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Last week, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth issued a preliminary injunction to stop Obama's reinstatement of some of the federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.

The plaintiffs included Christian Medical Association; the Nightlight Christian Adoptions, an agency that sells the use of frozen embryos it calls "snowflakes" - from fertility clinics; two PH.D. scientists, James Sherely of Watertown, Massachusetts, and Theresa Diesher of Seattle, who do research on adult stem cells and claim that allowing embryonic stem cell research wrecks their chances of getting federal grants; clients for adopted embryos; and the embryos frozen in IVF clinics.

Judge Lamberth's decision was based on the Dickey-Wicker Amendment attached to every Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) bill since 1996. The rider was a pro-life fueled measure, intended to prevent cloning for research purposes. Since 1996, the Dickey-Wicker Amendment has ostensibly prohibited the use of federal funds for:

• "the creation of a human embryo or embryos for research purposes;" or
• "research in which a human embryo or embryos are destroyed, discarded, or knowingly subjected to risk of injury or death greater than that allowed for research on fetuses in utero under" certain existing laws."

Nevertheless, three administrations, the Clinton, Bush, and Obama, have allowed various levels of federal funding on research on embryonic stem cell lines. The judge's injunction goes so far as to roll back former President Bush's limited acceptance of federally funded stem cell research for certain stem-cell lines created by 2001. The Federal government has requested a stay (.pdf) of the injunction. Who will prevail? The government? Plaintiffs?

Science Community Stunned

The legal move was a blow to the science research community. Said NIH Director Francis Collins: "The NIH was frankly, I was stunned - as was virtually everyone here at NIH - by the judicial decision yesterday".

But remember, back in 2001, prior to the 2002 elections in which Republicans gained seats, and when President Bush was making decisions about stem cell research. A similar group of plaintiffs sued the government. The plaintiffs in Nightlight Christian Adoptions et al v. Thompson included Nightlight Christian Adoptions, the Christian Medical Association; two couples who wanted to adopt embryos and said that stem cell research reduced availability of embryos for adoption; and Dr. David Prentice, a former professor of life sciences at Indiana State University who said that there were better alternatives to hESC, who is now a fellow at the Family Research Council.

Now, nine years later, right before mid-term elections and after Obama plans to expand funding for stem cell research, we have basically the same lawsuit, from basically same plaintiffs.

People have various opinions about what the injunction means and how it will progress in the courts. A lawyer and commenters here at concurringopinions.com discuss why the government will prevail (or won't).

Some scientists speculate that the importance of federally funded embryonic stem cell research has faded, because so much work is done privately. Others, including the plaintiffs, argue that inducible pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) or adult stem cells are just as promising. But most people don't find these arguments too persuasive, and agree that embryonic research is at least a necessary prong to pursue potentially life-saving research. Of course "pro-life" and Christian groups argue that the blastocysts are people which shouldn't be used for research, even if it will save lives.

The plaintiffs' arguments do not persuade for many reasons. Their claim to economic injury is not only unconvincing on its face, considering the plaintiffs and NIH funding structure, it's dwarfed by the impact that stopping the research would have on the lives of sick people. As well, the livelihoods of the researchers are in jeopardy, as is the investment of millions of dollars of government funding that the judge's order seeks to abandon. 24 research projects in which the government has spent $64 million are currently threatened (.pdf) because they had been scheduled to receive $54 million in continuing NIH funding at the end of September.

Should Scientists Have Been Surprised

I was. But maybe I wasn't paying close enough attention. Or maybe I didn't want to believe that such anti-reason would even get a chance. But apparently, all it took was the "right" plaintiff and the "right" judge, at the "right" time.

It's sometimes easier for people (including scientists) to perfunctorily dismiss as terminally unenlightened or misguided, those who hold politically opposing views, for instance those who believe in Creation over evolution. Maybe it's not as head-splittingly frustrating as arguing or teaching. Perhaps a quick witted turn of phrase can morph anti-reason into fodder for jokes, yay! And why not deflect an ugly stand-off with some humor?

James Taranto, of the Wall Street Journal, for one, says that dismissive attitudes (here's one example I thought of: "Poll: So You Want to Build a Mosk?") harms liberal causes because 1) they tend to "mainstream those supposedly fringe notions" (ie: Pew Research Polls that constantly highlight subjects of "culture wars"), and 2) they "put the ugly attitudes of the liberal elite on display."

Scientists discuss these things frequently and blogging scientists have consumed years writing, discussing, comparing and vehemently arguing about various approaches -- hostility, framing, teaching, patience, humor, tolerance, diplomacy, "accomodationism", to deal with anti-reason. (Personally, I can't get attached to one approach or think another is "bad", I believe different writers and audiences will gravitate towards one communication method or another. They complement each other. )

But regardless of whether scientists are "civil", hostile, sarcastic, or choose to ignore what offends them, I wonder if all approaches are fatally flawed not only because of the reasons Taranto and scientists usually discuss, but because scientists are so up to their necks in scientific method. Do we then let ourselves believe that reason will prevail? And does that lead us to ignore what's at stake? The incredible belief everyone had in Obama that he could somehow transcend politics, indicates this may be so. Francis Collins "stunned" response indicates this may be so. Collins, if anyone, with his position and overt religiosity -- he's written books on this! -- should have had his ear to the ground.

