Student dissidents are accusing the New York Times of being a propaganda machine for the theocracy. If only Americans could see that clearly.

Here’s a good long and detailed rundown on the NYT scandal over Jayson Blair.

I find the most interesting thing about it the source, and the voice. It’s by the NYT, written in active voice third person, as though they were another paper reporting about the competition. I assume they made that editorial decision to give it more of an air of objectivity. It’s nice not to read, “mistakes were made…”

Jonathan Rauch says that, contrary to conventional international “wisdom,” George Bush didn’t “squander” the world’s good will after September 11–he spent it. (Not a permalink, unfortunately).

I was going to note something about the story (available from several sources) that Rep. Joe Barton wants to shut down the Shuttle program because it might kill astronauts. Either that, or fly it unmanned, which is an utterly senseless idea.

The significance of this is that the congressman is from Texas, tribal homeland of the Shuttle, and he’s on the Space and Aeronautics subcommittee. I’m not necessarily opposed to ending the current manned spaceflight program in its present form–there are several arguably good reasons to do so even if one supports humans in space, but to do it because it’s unsafe is, well, stupid. It would be yet another case of doing (possibly) the right thing for completely the wrong reason, and when we do right things for wrong reasons, it dramatically diminishes the possibility of doing follow-up right things.

Anyway, fortunately, I don’t have to say much, because Thomas James already has.

In case anyone’s wondering, I’m taking care of a convalescing Patricia, who had some minor surgery on a torn shoulder tendon today. She’s (only, thankfully) temporarily the one-armed woman…

What he said.

“Giving NASA managers and government contractors who have failed over and over again billions of dollars to design and build a spaceplane specifically and only for NASA’s use is the old way of doing things,” Tumlinson said.

“We don’t need one Orbital Spaceplane, we need many spaceplanes. We shouldn’t be laying off astronauts, we should be opening the space frontier for more Americans. If this is done right, NASA can get all the transportation it needs, save billions in taxpayer funds, kick start a huge new industry and along the way, the people will at last get a chance to go into space themselves.”

What he said.

“Giving NASA managers and government contractors who have failed over and over again billions of dollars to design and build a spaceplane specifically and only for NASA’s use is the old way of doing things,” Tumlinson said.

“We don’t need one Orbital Spaceplane, we need many spaceplanes. We shouldn’t be laying off astronauts, we should be opening the space frontier for more Americans. If this is done right, NASA can get all the transportation it needs, save billions in taxpayer funds, kick start a huge new industry and along the way, the people will at last get a chance to go into space themselves.”

What he said.

“Giving NASA managers and government contractors who have failed over and over again billions of dollars to design and build a spaceplane specifically and only for NASA’s use is the old way of doing things,” Tumlinson said.

“We don’t need one Orbital Spaceplane, we need many spaceplanes. We shouldn’t be laying off astronauts, we should be opening the space frontier for more Americans. If this is done right, NASA can get all the transportation it needs, save billions in taxpayer funds, kick start a huge new industry and along the way, the people will at last get a chance to go into space themselves.”

My team (to the degree that I have a team), the Detroit Tigers, started out the season as the most pathetic team in the major leagues, with a 3-25 start. They were so deep in the cellar at the end of April that they needed a shovel to get to the floor of it.

They just took four straight, and swept the Orioles.

Amazing. Wonder if this is a fluke, or a turning point?

Via Paul Hsieh (whose Geek Press I recommend reading daily, because it doesn’t take long–he only posts a few quality topics each day, and he always comes up with neat stuff), there’s an interesting article in the New Scientist about some recent developments in simulated evolution, in which artificial organisms develop capabilities based on mutations that would be seemingly unrelated to them.

Evidence of a gradual biological evolutionary process is found in complex structures that retain features related to earlier evolutionary steps. The human eye, for example, contains crystalline proteins that are related to those that perform enzymatic functions unrelated to vision.

The researchers say their computer model will let biologists study individual evolutionary steps for the first time. “Darwinian evolution affects DNA and computer code in much the same way,” says Christoph Adami, who leads the Digital Life Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. “This allows us to study evolution in this electronic medium.”

Lenski adds that some mutations, which initially looked as if they would not be advantageous to an organism, turned out to be crucial stepping stones in the long run.

This is one response to the argument made by some that homosexuality can’t be genetic, because “the gene would die out.” This is reflective of an overly simplistic misunderstanding of genetic evolution. If homosexuality is purely genetic (and I won’t be surprised if it is) as opposed to womb environment or some combination of the two (it’s quite clear to me that homosexuals are born, not made), I’l be very surprised if it turns out to be a single gene. More likely it will be found to be a complex of genes, each of which has some non-sexual evolutionary utility, but in combination confer the unfortunate (at least in our present society) trait of inability to feel a physical attraction for the opposite sex.

A similar example is the gene for malaria resistance, very useful to people living in the tropics, but of which a double dose (from both parents) results in the deadly disease of sickle-cell anemia. In temperate climates, there’s no benefit to the gene at all, and it may eventually disappear in the African-American population, but it will take many generations.