brainrow

Oh, but I do like this song by Steeleye Span.

CNN Political Analyst Bill Schneider says Bush’s job approval rating is 32 percent, and I can’t help wondering — is it really possible that almost a third of Americans approve of this walking disaster? Are that many people crazy?

CNN runs lots of little online polls called QuickVotes. After recent Nascar cheating scandals, they asked “Is it ever OK to cheat?” “Yes” got 26 percent of the vote.

So here’s my theory: Bush’s honest approval rating is about six percent.

Now, that I can believe.

Via Atrios, USA Today founder Al Neuharth considers the worst president ever:

I remember every president since Herbert Hoover, when I was a grade school kid. He was one of the worst. I’ve personally met every president since Dwight Eisenhower. He was one of the best.

A year ago I criticized Hillary Clinton for saying “this (Bush) administration will go down in history as one of the worst.”

“She’s wrong,” I wrote. Then I rated these five presidents, in this order, as the worst: Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant, Hoover and Richard Nixon. “It’s very unlikely Bush can crack that list,” I added.

Andrew Jackson? Really? Sure you didn’t mean Andrew Johnson?

I was wrong. This is my mea culpa. Not only has Bush cracked that list, but he is planted firmly at the top.

Hey, Bush still has almost two years to totally turn his administration around. He might turn out to be only the second or third worst president ever.

John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth on February 20, 1962. He rode in a Mercury capsule dubbed Friendship 7, launched atop an Atlas rocket at 9:47 AM EST.

Next Tuesday is the 45th anniversary of Glenn’s flight, and at 9:47 AM Glenn himself will talk about the flight at the Center of Science and Industry (COSI), 333 West Broad Street, here in Columbus, Ohio.

The event is called “Friendship 2007: A Conversation with John Glenn.” Tickets are required, but they’re free. They must be picked up at the John Glenn School of Public Affairs, room 350 Page Hall, 1810 College Road, on the Ohio State University campus. The phone number is (614) 292-4545.

I’m a Macintosh bigot, so I really enjoyed this. Via Discovering Biology in a Digital World, a hilarious demonstration of speech recognition in Microsoft Windows Vista:

We’re gonna do a little perl script using the Windows Vista software recognition to show you how easy it is.

(Warning: strong language.)

In fairness, the speech recognition seems to work really well. Programming may not be the best use of this technology, and this guy probably needs to learn a few new techniques to meet the computer half way… well, two-thirds of the way.

Have you ever had a creepy feeling that you were being watched? From Living the Scientific Life: the Helix Nebula.

And, from the New York Times, this completely unrelated article:

Why do we see faces everywhere we look: in the Moon, in Rorschach inkblots, in the interference patterns on the surface of oil spills? Why are some Lay’s chips the spitting image of Fidel Castro, and why was a cinnamon bun with a striking likeness to Mother Teresa kept for years under glass in a coffee shop in Nashville, where it was nicknamed the Nun Bun?

Compelling answers are beginning to emerge from biologists and computer scientists who are gaining new insights into how the brain recognizes and processes facial data.

Long before she had heard of Diana Duyser’s grilled-cheese sandwich, Doris Tsao, a neuroscientist at the University of Bremen in Germany, had an inkling that people might process faces differently from other objects. Her suspicion was that a particular area of the brain gives faces priority, like an airline offering first-class passengers expedited boarding.

“Some patients have strokes and are then able to recognize everything perfectly well except for faces,” Dr. Tsao said. “So we started questioning whether there really might be an area in the brain that is dedicated to face recognition.”

More here.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, by carefully inspecting every bite of food in order to make sure it wasn’t Jesus or somebody, I was eating a lot less and finally losing some weight. On the other hand, I feel more relaxed now without that creepy eye spying on me all the time.

Via The Frontal Cortex: Randy Newman defends America. (Warning: Randy is not worried much about being politically correct.)

Now, the leaders we have
While they’re the worst that we’ve had
Are hardly the worst this poor world has seen

…

The end of an empire
Is messy at best
And this empire’s ending
Like all the rest

I don’t think Abraham Lincoln would recognize today’s Republican Party. Today’s “Party of Lincoln” would reject Abe as a bleeding-heart. That doesn’t mean they don’t have use for him. Take Washington Times columnist Frank Gaffney:

Frank Gaffney, Jr. opened his latest column with this: “Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.” — President Abraham Lincoln.

He continues: “It is, of course, unimaginable that the penalties proposed by one of our most admired presidents for the crime of dividing America in the face of the enemy would be contemplated — let alone applied — today. Still, as the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate engage in interminable debate about resolutions whose effects can only be to ‘damage morale and undermine the military’ while emboldening our enemies, it is time to reflect on what constitutes inappropriate behavior in time of war.”