Maybe it's a tempest in a teapot, as many seem to think. Maybe Lamberth had an off day and will change his mind, maybe the courts (moving right every day) will come to their senses. But at the moment, those who want to stop hESC seem to be determinately bulldozing things their way, decade after decade.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, in an interview with John Pilger, was asked if it was difficult to publish secret information in Britain. Assange answered:

'When we look at Official Secrets Act labelled documents we see that they state it is offense to retain the information and an offence to destroy the information. So the only possible outcome we have is to publish the information."

Elsewhere on the continent, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is a hunted man, or so it seems, he has the - I_haven't slept_or_been_able_to_wash_my_hair_in_weeks - look. Fleeting charges about rape made by Sweden were dropped hours later, but the real story remains elusive. The tabloids picked up to explain. Aftonbladet asked one of the women about the rumored Pentagon connection:

De konspirationsteorier som mmar nätet just nu avfårdar kvinnan i 30-årsålden bestämt.

"Anklagelserna mot Assange är förstås inte iscensatta av varken Pentagon eller någon annan. Ansvaret för det som hänt mig och den andra tjejen ligger hos en man med skev kvinnosyn och problem att ta ett nej."

Which gave us a chance to try out Google's Swedish, which translated the exchange as:

The conspiracy theories that are flooding the web right now dismisses the woman in her 30s decided.

"The charges against Assange is of course not orchestrated by either the Pentagon or another. The responsibility for what happened to me and the other girl is in a man with skew kvinnosyn problems and to take no for an answer."

We're not sure what happened with "skew kvinnosyn", whether Google was stumped or censoring. But see? It's not true, any of it, including the bit about the Pentagon.

But it reminds us of the story that came out earlier this year about US government hanky-panky mischief. the FBI learning from listening in on a CIA Iraq Operations Group about an unrealized plan to make-up a video about Saddam Hussein's sexual exploits. Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent wrote earlier this year about another ill-advised CIA plan to use Afghan women to elicit sympathy for the war against the Taliban.

The skirmish over at ScienceBlogs between PepsiCo and the science bloggers actually made me feel sorry for Pepsi.

Pass The Bong and the Aspartame

You have to admit, PepsiCo had a tough month...week. First, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom banned Pepsi from vending machines, a move that elicited potshots from conservative DC paper The Washington Times, as in: "Pass The Pot Brownies, But Drop That Soda". Expounding on that clever cliche, they wrote: "In the City by the Bay, it may soon be easier to get a pot-laced brownie than a can of Pepsi".

Oh yeah, nailed it! Hippies in the "City By The Bay" ("Frisco" to some) -- don dirty tie-dyed t-shirts daily, in order to stand on corners and flash "peace" fingers to badly parented long-haired youth driving orange Volkswagon buses, wearing flowers in their hair, swaying to the music, THC soothing their psychedelics' addled nerves. Wow, The Washington Times sure knows "The City By The Bay".¹

It used to be that Coke would lose its big university or city contract to Pepsi, then Pepsi to Coke, back and forth. But not this time, soda was ousted. No sooner than being ejected from San Francisco city vending machines, PepsiCo was yelled off ScienceBlogs. Curiously, ScienceBlogs also hails from the Bay Area.

SciBling Hospitality?

It must have been a confusing time for PepsiCo. First, warmly courted by ScienceBlog editors, PepsiCo invitingly titled their blog "Food Frontiers". But they couldn't even pen a "Hello, World! Corn syrup is so good for you", before "SciBlings" (ScienceBlog bloggers) rose up en masse from their virginal science blog space and confronted the evil sugar-water mixer about stealth advertising. (If you can do stealth with prominent branding, that is.)

I wasn't there. But it's mid-July, pretty slow in science news, so I thought I'd Twitter all the anger, consternation, then mass exodus of 20 SciBlingers, thus entertaining all the fluffy dogs, porn stars (and some cool peeps) who follow AcronymRequired. Unfortunately, before anyone could figure out whether to call it PepsiCoGate, Pepsigate, or Pepsicopalyse, Pepsi Food Frontiers skedaddled as if confronted by a battalion of helmeted storm troopers spraying plastic bullets and tear gas at their sit-in.

Safely back at PepsiCo.com, Food Frontiers publicly reminisced about the "very candid feedback" and their "intent to embrace that conversation". The regrouping Pepsi bloggers talked microbial stability, acidity, phosphorous content, obesity, and salt, vis-a-vis PepsiCo. And as promised, they engaged "that conversation", by answering the demands of SciBlingers who chased them back.

PepsiCo "embraced" the bracing blog comments from SciBlingons ("Does the material leave your own computer when you write a post, ever? I.e, pass in front of other people's eyes? Is there a standard workflow for producing a blog post that involves any kind of oversight or inspection?...The truth is that if you'all blogging researchers can only write approved copy, then the whole blog thing really is probably a bad idea"), and responded promptly and sweetly: "Thanks Greg Laden" in "The Posting Process on Food Frontiers".

