Good News….or Maybe Not Such Good News

In some circles much is being made of a recent announcement by the Iraqi government that agreements have been made on several issues dividing the Shia and Sunni camps. But hold on there. The National Concord Front is still so unhappy that they are continuing their boycott of the government. The Herald Sun reports on [...]

And On a Related Subject

MSNBC also informs you of 9 Things the Insurers Don’t Want You to Know. Among them is that if you become expensive to them they’ll go over your records to see if there is absolutely anything that they can use against you as a reason to drop your coverage retroactively. They call it recission.
You know how [...]

Is it Defensible?

At almost any blog that discusses politics the subject of health care will come up. There is no lack of people to defend the current system if it’s been good to them. Of course good to them generally means no serious illness in their life or the lives of those close to them. Because the [...]

Electric Paper

Scientific American tells us about research that has resulted in cellulose being combined with nanotubes, liquid salts or lithium to produce (depending on the combination) either long lasting batteries or commercial grade supercapacitors. The research was a collaboration of three different labs at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

About that positive review of the surge…

Steve Benen at Talking Points Memo points out some interesting details about the op-ed in the NYT by O’Hanlon and Pollack. First, in spite of the embrace of this article by the political right as somehow proving something about their belief in how to handle Iraq the only progress they noted was on the military [...]

A Very Cool Contest

CNet news has an article on the Energy Department’s 2007 Solar Decathlon. It’s a really good idea and I’ve seen something of it before when a television special hosted by Tom Friedman went there. Of course the day Friedman and his crew visited it was cloudy and raining.
But there is another contest that I wish [...]

Big Meeting, Nice Words, Foolish Words

There is coverage of a big meeting of tribal leaders that Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf addressed in order to show that he’s doing something about the terrorists that use Pakistan as a base to launch attacks into Afghanistan. I have a very simple phrase for this: “Show me.”. I’ll believe it when I see some [...]

Didn’t everybody already know that?

Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars writes about some really bad science reporting. I know that when I saw it I had some of the same thoughts he expresses so well. It’s just mind boggling that someone would report as a startling new discovery something that has been known for decades, which is [...]

Don’t Mirror the Republicans

This Washington Post piece by Martin O’Malley and Harold Ford is, like so many similar op-eds, pretty vague. But that isn’t really meant as a criticism. No one writes articles about capturing the center of the American electorate in order to make specific policy proposals. Honestly, in spite of criticisms otherwise I haven’t noticed the [...]

Discoveries Can Be Anywhere

Ketamine is an approved anesthetic. It is also a club drug nicknamed “special K”. It has effects as an anesthetic and hallucinogen. But it does something that no other drug has ever been able to do. It can relieve depression in some of the most intractable cases in hours, not the days that every other anti-depressant takes. [...]