How do you think the Rabid Right is reacting to Obama’s enlightened stem cell policies? This comic isn’t far from the truth.
Here’s Glenn Beck, always the representative of Idiot America.
So here you have Barack Obama going in and spending the money on embryonic stem cell research, and then some, fundamentally changing – remember, those great progressive doctors are the ones who brought us Eugenics. It was the progressive movement and it was science. Let’s put science truly in her place. If evolution is right, why don’t we just help out evolution? That was the idea. And sane people agreed with it!
And it was from America. Progressive movement in America. Eugenics. In case you don’t know what Eugenics led us to: the Final Solution. A master race! A perfect person. That came from people in white coats. That came from the best and brightest because they were unhinged from any kind of ethics. They were unhin… they believed in evolution. It came from the scientific consensus. We’re headed back down there again. The stuff that we are facing is absolutely frightening. So I guess I have to put my name on yes, I hope Barack Obama fails. But I just want his policies to fail; I want America to wake up.
Man, he sounds like Ben Stein. Science is evil, science is indistinguishable from Nazis, evolution is the same thing as amorality. What a maroon. If anyone is unhinged, it’s Beck.
Well, we get to have some fun with that kind of mentality. Tomorrow night, Wednesday, at 10:00pm Central time, I’ll be on KPFT radio with Ray Bohlin to talk about the stem cell story. Tune in and call in. It should be…entertaining. I probably won’t kill and eat any babies on the air, but you never know.
Ah, Glenn Beck. The gift that keeps on giving.
Just like an STD.
#1- If only a shot of penicillin took care of the problem.
This is all the better for having just read the snowbound cannibalism post.
I say go for the cat, at least if it’s young and tender.
Better yet, on CNN today, someone wrote in saying they would get through the financial crunch by eating Republicans, since they’ve grown fat and useless after all… and the anchor said that was the best email so far.
I wonder if Beck’s little brain can make the link between science and the doctors, dentists, etc. he has seen/will see in the future, or the waste of HD TV that most HD channels are right now… but doubt it… if science is so evil, go live in a cave, don’t brush your hillbilly teeth and so forth… but no, they’re just a bunch of hypocrites.
And apparently, science is female! Maybe that’s why Beck’s so frightened?
Man, he sounds like Ben Stein.
no…
he actually sounds more like he’s in some sort of psychotic fugue state!
It’s two fucking paragraphs of nonsequitors all strung together.
That people who write like this CAN be a part of the public debate is of considerable concern.
PZ, have you been letting Glenn read your diary again? Now he knows all our plans! How will we accomplish the Atheist Science Revolution? They’ll be able to out-strategery us.
…I’m actually surprised he didn’t work the phrase “9/11” in there somewhere.
“Help out” evolution? You mean, so that it gets to its final goal?
They filter everything through their own religion, and then complain that it looks silly. Or wicked.
Since gravity is right, then I’d like to help out gravity by throwing someone out the window. Beck just better stay out of my way. Silly man.
Wait, so we aren’t building a dead baby gun?
strategery…
What part of natural selection don’t they understand?
Beck sounds like chicken little.
America has the best comedians.
Why is it that anyone actually listens to unqualified idiots spouting such extreme garbage on fox news. You know, I used to think that Glen Beck was a minor one in the pack but now with this and his civil war crap, he’s probably the dumbest pudit out there.
#12 re: What part of natural selection don’t they understand?
All parts of it, duh. They think it’s some sort of random magical process that supposedly poofs things into existence… or in the case of eugenics, they think it means we’re supposed to evolve into Klingons or Predators or something.
Someone needs to explain the distinction between fantasy and reality to these people, they keep getting their science from fictional sources.
btw, in case you’re wondering why the radio tards like Beck and Limbaugh have come to the fore of late…
http://theplumline.whorunsgov.com/house-republicans/gop-rep-our-goal-is-to-bring-down-approval-numbers-for-dems/
Slightly O/T:
Would anybody like to respond to this plea to forge a new compact with ‘people of faith’?
Me I think we can start the process when they give up their fantasies of a hereafter, the bigg Boogie in heaven, Satan and all the rest of the childish, barbaric crap they spew…
No. I’m not ready to make nice to ’em…
Every word of that is such ignorant bullshit. Good lord. And “put[ting] science truly in her place” is both a scary and a just plain clumsy turn of phrase.
The irony is that if you’re going to talk about eugenics with blastocysts, the much better analogy is fertility clinics–not hESCR. Fertility clinics produce a plethora of embryos, of which a select few which are deemed to have the correct characteristics are implanted and may come to term. The vast majority are destined for destruction. If you really believe that blastocysts are full humans with all the rights we have, then a fertility clinic is the very definition of a eugenics camp.
But how many opponents of hESCR are against fertility clinics? Mr. Beck? I’m waiting …
Andres @ #12
What part of natural selection don’t they understand?
None of it. Ignorance of the basic concepts of Natural Selection permeates American society. I would guess that 99% of U.S. adults have no clue of the selective mechanisms that increase the complexity of living things.
Humans have souls, after all, they are the pinnacle of evolution.
Thank heavens, in America at least, that you had religion to counter Eugenics. It could have led to all kinds of atrocities against the weaker members of society. Without the church to stand for the rights of man, riots and injustice would surely have marred the 20th century.
Okay, 10pm Central Time. Daylight savings, I suppose. So in proper money that would be 2200+5, I think. 0300 GMT tomorrow morning?
Pim, # 10: Wait, so we aren’t building a dead baby gun?
Well I wish we could have worked this out beforehand! These things don’t keep very long and my freezer is filling up. I’ve got no more room for my Hot Pockets!
Another conservative putting ideology ahead of country.
I love how “Progressives” has become an insult, and Bill-0’s favourite, “Secular Progressives”.
What do they call themselves? Regressives? Repressives?
Er Tony, my man, @21, are you implying that riots and injustice did not mar the 20th century?
And, um, remember lynchings? I think all of those were done by good Christian white folks.
Glenn Beck is an unstable person and giving him a public forum is borderline irresponsible.
Any time a cave conservative drools about eugenics and evilution in the same sentence, they should be subjected to an immediate pimp slap by the nearest liberal/progressive/atheist. It most likely won’t change things, but it’ll be damn fun. Let’s make this law.
Got one, “Tony”.
I’m off of republican babies, too stringy.
Fine for a slow cooked stew though.
Tried libertarian baby once. They look alright on the surface, but when you open them up, there’s just no meat.
Strange.
@26:
Smell that? I’m pretty sure it’s sarcasm.
It bears repeating that eugenics was an equal opportunity obsession. Left, right, centre, religious, and non-religious all had their advocates of the idea.