But will such sugary pabulum engage ScienceBloggers? No. Only two comments to that PepsiCo post, neither of them reciprocally "embracing". It would have been more SciBlingy for Food Frontiers to be a little in their face: "WTF is YOUR process -- why do so many ideas conflicting with your world view meet with such profane outbursts and bunkerbuster-style attacks? What are you, the Department of OK Blogs?" -- Now that, would be "engaging the conversation", sciblingy-like. Instead, light, huggy, bubbly, marketing stuff.

Maybe Food Frontiers bloggers were jittery, wan and weak from a diet of caffeine, phosphorous, sugar, water, and natural flavors. Or, possibly they were devouring cans of spinach voraciously and weight-training vigorously, but saving their vim and vigor for this week's attack on a more familiar foe -- CocaCola.

In a newish YouTube spot, the two opposing soft drink truck drivers meet in a diner and swap colas, "Why Can't We Be Friends?" by the band War, a 1970's song. As one driver drinks a soda, the other betrays him (can't tell you why). Then they get mad and crash through a window together. The Associated Press wrote:

"Analysts say people love the funny, spirited rivalry of the decades-old cola wars and the move will benefit both soda makers. That's good news for the $100 billion industry, which is seeing weak soft drink sales as shoppers switch to healthier juices and teas."

Business as usual, just pining for the 1970s? See how it works Sciblingers? Friendly public rivalry.

Butlered off the Isle?

Of course, I don't really feel sorry for Pepsi. They have a nice new sepia toned 1970's ad and a brilliant business, patenting and selling corrosive sugar and water drinks. But as we've written before, soda's not so healthy for humans or the environment ("Childhood Obesity, The American Way", or "Pop's Out Drug's are In", or "Coke: Teaching the World to Sing", or "Why So Fat? It's System Wide", or "Common Sense Foods in Schools""). And PepsiCo doesn't need us, they can always fall into the arms of Coke, or the loving the Cato Institute. or FOX, and many others.

Apparently there was more going on at ScienceBlogs than PepsiCo, there always is. I've read and mostly enjoyed ScienceBlogs since the inception. There weren't too many bloggers way back then and I've watched SB evolve with particular interest. So I get it. But Sciblingons! Sheesh! "Spirited rivalry" and gentle brawls people! Do you really need to beat them up, throw them off the island, bash their heads in, then drown them? What good are they too you then?

Just my opinion. I believe that ScienceBlogs has done wonders for getting others online writing about science. A ton of SB bloggers blog seriously about science, every day, good stuff. But some bloggers get increasingly spiteful as they vie for the attention that blogging compels, then use that attention to generate a certain brand of PR for SB. The level of conversation often spirals downward (there must be some entropy model that describes it). And that downward spiral seems infectious -- I've noticed Nature has been forging new ground lately in diluting their brand with some profane blogs also.

Pepsi's not the first one to feel SciBlingon wrath, though sleepy-hot July always gives these incidents an extra charge. Remember the Nature/Butler/PLoS fracas of July, 2008? It was similarly acrimonious with a familiar corporate/underdog theme.

These bloggers know their power, they say. But this is how SB looks from the outside, to me, an independent sometimes-blogger. Everyday science bloggy, bloggy, bloggedy, great - oh, too boring? Yawn? Then Boom, Smash, Bang, big tizzy over at ScienceBlogs over something, lots of media coverage. Repeat. For someone not in the thick of it, the episodic commotions tempt a plea for perspective.

I hope ScienceBlogs settles -- certainly finding eager writers shouldn't be a hurdle, and there are 60 left. I look forward to future writing from the diaspora. But I would also venture that it's complicated, messy business, this advertising stuff, this ethical boundaries stuff. It's pretty easy to inadvertently be seen as hypocritical trying to carve arbitrary ethical boundaries that suit your own very personal interests. As a minor, minor example, isn't most blogging just personal branding/advertising? But your brand is pure as the driven snow, whereas Pepsi's is marred by soda pop? Anyway, I'm not sure getting Pepsi off of ScienceBlogs, although certainly a "cause", was one worthy of the show or the arena.

(To Be Continued)

--------------------------

¹ Actually, in another "City By The Bay", they plan to grow pot by the acre, an unfortunately timed news story which you'd think would crush my defense. But then the city will tax it, hopefully so they can pay for a much needed police force. Complicated. Another story.

Gene Weingarten on the old "typical American newsroom" versus the "New Newsroom", in "Gene Weinharten Column mentions Lady Gaga" (via BoingBoing, via Joel Johnson).

Weingarten misses deadlines and creative headlines, but appreciates "the services of tens of thousands of fact-checking 'citizen journalists'", and "comments" -

"though they can seem a little jarring: spit-flecked rants that are appended to a product that at least tries for a measure of objectivity and dignity. It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots".

"New Journalism" is "confusing", with leagues of "multiplatform idea triage specialists", compared to the old days, when:

"On deadline, drunks with cigars wrote stories that were edited by constipated but knowledgeable people, then printed on paper by enormous machines operated by people with stupid hats and dirty faces."

There's more.

The BP spill in the gulf remains an unrelenting environmental and economic disaster. Oil industry technology lets us pierce deep holes in the ocean floor and extract oil for energy and profit for companies. That know-how is obviously way ahead of the know-how to avert and fix oil rig failures that impact people and the economy more frequently than they should.

