Category Archives: Uncategorized

Is That a Disease In Your Pocket...?

A U.S. vector biologist appears to have accidentally written virological history simply by having sex with his wife after returning from a field trip to Senegal. A study just released in Emerging Infectious Diseases suggests that the researcher, Brian Foy of Colorado State University in Fort Collins, passed to his wife the Zika virus, an obscure pathogen that causes joint pains and extreme fatigue. If so, it would be the first documented case of sexual transmission of an insect-borne disease.

via ScienceNOW

Demagogue

Upon seeing a pie chart which explains that 2/3rds of Rep. Ryan's budget cutting plan comes directly from cutting programs that benefit low-income citizens, worshiper of all things serious, Andrew Sullivan, finds a way to make sure the Democrats are still worse:

Agreed. Which is why the Democrats now need to provide a way to get equivalent savings by fairer means. If they could stop politicking and demagoguing, this is a major opportunity to contrast their vision of shared sacrifice with the GOP's.

Holy fuck, dude. This is some unbelievable shit right here. Did you really miss the last 12 months where the Dems tried to help fix the deficit by enacting a whopping 3% tax increase on income above $200,000 and were turned into America-hating, job-killing, class-warfare-waging, commi-socialists ? (not to mention Death panels ? Cutting Medicare !) Three percent! They got slaughtered by the media who, in love with the dipshit teabaggers, refused to explain to its audience what a "marginal tax rate" is, how our tax system works, what 3% really means in this context, etc.. For three fucking percent on income above $200K.

For those who don't know our tax system: this means that if you made $200,001 and the tax rate for income above $200K went up 3%, you'd pay $0.03 more. Wow! Right?

Do you know the median personal income in the US ? Sullivan? Look it up. After you've done that, and then pushed your eyes back into their sockets, take another look at that pie chart - a long look. And think about what Ryan is proposing vs. what the Dems got beat down over. And tell us again who the real demagogues are. Do it.

Seriously.

The Truth Is Out There

Having backed himself into a corner with an increasingly convoluted mythology—much like the final season of The X-Files — Glenn Beck has announced that his Fox News show will end later this year, hopefully bringing several seasons’ worth of chalky conspiracy theories to a satisfying conclusion instead of some kind of sentimental, “character-based” copout.
...
Of course, The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz reports that backstage tension between Beck and the network heads means this will probably only amount to a “handful of specials.” So hopefully that whole “ACORN/Egypt/Middle Eastern caliphate” plotline will be tied up by the end of the regular season, because those follow-up TV movies are never really the same.

I Am Reminded...

...why I quit...

My bottom line on this is that the vast majority of regulations curbing the distribution of alcoholic beverages in this country are misguided. Drunkenness is associated with a lot of problematic public health issues, but the correct way to address this is with taxes. Right now in the United States we undertax beer, and it’s cheaper than it ought to be, which deprives us of a lot of much-needed revenue and contributes to crime and other problems. But at the same time, a thicket of obscure regulations serve to protect incumbents from competition and senselessly reduce consumer choice.

... reading Matt Yglesias.