Didn’t Glenn Beck convert to Mormonism?
Not exactly a sign of great intelligence.
The Master Race rubbish and the horror of the Final Solution came from men wearing buckles saying “God is with us”(Gott mit uns) and inspired, in their own words, by “On Jews and Their Lies”, a gem given to us by Martin Luther, the founder of Protestant Christianity, who also happened to be German.
But of course I wouldn’t expect Glenn Beck to know any of that.
I really have to wonder, if science is so evil, why do Glen Beck and Ben Stein use the internet? Aren’t we supposed to despise everything made by those evil scientists?
AnthonyK: Thank heavens, in America at least, that you had religion to counter Eugenics
Yes, thanks to The Lord! Amen. Imagine, if we were a fully secular society, we may not have gotten rid of the last eugenics laws in the 70s (in N. Carolina I believe), and we would have started with eugenics laws before the early ’20s.
We might have been like Germany!
Somehow Glenn Beck doesn’t understand that he and his ilk stand for cultural eugenics, bullying and shouting down anything outside their Christian worldview. Oh, irony.
AnthonyK #21, that was a fine piece of irony.
Beck might want to read Rosen’s Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement before he begins misattributing support.
No ifs, no ands, no buts, no maybes,
Merely guns made out of babies–
We need good guns, to go to war;
That’s what we made eugenics for!
Before the election they told us Obama was a secret Muslim suicide bomber… It’s worse than we feared!!!
What are they talking about? The dead baby shooting dead baby gun was one of Obama’s main platforms. That’s certainly why I voted for him.
And you just know that if he didn’t build the dead baby shooting dead baby gun, they’d be all like “Mweh mweh Obama doesn’t keep his campaign promises mweeeeeh.” I swear, the man just can’t win.
Using dead babies as ammunition makes no sense, they’d just splat against their targets.
Thick republican skulls, on the other hand, would make better projectiles than depleted uranium.
Except for the baby gun part, that comic pretty much represents how the right views this. Including the Jesus part.
Mini:
http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/7893/0bbc465d20cc5ccc7c3d36c.jpg
Where’s the 8th tentacle?
Miranda Hale @ 18:
That’s what immediately struck me, as well.
“Putting science in her (sic) place.”
As in “mother nature” – the fem.
Seems to me that fundies’ references to the female sex have consistently been that its not just quite as important as the male.
Just in terms of humans, of course.
“We got god, of course male, n’ then we got nature, of course the result of god’s planning, so we’ll refer to it as female ….”
Um, then there’s the actual study of life, with description of it, inference due to that study of reality, and prediction based on that study of reality. Revelation from this: there is no “us’s is better than ’em! & so what we say goes!”
Just differences.
(Which so many of us enjoy!)
@ Catballou # 5, regarding:
Yeah, I noticed the reference to sex too.
Oh Noes! – Teh womenz can has kill Ceiling Cat by teh sienze! Putz teh womenz in burka to mak them safe! Teh WOMENZ bee seeducing teh menz beecoze evil talking snake teech teh womenz sienze!
Those same “great progressive doctors” also advocate other things too. Such as curing the sick. But I’m pretty sure Beck would be the first to complain if they refused him treatment, no?
Isn’t it about time we redefined the “culture war” as being between the intellectual culture and the pig-ignorant culture, rather than between liberals and conservatives?
@ThirdMonkey
I was about to say why not use their balls…than I remembered they don’t have any.
Their blood’s a great corrosive too btw.
Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter, O’Riely, Hanity…five people with only 4 IQ points between them.
Alex Deam #47 wrote:
That’s a good suggestion, though I’m a bit partial to “reality-based community” vs. “fairy dust conspiracy wackaloons.”
Y’arrr. This will only lead the people who agree with Beck to agree even more and everyone who sees through his BS will still be able to. I don’t think he’s winning anyone over. At least I hope not. This might prove me wrong: The Real Glenn
Let’s be fair. He doesn’t want Obama to fail or the Obama administration to fail. He wants Obama’s POLICIES to fail. Now I might just be spitballing here but the thought occurs to me: If the policies fail, what’s left to succeed. He hopes for successful State dinners, for a successful helicopter ride to Camp David.
Maybe he’s committing the fallacy of artificial partialization (I just made that up so if you use it be sure to cite me in the bibliography.
Ed
Awesome!
Shouldn’t it be saved for Friday?
Thats leaves aside the fact that a lot of stupid people are kept studip,or raised stupid,by their parents or peers.
With people more educated in science,rationality,logic,or at least less close-minded,the likes of Coulter and Limbaugh would have less influence.
*Sigh*
One can dream…..
damn those organic blueprints. they make peeps say crazy things.
How can anyone stomach more than six seconds of Glenn Beck?
Any longer and I would vomit from revulsion.
Faux News: where to go when you hate truth.
Sastra @ 9:
Bonus points if you throw Glenn Beck out of a window and land him on Ben Stein.
And apparently Beck has forgotten that the Nazi eugenics movement resulted from a totalitarian government subverting science for its own narrow causes instead of supporting open-ended research and free inquiry. Y’know, the kind of stuff Bush & Co. just couldn’t do, despite all their best efforts at it.
Who am I kidding? He honestly probably never knew it, having been safely inoculated from the truth by the walls of Fox News.
BTW,the real problem here with what Beck says is that I think it actually resonates with certain people,whether fundie christians or just less educated people.
Especially in the US science and scientists seem to have an image problem almost like atheists,its quite baffling.
But again,only when you have a population that is largely uneducated about the ToE can stuff like this eugenics babble be taken at face value by anybody in the first place.
No, that came from thugs in brown shirts.
“What a maroon”
SO superficial, but:
a) Bugs B has always been one of my heros
AND
b) my mom makes the best coconut cookies evah!
AND
c) the sight of coagulated blood is not pleasant
therefore: never understood what this fave phrase of Bugsy meant until a few years ago, thanks to a colleague. Then, head-desk.
result: fun!
conclusion: continually adding new info to your previously existing knowledge base is so interesting & aha, as well as clarifying (even things that seem at the time trivial)
question from that conclusion: so why are some people so resistant to doing so?
broad explanation which prevents a Bugs B from going bugs: evolutionary theory (ie integration of specific cumulation of facts + logic)
Clue, fundies: Fudd is not a role model
(new to me; sorry if same reasoning has been posted a zillion times before; actually, I hope that it has)
He makes Rush Limbaugh sound like Richard Feynman.
SF:
Now I might just be spitballing here
when have you EVER done anything else, you bloody moron.
nominations for the dungeon:
SF – he’s already disproved his own god all by himself, has nothing of note left to say.
