Fucking Morons
mikethemadbiologist | June 30, 2008In a very good post about elitism and Republicans, Maha asks:
John McCain's recent mangling of Barack Obama's famous "bitter" remark is also illustrative:
"We're going to go to the small towns in Pennsylvania and I'm gonna to tell them I don't agree with Senator Obama that they cling to their religion and the Constitution because they're bitter," said McCain, who might have been referring to the Second Amendment right to bear arms. "I'm gonna tell them they have faith and they have trust and support the Constitution of the United States because they have optimism and hope... That's what…
mikethemadbiologist | June 25, 2008If Republicans claim that oil pipelines are good for caribou, I wonder what they'll make of the blackfly outbreak in Maine. About the first half of the previous sentence--that's not hyperbole. Really (by way of Digby):
During a radio interview on Wednesday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) attempted to argue that drilling for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) would be beneficial for Arctic wildlife. Bachmann claimed that drilling would cause not only an "enhancement of wildlife expansion," but that the area around oil pipelines would also "become a meeting ground and '…
mikethemadbiologist | June 24, 2008There seem to be some problems with the CDC's Q Fever Biohazard level 3 facility:
At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's new $214 million infectious disease laboratory in Atlanta, scientists are conducting experiments on bioterror bacteria in a room with a containment door sealed with duct tape.
The tape was applied around the edges of the door a year ago after the building's ventilation system malfunctioned and pulled potentially contaminated air out of the lab and into a "clean" hallway.
Nine CDC workers were tested in May 2007 for potential exposure to the Q fever bacteria…
mikethemadbiologist | June 20, 2008So I emerge from my grant writing burrow only to discover by way of ScienceBlogling PZ that the clowns at Answers in Genesis are pestering National Academy of Sciences member Richard Lenski about the citrate evolution in E. coli paper he co-authored.
Fortunately, Gerlach at Off Resonance does a great job fisking this creationist crapdoodle, so I don't have to. While I'm glad Lenski responded, he should cut them off at this point. The problem is that his response, which is quite sensible--he presents the data that show that contamination is not an issue among other things--does not matter to…
mikethemadbiologist | June 17, 2008I've noted before how stupid creationists are when they burble things like 'mutation is bad.' Well, a brief story in Nature once again shows just how stupid that whole idea is:
Publishing in Chemistry & Biology Truman et al. have identified a single amino acid substitution in the active site of the protein Cep15, which is part of the glycopeptide antibiotic chloroeremomycin biosynthetic machinery in Amycolatopsis orientalis, that abolishes its catalytic activity. Reversing a point mutation in the cep15 gene produced a functional enzyme. This finding represents the first time that the…
mikethemadbiologist | June 15, 2008I've discussed Republican rising star Bobby Jindal's public support for creationism before. What's galling is that his idiocy can't be laid at cognitive deficiency or ignorance. I was in the same graduating class as Jindal, and I know that every biology major had considerable exposure to evolutionary biology.
Clearly, Jindal is being willfully ignorant to avoid theologically inconvenient reality. Now Jindal is further attempting to lower the value of my degree: he performed an exorcism, and believes that it cured the 'possessed' woman of cancer.
(Don't tell Orac, or his head might explode…
mikethemadbiologist | May 22, 2008Washington Post syndicated columnist* Kathleen "Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Führer" Parker writes about the "patriot divide" (italics mine):
It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.
Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Josh Fry's political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically -- and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century -- there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.
We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants--and…
mikethemadbiologist | May 19, 2008A loyal reader mentioned to me a while ago that political news is morphing into sports news. Consider the now-famous Chris Matthews' smackdown of rightwing radio host Kevin James. Instead of focusing on Matthews' deconstruction, instead listen to the first thirty seconds or so:
How is this any different than ESPN's Jim Rome or anything on Fox Sports News? James has the same bloviating, loudmouth manner. He has no idea what he is talking about. When he wants to make a point, he just shouts louder. The only difference is that what Rome discusses--sports--doesn't matter. We don't wind up…
mikethemadbiologist | May 14, 2008Someone I knew who wasn't Jewish, once asked me what I could do to stop anti-Semitism. I responded that, if combating anti-Semitism is solely the responsibly of Jews, then we're done for. The point being that you need more than a small minority to fight what is. I've often thought the same about the War on Science: if fighting it is only left to scientists, we really don't stand much of a chance.
This is why I was heartened to read Amanda's double-barreled blast against anti-vaxxers:
Anti-vaccination cranks make me see red, in no small part because there's no excuse for the levels of…
mikethemadbiologist | May 7, 2008By way of Kathy G, I see that Caitlin Flannagan won an award for being "thoughtful and bracingly honest, filled with humor and empathy, and free of cliches and political correctness." This gives me an excuse to rescue from the Google cache an old post, "Hell, I'll Pile on Flanagan Too", illustrating some of Flannagan's thoughtfulness:
I'll leave to these fine people to criticize Caitlin Flanagan's efforts to bemoan her sorry lot as a faux stay-at-home mom. What honked me off in the Time article was this:
The Democrats made a huge tactical error a few decades ago. In the middle of doing the…
mikethemadbiologist | May 4, 2008Darksyde rightly skewers Ben Stein and his creationist fellow travellers for claiming that evolutionary biology led to the Holocaust:
Religion and science are different species of course. But one thing they share in common is both can be used for great good or nightmarish evil. Particle physicists developed the theories underpinning everything from PET/CAT scans to the device you are reading this post on. They also brought us the hydrogen bomb. Biochemists developed antibiotics, saving the lives and limbs of countless millions of suffering people. The same science produced Zyklon B, a…
mikethemadbiologist | May 4, 2008Several of my fellow ScienceBloglings have noted that the increase in measles cases is due to idiots who refuse to get vaccinated. Beyond the obvious health threat this represents, there is a more subtle, yet equally murderous effect of all of this anti-vax woo.