Flimsy Tech, Strong Marketing

John Gapper wrote over a month ago in the Financial Times that the BP disaster could have been worse, for instance if the larger Thunder Horse rig failed. He quoted BP's website: "Everything about Thunder Horse is at or beyond the limits of the offshore industry's experience", and noted: "What once sounded impressively high-tech now sounds positively scary."

Of course, lack of "industry experience" sounds less scary today, a month and a half later, because we understand the enormity of the Deepwater Horizon mishap. Our fear has been removed by experience. Can we fathom anything worse, now that the estimated volume of gushing oil has been adjusted upward; now that plugs, top-kills, and various domes and caps have failed to stop the damage?

We don't even have a word for it. "Spill"? As in a sippy-cup of milk? Perhaps we need a new word for ~60,000 gallons a day gushing into the Gulf? Gusher's not quite right. Sound's almost celebratory, like champagne. Trivialities aside, don't we need a new system to assure that technology to contain spills doesn't extend "beyond the limits of offshore industry's experience"?

Tech Failure as Entertainment Staple?

Technological failures happen every day, we don't have blind faith in technology, despite what some say. Buildings collapse, brakes fail, cars crash. We live with this, we wear seatbelts, mandate airbags, set values on body parts. And when worse comes to worse, we get cathartic pleasure from accidents. It's true. Why is the traffic stopped on the highway for five miles back? The accident is cleared, the bodies are gone, but people need to gawk at the damage on the cars. What can't be gotten in person we get on TV. Any botoxed, pancake make-up plastered announcer who manages to contort their face into an emotion while describing an airplane crash, a fire, or a kitten with two faces steals our attention.

A little hormone surge, then back to the routine until the next catastrophic high. We depend on those hormone surges like some probably depend on prayer, to get us through the mundane day. A little spilt milk souring someone else's life is great entertainment. The difference with this spill is that we're usually free, after a few minutes of rubbernecking, to drive away from the scene, catecholamine rush satisfied.

We crave that. And so the media finally goaded President Obama to say "kick-ass" on TV -- to pretend-put BP in it's place and give us a little surge. True, talking about ass-kicking will never prevent the next catastrophe, but the grinding negotiations of lawmaking never provides an adrenaline boost. We champion people talking about change, but that's it. Unfortunately, Obama's presidential version of "kick-ass" didn't satisfy. Fortunately Congress can always step up to some ass-kick rhetoric theatre for America.

Weak Oversight of Inevitable Failure?

The company face-off with congress suits business too. Companies seem used to enduring public lashings, as long as their business goes on as usual. CEO's probably have it written into their contracts: "You will appear before Congress for reprimanding should the business of risking lives for profits be revealed, and your job is to exhibit the full range of arrogance and chagrin:" (Salary: $27.2 million).

Dragging bank CEOs before Congress served this purpose earlier this year. And notice how quick we lost interest in the "regulatory loopholes", ensconced as we are in the current crisis.

The hearings also give oil company executives a chance to argue for less regulation right off the bat. The BP technology failure, as inevitable as it was, sent shudders through all the regulation-allergic oil companies. This week executives energetically backstroked away from the flaming BP rig oil gusher. Rex Tillerson (Exxon) described it as an "unprecedented" event, due to a "level of risk...beyond industry norms." that "should not occur". John Watson (Chevron) called it a "single incident" and a "preventable tragedy", due to "failure to operate with high standards".

The Exxon and Chevron CEOs offered lawmakers all sorts of reasons why the BP accident wouldn't happen in their companies, because of "documented standards", "best practices", "proprietary technology", "stop-work authority", and "time to do things right or not at all". Watson said "safe" or "safety" no less than 25 times in his brief.

Of Walruses...and Little People

And about those "documented standards"? We saw how companies share in their contingency plans the phone numbers of the same dead experts, and descriptions of how to clean walruses not seen in the Gulf since the Ice Age. Kudos to Congress for pointing all this out with great theatre. But shouldn't someone be reading these plans before the failure? That walrus thing would be pretty easy to spot. Demonstrating how little relevance these showdowns have, even that embarrassing fact didn't move Exxon's CEO, who said: "It's unfortunate that walruses were included". Because...if they hadn't been included nobody would have noticed that there was no plan at all? Accchhh...the insouciance.

Once impressive technology always looks fatally flimsy after failure, like the feebly blinking red 12:00. We're used to technology achievements -- they yield tremendous bragging rights. We're also used to technology failures. Cars crashes happen and when they do we know how to mop up. Spills occur, as in the Niger Delta and frequent gushers across the world. So shouldn't the standards and contingency plans be evaluated as part and parcel with the technology -- ahead of time? There's more to technology then a deep a hole we can dig for ourselves.

In our break from blogging we learned about an unexplored benefit of writing about news, as we do at Acronym Required (from time to time). When we spend "free" time writing or interpreting news we care about we interrupt any potential habit of seeking substantive news amongst the addictive trifle of mainstream media. Not to disparage all MSM, of course, some MSM is great. ProPublica publishes great pieces (though not quite mainstream). There's Huffington Post's Investigative Fund. But trash news is the bread and butter of MSM (and Huffpo proper), because readers are addicted to piffle.