Nate – complete wackaloon who too often spams bible verses
Simon – do we really need 2 Nates?
I mean trolls, OK, but these guys are complete bugfucknutters.
…and they’ve been hanging on for too long.
@9:
I really like your gravity analogy. Illustrates the point very well.
“What a maroon.” It’s good to see this Bugsyism is still part of our language.
http://www.barbneal.com/wav/ltunes/Bugs/Bugs34.wav
Clue, fundies: Fudd is not a role model
…and to add to that:
1984 was NOT an instruction manual.
Especially in the US science and scientists seem to have an image problem
It’s because our educational system is totally broken. It has become a political conspiracy of aching boredom and child-warehousing.
Media stereotypes of science and scientists finish the job. A common response when I tell kids I’m a scientist is “no you’re not”, like they can tell by looking at me.
Posted by: tim gueguen | March 10, 2009 9:02 PM
It bears repeating that eugenics was an equal opportunity obsession. Left, right, centre, religious, and non-religious all had their advocates of the idea.
worth remembering, too, is the epistemological connection between ‘eugenics” and all those “frankenfoods,” nest paw?
1. Eugenicists try to improve the human gene pool.
2. Hitler decides to wipe all non-Aryans from the Earth.
3. ????????
4. A half-black man is elected president of America.
5. PROFIT!!!!
It almost makes too much sense!
Conservatives, of course, have always been fiercely opposed to eugenics. For instance, conservatives were unanimous in their condemnation of that liberal screed The Bell Curve. (I hear Obama sleeps with a copy under his pillow.)
Stephen Colbert did a great riff on this, back when the Dems regained control of Congress in ’06:
Alas, one can easily imagine Glen Beck uttering these words without a hint of sarcasm. Poe’s law strikes again.
“that shoots dead babies”
It’s all good, the gun is only going to shoot dead babies, there already dead anyway!
Someone should tell Beck the truth: the ancestors of the modern ‘conservative’ movement in the U.S. are actually partially responsible for the Holocaust in Europe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_Integrity_Act_of_1924
Eugenics-based laws like this were based on racist attitudes that the Republican party later explicitly and successfully took on, as a part of their 1960s Southern Strategy.
And the Nazis visited the U.S. and were inspired by the same American racism that the Republicans later cultivated:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics#United_States
And if you visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, you can see a Berlin park bench that was designated for Aryans only. And there is a plaque on that bench that tells how Nazi visitors to Jim Crow America were inspired by park benches designated “Whites Only.”
Re: eugenics;
Kellog was a konservative kristian who wanted to use non-natural selection to breed slaves like dogs or horses. His attitudes were very similar to glenn beck’s
Again it’s projection.
It’s just as well that every complex issue can’t be dumbed down to the point where any Joe Sixpack could understand it, saves us the effort of explaining things to those who don’t wish to understand.
What’s the difficulty? Those who wish to live in the Dark Ages can just be left to pursue their own course while the rest of us move on…seems like a self-correcting problem, if you take a sufficiently long-term view of it.
So his imaginary sky fariy’s son was supposed to be the “prince of peace”. Love was supposed to be Jesus’ stock in trade. So naturally li’l Glenn sells “Hate U” shirts alongside his “Torch and Pitchfork” shirts. PZ, can I use cunt now? For Glenn? Pleeeeez?
He makes me so mad, I misspelled “fairy” . . . if you only knew how ironic that is.
“Fudd was not a role model”.
And, Fuddy mentalists, neither was Yosemite Sam!
On this embryonic stem cell issue, science has been given the proverbial “sucker punch”. The public want the “cures” because they want to drink their livers into oblivion; smoke their lungs into a black balloon; glutton themselves with unhealthy foods that ruin their hearts. But, they don’t want to die from anything that’s potentially curable.
So, there’s a lot of pressure on science to get cracking and they don’t want to hear all this BS about indirect benefit and that kind of mumbo jumbo. They want the CURE. If science can’t provide it, the scientists will, in the public’s estimation, be lower than whale dung. Then the public comes with the big carrot, funding. There’s going to be a lot of funding and once scientists gets hooked on the moolah, they’re going to be working 24/7.
Of course the public doesn’t want to be killing all those little embryos and they would rail at the very suggestion that any of them would stoop to such moral depths. Fortunately, they don’t have to suffer the ill effects of moral denigration; they have oodles of surrogates -another word for scientists- who are willing to take the hit for them.
As Captain Kirk of the Starship Enterprise would say; it’s a win-win scenario; the public gets the CURE, the scientists get to “research” and the moolah and the rest of us can walk away with moral impunity and a clear conscience. You might say, “but, what about the little embryos?” Well, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a couple of eggs.
Maybe if you’re lucky, Silver ‘By my egregious logical error I’m forced to accept Scientology as valid because I can’t disprove Xenu’ Fox, science might be able to come up with a cure for your particular kind of stupidity.
What’s really funny is that what’s really causing your deficiency is a fear of critical thought.
It’s true, liberals are the new Nazis. If only religious, patriotic Americans would grab their guns and round up all the “elitist” intellectuals, university professors, Darwinists, illegal aliens and homos, surely they could keep history from repeating itself.
Oh shut the fuck up Silver Fox.
I’ll donate 100 organic, fetus free, green eggs to be shoved up your ass by the first scientist or other professional to volunteer.
Bend over.
Bids are open!
Surely the best way to ‘help out evolution’ is to ensure that the gene pool is as diverse as possible.
The obvious way to do that would be to keep as many people alive as we can.
–Beck sounds like chicken little.
America has the best comedians.
—
Almost, – but no cigar. America has the best UNINTENDED comedians.
If I recall correctly, In Susan Jacobi’s book The Age of American Unreason she actually describes how the support for Social Darwinism (and thus the Eugenics movement) came mostly from American conservatives.
You do realize that most of the funding for this sort of thing will be going towards lab spaces and equipment, right? Yes, individual scientists will earn good salaries, but nothing extravagant. They don’t get paid anything close to what investment bankers, or even US Congressmen earn. So you really can’t cite money as the reason that scientists do what they do. They’re smart people, and if they chose to, most of them could probably earn far more money working in different fields. They stick with science because it interests them.
Between is the operative word. None of those people actually have any.
cactusren:
SF’s ridiculousness is another example that shows that their kind of mindset cannot escape its own scope – since their motivations are dominated by faith and profit, everyone else’s must be as well. I think the concepts of reliance on evidence and actual altruism cause a glitch in their mainframes.
