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| Anti Science (A la palin); Christopher Hitchens on the button again | |
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| Topic Started: Oct 29 2008, 12:21 PM (417 Views) | |
| Post #1 Oct 29 2008, 12:21 PM | Huxley |
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Read it and weep. Palin In an election that has been fought on an astoundingly low cultural and intellectual level, with both candidates pretending that tax cuts can go like peaches and cream with the staggering new levels of federal deficit, and paltry charges being traded in petty ways, and with Joe the Plumber becoming the emblematic stupidity of the campaign, it didn't seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber. But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy "I kid you not." It was in 1933 that Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for showing that genes are passed on by way of chromosomes. The experimental creature that he employed in the making of this great discovery was the Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly. Scientists of various sorts continue to find it a very useful resource, since it can be easily and plentifully "cultured" in a laboratory, has a very short generation time, and displays a great variety of mutation. This makes it useful in studying disease, and since Gov. Palin was in Pittsburgh to talk about her signature "issue" of disability and special needs, she might even have had some researcher tell her that there is a Drosophila-based center for research into autism at the University of North Carolina. The fruit fly can also be a menace to American agriculture, so any financing of research into its habits and mutations is money well-spent. It's especially ridiculous and unfortunate that the governor chose to make such a fool of herself in Pittsburgh, a great city that remade itself after the decline of coal and steel into a center of high-tech medical research. Share this article on Digg Buzz up! Share this article on Buzz In this case, it could be argued, Palin was not just being a fool in her own right but was following a demagogic lead set by the man who appointed her as his running mate. Sen. John McCain has made repeated use of an anti-waste and anti-pork ad (several times repeated and elaborated in his increasingly witless speeches) in which the expenditure of $3 million to study the DNA of grizzly bears in Montana was derided as "unbelievable." As an excellent article in the Feb. 8, 2008, Scientific American pointed out, there is no way to enforce the Endangered Species Act without getting some sort of estimate of numbers, and the best way of tracking and tracing the elusive grizzly is by setting up barbed-wire hair-snagging stations that painlessly take samples from the bears as they lumber by and then running the DNA samples through a laboratory. The cost is almost trivial compared with the importance of understanding this species, and I dare say the project will yield results in the measurement of other animal populations as well, but all McCain could do was be flippant and say that he wondered whether it was a "paternity" or "criminal" issue that the Fish and Wildlife Service was investigating. (Perhaps those really are the only things that he associates in his mind with DNA.) With Palin, however, the contempt for science may be something a little more sinister than the bluff, empty-headed plain-man's philistinism of McCain. We never get a chance to ask her in detail about these things, but she is known to favor the teaching of creationism in schools (smuggling this crazy idea through customs in the innocent disguise of "teaching the argument," as if there was an argument), and so it is at least probable that she believes all creatures from humans to fruit flies were created just as they are now. This would make DNA or any other kind of research pointless, whether conducted in Paris or not. Projects such as sequencing the DNA of the flu virus, the better to inoculate against it, would not need to be funded. We could all expire happily in the name of God. Gov. Palin also says that she doesn't think humans are responsible for global warming; again, one would like to ask her whether, like some of her co-religionists, she is a "premillenial dispensationalist"—in other words, someone who believes that there is no point in protecting and preserving the natural world, since the end of days will soon be upon us. Videos taken in the Assembly of God church in Wasilla, Alaska, which she used to attend, show her nodding as a preacher says that Alaska will be "one of the refuge states in the Last Days." For the uninitiated, this is a reference to a crackpot belief, widely held among those who brood on the "End Times," that some parts of the world will end at different times from others, and Alaska will be a big draw as the heavens darken on account of its wide open spaces. An article by Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times gives further gruesome details of the extreme Pentecostalism with which Palin has been associated in the past (perhaps moderating herself, at least in public, as a political career became more attractive). High points, also available on YouTube, show her being "anointed" by an African bishop who claims to cast out witches. The term used in the trade for this hysterical superstitious nonsense is "spiritual warfare," in which true Christian soldiers are trained to fight demons. Palin has spoken at "spiritual warfare" events as recently as June. And only last week the chiller from Wasilla spoke of "prayer warriors" in a radio interview with James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who said that he and his lovely wife, Shirley, had convened a prayer meeting to beseech that "God's perfect will be done on Nov. 4." This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity. |
 