One problem: Lincoln never said it.

Gaffney didn’t make it up. No, that was the work of another conservative writer, J. Michael Waller, writing in Insight magazine — a sister publication of the Washington Times.

Once the truth gets its boots on, it’s nice to know that so many of the pants that need a swift kick are gathered together in just a few convenient places.

Updates from Editor & Publisher: As of Thursday night, The Washington Times had neither removed the quote from the Gaffney column nor run a correction.

On Thursday, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) cited the quote on the floor of the House during the debate on the Iraq war “surge.”

A small New Mexico radio station opts for higher standards of journalistic integrity than the big boys:

After the latest widely-publicized stories in national newspapers about weapons from Iran allegedly killing Americans in Iraq — based completely on unnamed sources — at least one smaller news outlet has had enough of it.

The news director of the public radio station in Santa Fe, New Mexico, has directed his staff to “ignore national stories quoting unnamed sources.” He also called on other news outlets to join this policy.

From Bill Dupuy’s memo:

Effectively immediately and until further notice, it is the policy of KSFR’s news department to ignore and not repeat any wire service or nationally published story about Iran, China, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia or any other foreign power that quotes an “unnamed” U.S. official.

…

This is a small news department with a small reach. We cannot research these stories ourselves. But we can take steps not to compromise our integrity. We should not dutifully parrot whatever comes out of Washington, on the wire or by whatever means, no matter how intriguing and urgent it sounds, when the source is unnamed.

It is said, “A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.” Eventually, however, the truth gets its boots on, and the liars are due a sharp kick in the pants. For starters.

It’s official: Al Franken is running for U.S. Senate:

I grew up in a hard-working middle class family just like many of yours. And as a middle-class kid growing up in Minnesota back then, I felt like the luckiest kid in the world. And I was.

My wife, Franni, whom I met our freshman year of college, wasn’t quite as lucky. When she was seventeen months old, her dad — a decorated veteran of World War II — died in a car accident, leaving her mother, my mother-in-law, widowed with five kids.

My mother-in-law worked in the produce department of a grocery store, but that family made it because of Social Security survivor benefits. Sometimes there wasn’t enough food on the table, sometimes they turned off the heat in the winter — this was in Portland, Maine, almost as cold as Minnesota — but they made it.

Every single one of the four girls in Franni’s family went to college, thanks to Pell Grants and other scholarships. My brother-in-law, Neil, went into the Coast Guard, where he became an electrical engineer.

And my mother-in-law got herself a $300 GI loan to fix her roof, and used the money instead to go to the University of Maine. She became a grade school teacher, teaching Title One kids — poor kids — and so her loan was forgiven.

My mother-in-law and every single one of those five kids became a productive member of society. Conservatives like to say that people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps — and that’s a great idea. But first, you’ve got to have the boots. And the government gave my wife’s family the boots.

That’s what progressives like me believe the government is there for. To provide security for middle-class families like the one I grew up in, and opportunity for working poor families like the one Franni grew up in.

By the way, I stole that boots line from Tim Walz, our great new congressman from Southern Minnesota. Tim’s father died when he was a kid, and he and his brother and his mom made it because of Social Security.   

…

Your government should have your back. That should be our mission in Washington, the one FDR gave us during another challenging time: freedom from fear. 

Revvin’ up for the next war:

President Bush said today he is certain that elements of the Iranian government are supplying deadly roadside bombs that kill American troops in Iraq, even if the innermost circle of the government is not involved.

Hey, has he ever been wrong?

“Support the Troops” the Bush-Cheney way.

First, let the ghost of Rumsfeld equip them for the “surge”:

U.S. Army units in Iraq and Afghanistan lack more than 4,000 of the latest Humvee armor kit, known as FRAG Kit 5, according to U.S. officials. The Army has ramped up production of the armor, giving priority to troops in Baghdad, but the upgrade is not scheduled to be completed until this summer, Army officials said. That is well into the timeline for major operations launched last week to quell violence by Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias, which the U.S. military now views as the top security threat in Iraq.

…

The Army began the Iraq war with an estimated $56 billion equipment shortage and has struggled to keep up with demands for new armor to protect against increasingly deadly bombs. In the case of FRAG Kit 5, the Army quickly produced a bolt-on version in limited quantities, while the permanent version has taken longer than expected to develop, test, produce and install. Meanwhile, the unexpected deployment of five additional Army brigades into Baghdad has created an urgent need for 2,000 Humvees with the new armor.

“You go to war with the army you have.” I guess that’s how you escalate, too.