It distracts us from other vaccination programs that we need to institute. Every year, roughly 36,000 U.S. residents die from influenza--the 'boring' kind. Why this isn't viewed as a major health crisis, while breast cancer, which kills approximately the same number annually, is escapes me. Not because breast cancer isn't an awful…
mikethemadbiologist | April 20, 2008What? You thought I was serious? I'm Mad, not crazy. But the release of Expelled gives me an opportunity to note one facet of creationist stupidity.
A while ago, in response to Michael Egnor, who features prominently in the movie Expelled, I discussed how creationists party like it's 1859. As the movie Expelled inadvertently demonstrates, they fail to recognize that we biologists have done a little work since Darwin's Origin of Species. Specifically, creationists never discuss either population genetics or phylogenetics because, if they did, they would get their asses handed to them (and…
mikethemadbiologist | April 17, 2008...the New York Times gives David Cay Johnston a buyout, and keeps Maureen Dowd on payroll.
Johnston is one of the few reporters with the brains and the patience to understand the intersection of politics and economics. He makes tax policy interesting for Intelligent Designer's sake. And unlike Dowd, he is actually part of the Coalition of the Sane.
Fucking insane.
mikethemadbiologist | April 17, 2008You might have read about the latest conclusive proof that Democrats are the party of out-of-touch elitists: Senator Obama ordered orange juice instead of coffee. While many see this as an attempt to manufacture controversy, I think the hypothesis that the press corps is so stupid as to border on mental disability is operative here. Hunter writes:
I can understand why a presidential candidate doing badly at bowling would be a fun, two-minute diversion from weightier matters. And I can understand why a presidential candidate speaking imprecisely about a difficult political issue would…
mikethemadbiologist | April 7, 2008A survey of Florida teens' sexual health knowledge yielded some very disturbing results:
A recent survey that found some Florida teens believe drinking a cap of bleach will prevent HIV and a shot of Mountain Dew will stop pregnancy has prompted lawmakers to push for an overhaul of sex education in the state.
There's been a lot said in favor of real sex ed and against abstinence-only 'education' (and rightly so), but, if the consequences of unwanted pregnancy and HIV weren't so serious, this other finding would be funny:
The survey showed that Florida teens also believe that smoking marijuana…
mikethemadbiologist | March 27, 2008To avoid permanent brain damage, the Surgeon General recommends that Vox Popoli be read only through the StupidVu9000
So Vox Day stumbled across my post about the utility of evolutionary biology (among other things) and he went berserk.
Maybe he came across the link by way of ScienceBlogling PZ, and since there's no love lost between those two, he went nuts by association.
Maybe he read the word "emotional" in the post and became absolutely terrified that his tiny little penis would fall off.
Or maybe he's just a complete fucking moron.
I'll lay out what I meant by "moral":
Creationists…
mikethemadbiologist | March 25, 2008I've argued before that one problem with the news media is that they are quite stupid. A recent speech by CNN celebrity journalist Candy Crowley reinforces that idea. While others commented on her sleep deprivation, this quote leapt out at me:
"On the Democrat side, we never get a chance to see anyone up close. The public has not been as well served because it doesn't know who these people are," she said. "Something in me says, 'Do we know enough?' It's hard to find a moment when we think 'This is the person, not the candidate.' We don't have a chance to flesh them out."
She said neither…
mikethemadbiologist | March 23, 2008David Sloan Wilson is asking Huffington Post readers if they want a science section at the Huffington Post. I always think science sections are good things...except when the blog lets Deepak Chopra say crazy things about evolution:
Deepak Chopra, over at the Huffington Post, has some absolutely ridiculous things to say about evolution (PZ Myers holds his nose and refutes Chopra here). What Chopra says is so inane (oxygen has intelligence?) that one's brain just locks up. Unfortunately, this silliness isn't limited to Chopra, and is far too common. One of the comments on his post sums up…
mikethemadbiologist | March 18, 2008While criticizing someone who does not understand the difference between artificial and natural selection--something I've successfully communicated to high school students and undergraduates--is like picking on the slow kid, his repeated nitpicking of ScienceBlogling Mike Dunford's post about the topic is illustrative of how creationists, whether they be young earth or intelligent design, operate.
Instead of dealing with Orac's or my response, Egnor quibbles with Mike over exactly what he meant. It's trolling, masquerading as intellectual discussion (and I had the same style of idiocy show…