Dan Savage doubles down

My wife just played the femdom role, and made me listen to that horrible Florida Republican debate while I cooked her dinner, so it was good of Dan Savage to provide some comic relief.

To "rick" is to remove something with your tongue—the "r" from "remove," the "ick" from "lick"—which makes "rick santorum" the most disgusting two-word sentence in the English language after "vote Republican."

To be complete, though, I need some bon mots to apply to Paul, Romney, and Gingrich.

I swear, next time I’m insisting on the whip and the spike heels grinding into my back — that debate was just too sadistic. I have my limits. And no, it wasn’t arousing at all.

In Indiana, it’s not just the lawmakers who are idiots — it’s the media, too!

The miseducation committee of the Indiana legislature recently approved a bill to allow the teaching of creationism in the schools, and now the Indianapolis newspaper approves, with the usual tepid and illegitimate arguments.

Much would depend on how teachers handle the origins of life in a biology or science class.

No, it doesn’t. A bill that inserts garbage into the curriculum is a bill that inserts garbage; it doesn’t matter if you think it could be used to make a lovely collage, or as an exercise in recycling, it’s still garbage. And if you trust teachers to do their job, let them do it without boneheaded cretins in the legislature telling them how.

And there is no provision in the bill that states creationism must be taught as a science subject.

Let me guess: it would be OK to teach it as “philosophy”. How much disrespect are you willing to give to that field? It’s bad philosophy, too. What disciplines is Indiana willing to poison with nonsense? Be specific. English? History? I know — how about relegating creationism to the football team.

Courts have ruled that using the Bible as an educational tool is permissible. We see nothing that would change that here, and note the bill stresses “theories” on the origins of life.

Uh-oh. I know what’s coming next. I cringe in anticipation.

The march down the slippery slope occurs when theories are presented as facts.

YEEEAAARGH. HULK SMASH!

Scientific theories are explanatory frameworks for integrating a body of facts. Evolutionary theory, cell theory, germ theory, quantum theory, electromagnetic theory, transition state theory, the theory of relativity — these are all theories, and they also represent accurate and useful descriptions of how the universe works. They should be and are taught as facts, provisional explanations that have been tested and evaluated and found successful. “Theory” means something very specific and powerful to a scientist — there is no creation theory to be taught or used, and especially, no creation story that has survived any scientific test.

This bill could act as a safeguard against an educator mentioning creationism, and then possibly getting sued for promoting religion in the classroom. The American Civil Liberties Union has jumped into the fray and says this bill is unconstitutional, and that courts have overturned similar bills from other states.

This makes no sense. Yes, if a teacher peddles creationism in the classroom, they are using a state-supported, public facility to promote a purely religious idea. If a legislator peddles creationism in a bill, they are using the resources of goverment to promote a sectarian religious idea. This is wrong whether it’s a teacher or a state rep doing it, it is unconstitutional, and most importantly, it is bad science being used to corrupt education.

Certainly, there is much empirical scientific evidence to support evolution, and some pretty good philosophical arguments to support creationism. It’s unfortunate, though, that the latter has to be tagged as a science.

“Pretty good philosophical arguments for creationism”? Name one. Most philosophers are cleverer than that.

We think a thorough education exposes students to different theories, and if schools have done a good job of developing a student’s critical thinking skills, there is no harm done.

Oh, great. This is going to be fun. So if they’ve learned how to fall safely in gym class, I can punch little kids in the nose, and no harm done. If they’ve learned basic logic in grade school, we can do a crappy job teaching them trigonometry and calculus — they’ll be able to derive them for themselves, and no harm will be done. If they’ve learned playground safety rules, we can turn them loose with random chemicals in the chemistry lab, and no harm done.

This moron is basically saying that if most of the kids’ education is decently done, then they can afford to throw a few state-mandated lies at them. Once upon a time, I thought the goal was to excel and provide the best education possible; in Indiana, the dream is a school system that is less than half shitty.

(Also on Sb)

Hey, Tennessee, why are you electing these ignoramuses?

Seriously, I don’t understand how people can be this stupid and uninformed and acquire high office in a democracy. When you look around your communities, shouldn’t you be promoting the smart, successful, well-educated people to represent you in your capitol, instead of picking the village idiot? Tennessee has at least a couple of dangerously flaming fruitcakes in office; and it’s not just that state (<cough> Michele Bachmann…). Here’s representative John Ragan explaining how homosexuality doesn’t really exist.