It is rather telling that some people need to resort to outright lying to support their opinions. Either that or they are deeply ignorant. Either way, they are wrong, and when you inform them of this unfortunate fact, they do not seem to show any sort of willingness to learn. Sad, really.
I’m rather amazed. To be a talk show host, don’t you need to be able to… you know… talk? And by that I don’t just mean make noise with your mouth, but say thkngs that actually make sense. Wouldn’t his show be better if it was hosted by a drunken lemur? (analogy (c) Scott Adams)
The Science Pundit (#19)
Urrrgh, that reminds me of my extreme contempt for people who use fertility drugs (or IVF) and then, when it turns out they got too “lucky” for one womb, they suddenly want to leave everything in god’s hands–even if that means, as was the case for one woman, losing all but one baby, that one being born blind and crippled. (I remember hearing about this in a TV program on multiple births, and I think the last paragraph in the left column of this page of Bioethics: An Anthology refers to the same family.)
In their minds, apparently, it’s not god’s will that keeps them from having babies, so it’s a problem they can use science to fix. But as soon as they’re faced with having to kill off a few of the fetuses for the sake of the health of the mother and the remaining siblings, god’s back in the picture and gets to make the big decision. Obviously god wouldn’t want them to kill the little things directly, even if it’s quite obvious god doesn’t choose in favor of the children every time. (Probably hard to make those crucial decisions when one doesn’t exist in the first place…)
But it’s the godless, liberal scientists who are the baby killers. Riiiiiight.
Wooah, ixnay on the ott-Adams-Skay, lest you rouse the ire of the Cthulhu… Dilbert is/was funny, but Adams himself is apparently a cdesign proponentist:
http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/scott_adams_is_a_wally/
Embryonic stem cell research turned into a debate about Eugenics? Changing the policy which by the way Clinton started, then Bush added to is nothing more than political and rebellion towards religion. The Obama policy lifts the mandate for funding adult stem research which is not good.
Adult stem cell research just blows away embryonic stem cell research. About 74 treatments have been developed while none has been developed for embryonic stem cells. Adult stem cells is moving so fast the regulations are too slow, so other countries are taking advantage as people with heart conditions for example, are being treated with adult stem cells which has a pretty good success rate so far.
I don’t know enough about stem cell research to comment about Michael’s claims of the superiority of adult stem cells over embryonic stem cells. However I do know that restricting science for religious reasons is not good policy. Maybe there’ll be no practical treatments to come out of embryonic stem cell research. But we won’t know until the research is done. Just because the ex-Maximum Leader and his cronies thought that embryonic stem cell research was icky is no reason for it to be curtailed.
“Remember, those great progressive doctors are the ones who brought us Eugenics.”
Yeah, those progressive, liberal, democrat, commie, fag loving, hippy doctors taught the Spartans everything they knew about eugenics.
Oh, wait …
He also, by his own admission, does not vote.
A couple of years ago, in response to this column by Mona Charen:
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTZmNzYxMmEzNGU3NWQzNmM0NTJjZTllODE1MmU4YTM=
the last paragraph of which read:
When the day comes, as it probably will, when I am old and decrepit and disabled and in need of compassion and assistance from someone, I only hope I will be lucky enough to come under the care of some extremist, who believes that I have value just because I am human and for no other reason.
I wrote this:
To read this article, especially the pathetic and bathetic last paragraph, you would think that embryonic stem cells were gathered by means of involuntary euthanasia performed on fully-aware grannies at old folks homes. As Ms. Charen doubtless knows, they are acquired from frozen blastocysts which are a byproduct of in vitro fertilization. The ones that are not implanted are eventually disposed of. She, and apparently most people reading this, would rather see these literally flushed down a sink or incinerated rather than used to possibly improve people’s lives.
And don’t bring up the “snowflake” babies. There are close to half a million of these frozen blastocysts. I haven’t been able to find an exact number, but it seems that fewer than 200 have been “adopted.” This works out to about 0.0004 so far. Generously assuming that no more of these are created and an “adoption” rate of 100/year (way more than has happened so far), all of them will have been “adopted” in a mere 5000 years.
The fact that she doesn’t mention these salient facts, and indeed works hard at giving a false impression of how embryonic stem cells are actually gathered, speaks volumes for her lack of intellectual honesty.
It’s true that we don’t know yet how productive this research will be, but we don’t know that about ANY line of research until it’s tried. Some pan out and some don’t. The scientists who are in the best position to know think it’s worth exploring. For at least some initial work, that’s good enough for me.
A cousin of mine died after more than 20 years in a wheelchair due to a catastrophic spinal injury. He was just 53. He came from good healthy stock and should have lived to a ripe old age. He was handsome, athletic, funny and smart. He had a good job, a great wife and a young child when he hit his head on the bottom of swimming pool. To their eternal credit, his company redefined his job responsibilities, and he was able to work for some years after his injury, but eventually he had to take full disability. That in itself almost killed him, as he loved his job and had a strong work ethic. His only child was about three when he was injured and so has few memories of his father standing on his own two feet. His parents, now in their 70s, had to bury their only child. His wife finally couldn’t take it any more and they were divorced. He endured dozens of surgeries, plus bedsores, bladder infections, months flat on his back and more besides. He had his dark spells, and times when he could be moody and difficult, but on the whole he went through his trials with astonishing grace and even flashes of humor. His body finally gave up the fight a couple of months [now a couple of years] ago. Ms. Charen apparently considers him less human than a blob of undifferentiated cells scheduled to be disposed of, and doesn’t believe that his more than two decades of genuine suffering matter as much as something which cannot suffer at all and which–let me say this once again–IS GOING TO BE DISPOSED OF ANYWAY. (Sorry for shouting, but why does no one on the anti-research side ever even acknowledge, let alone address, this fact?)
Now, I am not claiming that he could have been helped by embryonic stem cell research, even if we had been pursuing it vigorously. The science is too new, and we are years, maybe decades, away from being able to do much for injuries like his (and I will freely admit that it might be never, but we won’t know if we don’t do the damn research). But there are others who could benefit from this research, and Ms. Charen’s fetus worship doesn’t allow her to care about them at all.
I don’t know Ms. Charen’s position on in vitro fertilization, but anyone who opposes embryonic stem cell research and doesn’t oppose IVF with equal fervor has no intellectual or moral credibility whatsoever. If she’s consistent here, and certainly some people are, good for her–it doesn’t make her right, or excuse that hideously dishonest final paragraph, but it’s something, and I’ll give her a bit of credit for it. Otherwise, she should not opine on this issue.
—
Not directly a response to Mr. Beck, of course, but it addresses the stem cell issue and I’m too lazy right now to rewrite it.