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| Post #2 Oct 29 2008, 07:31 PM | Bonzolee |
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Man, Hitchens has been going to war with the Republicans this year! He's not some big liberal either. He's got such a way with words, too. You generally don't want to get him angry, because he'll tear you a new one without breaking a sweat. Needless to say, I'm loving it! |
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"Brain disorders, like madness, are themselves contagious. The frequency of madness among doctors who are specialists for the mad is notorious." – Gustave Le Bon "The fact that audiences would rather go to Wonderland than face Iraq speaks volumes." – Random Youtube Poster | |
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| Post #3 Nov 1 2008, 08:26 PM | Joe E. Holman |
| Yeah, Hitchens is opening a can of whoop-ass on the Republicans. Normally right-leaning myself, I still say "amen" to everything he said. Pailn scares me, but I'm now convinced McCain's a gonner come election! |
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| Post #4 Nov 1 2008, 10:03 PM | Bonzolee |
 Oh Hell Yeah!!! Yeah, believe it or not, I lean to the right on a few things. In fact, I consider myself more of a moderate, if anything. I just find myself aligned with the left at the moment, because I feel their ideas are more based in reality. I mean, I've liked plenty of Republican/right leaning presidents and members of Congress, but... this modern Republican party seems like some sort of a hellacious nightmare. I have no clue what they are thinking. That is, if they are even thinking. The Republican party is going to have to reinvent themselves and do some soul searching after this election. Hopefully, the party moves back to reality critical thinking and away from all the Neocons and Palin/fundy crowd. If they go in the latter direction... can't say I'll say anything good about them for quite some time. As for my almost random Austin pic... hey, it's not everyday I can throw in a good "Hell yeah!" moment. |
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"Brain disorders, like madness, are themselves contagious. The frequency of madness among doctors who are specialists for the mad is notorious." – Gustave Le Bon "The fact that audiences would rather go to Wonderland than face Iraq speaks volumes." – Random Youtube Poster | |
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| Post #5 Nov 7 2008, 07:05 PM | Gemmy63 |
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I'd just like to say congratulations to all the Americans for having the intelligence not to vote for that ridiculous woman... If The USA became any more right wing loony it'd be truly frightening... I can honestly say that I was scared they'd win... Wow, a black man is president, in my lifetime.... praise be!! I so hope he does a wonderful job and no idiot blows him away... I've never seen such proud happy African American faces as I did when it was announched he'd won... As for Ms Palin and her ilk, why oh why does no one ask them the hard questions when they make ridiculous statements?? I just don't get it... They're allowed to say any stupid dumbarsed thing they like and no one questions them?? argh! |
 
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| Ignorance or Apathy? I don't know and I don't care ... | |
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| Post #6 Nov 7 2008, 07:42 PM | Huxley |
| I think the big challenge for Obama is to appear to be a President for all and not just blacks. It will be a difficult job but if he just plays it statesman like, he'll do Ok. News tonight that the state of Chicago is almost bankrupt. Will there be anything left for Obama to manage? |
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| Post #7 Nov 11 2008, 01:15 PM | Huxley |
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I not now that La Palin is hoping God and her faith will show her an opening in the Republican party by the next election. Strange there was no mention of ole Spooky until now. Its a damn shame. Would have liked to nail her but its no political credential is it? |
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| Post #8 Nov 12 2008, 02:12 AM | Perry |
Not sure if I've already made the observation, but I do wonder why anyone would want the helmsman's job, anywhere, given the crock of shit state-of-the-world, generally? PS New Zealand's no different. And we've just gone left to right, as opposed to the USA's right to left. Bravery or madness? Bizarre. Most everywhere. PPS Chicago is a city in Illinois, not a state of its own, even if its elders may think otherwise. Edited by Perry, Nov 12 2008, 02:15 AM.
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Con fused jus
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4:37 PM Jul 31