A person is a heterosexual because of the presence of genitalia of one sex or the other. No one except a very few with an exceedingly rare congenital deformity have both kinds of genitalia.

Get it, all you gay readers? You can’t be a homosexual unless you are born with a penis and a vagina.

And then there’s Senator Stacey Campfield. He has his own, private, special version of epidemiology, virology, and medicine that the damned doctors are unaware of.

Most people realize that AIDS came from the homosexual community. It was one guy screwing a monkey, if I recall correctly, and then having sex with men. It was an airline pilot, if I recall.

My understanding is that it is virtually — not completely, but virtually — impossible to contract AIDS through heterosexual sex.

His recall and understanding are deeply flawed. Everything is wrong in his statements.

Did you know you can be as stupid as Ragan and Campfield and still hold office in this country? We don’t have friendly burly men in white coats who gently lift them out of their chairs in their legislatures and take them off to a wonderful little school in pleasant surroundings for intensive remedial education in the sciences, after which they are returned to promote their peculiar politics, but with accurate information, at least, in their heads.

Indiana fails

Indiana is preparing to promote creationism in their science classrooms. A legislative committee has advanced a bill that endorses creationism and “alternative theories” to the vote of the full senate. So it’s not a law yet, but it’s advancing down the path.

Here’s the horrifying part: it was approved 8:2 by the Republican-controlled Senate Education Committee. This is a group that is supposed to be the gatekeeper for good educational practices; you’d think their job was to screen out the random wacky garbage that individual, ideologically motivated members of the senate might poop out. But in the state of Indiana, they’ve handed that job over to goddamned Republicans in a calculated effort driven by their Republican governor, Mitch Daniels, to overhaul the state’s educational system.

It’s practically Republican gospel to destroy the system of public education in the US. It’s always going to lead to tears when you put those bastards in charge.

(Also on Sb)

Oh, so that’s what cats are for

You can use their butchered bodies to send messages to your political opponents! The campaign manager for a Democrat running for office in Arkansas was horrified to discover the family pet killed and “LIBERAL” painted on its body.

Little known fact: cats, dogs, goldfish, hamsters, gerbils, boa constrictors, turtles, and canaries are all politically liberal, and would all vote Democratic if only The Man weren’t keeping them down. I believe arthropods tend to be more libertarian, but even there, no self-respecting animal of any phylum would ever stoop so low as to vote Republican.

An essential lesson in Minnesota geography

I need you to look at the map below. The most important thing you must learn from it is that Morris, Minnesota is in the blue dot on the western side of the state, in Stevens County.

Do you see that hideous red blob on the eastern side of the state? That’s the Anoka-Hennepin School District. It’s in the northern suburbs of Minneapolis.

I point this out with some urgency so that it is completely clear to everyone that we have nothing to do with those assholes. I try not to even visit the place; I recommend you avoid it, too. At least it’s easy to skip it; the airport and the Mall of America are all on the south side of the city, so really, you have no need to ever even pass through there. There’s no excuse at all, unless maybe you were visiting Greg Laden, who lives around there.

Why am I so eager to separate myself from that area, and why am I urging you to shun it? Because it seems every state needs a sphincter where the unpleasant inhabitants must congregate, and Anoka-Hennepin is it for us (well, and a few other places: states aren’t restricted by metazoan anatomy, and can have many sphincters). This is one of the areas that elected Michele Bachmann; it’s been in the news lately because it is the center of a wave of teen suicides, where bullying is common and gay kids are often the target.

You’d think parents in that area would be worried about an epidemic of suicides. They are. Led by the Parents Action League and The Minnesota Patriarchy Council, some have decided to do something about it, they’ve assembled a list of actions to take.

They propose further discriminating against and stigmatizing homosexuality.

And whereas school officials would be liable for violating parental rights by subjecting a child to homosexual and related conduct indoctrination…

And whereas legal liability exists for the tort of negligence if it is proved that homosexual activists and organizations were granted access to students under responsibility and that students suffered physical or mental harm…

1. A new division within the student support services and a special section on the District 11 website devoted to student of faith, moral conviction, ex-homosexuals and ex-transgenders…

3. That District 11 administrators and staff work closely with pro-family and ex-homosexual and ex-transgender organizations to provide ongoing training to school counselors, school nurses, social workers, school psychologists, prevention specialists, student learning advocates and a number of secondary principals and principals….