Let me see if I understand this correctly;
most here believe Hitler did NOT attempt to breed the superman?
Most believe he did NOT follow Eugenics?
Most believe the Eugenics movement was NOT based on Darwin’s writings?
Most believe the founder of Eugenics was NOT Darwin’s cousin?
Most believe that the Eugenics movement was among blue collar workers instead of professional people?
Since these are well established facts, it seems we are deeply embroiled in denial here, folks –
This issue is being discussed on my discussion group, Talk About Origins here:
http://tao.invisionzone.com
Posted by: Terry Trainor | March 11, 2009 5:53 AM
Why do I get the sneaking suspicion already that you haven’t?
Of course he did…
Actually, his scientists under order from his government pursued eugenics…
Most here know that is was based on Social Darwinism, which is a bastardization of Darwin’s theory about natural selection…
Honestly, your crazy is showing.
WTF? When did this morph into a class debate??
Indeed you are…indeed you are.
Don’t you just love it when one of these people shows up bashing the people here with ignorant canards, and then turns right back around and invites us to their site?
Ray Bohlin sounds like he’s a fundie-nut-job. His website has an advice column for some poor bigot who wants to know why their Hindu friend laughed at their “witnessing”. The answer is, of course because Hindus are all immoral and pray to evil gods to do evil things in their favor.
For a while I thought Bill O’Reilly was the most idiocit loudmouth in the right. Then once I saw Glenn Beck at some fucked up rightwing channel talking to the brain-dead lady of the right. Then I realized O’Reilly is actually quite reasonable among these nutjobs.
Later Glenn Beck moved to Foxnews.
Off topic, but still speaking of Idiot America, I saw this today on MSNBC.com news:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29628516/
How do their heads not explode from the cognitive dissonance?
@brokensoldier:
Your post is irrelevant. We are making fun of the following idiotic statement by Glenn Beck:
Do you know what stinks about the above statement or do you need to be fixed?
“Why should we be afraid to test our worldview against reality?” asked Bill Jack
Indeed.
By the way, Hitler did what he did because he was racist and it had nothing to do with the theory of evolution. Study of the “primitive” tribes has proven that often they dehumanize other rivaling tribes (i.e., racism, that the others are subhuman; this is also popular among religions, e.g., muslims believe non-believers to be literally dirty) and also glorification of their tribe (the equivalent of Hitler’s nationalism). An intense dose of these emotions usually results in one tribe trying to completely eliminate the other one.
It has nothing to do with the theory of evolution and possibly little to do with Eugenics which is only a cover often used by racists to justify and rationalize their motivations.
There actually is something as bizarre as “Advanced Creation Studies”? How much Poof can one teach?
In order:
-Hitler attempted to breed supermen due to his nutso religious and anti-Semitic beliefs, not evolution.
-No, Hitler did not follow Eugenics.
-Eugenicists was based only in part on Darwin’s writings. They, like creationists today, ignore the parts in his writings where he specifically argues against Eugenics.
-Irrelevant.
-Also irrelevant.
Lotharloo?
Which one of brokensoldier’s posts are you referring to?
Historical comprehension fail.
“Most believe the Eugenics movement was NOT based on Darwin’s writings?”
Was NOT the the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki based on Einstein’s etc… Atomic Theory ?
Does it mean Atomic Theory is wrong ? Or should not be taught in Physics class ? Or should be taught alongside with the “Baby Jesus is holding everything together” explanation ?
I’m not completely sold on this whole stem cell research thing. I’m Catholic, so I guess you can tell why. Then again, I’m a big fan of science and its innovations/breakthroughs. Religion + science = isn’t really a good mix… go figure. I know medical breakthroughs are important, but are illnesses that bad that we’re willing to go with stem cell research?
wait
What?
What the hell does that even mean?
How about you go on a Parkinson’s disease or any other genetic disease support forumn and ask that question.
What an ignorant thing to say.
Imee,
There is a distinction between applied research, and pure research*.
You may wish to see this other post: A major change in stem cell policy, where PZ writes: The purpose of this research is to increase our understanding of how cells work to build tissues, not to poof “cures” into existence.
If the US pours hundreds of millions of dollars into stem cell research, and the scientists come back a decade later and say stem cells aren’t the answer any more, it’s new therapy X that they’ve discovered, it isn’t a failure. It means we’ve learned something we wouldn’t have known without doing it, that we’ve uncovered wonderful new surprises, and that through it all, we’ve learned more of the basics of how biology works. We don’t know what we’re going to find; if we did, it wouldn’t be research.
—
* AKA ‘blue sky research’
@ Lotharloo
You do realize that brokensoldier, a valued member of this community, was dismantling the comment of the troll Terry Trainor, right? And even that comment was part of a tangent on the main discussion?
Of course, I could just be missing your sarcasm and humor, which, if that’s the case, I apologize.
Otherwise, not so much.
Oh, yes, of course.
Mixed-race Barack Obama, eugenicist. It all makes so much sense.
I’m glad we have sharp minds like Glenn Beck to make these brilliant connections for us.
Here’s a sobering thought, stem cells have the potential to develop in to fully formed adults like Archbishop Don Jose Cardoso Sobrinho who excommunicated the doctors who performed the abortion on the 9 year old rape victim in Brazil recently.
I say we eliminate all stem cells.
Presumably Glenn Beck would also have opposed mankind’s earliest efforts to harness the power of fire on the grounds that it could be used to burn things down.
Well, it looks like “progressive” has become one of the favorite words of theirs. What, do they have anything against the progressive movement, like Theodore Roosevelt, and legislation against child labor, limitations on working hours, &c.? Well, I guess if they call us “progressives,” they are “regressives.”
He makes a convincing argument. I’ve changed my mind. I hope America crumbles into an ash heap. Yeah. That’s a way better outcome than having to admit I could be wrong.
He sounds worse than Stein. Stein at least tries to make one sentence connect sensically with the next. Beck just throws random words together, as if sticking anything together he doesn’t like makes it a logical connection.
“You know these big mammals? Whales? They swim around in the sea. They have families. What do those people do? Kill them and hunt them, and eat their meat. Dogs eat meat. Did you know that four children get killed by dogs in every large city every year? Yeah, that’s what whales lead to. They’re evolved. I think you see the point now.”
Imee @ 110
I would refer you back up to post # 97 for some decent factual info on the stem cell issue and where the cells actually come from.
In other news – WTF is it with conservatives? I honestly do not understand why anything having to do with science becomes a lib-er-ul conspiracy. Just because their base has shrunk to a group of people who take the writings of bronze age goat herders as literal truth…
never mind.