Next, use them to justify more of the same. More soldiers without protection means more casualties. You can rest assured that the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress will cite each of those sacrifices as one more reason why we must continue this disastrous war, so that, in Karl Rove’s words, “their sacrifices have not been in vain.”

Next, cut ’em loose as soon as possible:

The Bush administration’s budget assumes cuts to veterans’ health care two years from now — even as badly wounded troops returning from Iraq could overwhelm the system.

…

Even though the cost of providing medical care to veterans has been growing rapidly — by more than 10 percent in many years — White House budget documents assume consecutive cutbacks in 2009 and 2010 and a freeze thereafter.

Sorry, troops, but there’s somebody Bush and Cheney support more:

According to Robert Greenstein, director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan Washington think tank, Mr. Bush will act by decisively widening the “yawning gap” between rich and poor. The president’s budget for fiscal 2008 “puts extremely large tax cuts for the most affluent Americans ahead of the needs of low- and middle-income families as well as future generations,” Mr. Greenstein says.

People with incomes of more than $1 million would get tax cuts averaging $162,000 a year (in 2012 dollars) in perpetuity. The top 1 percent of households will receive more than $1 trillion in tax benefits over the next decade, if the Bush tax cuts are made permanent.

Any billionaires among our brave troops can rest assured that Bush and Cheney are always there for you.

Via Crooks and Liars: I hadn’t realized that Bertrand Russell, the mathematician, philosopher, and general trouble-maker, had written a children’s book:

In these political times, so polarized with heated rhetoric, I was pleasantly surprised to stumble across a copy of Bertrand Russell’s The Good Citizen’s Alphabet. A important philosopher, Russell had the wisdom to realize that certain words require proper definition to be used correctly in political and social discourse; words such as, “asinine,” “erroneous,” even “nincompoop.” Of course, there are also words that inspire: “liberty,” “sacrifice,” even “zeal.” Russell aspired to educational enlightenment, believing “the ABC, that gateway to all wisdom, is not made sufficiently attractive to immature minds.” In his research with this teaching tool, respondents found his explication of the alphabet both “wise” and “foolish,” “right-minded” and “subversive.”

Well, it’s not really a children’s book. Like the Pat Bagley books, it uses the form of a children’s book to comment on grown-up concerns. “Asinine” is defined as “What you think,” and “Bolshevik” as “Anyone whose opinions I disagree with.” “Liberty” is “The right to obey the police” — I see that Bush, Cheney and Gonzales aren’t breaking new ground after all.

You can see the entire book by viewing the slideshow.

Clueless George Goes to War, by Utah political cartoonist Pat Bagley, is a parody of the Curious George children’s books.

It’s the first of three such books. The others are Clueless George is Watching You and Clueless George Takes on Liberals. They’re short — each one less than 30 pages — but they’re funny, and they land some sharp jabs at this disastrous administration.

As The Man tucks him into bed at the end of Clueless George Goes to War, George worries about some of his critics.

“They were obviously America-hating, evildoer-loving liberals,” The Man patiently explained.

“So that’s why you sent them all to Geronimo Bay…” mused George. “Shouldn’t we have given them trials?”

“The answer to that is very nuanced,” said The Man.

This administration tries to “nuance” our rights out of existence. The proper response to that isn’t nuanced at all.

You can find sample pages from all three books, other books and pins here.

Today is also the 198th birthday of Charles Darwin. (Links to many Darwin Day posts here.)

From ScienceBlogs:

For scientists, the human fascination of Darwin’s life is only part of the picture. He is also admired because he was a scientist’s scientist — a role model for the ages. He had a keen insight into the way that nature worked, and he was able to use his observations to formulate hypotheses. He was also a very careful and methodical scientist. In the years between when he first formulated his evolutionary hypothesis and when he (reluctantly) published it, he conducted experiment after experiment, looking at different aspects of life. He bred pigeons to study how selection could result in changes in offspring. He spent years dissecting barnacles and observing the similarities and differences within and among species. He (with some help from his son and butler) soaked seeds in a tub of saltwater for months at a time to study dispersal. He gathered information from a web of collaborators that spanned the world, on a range of topics that covered a great deal of the science of biology. Darwin’s combination of insight and patience is what makes him a role model for scientists, and it’s one of the reasons that most of us have such great respect for him.

Darwin’s importance is only growing:

In his own way, Darwin emancipated the sciences. By producing a coherent theory that unified biology, he established biology as a theoretically sound and intellectually exciting science. Lawrence Summers … is right to say that “If the 20th century was defined by developments in the physical sciences, the 21st century will be defined by developments in the life sciences.” It will be Darwin’s century, a century in which his ideas will be the strong bedrock on which great inventions are built.

The Creator sure was busy 198 years ago today, and He did some of His best work then, too.