Haggis

Case in point: At Reuters, often a fine reporting vehicle, readers devoured the piece "The Hills Are Alive With Haggis". Haggis, you ask? Indeed. Scots consume Haggis a dish made from the lung, liver and heart of a sheep, on Burns night - of course, with lots of whiskey.

An aside: The US banned haggis in 1989 because of the threat of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), but for some reason unexplored by Reuters, the US recently relaxed the ban. Richard Lochhead, the Scottish environmental secretary waxed ecstatic that Americans can now "sample our world-renowned national dish."

But Reuters did not cover the American ban of sheep innards because of BSE. Readers can only learn that "renowned" as it may be, many Scots don't know what haggis is and Brits are even more uninformed. As the report goes, one in five Brits thinks haggis is "an animal that roams the Highlands", another 18% think it's a Scottish instrument, and 4% think its a character from Harry Potter.

Circuses and More

Like the empty calories of cotton candy, apparently, the haggis story leaves readers hungry for more drivel. Because from "The Hills Are Alive With Haggis", they're unlikely to click on a story about the environmental crisis off the Louisiana coast or the implications of Greek financial crisis. No, says Reuters "after reading this article people will most likely read": "Police barred from penis enlargement", about Indonesian police candidate screening, that even I refuse to link to. Rather that exploring the BSE ban, they'll more likely read: "Circus comes to Turkmenistan again after long ban."

Just like any perilous addiction, it seems that reading banal news leads to reading even more rotten gibberish. Of course, as we've just inadvertently demonstrated, bloggers, once heralded as the saviors of news, are JUST AS PRONE to courting readers with the most scurrilous news they can drum up. But we do try to do better. (This post not included). We try to write about science.

The Los Angeles Times Science section is a-ok. Except, worryingly, the LA Times now puts Science in a subcategory under the category "US and World", in one of the top ten categories that editors use to divvy up the news: "US & World", "Local", "Business", "Sports", "Entertainment", "Health", "Living", "Travel"", "Opinion", and "More".

LA Insatiable for Hotlist, Brand X and The Envelope?

Let's look at how this works.

• Under the category "Entertainment", the LA Times has these subcategories: Movies, Television, Music, Celebrity, Arts & Culture, Company Town, Calendar, the Envelope, and Hotlist, in that order. Don't think they missed any "Entertainment" "news".

• Under the category "Living", the paper assigns these subcategories: Health, Home, Food, Image, Travel, Autos, Books, Hotlist, Brand X, Magazine and "Your Scene". Can't imagine they've missed much "Living" "news".

• Then, under the category "US and World", the paper puts these subcategories: Washington, Nation, Afghanistan, Middle East, Latin America, Asia, Science, Environment, and ominously, Obituaries -- again, in that order.

The LA Times has put "science" on the same level of "brand X", "the envelope", and "company town".

Bucket List

Get it? All the real news, all the stuff that really might impact us; like the whole rest of the world beside LA; two killer, budget decimating wars; 51 US states; global warming; stem cell research; microbiology research; astronomy and the universe; on and on -- all live in one convenient news bucket beside biographies of the dead.

Technology is in "Business". And where is "Europe"? I can't find it. Completely missing from the line-up? Perhaps so old world, that some editor shoved it into Obituaries? Does the Los Angeles Times have a grudge against all of Europe? Does that include Russia? Or is "Russia" in "Asia"?

I'm worried. Because if the LA Times can eighty-six all of "Europe", then it looks like the editors and managers have placed the two categores Science and Environment disconcertingly close to Obituaries. Say a little prayer for Science News, one banana peel away from the grave?

Carp, a Problem -- And The Government Solution

A couple of weeks ago we reported that scientists feared Asian carp had invaded the Great Lakes. Sure enough, scientists recently found carp DNA in Lake Michigan, an ecological problem considered so serious that the Supreme Court weighed in on the issue last week. (The Supreme Court said NO to Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Ontario, who together requested that the court allow the locks be closed to prevent the carp from impacting the $7 billion dollar fisheries industry).

Who could suggest a solution? Fortunately, the entrepreneurial government of the United States (but not SCOTUS) can tackle this kind of stuff. Now, some government go-getters suggest marketing the carp as "Silverfin" (not to be confused with the "silverfish", a revolting insect) to strengthen the filter-feeder's appeal to diners.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries hatched the carp plan, identifying eleven "activities" to help rebrand the invasive fish as a delicacy.

The Media Could Actually Be Helpful

Number one on the list is surprisingly obvious: "determine if silver and bighead carp are suitable for human consumption". Apparently Chef Phillipe Parola (famous for trying to push other distasteful creatures on diners, like alligator and nutria) already tested the fish with consumers, and found that the only barrier to epicurean success is "a series of floating bones that are not easily separated from the flesh". The US Geological Survey got right on it, promptly producing a video to teach chefs and sports fisherman how to clean the invasive fish.

The agency also planned various promotional activities, and here's where journalists play an important role. In a series of events, producers plan to: "present the fish products to the media...", who will be "given samples of fish and fish products to eat". Providing no journalist chokes on a bone and dies, apparently the US Geological Survey will move on to Stage II Clinical Trials.