Of course science is female! It’s the pursuit of knowledge and who do we have to blame for that pesky thing? That’s right, Eve, the first human to pursue knowledge (in form of a fruit. I didn’t say it made sense). Silly womenz…
Well Chas does make a good case for eugenics:
– “Descent of Man” (1874, page 138)
But then he “mitigates” this harsh opinion by invoking the instinct of sympathy, which cannot be checked “without deterioration of the noblest part of our nature”.
Glen Beck makes the stoopid look smart. He’s unwatchable – and I tried, because my husband watched that moron for a few weeks, till he could no longer stand it. He has a morbid fascination with profound right wing dogmatic stupidity, of which Beck is an exceptional example.
The right wing-nuts have an unparalleled ability to select factoids and spin them into a tornado. Happily, it seems to be engulfing them now in the US. Sady,, here in Canada (aka Soviet Canuckistan, courtesy of Bat Buchanan), we seem to be moving in the wrong direction.
Thick republican skulls, on the other hand, would make better projectiles than depleted uranium.
There’s an environmental problem here, in that Republican skulls usually contain much higher quantities of toxic material than depleted uranium.
Teleological evolution rears its confused head once again. Why oh why can the critics of modern science not do even the basic research needed to become familiar with their topic?
“Those great progressive doctors” are all dead now. They’re not the same progressive doctors alive today. They’re also not the same progressive doctors who revolutionised public hygiene, wiped out small pox, reduced polio to a shell of a disease, linked smoking to lung cancer, invented open heart surgery, discovered antibiotics, mapped countless genetic diseases… oh those progressive doctors, such a mixed bunch. Maybe it would be better to differentiate on some other basis.
I know medical breakthroughs are important, but are illnesses that bad that we’re willing to go with stem cell research?
Lady, there are things that don’t even kill you that are worth pursuing stem cells about, especially since the embryos everyone uses are going to get thrown out anyway. Read that again: The embryos are going to get thrown out anyway. If that bothers you religiously, maybe Catholics need to start picketing IVF clinics instead of turning a blind eye to that sort of thing (on the grounds that it might make more Catholics someday, amirite?).
I’ve got cerebral palsy and a friend with early Parkinson’s. I’m kind of hoping someone comes up with something creative to do with stem cells…
As has been mentioned, anyone whom would willingly convert to being a Mormon is clearly mentally deranged.
Because if they did, then even the most stunted among them would have to acknowledge that they’re just tilting at fucking windmills?
Call me an optimistic dreamer but I certainly hope that stem cell research will allow us to build a baby firing gun made of dead babies. Some day maybe in maybe in my life time…
@
Yes, sorry, I apologize for my mistake. What I meant was Terry Trainor, I messed up.
Felix
I’ve long suspected that Glenn Beck is an animatronic running a badly-broken version of Racter.
Glenn Beck just says what the idiot hordes want to hear.
They don’t care about truth, all they care about is having someone to hate. It’s socially acceptable to hate someone because of their political beliefs, so they do that. It helps them to identify science as evil so they can feel better about their irrational thought processes.
These are the same people who were racists fighting against civil rights in the mid part of last century, the same people who fought for the south in the Civil War. They have to be constantly fighting something to feel like they have a purpose. Instead of fighting the “good fight” they pick something easy and lame.
@67:
“It’s because our educational system is totally broken. It has become a political conspiracy of aching boredom and child-warehousing.”
That … is not only incorrect, it’s a cliche.
None of the data I see conforms to that statement. Maybe that’s because I live in Minnesota.
My wife teaches her (public school) second-graders more about writing than I got until I was in college (and I was a straight-A student in a very-highly nationally ranked district in Minnesota, and I took all the hardest classes available.) I was educated in the ’60s and ’70s.
What’s broken about the schools are these:
1. Everyone in education knows that parent attitude and involvement THE DETERMINING FACTOR (everything else is noise by comparison) in how children perform in school. Parents are never held responsible. Parents are immune from criticism or correction. Everyone wants to blame the teachers and schools. Yeah, that’s easy and also nearly useless. Many of my wife’s students come to school: unfed, in the same clothes all week, having done no homework or reading (ever), having stayed up until midnight watching R-rated movies, without coats in Minnesota in January. You can plot their reading scores against any measure of parental involvement (attendance at conferences, homework performed, reading log filled in, parent forms signed and returned, etc.) and you will get a nice positive, linear (or positively geometric/exponential/log) trace. Yeah baby, it’s all the schools’ fault.
2. The public schools spend more on main-streaming special needs kids and bussing kids all over hell than they do on teaching. One disruptive kid (who can’t be disciplined of course) sucks up 90% of the time of the teacher and robs the kids who are actually engaged in school. These disruptive kids just get moved from school to school (school choice! More bussing!) by their parent to stay ahead of the consequences. Oh, and it’s all the teachers’ and schools’ fault.
3. Charter schools are supposed to be improvements. They perform in all real measures worse than public schools. They want exemption from the accountability that was supposed to be their reason for being. But, you know, public schools are the problem.
4. The reading level of my wife’s (2nd-grade) kids range from pre-K (don’t know their letters or ~zero English) to 7th grade or soemtimes even 10th grade.
How can a teacher properly address the needs of a (large!) class of kids with this range? On top of all the other (crap) requirements they have to adhere to (such as keeping up to the minute records of performance and corrections for every kid, testing (testing, testing, testing), having individual plans for every kid, etc., etc., and they just keep coming …) All this in addition to having to often perform the parenting for the kids.
And now, they want to make teachers work year-round! Want to drive good people out of teaching? Take away their summer break. People have no idea how hard teachers work, how far from a 40-hour job it is (and for relatively poor pay, given the education level required for licensure.)
The only thing that will ever fix the performance of some kids in school is getting rid of the know-nothing, anti-education (not just indifferent, but opposed) “urban” culture and having higher expectations of parents and students.
Everytime I read one of these morons, I just want to scream. Especially the bit about eugenics “helping” evolution. Natural selection is descriptive, not prescriptive. You cannot “help” or “speed up” natural selection by practicing eugenics, any more than you can “speed up” gravity by throwing someone out a window.
Glenn Beck is an upstanding Moronmon, not a Marooon – Silly!
Beck is a fool to say that the eugenicists were unhinged from ethics. They were profoundly ethically concerned. Indeed, their ethical concerns match up exactly with those promoted by Beck and his cohort: concern over the shape of the family, sexual mores, etc. It was not the science that fueled eugenics, it was its intertwining with a reactionary ideology that thought it was appropriate to tell people what kind of families they should live in. Beck’s own ideological ancestors are far more culpable for eugenics than Darwin.
