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POPSGuns: This Is Why I live in Texas, a big gun-loving state. Just a few days ago when discussing the recent Supreme Court decision, I missed my opportunity to get on my soapbox when someone baited me by asking, "What, you wouldn't allow me to protect myself?" This is why, dumby: You are far more likely to blow yourself away than to protect your precious dvd collection. When people talk about guns, the words they use include "rights, freedom, American, 2nd amendment, protection, safety, etc." But somehow suicide and accidental gun injuries and death never rise to become part of that conversation. For the life of me I don't know why. Is it that we are confronted daily with images in the media of heroic gunfights between the bad guys vs. the good guys? But what about the good guy vs. himself? Or the bad guy grabbing the good guy's gun and using it against him? Or the good guy's young child accidentally shooting her foot off? Why do we never talk about these things?
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POPSHillary is a Formidable Foe, but so is Maureen Dowd I love Maureen Dowd. Here's a little clip of hers from today's Times. It's nice to see the media giving Hillary some credit and talking about her toughness as a good thing. It's also nice not to keep hearing doom and gloom about how this race is going to destroy the democratic party. I totally agree with her here, Hillary is priming Obama to handle tough battles in the future....since in the political realm anyway, he's never had to battle like this before. That's not to say that I believe Hillary's only valuable role of note in this nomination process is as mentor/mommy to her younger (naive? inexperienced? pollyanna?) opponent. Not at all.
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POPSTexas Caucuses This is going to be contested for a long time I think but...Obama won 2,235 delegates to the state convention while Clinton has 1,511. Ultimately, the author of this is totally, totally correct.
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POPSUnderstatement of the year So nearly my entire day Saturday was spent caucusing for my presidential candidate of choice at my local senatorial district democratic convention. In the end, our precinct got the result we wanted in terms of delegate representation, however this came at a great cost. For example, the feeling of physical danger on the part of several members of our precinct. It's hard to summarize my experience, but in a nutshell, it involves a fist fight (!), numerous violations of the Texas Democratic Party rules, general mob-fever, total chaos, confusion, booing, screaming and yelling, utter disrespect for a previously revered elected official at the national level, repeated unnerving sensations that I was part of some kind of staging of an adult inner city Lord of the Flies, and finally and most disturbingly, veiled misogynistic, homophobic, and racial hatred. Did I mention that I was with DEMOCRATS?! Because it sure didn't feel like it.
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POPSWhat's 20 Million Dollars Anyway When It Makes Xenophobic People Feel Better Just last night I was talking about how I should make a career out of evaluating policies in which tons of dollars are dropped and no one ever knows or seems to care about the outcome. Because the policy is assumed to be a good idea, I suppose. Anyway, this is a prime example. But those geniuses at Homeland Security! There apparently is no way to evaluate this damn fence. Brilliant.
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POPSGender Imbalance in NIH Scientists
This article reporting on a study conducted by the NIH on its intramural female scientists doesn't come as a surprise. The article goes on to report that women are more likely to make career concessions than men and that a change in academic and scientific culture will be necessary to combat the gender gap. (Don't hold your breath!) It also says that while men and women rate themselves equally when it comes to professional skills, women are less confident that they will obtain PI positions and receive tenure. I find it interesting that the story has long been "more women trained in science and admitted to university, graduate school, and postdocs will soon translate to more women in tenured and PI positions." That seems so hopelessly naive to me. The reality is that something is wrong with the system and the culture (of academia, research, and the "rest of the world") and that throwing more women into the system at the lower level isn't going to magically solve the problem.
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POPSMore on Epidemiology and the Public's Health A recent article in the New York Times Magazine profiles the case of hormone replacement therapy as an example of the seemingly endless yo-yo cycle of medical research findings, and discusses whether or not we know what really makes us healthy.
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