Fucking Morons
mikethemadbiologist | March 13, 2008As I watch the Democratic primary lurch closely towards self-destruction, I keep asking myself why are so many Democrats projecting their fantasies onto two candidates whose feet are definitely made of clay? Granted, this has been going on since the start of the silly season (italics added):
...what I'm seeing is that many who identify strongly with a candidate hold opinions that are very different from the candidates. Now, there's [nothing] wrong with that per se: if your guiding star is to beat the Republicans, because you think any Democrat would be preferable to a Republican, then so be…
mikethemadbiologist | March 10, 2008
ScienceBlogling Mike Dunford reminds us that Michael Egnor's creationist stupidity, like Camus' plague, never disappears, but only wanes. Egnor has unleashed his formidable stupidity on the concepts of artificial and natural selection.
So many fucking morons, so little Mad Biologist. Fortunately, I've written about this before:
The difference between artificial selection and natural selection isn't that the selective agent (e.g., pesticides) is a result of human activity. The difference is in what determines what is the 'fittest': a person's decision as to what traits are preferable, or…
mikethemadbiologist | March 8, 2008...it ultimately leads the Mad Biologist to a very irreverent, but accurate, description of the scientific method. Someone I know recently had said someone's car rear-ended. For reasons not worth going into*, said someone used The Google, and discovered that the person who ran into said someone is an intelligent design creationist (Intelligent Driving?).
This information comes by way of a post responding to a letter that the creationist wrote to the Boston Globe. The post contains this superb description of the scientific method as applied to intelligent design creationism (italics mine…
mikethemadbiologist | March 7, 2008
There's not much to add in terms of rebutting intelligent design creationist Jonathan Wells' latest misappropriation of science that Larry Moran, Orac, and Ian Musgrave didn't already write. But Wells' latest screed demonstrates just how pathetically low intelligent design creationism has sunk. An argument that stupid is a tacit admission of defeat.
Essentially, Wells' argument can be summarized as "if evolutionary biology isn't cited in every single biology paper EVAH!, then evolutionary biology isn't relevant to biology." Never mind that every step in genomic biology involves…
mikethemadbiologist | March 6, 2008...if he weren't a fucking moron. One of the books that has gone missing in all of the criticisms of Jonah Goldberg's ridiculous Democrat-bashing screed Liberal Fascism is Wolfgang's Schivelbusch's Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939.
Schivelbusch correctly notes (as does Goldberg) that were similarities among the U.S., Germany, and Italy between 1933-1939: the state did become more involved in the economy, there was state propaganda--which was informed by what people wanted (at least superficially), and each society was…
mikethemadbiologist | February 24, 2008A while back I wrote about how the Office of Human Research Protection (OHRP) had blocked the implementation of a checklist for ICUs that would most likely prevent roughly 20,000 deaths from infectious disease annually. ScienceBlogling Revere reports that the OHRP has reversed its decision (italics mine):
The Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP) -- part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services -- has concluded that Michigan hospitals can continue implementing a checklist to reduce the rate of catheter-related infections in intensive care unit settings (ICUs) without…
mikethemadbiologist | February 20, 2008By way of maha (and also Roger Ailes the Good), I came across this screed from the conservative National Review's website (italics mine):
... Obama and I are roughly the same age. I grew up in liberal circles in New York City--a place to which people who wished to rebel against their upbringings had gravitated for generations. And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but…
mikethemadbiologist | February 19, 2008A lot of my fellow ScienceBloglings have written about the attempts in many Floridian municipalities to weaken biology education, so I won't waste bandwidth revisiting that here. But what amazed when I read this article about Floridian voters' views of evolution was the response to the question "Which of the following comes closest to what you think evolution is?":
How in the Intelligent Designer's green earth do the same number of people define evolution as creationism as do correctly define evolution? Remember, this was not a question about what was the 'correct' version of how life came…
mikethemadbiologist | February 18, 2008Lest the humanities feel neglected, the Republican War on Art keeps chugging along. In Bush's 2009 budget, the arts take massive hits across the board, with the sole exception of much needed maintenance funding of the Smithsonian. But first, by way of the Boston Phoenix, let's look at the most unconscionable part of the budget:
...nothing exemplifies the right wing's embrace of public ignorance more than its opposition to funding arts education in the schools. This position is beyond primitive. Even cave dwellers probably delighted in the animal figures they painted on their walls; not Bush…
mikethemadbiologist | February 4, 2008Rolex has rolled out a new watch that costs over $20,000. But there's a small flaw with the design:
What? You didn't see it? Let me help:
IIII!
No.
IV.
Would you spend thousands of dollars to show the world that you're illiterate? This is what you would expect to see on a cheap knockoff bought on the street corner, not the original.