OK. Let us suppose that you are a zygote. Your siblings have made the cut and been implanted into a nice warm womb. You, however are waiting in the deep freeze. You have two possible fates:
1)You may be turned into stem cells and thereby bring incalculable benefit to someone who is desperately ill.
-or-
2)You get autoclaved.
Which would you choose?
Eugenics is pseudo-science, not science. Of course, how could we expect any creationist to know the difference?
So why Obama make a gun out of dead babies? Don’t fundies think that all liberals want to ban guns completely? Come on, at least be consistent with your Straw Man fallacies!
JBlilie @ 133
My wife & I consistently participate (and volunteer) in our kids’ schooling. I couldn’t agree with you more. Parenting makes a difference.
Sometimes, though, even participatory parents can be a negative influence. We live in Northern Georgia – with more wingnuts per square mile than crape myrtles!
Somehow, we seem never to get elected to positions of influence – those seem to be taken by the uber-networkers (aka the folks who go to the biggest church in the area).
We do make a stand against some of the most egregious ‘religiosity’ (some maroons wanted to have ‘prayer breakfasts’ before school – to provide breakfast for underprivileged kids. We pushed hard to keep that secular! We don’t need god with our cheerios, thanks very much. We turned it into ‘bonus breakfast’ where we did mini ‘seminars’ on topics kids were finding challenging. Fun and rewarding)
It’s hard – even in a school district with involvement.
And an aside – parental involvement does not seem to be correlated to income/wealth. Some of the best students are from ‘the wrong side of the tracks’. I know this ‘cos we sponsor additional band uniforms and instruments for kids who can’t afford it.
[/rant]
Oh! and back on topic – Beck *could* be a maroon – if only he studied hard!!
No, Lotharloo – you simply flubbed a bit, something I have done (and much worse) before – no biggie. Terry Trainor, OTOH and in the very kindest sense of the word, messed up.
You can plot their reading scores against any measure of parental involvement (attendance at conferences, homework performed, reading log filled in, parent forms signed and returned, etc.) and you will get a nice positive, linear (or positively geometric/exponential/log) trace.
Correlation is not causation. Thank you for playing, back to school.
This is not necessarily true. Gregor Mendel was a great scientist and a great priest. There’s no reason why a Catholic needs to believe that an embryo is a human being, since the Bible does not say that, and suggests otherwise. Also, plenty of churches accept the validity of evolution by natural selection, including the Catholic church. Science and religion are not mutually exclusive.
Posted by: Josh | March 11, 2009 9:05 AM
Hey, as a literature major, I think that’s a little harsh on Quixote…at least he actually believed the windmills were really there! :P
These guys know they’re spewing bile, they just don’t care as long as it keeps the ratings high and the moola flowing in.
…of course, by windmills, I meant monsters…
*facepalm*
I’d be very fuckin’ interested to see the fuckin’ money all of you keep talking about. Seriously.
Because I, and a lot of people, are presently leaving research for more profitable and secure trades, like medicine, teaching, engineering, marketing and the likes.
Here are the news : most of us lab rats don’t get paid shit. And that with shitty conditions. We get jobs in small couple-months contracts, never sure that we won’t have to leave everything to work crappy minimum wage jobs to pay for the grocery. And if you get pregnant, well, kiss your job goodbye. Heck, I know bus drivers who make more than I used to (when I did not have to work two minimum wage jobs).
I hope you guys are happy, because from seeing enrollment statistics from most north american science faculties, the message has gone in: science not only doesn’t pay shit, but people, far from being grateful of your sacrifice, will spit on you for doing it. Congrats !
If you don’t believe me, take a tour of the research labs at your neighborhood university, and ask grads students where they come from. You will get very very few from the US. Your science & tech is being done by foreigners whom are returning home in droves in the wake of the economic crisis. Wake up!
If I recall, wasn’t Prescott Bush (chimp’s granpa) one of the stalwarts of the American eugenics movement (centered on Yale, where he was a trustee). In fact, in his (Prescott’s) first run for office in 1950 he was exposed as an activist in the fascist eugenics movement. Due to that exposure, Prescott lost his first bid for office.
Eugenics have always been associated with people in power (aka rich or influential), never with grassroots organization. Even ‘animal husbandry’ is an elitist pursuit – you need substantial herds/flocks to consider selecting for breeding purposes. Ordinary people don’t have access to such resources.
Science has been used to support eugenics, but then science is used to support everything – since science [i]is [/i]everything.
Like complaining there is air above the water.
Of course, the Nazis presumably believed in gravity as well.
I guess we need a new theory there too.
Hey, there are plenty issues with this theory of gravity. First of all, it is a force that always attracts and never repulses. It works instantaneously over any distance. And no specific matter or energy has been discovered to be the cause of it. (Well, I’ve heard of gravitons, but that sounds like Commie, anti-American talk.) So, since this is only a theory and has many holes in it, my theory must be the correct one, that an invisible creator is consciously moving everything to look like gravity exists. It must be true because your theory is imperfect.
Good lord. This is worse than the “HItler was a vegetarian!” diatribe. Hitler also used the bathroom and got his hair cut. Are those all now tainted too? Do they mean we’re all headed to become Nazis?
Glenn Beck is a dangerous retard.
Stu:
Thanks for the correlation/causation canard. I don’t think the post was intended as a scientific study. OTOH, perhaps this merits further serious research – something that is sadly lacking in most education studies. You will be hard pressed to find a classroom teacher who does not observe the influence of parental involvement. The real question is – what are the factors involved in this apparent effect? Is the effect real?
Thanks for playing, back to school.
Is it that bad to suffer for Alzheimer’s, cancer, diabetes, or Parkinson ? My take on it is that it’s pretty dumb to answer that question without either :
a) Having it happen to a loved one and share the experience
b) Having it happen to you
I’ve supported a close friend during chemo (twice), and I wouldn’t dare describe it as “not that bad” to her face.
But let’s put that in perspective. A few centuries ago, some people would probably ask : is an illness that bad that it justifies desecrating a corpse ?
Back then, doctors curious about human anatomy had to hide and steal corpses to perform their studies. Hadn’t they done it, kiss modern surgery goodbye, and it’s back to the theory of the 4 humors, phlebotomy and useless but harmless homeopathy as only treatements. I hope you don’t find dying from appendicitis “too bad”.
That Ray Bohlin Christard is a real mouthbreather, should be fun.
This host is brand new om KPFT, I believe he conmes from commercial talk radio.
He has the FSM on his webpage, and I know the producer/board-op, Laura, she is a stone atheist.
Thanks for the correlation/causation canard.
Please don’t use big words you do not understand.