The Geological Survey also suggests "large media events", where attendees will be habituated to the idea as carp as food, since "videos showing the fish and cleaning methods will be continuously playing".

And Scientist Could Help Too, Doing What They Usually Do -- Research

When the Supreme Court chooses to be unhelpful, maybe scientists can aid the cause. Salon Magazine interviewed "the energetic Parola", who's pushing hard to change the fish's name from "carp" to "silverfin".

Parola illustrates how some government agencies work at cross-purposes -; as he explains how the carp got its undelicious name:

Parola: "Some clown from the USDA classified it as a carp. Carps are a bottom feeders and this is a filter feeder. The shape of the fish, the way it grows, the color: Literally there is no similarity to the carp. There's no other species named the silverfin, so what's the problem?"

Salon: "Well, off the top of my head, shouldn't it be up to scientists to name the fish?"

Parola: "But what I'm saying to you -- very loudly - is that this fish doesn't have any similarity with the carp. I want somebody out there to redo that research and help us out."

There you go. Team effort. Scientists? Change the research. Do what you need to do, whatever it takes, call in the IPCC (no!! little joke)...what do ichthyologists think?

Many people who are now disappointed by the Obama administration didn't pay close enough attention during his campaign and election. It's the same with all presidents, really -- the promise of a new president brings at first a golden era of hope during which people seem to cavalierly shed their analytical abilities; then the denial phase as the president comes into his own; then the rude awakening when they're shocked, shocked, shocked at the scale of the deception.

Remember the Bush presidency? Mr. Compassionate Conservative? People barely twitched when he invaded Iraq, then slowly awoke to his mendacious governance -- the fact that there were no WMDs, there was global warming, arsenic levels weren't safe, Guantanamo prisoners were tortured to within an inch of their lives the end of their lives -- etc.

Warnings

But before presidents are elected there's time to profile their past, time for people to shake themselves out of wishful thinking into clarity. Usually at least one enterprising journalist digs into a candidate's history and accurately predicts their presidency. For instance, during the George W. Bush presidential campaign of 2000, Harper's author Joe Conason wrote an excellent, disturbing article about Bush's tenure in Texas politics called, "Notes on a Native Son: Part I. "The George W. Bush success story: A heartwarming tale about baseball, $1.7 billion, and a lot of swell friends." (Feb. 2000) The article disabused people of their ideas that George W. Bush and Democratic candidate Al Gore were very similar. Conason nailed Bush's future leadership proclivities. Perhaps some of it was luck, and I'm sure Conason wasn't the only one who caught on early. But the Harper's article showed that some people really can get a bead on leaders, and that if we pay attention we could too. That, at least, is reassuring to know.

Forward to the Obama campaign, in July, 2008, when New Yorker magazine shocked the world with a cover cartoon of Barack and Michelle Obama pictured with radical accoutrements and dressed -- as Al Jazeera put it -- "in what many [Americans] see as 'Muslim clothing'". We think fewer people read the accompanying article, which we touched on back then in "We The Thin Skinned, The Public and The Media".

The New Yorker cleverly juxtaposed a detailed political biography of Obama by Ryan Lizza against their cartoon cover depiction. In Making It: How Chicago shaped Obama, Lizza portrayed Obama as a pragmatic politician alert to the vagaries of politics, who proved himself more than adept at maneuvering through the political quagmires of Chicago and Illinois to emerge unscathed, all the while governing blandly. We quoted this from Lizza's profile:

"Perhaps the greatest misconception about Barack Obama is that he is some sort of anti-establishment revolutionary. Rather, every stage of his political career has been marked by an eagerness to accommodate himself to existing institutions..."

Liberals now realize that Obama's "existing institutions", as Lizza put it, were in many cases set up by the George W. Bush administration. The public didn't seem to get the New Yorker's sly joke back then, the paradox of the cover story versus the true inside scoop. The public went apoplectic over the cover. And only now are people starting to catch on to the fact that the Obama they compiled in their head isn't the Obama who's leading the country.

Misconceptions

If liberals and independents are unhappy -- Bush at least went full tilt with his base-- so too are conservatives. Conservative columnist Ross Douthat sought to explain the Obama paradox recently. He wrote: "In hindsight, the most prescient sentence penned during the presidential campaign belongs to Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker", then quoted Lizza's two sentences ("Perhaps the greatest misconception...institutions"). Douthat's "The Obama Way" explained that everyone vilified Obama differently but the president fit no particular mold. The most discontented people were the liberals -- as Douthat said:

"The left has been frustrated, again and again, by the gulf between Obama's professed principles and the compromises that he's willing to accept, and some liberals have become convinced that he isn't one of them at all. They're wrong. Absent political constraints, Obama would probably side with the liberal line on almost every issue."

There goes Douthat, first heartily agreeing with Lizza's New Yorker quote describing Obama as a political accommodator, next labeling Obama a flaming liberal who's only tenuously tethered to some middle way -- as if to warn conservatives not to relax. Well, which is it, young feller?

