Explore the Human Microbiome [Interactive]
The Coming Beepocalypse
In Praise of the Lowly Dandelion
The Dangerous Superbugs Hiding in Your Dinner
Visualizing a genome in disarray

Other:

Very, Very, Very White Man’s Burden (must-read)
Ten Things I Learned During a Decade in D.C.
Why Jews need to talk about the Nakba
Lions in Winter, Part One
Lions in Winter, Part Two
Looking Back at Huey Newton’s Thoughts on Gay Rights…In the Wake of Obama’s Endorsement
Horrific Injuries Linked to BP Dispersant Corexit (history will look at the response to Deepwater Horizon and judge Obama very harshly)
The Liberal Arts and Leadership
Just how big can car-sharing get?
Rethinking Affirmative Action
Government’s Extrapolation Problem
Government is flawed, but markets are too. Tom Schaller asks: Why don’t private-sector inefficiencies, which drive up costs, drive us crazy the way public-sector waste does?
Extremists and Enablers
Sweden’s enormous education experiment improved longevity. Children who received an extra year of school in a post-war trial have reaped health benefits.
Debt: Not just for undergrads

There’s an interesting interview with virologist Ian Lipkin which, in part, discusses his experience an advisor to the Chinese government (boldface mine):

What happened when you arrived?


Chen Zhu, now China’s minister of health, was waiting at the airport with a red carpet. The streets were deserted. Tiananmen Square was empty. The Forbidden City was empty. The next morning we went to the Great Hall, and I’m told I am there to design their SARS program. There were 250 people waiting to hear what I wanted them to do.

Eventually they did manage to obliterate SARS in China.


SARS was contained not because of a drug or vaccine but because we identified people who were infected or at risk, and we isolated them. When I went back to see Chen Zhu, he was in a hospital with an unexplained liver problem. At the nursing station they didn’t even have soap. The first thing I did was sit down with him, and I said, you must do two things for me. There can be no spitting on the sidewalks because this spreads all these germs. And doctors and nurses coming to see you must wash their hands. By the time I left his room half an hour later, there was a prohibition against spitting on sidewalks and there was soap and water and paper towels in hospitals.

WASH YOUR DAMN HANDS! It really does help.

Giant Black Hole Shreds and Swallows Helpless Star
The Pill for HIV: No, really, this is a bad idea
Wild Elephants gather inexplicably, mourn death of “Elephant Whisperer” (this is most likely coincidence, but still neato)
Humanity’s Best Friend: How Dogs May Have Helped Humans Beat the Neanderthals
A Case for Genetic Jewishness

Other:

Economics…not a science, not even a dismal science…just dismal (that the chief economist for Bloomberg LLC is such an idiot explains a lot)
Way to Pick Your Battles, Catholic Church
Barack Obama, the Great Deceiver (I never had such high hopes, but I thought the left would at least get some scraps from the table)
What Jamie Dimon didn’t tell you on ‘Meet the Press’
Social Security Is Not Going Broke
Norman Ornstein, alive and well!
On my Soapbox
No, Bubba Carpenter. Mississippi has NOT stopped abortion. You have only stopped SAFE abortion.
The Weekly Standard on “Hillbilly” Climate Denial
Booksellers v. Libraries? Publishers v. Amazon? These are the wrong battles to fight (I still don’t get why publishers and libraries can’t agree to limit the number of people who can check out an eBook–just like they do with ‘real’ books)
Hope springs a trap: An absence of optimism plays a large role in keeping people trapped in poverty
How Yahoo Killed Flickr and Lost the Internet
Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is

There are already two Sweet cupcake stores in Back Bay, along with two ‘food’–that is, cupcakes–trucks that show up five days every week. Just in case you can’t make it three blocks without a fucking cupcake. Meanwhile, there is no bakery in Back Bay. For those of us who want to buy fresh bread. Hopelessly old school, I know.

For a Mad Biologist can not live by cupcakes alone. Or something.

Michael Linden, an economist for CAP, writes:

By the time Obama was sworn in, he was facing a $1.2 trillion deficit. Inconvenient though it may be for conservatives (especially those who are running for president), the truth is that spending, taxes and the deficit are all lower today than when President Obama took office.

We are suffering from chronic un- and underemployment, historically awful male employment, wage stagnation, not to mention a decaying infrastructure. And progressives along with the administration are celebrating this? Did they fall out of the stupid tree and hit every fucking branch on the way down?

Cutting government spending means people lose jobs. I’ve discussed the balance of accounts before, but if we cut deficits, total net private sector savings will decrease–that’s not ideology, that’s arithmetic. And who in the private sector will have their saving reduced? The one percent or the rest of us? Alrighty then.

What’s worse are all the fucking morons in the comments section of the Think Progress post–Democratic-leaning overall–who are cheering for this crap. If Democrats don’t comprehend how deficit spending and reduction are tools that can be used to move the economy towards desirable outcomes–paying people to do stuff we need done comes to mind–then we’re screwed.

In a sane political system, a candidate who boasted of cutting spending during a massive downturn would be out on his ass. Fortunately, for Obama, we don’t have such a system. So, deficits über alles becomes Our Great Cause.