Anyway, of course there’s a correlation, of course teachers observe it, of course there’s cause for further investigation (not that I can see an ethical way of doing useful research on this, but that is besides the point). Just don’t present a correlation as causal fact when there is no proof. It’s only half a step above blaming global warming on the declining number of pirates.
R.
Sorry Stu – I do, in fact, understand what a canard is and your simplistic statement was just that. It turns out that the research, while not as clean as might be desired, does show a good case for causation. Perhaps it was not the leap in logic you implied with the original comment.
BTW – I think you have it wrong – global warming is causing the increase in pirates off the African Coast. They are part of the plot by scientists to keep the grant money coming.
Uh, that comic is a bit of a straw man since someone is manufacturing words to put into the mouth of the Right Wing. We hate it when they do that to us. I believe there is quite enough craziness to mock without inventing Dead Baby Guns.
ad,
You neglect the next bit:
That’s about as forceful as Darwin ever got about anything.
Darwin’s not “mitigating” his opinion–he’s making two related but independent points. One, that helping the weak to survive and breed impacts our future evolution. This is simply factually true–if people with (say) cystic fibrosis survive and have kids, you get more people with cystic fibrosis–but it has no inherent moral implications. Two, that not helping the weak to survive and breed would be a moral atrocity. This is not a factual issue, but an unambiguous moral judgment, with which the rest of us can either agree or disagree.
It’s not like Darwin’s waffling here. He’s very very clear–not helping the sick, weak, and disabled is morally unacceptable. Future benefits to the species as a whole cannot possibly outweigh the “overwhelming present evil.”
Check out how people are grading Obama. Bush didn’t even get this low of score. Crazy
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29493093
Monsieur Myers! You were quoted in Le Monde’s Monday edition on stem cells:
“L’encre n’était pas encore sèche sur les documents signés, lundi 9 mars, par Barack Obama qu’une grande partie de la communauté scientifique s’extasiait déjà de la concrétisation d’une de ses promesses de campagne : l’autorisation du financement fédéral pour la recherche sur les cellules souches embryonnaires humaines. ‘Ça fait huit longues années, et c’est tellement bon et rafraîchissant d’entendre un défenseur éloquent de la recherche scientifique’, s’amuse le biologiste PZ Myers sur son blog Pharyngula. ”
http://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/2009/03/10/cellules-souches-les-scientifiques-americains-se-reveillent-apres-un-cauchemar-de-8-ans_1165753_3244.html
meaning zero.
I sound so much better in the original French.
Vivian @158
I find it interesting that less than 2 months into the task of cleaning the Augean mess left behind, twits are (1) asking about grades and (2) giving “F” marks.
Miserable conservative crotchfruits.
I do, in fact, understand what a canard is and your simplistic statement was just that.
So in your world, “correlation does not equal causation” is a “false or baseless, usually derogatory story, report, or rumor”? Really?
It turns out that the research, while not as clean as might be desired, does show a good case for causation.
[Citation needed]
Stu – do a quick google on the subject – Michigan has some half decent stuff from their lab schools with citations. The Harvard project is also interesting. You will find others as well.
http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Final_Parent_Involvement_Fact_Sheet_14732_7.pdf
http://www.hfrp.org/publications-resources/browse-our-publications/parental-involvement-and-student-achievement-a-meta-analysis
As for false or baseless – since there is supporting research, the correlation really does imply causation. When you made the statement, you were effectively saying that the initial statements were incorrect. You were deriding the evidence for the importance of parental involvement, and you were in error doing so. Thus the term canard.
I was not making the argument that it is always wrong, just that it was misplaced in this case.
I like the idea that Eve was the first scientist. First thing she discovered was that God had lied about the fruit and the Serpent had told the truth.
IVF clinics make doomed embryos. There is a movement to adopt “snowflake babies”, but so far not a lot of women seem to be willing to do that, and the genetic parents of the embryos usually have qualms about snowflake transfer.
I am a KPFT supporter. I am a supporting member and gave them a semi-dead car last year. I’ll tune in tonight. Too bad PZ you’re not gonna be in the studio. I’m sure Scooter would come by and you could go to the Disco Kroger, that classic Montrose institution.
Montrose isn’t what it used to be. Gentrification took its toll and what was once the Deep South veresion of Castro Street is no more. I think Eastwood will become the new Montrose, but now that the rail system will be there in a couple of years, I’m unable to to get a property there.
We’ll have to agree to disagree on the use of “canard”, even in context — but I’ve read up on your links, and it is far more solid than anything I read before.
One might even say it establishes causation.
Which means I retract and apologize.
Stu…
Thank you -’tis appreciated as the mark of a gentleman. I do understand your point as well.
From #145: If you don’t believe me, take a tour of the research labs at your neighborhood university, and ask grads students where they come from. You will get very very few from the US. Your science & tech is being done by foreigners whom are returning home in droves in the wake of the economic crisis. Wake up!
—
FWIW, my father-in-law taught metallurgy and materials engineering in a fairly important university engineering department for 30+ years. For the last 15 years or so before he retired, he did not have a single doctoral student from the US. Most of the new hires for that same period were not native-born Americans, either. As an American who worked abroad for several years, I certainly have no intrinsic objection to students studying out of their native countries, or seeking employment elsewhere. Indeed I think it can be very enriching for all concerned, but the imbalance in the sciences is striking and can’t be a good thing in the long run.
Anyone else having difficulties with the live stream?
I’ve been buffering for 7 minutes now…
“But let’s put that in perspective. A few centuries ago, some people would probably ask : is an illness that bad that it justifies desecrating a corpse ?”
Ah, but how silly to compare embryos to corpses. Corpses are just dead tissue and are beyond caring about what happens to them, while embryos are living tissue with hopes and dreams and the desire to win the world Series!
Brilliant insight, btw.
Splintering America:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-stem-cell-states,1,5817121.story
ATLANTA (AP) — A showdown is shaping up in some of the nation’s most conservative states over embryonic stem cell research, as opponents draw language and tactics from the battle over abortion to counter President Barack Obama’s plan to ease research restrictions.
Legislation granting fertilized embryos “personhood” has gained momentum in at least three state legislatures. […]
They should be careful what they wish for, or IVF doctors will be subject to arrest for murder, and any pregnant woman who smokes or drinks could be charged with child abuse. (And what about the 30% of pregnancies that end in miscarriages — if you did something that you knew had a one-in-three chance of killing a person, wouldn’t that at least be grounds for manslaughter charges?)
Amazing.
“Idiot American” Glenn Beck can write in complete and coherent sentences.
Why can’t the bulk of your fans, Mr. Myers?