Fell behind on this last week. This is the fourth week in a row I am doing my "Articles They Don't Want You to See" feature. This week I want to highlight science...the science they don't want you to understand. Specifically Evolution, Global Warming and the HIV/AIDS connection. I write about the first two topics a great deal and will draw from earlier diaries I have written. The HIV/AIDS connection is something I only recently realized had a denial lobby associated with it that needed countering. I am a scientist and have been a scientist during the bulk of the history of AIDS research. Almost took a job in Seattle working on an AIDS vaccine (moved to NYC instead). I knew that there were deniers in South Africa and that is a major problem in Africa, but now I have encountered HIV/AIDS deniers on dKos and realize I can suggest some articles regarding that issue as well.

I cannot only imagine how freeing it is for Al Gore to not be constrained by political campaigns, handlers and schedules in his daily life, I can celebrate it because now that he is free of the pretense that goes with it, so am I as a supporter of his.

By Tyler LePard

Despite repeated scientific proof that abstinence-only programs don't work, the Administration on Children and Families (ACF) and Youth Services Bureau (FYSB)--program offices of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)--recently announced a grant to the Medical Institute for Sexual Health to develop online abstinence training programs. This $207,400 grant qualifies as technical assistance from the Abstinence Education Division of FYSB in order to integrate "medical and scientific information into abstinence education programming."

   

According to their website, the Medical Institute for Sexual Health (MI) is a credible scientific organization interested in public health:

 

"MI was founded to confront the global epidemics of teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections (STIs). We identify and evaluate scientific information on sexual health and promote healthy sexual decisions and behaviors by communicating credible scientific information."

 

However, their focus on abstinence, to the exclusion of important health aspects of comprehensive sex ed shows, that they value ideology over sound public health. The Medical Institute plays up the failure rate of contraception and opposes mandating the HPV vaccine (despite acknowledging HPV as the most common sexually transmitted infection).  Additionally, SIECUS (Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States) features the Medical Institute in their National Opponents of Comprehensive Sexuality.

Few Americans have heard of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment.  It was created by Congress in 1972 and became the fourth congressional support agency.  It was designed to provide the House and Senate with independent, nonpartisan and thorough analysis of complex technical issues and policy options for addressing them.  In 1995 under pressure from the pompous and nefarious Newt Gingrich the small agency was de-funded.

I have had several interesting discussions recently about global warming. Of course sometimes I run into denial lobby drones who yammer "it's a myth" despite the overwhelming scientific evidence, and I merely deal with them with a slap down, fools that they are. But there also are legitimate discussion of what can we do---as a society, as individuals. We have a 10 year window according to top scientific and economic experts coming at the question from different angles. We have a 10 year window.

It has recently struck me that those who will be most affected by our choices regarding global warming will be too young during that critical 10 years to have any say whatsoever in our choices. We decide but our children will feel the brunt of the consequences.

I originally started discussing the craziness and duplicity of the denial lobby here on Political Cortex (e.g. here). And, after I started writing about it, I notice the term "Denail Lobby" has surfaced in the mainstream media (e.g. here).

More recently I have been just begun to discuss the need to move on, to evolve the discussion, from a supposed "debate" over whether global warming is happening (it is!) to a discussion of solutions. Personally, I do hope to help evolve the discussion. But sadly, the denial lobby continues its supid, suicidal crusade against science. But by now even the most skeptical of scientists are fighting back.

Every now and then, you run across a piece of entertainment that isn't intended to be horrific, but which nonetheless leaves you with goose bumps.  For me, the movie The Thirteenth Floor was such an event.  Coming in the wake of The Matrix, this action film with an intellectual / philosophical twist was far from a big success at the box office, but the questions it raised were a lot harder to shake off than the nature of Neo's quest.

The film wasn't the first to bring up the issues, or the last, and years of examination by science have failed to make these issues fade.  In fact, some top scientists are starting to consider seriously the idea that life is just a dream.

