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Proponents of evolution have a lot of things over proponents of creationism intelligent design – knowledge, facts, the backing of virtually the entire relevant scientific community, research, etc. But above all this, they have one especially important factor: honesty.
Filed under: Misc | Tagged: Honesty, Thought of the day | 2 Comments »
A bigot has raised bigot-based questions on a military study.
Directly challenging the Pentagon’s top leadership, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain on Thursday snubbed a military study on gays as flawed and said letting gays serve openly would be dangerous in a time of war.
McCain also said Adm. Mike Mullen’s opinion didn’t matter as much as other military leader’s opinions because he doesn’t directly lead troops. Mullen had one hell of a response.
“With all due respect, Mr. Chairman and Sen. McCain, it is true that, as chairman, I am not in charge of troops. But I have commanded three ships, a carrier battle group and two fleets. And I was most recently a service chief myself. For more than 40 years I have made decisions that affected and even risked the lives of young men and women.
“You do not have to agree with me on this issue. But don’t think for one moment that I haven’t carefully considered the impact of the advice I give on those who will have to live with the decisions that that advice informs. I would not recommend repeal of this law if I did not believe in my soul that it was the right thing to do for our military, for our nation and for our collective honor.”
McCain would absolutely not question this study if it gave him the results he wanted. He’s just a typical bigoted Republican, arguing from his biases, not any sort of objectivity. What’s worse, he’s making our military weaker by allowing this unconstitutional law to remain in place.
Filed under: News, Rights | Tagged: Don't Ask Don't Tell, John McCain, Mike Mullen | 3 Comments »
In my daily news trawl, I came across two articles listed right next to each other. Here’s the first:
House Republicans have temporarily blocked legislation to feed school meals to thousands more hungry children.
Republicans used a procedural maneuver Wednesday to try to amend the $4.5 billion bill, which would give more needy children the opportunity to eat free lunches at school and make those lunches healthier. First lady Michelle Obama has lobbied for the bill as part of her “Let’s Move” campaign to combat childhood obesity.
…
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has also taken a swipe at the first lady’s campaign, bringing cookies to a speech at a Pennsylvania school last month and calling the campaign a “school cookie ban debate” and “nanny state run amok” on her Twitter feed.
It has been abundantly clear for a long, long time that Sarah Palin is intellectually inferior to most people. I really don’t see how this can even be debated. But it hasn’t always been clear that she’s also just a bad person. Now it is.
Now, if she was scientifically literate, maybe this second article would have an impact on her thinking:
The latest research involving about 1.5 million people concluded that healthy white adults who were overweight were 13 percent more likely to die during the time they were followed in the study than those whose weight is in an ideal range.
“Having a little extra meat on your bones — if that meat happens to be fat — is harmful, not beneficial,” said Dr. Michael Thun of the American Cancer Society, senior author of the study.
The study’s conclusions, published in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine, are similar to three other large studies, said the lead author, Amy Berrington of the National Cancer Institute.
“Now there’s really a very large body of evidence which supports the finding that being overweight is associated with a small increased risk of death,” Berrington said.
This is what I’m talking about when I say human beings are more important than the abstract ethical principle of liberty. Letting kids get fat is going to have real world consequences that no one wants. Human lives matter.
But kids do like cookies.
Filed under: News | Tagged: American Cancer Society, Amy Berrington, Child Nutrition Bill, Let's Move, Michael Thun, Michelle Obama, National Cancer Institute, New England Journal of Medicine, Overweight, Republicans, Sarah Palin | 15 Comments »
That’s the number of stars – 300 sextillion – scientists now estimate to be in the observable Universe.
The research, led by Yale astronomer Pieter van Dokkum, is being published by the journal Nature. In an interview with Space.com, von Dokkum said the findings are based on data gathered when the researchers were analyzing “red dwarfs” — stars that are dimmer than our sun and much smaller.
The “faint signatures” of those red dwarfs in eight galaxies “located between about 50 million and 300 million light-years away,” led to the new calculation of how many stars are out there, Space.com writes.
This has also led von Dokkum to speculate that there are likely trillions of Earth-like planets out there. This makes sense given the mundane nature of our solar system. Why wouldn’t there be more planets like ours? And life on those planets? We may be locally rare, but on the scale of the Universe only arrogance could say we’re likely to be exclusive inhabitants.
Filed under: Astronomy/Cosmology/Physics | Tagged: Pieter van Dokkum, Sextillion, Stars, Trillions and trillions | 4 Comments »
For the Sake of Science 