial interests of young people (or most people who aren’t wildly wealthy, but I digress). It’s also that well-educated young people care about, well, education. In this area, the GOP unarguably fails. A second FrumForum article gets to the heart of the matter.
Let me advance another hypothesis. Today’s top students are motivated less by enthusiasm for Democrats and much more by revulsion from Republicans. It’s not the students who have changed so much. It’s the Republicans.
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Under Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, Republicans championed science and knowledge. But over the past 30 years, national Republicans have formed an intensifying alliance with religious conservatives more skeptical of science and knowledge. I don’t know whether discarding evolution goes against common sense; but I’m pretty sure it goes against most Ivy League-educated senses.
To advance this alliance, national Republicans have derided elite universities as dangerous and hostile places.
This anti-intelligence movement among Republicans is long-standing. I think part of it stems from the emphasis the party placed on social values in recent years, especially throughout the 90’s. A lot of the concern there was fair, even if wrong-headed. But there was a hidden correlation among those with more socially liberal (i.e., fair and equal) values; some of what brings one to certain social values also brings one to more liberal economic policies. Given the unfortunate nature of politics, we often find ourselves arguing the polemic even though we may have plenty of common ground. This can lead to an us-vs-them mentality which in turn polarizes the political atmosphere. Now we have Republicans, resting on the shoulders of those who came to power over socially conservative values, who are also forced into other positions, including economic hostility towards science and education. And of course, there is the real hostility that exists among religious conservative who rightly recognize the threat science and education pose to their pre-conceived notions; it isn’t just politics now – much of the power of the GOP is locked up in the hands of those who really are anti-science and anti-education. (To be fair, I’ll grant that they are only generally anti-education in practice; idealistically I think most everyone is pro-education.)
And even though they didn’t win in every instance, now we have those annoying Teabaggers promoting anti-intelligence views.
The couple were temporarily separated when Mr Oliveira’s bid for asylum over claims he was raped in Brazil as a teenager was rejected on the grounds he was not physically affected.
But in June Senator John Kerry intervened and urged officials to temporarily allow Mr Oliveira back into the country and to return to the home he shares with Mr Coco in Haverhill, Massachusetts.
His return was granted on humanitarian grounds, but now Attorney General Eric Holder has refused to change his mind on the original decision.
It means the Brazilian could be forced out with six months, a decision which has drawn criticism from gay rights groups.
What’s the justification here? How is this good? A legitimately married couple want to live in the U.S.; one spouse is a U.S. citizen. This seems pretty straight forward.
But, then, a majority of Americans are disinterested in civil rights for everyone.
“We’ve decided to make a change and introduce new voices and new perspective,” said Norby Williamson, an executive vice president of ESPN. He added: “Twenty one years is an eternity in this business. And today is about acknowledging the contributions they made to the franchise.”
One of the most fundamentally dishonest positions of many marriage bigots is that marriage is all about children and reproduction. ‘Oh, we don’t hate da gays! We just want to create the best environment for children!’ I’m sure they are concerned with children, but that isn’t why they’re against gay marriage. We see this every time civil unions come up and they still oppose the measure. This is about not giving rights to a group of people based on who that group inherently is. That’s bigotry.
Now Hawaii has a chance to make the lives of gay couples better. (When put this way – an honest way – it’s all so clear.) The out-going governor, Linda Lingle, had this opportunity, but she instead decided to consult some wholly unqualified men who dress in silly garb. This undue respect given to the ignorant and silly resulted in less human happiness/more human suffering. It was unjustifiable by any reasonable measure.
Hawaii voters opened the way for same-sex civil unions to become state law next year, with an election that gave victory to a pro-gay rights gubernatorial candidate and rejected many church-backed candidates.
The state House and Senate retained the Democratic majorities that approved a civil unions bill this year before it was vetoed, and Democratic Gov.-elect Neil Abercrombie has said he will sign a similar law if passed by the Legislature.
The move would make Hawaii, long a battleground in the gay rights movement, the sixth state to grant essentially the same rights of marriage to same-sex couples without authorizing marriage itself.
This doesn’t qualify as equality, but it is currently the best Hawaii can do. I hope 2011 will be the year gay Hawaiians are treated a little more like human beings.
The last time I wrote about HIV, I made the point that biology is all about shape; keep that idea in mind and a lot of things will suddenly start making a lot of sense. In that instance, I was writing about antibodies that were able to nearly universally attack HIV based upon one particular location on the virus which did not change shape. In this post I want to talk about a new study concerning protein differences.
To define host genetic effects on the outcome of a chronic viral infection, we performed genome-wide association analysis in a multiethnic cohort of HIV-1 controllers and progressors, and analyzed the effects of individual amino acids within the classical HLA proteins
HIV controllers are just what you probably think they are: they are people whose bodies are able to control the impact of HIV. They maintain healthy levels of helper T Cells. Progressors, on the other hand, are people who follow the expected course after they contract HIV. In this study, a large group of controllers were taken and had their genomes compared to progressor genomes. Researchers found more than 300 (313, to be exact) SNPs on the chromosome 6 that separated these two groups.
This is a pretty specific area with a small amount of difference. In fact, on the HLA-B protein, a difference of just 5 amino acids makes all the difference in a single groove. It appears as though this is one of the most important differences between controllers and progressors, constituting a significant region which enables the immune system to control and limit the proliferation of HIV. The amino acid sequence changes the shape of the groove in controllers as compared to progressors. This change protects the controller against HIV and its deadly consequences.
Precisely how this change in shape keeps HIV from turning into AIDS has not yet been made clear, but it is very promising. Given the current state of research, I’m willing to predict we’ll see a cure for HIV before we see a cure for cancer.
For the Sake of Science 