Duke University researchers create an invisibility cloak.  Yes, now you can join Harry Potter in crouching under a cloak while remaining invisible to those around you.  

There's only one little problem with the current design: it only works if you happen to see using microwaves.

A research team at Duke University in North Carolina has demonstrated the ability to make things disappear, at least in a very limited way. What they did is devise a way of steering one particular frequency of microwaves around an object so that, if your eyes were sensitive only to that microwave frequency instead of visible light, the object would seem to disappear.

A quick warning to Republican lawmakers: making a cloak that can actually achieve the same effect for the whole range of visible light seems a lot more remote, so it's unlikely you can use this device to hide form the voters this November.  Sorry about that.  In fact, researchers have noted that, even if the device could protect against visibility, voters would still be able to find Republicans by the smell of their rotten policies.

But hey, I understand that creatures from Cheney's planet to see in the microwave spectrum, so at least you can avoid that shotgun blast after you lose.

Stories like the one excerpted below are the kind of reports I like reading, posting, and discussing, because they are about the people truly interested in spreading this message and in taking action, not just going through the motions for some political advantage as we see far too often.

The Solar System.  You know it, you love it, you've made copies of it from Styrofoam and Magic Markers.  Nine planets, a ring of asteroids, and some left over debris in the form of comets and bric-a-brac.  

Now get ready to change your thinking.

For centuries, people recognized five wanderers among the circling stars: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.   The introduction of the telescope added Neptune, Uranus, and finally tiny Pluto.  And a billion textbooks later, those eight, along with Earth, define the standard nine planets.  However, almost from the moment of it's discovery, Pluto has been "on the bubble."  It's too small, and it's orbit is too quirky.  For decades, some astronomers have wanted to kick it out of the planet club.  Only that raised new problems -- just what is a planet, anyway?

Your life is being shaped by people you don't know, making discoveries and decisions of which you're mostly unaware, and those decisions have implications far more wide-ranging than any of the most controversial issues discussed in the halls of congress.  Sound frightening?  In a sense, it should.  These men and women don't work for the NSA.  They're not laboring in the depths of the Pentagon.  Despite the title of the diary, they aren't generally fans of spandex and capes, though some of them have been known to adopt an archetypical costume: a white lab coat.

The people in question are scientists, and more than any elected official, they will shape the world you live in for good... and for bad.

HAPPY EARTH DAY!

In honor of Earth Day, watch TV tonight! More specifically, watch the global warming documentary TOO HOT NOT TO HANDLE on HBO. It airs tonight, 4/22 at 7 PM and will be re-shown throughout the week. My wife, Joy, was interviewed for this show, though we don't know if the footage of her made it into the show.

This story has nothing to do with Kennewick Man or disputed sites like Calico.  We're talking before that, way before.

If you attend any journalism school, one of the the first things they tell is to get the heart of your story at the top of the page.  Drop all those W's, -- who, what, when, where -- into your opening paragraph, then come back and fill in the details and background.  But then, it's been a long time since I even pretended to be a journalist, so you'll have to forgive me if I write this story in reverse.  

Eventually, I'm going to get to the news, but I'm going to start the story nearly 400 million years and two thousand miles from the important events.  In fact, I'm going to start in my own backyard.

The Bush administration is in a state of collapse. Around the country, people are starting to talk about the need to impeach and remove Bush from office. Many of these people, like the one-time Republicans described here are, like William Buckley, totally lost and devoid of answers. Especially in Red or Purple areas, everybody will know who the resident liberal is - even if you have never said a word about it.

In honor of Charles Darwin's birthday on February 12th, I am posting a series of diaries on Darwin and his theory. My first entry in this miniseries covered the basics of Darwin's theory of evolution. In this essay, I wish to discuss some of the objections that have been made regarding his theory and show how more than 100 years of research have done nothing but bolster or minorly modify Darwin's theory.