Fucking Morons
mikethemadbiologist | June 11, 2007I used to think that Democratic politicians were trying to be too clever by half, and consequently screwed things up. Then I started to think that many are actually quite conservative, so they're just reverting to form--most of them don't have a tiny liberal inside of them, struggling to be free. After reading this exchange with a Democratic canvasser (something I used to do), I think the party has been taken over (or at least seriously infiltrated) by fucking morons (italics mine):
When I explained my stance and rationale [for not donating to the national party] to the woman on the phone,…
mikethemadbiologist | June 8, 2007When you do 'faith-based' science, you have problems when you don't follow the tenets of that 'faith.' From the AP:
The man who plays Adam in a video aired at a Bible-based creationist museum has led a different life outside the Garden of Eden, flaunting his sexual exploits online and modeling for a clothing line that promotes free love.
After learning about his activities Thursday, the Creation Museum in Kentucky pulled the 40-second video in which he appears.
"We are currently investigating the veracity of these serious claims of his participation in projects that don't align with the…
mikethemadbiologist | June 4, 2007I was watching this video of a presentation by ScienceBlogling Matt Nisbet, and he related this factoid about the NIH and scientific illiteracy:
Only nine percent of Americans could identify what the NIH was.
(on the video, it's at the 27:00 mark)
Given the public's staggering ignorance, it's a miracle any science gets done. How can people not know that the NIH stands for the National Institute of Holiness?
Kidding.
mikethemadbiologist | June 1, 2007And in other news, dog bites man. Would the NY Times have printed an op-ed allowing a flat-earther to explain why he believes the earth is flat? Because that's what they did when they ran Brownback's defense of intelligent design creationism. And there's nothing original in Brownback's op-ed either.
First, Brownback makes this declarative statement:
The heart of the issue is that we cannot drive a wedge between faith and reason. I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction between the two. The scientific method, based on reason, seeks to discover truths about the nature…
mikethemadbiologist | May 30, 2007I've said before that when you watch ignoramuses and authoritarians trash your country, anger is the appropriate response. driftglass explains why:
The Real Problem is that, in the name of Holy Balance, journalists treat the patently and dangerously delusional adherents of Cult of Dubya as if their opinions were worthy of discussion.
Except what Mr. Ites still dogmatically believes in this Year of Our Lord 2007 -- that we are in Iraq because "What they did on 9/11 is a travesty" -- is not a matter of opinion, any more than a fanatical insistence on the flatness of the Earth, the falseness of…
mikethemadbiologist | May 30, 2007Would you pay $728 more a year to keep schools and libraries fully funded? I would, but the voters of Northbridge, MA wouldn't. According to the Boston Globe:
And yesterday, budget cuts and voter indifference in Northbridge finally caught up with the institution officially known as the Whitinsville Social Library. Its doors closed at 2 p.m. And though they will reopen again this week, people in Northbridge, population 13,100, will notice a difference.
The town cannot afford the $200,000 needed to keep the library fully running for another year. Once open 40 hours a week, it will be open…
mikethemadbiologist | May 29, 2007No, that's not an inappropriate joke. The conservative Polish government is worried that the Teletubbies might turn Polish youth into TEH GAY:
Poland's conservative government took its drive to curb what it sees as homosexual propaganda to the small screen on Monday, taking aim at Tinky Winky and the other Teletubbies.
Ewa Sowinska, government-appointed children rights watchdog, told a local magazine published on Monday she was concerned the popular BBC children's show promoted homosexuality.
She said she would ask psychologists to advise if this was the case.
In comments reminiscent of…
mikethemadbiologist | May 25, 2007A couple of weeks ago, after I posted about a very serious emerging bacterial threat, KPC, I received an email from a reader with an elderly relative in the hospital with a very serious case of pneumonia caused by KPC. What he* told me is shocking.
The relative, who has had repeated hospital stays and a previous MRSA infection, was in the hospital for a week before any laboratory cultures were performed. That's right, a patient with practically every major risk factor for a multidrug resistant infection wasn't tested for a week. So this patient wasn't isolated, exposing other ICU patients and…
mikethemadbiologist | May 18, 2007So Lou Dobbs has been making ludicrous statements about leprosy and illegal immigrants, claiming that 7,000 cases have happened in the last few years as a result of illegal immigration. The Southern Poverty Law Center wrote Dobbs a letter:
Actually, we have had 7,000 cases of leprosy--over a thirty year period. Leprosy is pretty easy to keep track of....
What a fucking moron.
mikethemadbiologist | May 14, 2007Well, that isn't what Ezra Klein titled his post about blogospheric venom, but he should have. Klein writes (italics mine):
...part of the problem with blogospheric civility is that bloggers aren't addressing their posts to folks like Hiatt. They're writing for an imagined audience composed mainly of liberals who are shut-out of Washington Post editorial meetings but appalled by what emerges from them. The tone such an audience demands is not terrifically genteel. That said, these posts get back to -- or are sought out by -- their ostensible targets, who confuse a critique written for them…
mikethemadbiologist | May 13, 2007Pundits discuss Democratic candidates
The mainstream media has a double standard for Democratic candidates. INCONCEIVABLE!