Does Douthat peg Obama as impossible to categorize but at his core very liberal? Or does he fall for the same fallacies of judgement he's just finished explaining to us?

Pragmatism

How liberal is Obama, deep down inside? Honestly, we don't know. But look, for instance at the politics of one of his long term advisors, the only person with a more quixotic image than Obama himself, whose intentions are even more difficult for observers to pin down -- Cass Sunstein. Sunstein leads the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). OIRA reviews regulations from all rule-making agencies in the Office of Management and Budget, regulations for banking, air and water quality, food, drugs, transportation...in other words, Sunstein's philosophy affects us all, and he's supposedly a close counsel of Obama's .

We've somewhat regularly followed Sunstein's progress in the Obama administration and his amazing ability to attract venomous critics as well as admiring followers from both the left and the right. There wasn't always such focus on OIRA administrators. Sunstein's very driven regulation-allergic conservative predecessors at OIRA, John Graham and Susan Dudley, attracted only the sparsest attention as they weakened regulation, ignored science, and developed symbiotic relationships with industry.

Sunstein often quotes John Graham and shares and builds on Graham's cost-benefit analysis legacy, yet people often label him, like Obama, as an out of bounds liberal. Sunstein's nomination was supported by conservative groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute and by the Wall Street Journal. Yet wildly preposterous rumors about his views, for instance on animal rights, held up his OIRA nomination for months. Republican senators stymied his appointment, as hunters and factory farms hijacked meaningful deliberation about Sunstein's most controversial ideas -- on cost-benefit analysis, for instance -- by focusing on the false notions that he might ban hunting, something that he had actually convincingly argued against.

The other thing that's interesting given Sunstein's well-documented ideas, is how pundits from both sides seem to ignore history when they periodically burst out over one thing or another they unearth in his writing. Of course some people, like Rena Steinzor of the Center For Progressive Reform, have long focused on environmental law, cost-benefit analysis, and the likely impact of Cass Sunstein heading OIRA. But to my point, recently Glenn Greenwald popularized a flurry of concern about Sunstein with his Salon article, "Obama Confidant's Spine-chilling Proposal". Greenwald's focus is not on Sunstein's cost-benefit machinations or environmental stances, but on Sunstein's exploration of government control of "conspiracy theories".

The Mirror, A Gift or A Curse?

Greenwald takes Sunstein to task for advocating in a 2008 paper that the government ought to do things like anonymously infiltrate groups to dissipate conspiracy theories. The Sunstein paper is really interesting (and funny, to me), and Greenwald competently attacks the ideas Sunstein presents. But just like Bush and Obama, Sunstein's proposals in 2008 proved consistent with what he has publicly explored/advocated for years.

In his 2001 book Republic.com, for instance, Sunstein argued that the government (he later changed this to private companies) could fight internet "hate-sites" and polarization that 'threatened democracy' by enforcing things like cross-linking to politically opposing sites. What did Thaler/Sunstein's book Nudge urge but for the government to "architect" our "choices"? If you circle through his books and papers you'll find that one way or another, either by infiltration or nudging, Sunstein's quite pre-occupied with government control of "undesirable" information, voices and outcomes, as judged by the government. These aren't terribly liberal obsessions, and it would be hard for me to call Sunstein a liberal.

Back to Douthat's point, I would also be hard-pressed to call Obama a liberal, either by his associations or his Illinois and presidential records. I'm surely biased, but so far he's a pragmatist, (though not a "centrist" Douthat says), and we were adequately and accurately warned. How many years does someone need to act like a centrist/pragmatist before people stop labeling them a liberal?*

Obama gets everyone together, he does. And they're all suspicious. During his campaign, people would say that Obama's campaign gift was that he made everyone see a bit of themselves in him. Perhaps now he has the opposite effect. No one can see any bit of themselves in him. Is that a curse?

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*And btw, as an aside, what is a liberal? And does the country need a "liberal" president, anyway, liberals?

"We can only marvel at the disarray." - Jeffrey Sachs on climate policy.

The CRU Emails - Fool's Gold:

Like glittering treasure, the emails hacked from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (CRU) beckon Republicans and climate change deniers who paw through the loot like pirates with fool's gold, pulling out one little nugget or another from the 1000+ email trove. I'm sure there's more than a lifetime's worth of out of context quotes to be mined.

(Graph: Instrumental Global Surface Temperature Measurements from >150 stations; image from Wikipedia Commons. More info)

It's a lesson some of us know and others are just learning, that given the slightest excuse, the deniers will get louder and louder by the day, despite 30 years of accumulated evidence showing anthropogenic climate change. And so post CRU email events and protagonists continue to gather momentum. This week the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and four members of Congress demanded that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) halt all rule-making to reduce man-made carbon emissions on account of the CRU emails. In their letter, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) requested that the EPA-

"conduct a thorough and transparent investigation" into the "questions raised by the emails". "Additionally, the EPA "should withdraw the Proposed Endangerment Finding, as well as the Light Duty Vehicle Rule, and the Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule....."

It was an over-the-top response to the CRU emails, but Sensenbrenner et al have been bombarding the EPA with this kind of stuff long before the CRU emails. Sensenbrenner is the former Chairman of the House Science Committee and ranking Republican on the House Select Committee for Energy Independence and Global Warming, a committee that he vehemently opposed before its formation, at which point he saw that he couldn't stop it so he got on board to undermine it anyway he could.