This is yet another reason why we can’t have nice things.

Federal cuts called a ‘disaster’ for Canadian science
Camp Psychopath?
Egypt’s Real Crisis: The Dual Epidemics Quietly Ravaging Public Health
Genome interpretation costs will not spiral out of control
Who Is Writing the ‘Next Generation’ Science Standards?

Other:

Don’t Mess with Massachusetts. It may be everyone’s punching bag, but it’s time to face facts: The Bay State is best. (the stats seem good. Unfortunately, there’s no discussion why this might be the case. I don’t think it’s genetics…)
A Bully Never Forgets. Unless That Bully Is Mitt Romney.
The Trouble with Scientism: Why history and the humanities are also a form of knowledge.
Scott Walker Cuts State Health Services, Then Rejects Health Reform’s Public Health Grants
A pro-fossil industrial policy?
Scott Brown sole state legislator to back up Mitt Romney in LGBT youth commission veto
America’s first gay president (Hint: It’s not Obama)
Why Can’t Americans Watch British TV Shows as Soon as They Air?
Accountability for social conservatives
Regression to the Mean, JPMorgan Edition

Here’s how the districts looked in 1812:

And here’s one of the kludged together districts:

The text reads:

All that we can learn of the natural history of this remarkable animal, is contained in the following learned treatise, published in the newspapers of March, 1812, embellished by a drawing, which is pronounced by all competent judges, to be a most accurate likeness.

They, really, did, like, their, commas, back, then, didn’t they?

And, please, let’s put to rest the absurd notion that there was a time when U.S. politics was polite and civil. It never was.

Wait? What? You’re kidding (boldface mine):

…the Girl Scouts of the USA are now facing their highest-level challenge yet: An official inquiry by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

At issue are concerns about program materials that some Catholics find offensive, as well as assertions that the Scouts associate with other groups espousing stances that conflict with church teaching. The Scouts, who have numerous parish-sponsored troops, deny many of the claims and defend their alliances….

“I know we’re a big part of the culture wars,” said the Girl Scouts’ spokeswoman, Michelle Tompkins. “People use our good name to advance their own agenda.”

“For us, there’s an overarching sadness to it,” Tompkins added. “We’re just trying to further girls’ leadership.”

…However, McCarty expressed doubt that the Girl Scouts’ most vehement critics would be satisfied regardless of what steps are taken.

“It’s easier to step back and throw verbal bombs,” he said. “It takes a lot more energy to work for change.”

Mary Rice Hasson, a visiting fellow in Catholic studies at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, a conservative think tank in Washington, accuses McCarty of “whitewashing” Girl Scout programs and policies that struck some Catholics as counter to church teaching.

…”A collision course is probably a good description of where things are headed,” she said. “The leadership of the Girl Scouts is reflexively liberal. Their board is dominated by people whose views are antithetical to the teachings of the Catholic Church.”

Yes, liberal versus Catholic. Someone needs to tell Hasson you’re supposed to use code words, and not be so blunt. Meanwhile, the Church is also opposing extending the statute of limitations for kiddie rapists.

And we haven’t even touched on groups like the Heartland Institute, which is nothing more that a propaganda arm for corporations–not to mention all of the tax-deductible conservative faith tanks, including Hasson’s Ethics and Public Policy Center. Or Pete Peterson’s half-billion dollars he’s donated to promote fiscal austerity and social security privatization–from which he would profit immensely.

At the same time, churches are serving as de facto political organizing arms for conservatives. If someone gives money to a secular political group (or a union), he doesn’t get a tax deduction. But if you preach politics from the pulpit–and let’s be honest, no politician will crack down on this and remove those churches’ tax exemptions–you can take the deduction.

If people want to give money to these organizations, fine. It’s their right to do so. But we shouldn’t have to subsidize those activities. Yes, this sucks. Lots of people, including the Mad Biologist, have benefited from tax-deductible charitable giving. Plenty of charities, religious or otherwise, do deserve the help. But right now, it’s doing more harm than good. Progressive organizations will always be outgunned under this regime. And it’s unfair to those who aren’t rich enough to take deductions on their taxes, regardless of political bent, to subsidize the predilections of the wealthy.

End the charitable tax deduction and the tax exemption for religious organizations.

OK Getting Serious Again
What your NSF dollar gets you: understanding of public opinion and technological spinoffs
When waiting is not an option
The Wisdom of Slime
Genetic determinism round-up

Other:

An open letter to the right wing in the wake of the passage of Amendment One in North Carolina (must-read)
Capitalists and Other Psychopaths
Charter Schools Association Is Using Taxpayer Money to Support ALEC’s Radical Agenda
“Will this question be on the course evaluation?”
BRB, going to murder someone in Norway… (Norway’s recidivism rate is also much lower than the U.S.’s)
Colin Powell Owes Us an Apology, Not Another Excuse
Derbyshire: ‘White Supremacist’ Is ‘Not Bad Semantically’
How the ‘war on women’ quashed feminist stereotypes
The Human Disaster of Unemployment
Anodyne Anonymity: Beware officials who hide behind the veil—and those who let them
Austerity geniuses
A Future Without Key Social and Economic Statistics for the Country
The Main Point