Jameson Foser writes (italics mine):
Cavuto suggests it's hypocritical for Edwards, a wealthy man, to want to eradicate poverty. That is essentially what Beck and Cafferty and Tucker said, too. And it's what The Washington Post's Bill Hamilton suggested when he justified front-page treatment for the article about Edwards' house sale by pointing out that it involved a "presidential candidate [who] just happens to be a millionaire who is basing his campaign on a populist…
mikethemadbiologist | May 12, 2007One of the odd ideas to have arisen is that one can have a good idea, but not express it well. With rare exceptions, in my experience, that isn't the case: poorly communicated ideas are usually a result of poor ideas. With that in mind, I thought it would be interesting to revisit one of former Secretary of War Defense Donald Rumsfeld's utterances.
While reading this, keep in mind that Rumsfeld once told Paul Wolfowitz (yes, that Wolfowitz) that one should "Begin with an illogical premise and proceed logically to an illogical conclusion." Here's a classic Rumsfeld:
The message is that…
mikethemadbiologist | May 11, 2007
...and a symphony broke out? Who starts a fight at the Boston Pops? From the Globe:
One of the two concertgoers at the center of what has become known as "The Brawl at Symphony Hall" said yesterday that he intends to press charges against the man who punched him after being asked several times to stop talking during the Boston Pops' opening night gala.
"People with a temper like that aren't really safe in society," Matthew Ellinger , a 27-year-old graphic designer from Brighton, said yesterday. "If a guy is going to lose his temper at the symphony when somebody asks him to stop talking,…
mikethemadbiologist | May 10, 2007Remember the old joke that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged? By way of Ed Brayton, I came across this post by Kent Hovind about his time in jail. Both the post and some of the responses are fascinating (in a 'car wreck' sort of way) because they illuminate the authoritarian mind so well. Hovind has reached an epiphany of sorts about the criminal justice system:
At lunch last week, one of the inmates said, "If I could, I would bomb the Christian Coalition. They are the reason we are here." I was shocked by his statement! I love the Christian Coalition, but I understand the…
mikethemadbiologist | May 7, 2007When rightwing CNN host Glenn Beck went Full Metal Godwin on Al Gore, I figured this was just garden-variety rightwing agitprop. But this post at Slacktivist about the "Left Behind" apocalyptic book series, by way of ScienceBlogling Josh, convinces me that Beck is just a flat out nutjob. From an interview between Beck and 'apocalyptic' writer Joel Rosenberg:
It's clear throughout the interview that CNN host Glenn Beck is more than a casual observer of LaHaye's books. He's a true believer. Consider this odd rant about EZ-Pass -- it's not the work of a tourist or outsider, but of a PMD […
mikethemadbiologist | May 7, 2007By way of ScienceBlogling John Lynch, I read that George Gilder calls biologists "Darwinian stormtroopers." In the same NY Times article, John West claims (italics mine):
The [Darwinian] technocrats, he charged, wanted to grab control from "ordinary citizens and their elected representatives" so that they alone could make decisions over "controversial issues such as sex education, partial-birth abortion, euthanasia, embryonic stem cell research and global warming."
While Gilder and West don't realize it, they have stumbled across our Evil Darwinist Plot:
That's why we want the embryonic…
mikethemadbiologist | May 5, 2007I'm working my through Lewis Lapham's Pretensions to Empire: Notes on the Criminal Folly of the Bush Administration. Here's what he has to say about the culture wars:
So many saviors of the republic were raising the alarm of culture war in the middle eighties that I now can't remember whether it was Bob Bartley writing in the Wall Street Journal or William Bennett speaking from his podium at the National Endowment for the Humanities who said that at Yale University the students were wallowing in the joys of sex, drugs, and Karl Marx, disporting themselves on the New Haven green in the…
mikethemadbiologist | April 30, 2007A recent meeting of the Utah County Republican Party
I've argued before that the Republicans can't win elections without their racist base. Well, apparently they can't win without their cracked-in-the-head base either.
From Utah County, Utah:
Don Larsen, chairman of legislative District 65 for the Utah County Republican Party, had submitted a resolution warning that Satan's minions want to eliminate national borders and do away with sovereignty.
In a speech at the convention, Larsen told those gathered that illegal immigrants "hate American people" and "are determined to destroy this country…
mikethemadbiologist | April 30, 2007PZ, in response to a Boston Globe article about ID proponent George Gilder, attacks Gilder's idiocy. I've pointed out some of Gilder's stupidity he displayed in a Wired article before, so I won't revisit that intellectually depauperate wasteland again. But while rereading my original post and PZ's response, something struck me: Gilder is the antithesis of education.
In what I called the "Power and Glory" section of Gilder's Wired article, he expounds on the Majestic Mystery of the Phospholipid Bilayer:
Just as physicists discovered that the atom was not a massy particle, as Newton believed…