We need an FMT: a Fucking Moron Tax. It would be 100% of the value of the offending item, plus an additional 50% for making everyone else's brain hurt.
mikethemadbiologist | February 3, 2008Prometheus describes the phenomenon of the arrogance of ignorance:
...the real issue is that everybody thinks that they are "above average";and have difficulty comparing their abilities to those of others. In the absence of actual face-to-face comparison, they assume that their abilities are equal to or better than most people.
Finally - a glimmer of illumination!
You see, it had always puzzled me that a person with, say, an MBA and a "Google PhD" (or, at least, a "Google MS") would have the temerity to accuse me of arrogance when I disagreed with them on a matter that is within my "sphere of…
mikethemadbiologist | February 2, 2008One should be more informed, not less after watching a presidential debate. Jamison Foser, in an otherwise excellent post about the recent Democratic debate, makes one small error when he accuses CNN's Wolf Blitzer of being imprecise, when, in fact, Blitzer is just wrong:
Blitzer said, "I just want to be precise" -- but he was the opposite of precise. Clinton and Obama had given precise answers; Blitzer then restated their positions in less precise terms.
Here, let's look at all three statements again, in the order in which they were made:
OBAMA: "Part of it is paid for by rolling back the…
mikethemadbiologist | February 1, 2008Because they don't understand stuff. To wit, Mike Allen in The Politico:
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs surveillance of telephone calls and e-mail traffic of suspected terrorists, expires on Friday. After that, any monitoring that's currently authorized could continue, but no new surveillance could begin.
Actually, what is set to expire is the Protect America Act ('PAA'). The reason the PAA is set to expire is that the retroactive immunity provisions for law-breaking companies in the new PAA are opposed by the Democrats, but the Republicans refuse to pass a…
mikethemadbiologist | January 31, 2008...the morons at Bucky's Family Restaurant do. From some actual NY Times reporting:
"I wish there was somebody worth voting for," said Buford Moss, a retired Union Carbide worker sitting at the back table of Bucky's Family Restaurant here, with a group of regulars, in a county seat that -- as the home of the 11th president, James K. Polk -- is one of the ancestral homelands of Jacksonian Democracy.
"The Democrats have left the working people," Mr. Moss said.
"We have nobody representing us," he continued, adding that he was "sad to say" he had voted previously for Mr. Bush. He was…
mikethemadbiologist | January 30, 2008Conservative blogger Ben Domenech, in a stereotypical display of rightwing 'humor'*, writes an imaginary speech for Fred Thompson's withdrawal announcement (italics mine):
I have never seen such a bunch of pansies strutting about pretending to be leaders.
Rudy Giuliani? Slick cheater. Mike Huckabee? Jesus freak. John McCain? Crazy. Mitt Romney? Woman.
That says everything, although 'insecure, pencil-dick weenie' probably wouldn't be superfluous.
*There are funny conservatives (Christopher Buckley often cracks me up), but among movement conservatives, much of what passes for humor would be…
mikethemadbiologist | January 29, 2008Because why offend one group of people, when you can offend two at the same time? From Chet Scoville:
It appears that "Canadian" is a new racial epithet in America; it's now a code word for black.
Don't believe me? Take a look:
Last August, a blogger in Cincinnati going by the name CincyBlurg reported that a black friend from the southeastern U.S. had recently discovered that she was being called a Canadian. "She told me a story of when she was working in a shop in the South and she overheard some of her customers complaining that they were always waited on by a Canadian at that place. She…
mikethemadbiologist | January 28, 2008Say hello to the Office on National Drug Control Policy and to faith-based drug overdose prevention. One public health intervention that saves lives is the distribution of Narcan nasal sprays to drug users:
The nasal spray is a drug called naloxone, or Narcan. It blocks the brain receptors that heroin activates, instantly reversing an overdose.
Doctors and emergency medical technicians have used Narcan for years in hospitals and ambulances. But it doesn't require much training because it's impossible to overdose on Narcan.
The Cambridge program began putting Narcan kits into drug users'…
mikethemadbiologist | January 27, 2008By way of Martini Revolution, I came across this Scott Horton post about Bush's favorite painting, "A Charge to Keep." We definitely need better art history education in the U.S., if for no other reason than to prevent people from embarrassing themselves. Horton:
Bush was so taken by it ["A Charge to Keep"], that he took the painting's name for his own official autobiography. And here's what he says about it:
I thought I would share with you a recent bit of Texas history which epitomizes our mission. When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman…
mikethemadbiologist | January 27, 2008By way of Amanda, I came across this bit of political 'humor' from a Long Island weekly. I'm not reprinting it, because I don't put racist sewage on this site ("someday I hope people will call me Doctor YoMama" in reference to Obama is just a taste).
I've lived in several parts of the country, and there were enclaves in Long Island that were more overtly racist than anywhere else--and that includes Virginia, where I grew up. Once you get to much of white middle class Nassau and Long Island, it's like (or worse than) the South, but without any of the manners.