The EPA's Endangerment Finding, gives the agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gases affecting US citizens health and welfare. We wrote about endangerment in a number of posts ( here, here, here, here, here, and here), describing the protracted negotiations between the states, the Bush and Obama administrations, and the courts, including the Supreme Court in Massachusetts v. EPA.

The four legislators demand that the EPA withdraw the Endangerment Finding decision of last April and halt Light Duty Vehicle and the Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rules, just when the EPA, after eight years of Bush administration shenanigans, takes baby steps to try and slow down our human contributions to greenhouse gas emissions. The letter might as well request the agency drown itself in a bathtub. ¹

If A "Climate Change Bullshit" Prize Bears Your Name, It Makes Sense That Republicans Would Quote You In A Letter To The EPA...?

"The content of the emails raises serious questions that demand your attention", write the four congressmen. To emphasize the erroneous climate science potentially informing their request, they quote from three newspaper essays - an editorial from the Wall Street Journal, a column from the New York Times, and a column from the British newspaper the Telegraph.

It's the job of Representatives and Senators to get information for their constituents. But what's their line of reasoning and who does it benefit? To anchor their letter, they reference UK Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker, presumably to give EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson good reason to consider their demands. Booker wrote that the CRU emails' "importance cannot be overestimated". US readers may not be familiar with the conservative Telegraph papers and they may not know Christopher Booker, but here's a sampling of his ideas (HT Wikipedia):

• Asbestos "poses no risk to human health and is chemically identical to talcum powder" [2]
• "Scientific evidence to support the belief that inhaling other people's smoke causes cancer simply does not exist" [3]
• Intelligent Design is valid and evolutionary scientists "rest their case on nothing more than blind faith and unexamined a priori assumptions" [4]
• "2008 was the year man-made global warming was disproved" and more, in columns, and a book "The Real Global Warming Disaster: Is The Obsession With 'Climate Change' Turning Out To Be The Most Costly Scientific Blunder In History" [5]

The UK Health and Safety Executive has rebuked Booker multiple times for his "misinformed" statements on asbestos. His false assertions on climate change are so well recognized in the UK that before George Monbiot wobbled uncertainly about the wisdom of casting his lot with climate scientists, he established the "Christopher Booker Prize for Climate Change Bullshit" with The Guardian.

The Christopher Booker Prize for Climate Change Bullshit awards the person who serves up the most climate falsehoods in a single article. That bullshitter gets a trophy made from what looks to me like a tin can and paper/styrofoam cup decorated with a magic marker - have a look for yourself. The "trophy" is made in "mid-Wales".⁶ You get a feel for Christopher Booker's authority.

The winner also gets an invitation from Monbiot to take a "one-way solo kayak trip to the North Pole" to "see for him or herself the full extent of the Arctic ice melt." (The Arctic video showing global warming here is actually in our last post.) The Guardian generously offers excursion support in the form of a little bit of mint chocolate.

The Gall (and Fatal Flaw?) of the GOP

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.), Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) don't offer the most countable untruths, so technically they're not even eligible for Monbiot's prize as defined, although Sensenbrenner has made such career out of hassling the EPA that he might be considered for a lifetime achievement award. Two styrofoam cups.

On the other hand, maybe we could redefine the award, given that everything is in "disarray", and all topsy-turvy anyway. Think about it. The EPA, after being thrown out to pasture for eight years, is now being served up demands by a foursome who cite as evidence the most egregious of science deniers, capable of provoking George Monbiot's most venomous contempt. But Monbiot himself fears that no sooner did he stake his reputation on climate science then the scientists left him standing on an ice floe.

Actually, there's too much evidence for global warming, no cache of CRU emails can undermine that, therefore the Republicans are reduced to sending a letter full of nothing. So perhaps Monbiot could redefine the prize and the four intrepid lawmakers could capture the "trophy" simply for offering the most nothing? The four would look very sporty upgraded from a kayak to a little round rowboat. But will Monbiot stand by his prize offer? Or will he throw the whole styrofoam cup and little bit of mint chocolate thing overboard...and throw back a pint with Booker?

The Myth of the Republican Rhetoric Machine?

Marvel that the Republicans cite Booker's opinion in a letter to the EPA. They do offer longer quotes from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that would also be facile to refute; however, I was most impressed with the audacity of opening a letter to the EPA administrator with a quote from such a clown. Such is the sad state of Republican intellectual rigor in 2009. When scientists fret about their ability to counteract deniers, they sometimes overestimate the GOP as some well-oiled rhetorical wonderboat. It's not always so.

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1. Grover Norquist said said: "I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."

2. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1381270/Christopher-Bookers-Notebook.html
3. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1556118/Christopher-Booker%27s-notebook.html
4. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1495664/Christopher-Bookers-notebook.html
5.http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/3982101/2008-was-the-year-man-made-global-warming-was-disproved.html

6. I bet if these four won we could commission some Hackensack, NJ, USA made trophies, because I know that's important to some camps. Hackensack is nice now, like Brooklyn, they say.