4. Provide professional development opportunities in which philosophical, pedogogical, and political assumptions of GLBT advocacy are critically examined.

7. Provide the history of gay-related immune deficiencies and acquired immune deficiencies and the medical consequences of homosexual acts.

They want to blame gay kids for potential harm, demand more Christianity in the curriculum and endorsement of gay conversion techniques, and want to relabel Acquired Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) to something that more clearly and more inaccurately pins the cause on homosexuality, Gay-Related Immune Deficiency (GRID — man, it’s been ages since I’ve seen anyone use that term).

This is their solution: to justify and encourage more hate.

By the way, in case you were wondering, Marcus Bachmann has two gay conversion clinics, one in the southern suburbs of Minneapolis, and the other in the eastern. Minneapolis is just surrounded with a ring of these enclaves of smug, small-minded Republican scumbags. I suggest that we call them the Sphincter Suburbs, both for their ring-shaped geography and for the psychological properties of their inhabitants.

Incremental progress

Minnesota has a “defense of marriage” act on the books, which prohibits gay marriage. Several gay families have challenged the law; their case was dismissed last year. However, it went before the Minnesota Court of Appeals today, and they have ruled favorably: the case was unfairly dismissed, and has now been tossed back to the lower courts.

Minnesota has not overturned the ban on gay marriage yet, but has won the right to challenge the law in court. It’s a step forward, at least. If you want to help out, Marry Me Minnesota is looking for donations.

Good hair turns out to be a poor science educator

The requirements to be a TV weather presenter are fairly slack: an undergraduate degree with some training in meteorology is preferred, but not required, and the main skills seem to be looking presentable with nice hair, being able to dance with a green screen, and being glib and cheerful. So I guess it’s not surprising that the “scientists” leading the charge against global warming are climate-denier TV weathermen. That link takes you to a long list of quotes from various television weather personalities — including a couple from Minneapolis — who all deny reality and use their position as frontmen pretending to be scientists to delude the public. Take a look and see if your local television station has a conspiracy nut doing the weather.

Another interesting aside in that article is that all of the current Republican candidates for president are climate change deniers. Every single one. Huntsman was the only exception, and he’s out.

That prompted me to look at the two front-runners positions on evolution.

Mitt Romney, the conservative establishment candidate, is a theistic evolutionist. He argues that evolution was the tool god used to create humans (“How?” I always wonder — evolution isn’t a railroad track in which you can put a car at one end and expect it to arrive at the other). He also opposed teaching intelligent design creationism while governor of Massachusetts, which is good news — I wonder if it’ll be used in attack ads against him? So on this one narrow issue, Romney is tolerable. On everything else the corporate plastic robot would never get my vote.

Newt Gingrich is the crackpot tea party candidate and is getting progressively wackier as the campaign goes on. While he made more vaguely moderate statements about evolution a few years ago, now that he’s courting the ignorant wackaloon vote, he’s sounding more like a member of the Insane Clown Posse.

I think we can safely say that no Republican should be allowed anywhere near the reins of government. They’re anti-science through and through.

(Also on Sb)

Elsevier = evil

Along with SOPA and PIPA, our government is contemplating another acronym with deplorable consequences for the free dissemination of information: RWA, the Research Works Act. This is a bill to, it says, “ensure the continued publication and integrity of peer-reviewed research works by the private sector”, where the important phrase is “private sector” — it’s purpose is to guarantee that for-profit corporations retain control over the publication of scientific information. Here are the restrictions it would impose:

No Federal agency may adopt, implement, maintain, continue, or otherwise engage in any policy, program, or other activity that–

(1) causes, permits, or authorizes network dissemination of any private-sector research work without the prior consent of the publisher of such work; or

(2) requires that any actual or prospective author, or the employer of such an actual or prospective author, assent to network dissemination of a private-sector research work.

This is a blatant attempt to invalidate the NIH’s requirement that taxpayer-funded research be made publicly available. The internet was initially developed to allow researchers to easily share information…and that’s precisely the function this bill is intended to cripple.

Who could possibly support such a bill? Not the scientists, that’s for sure; and definitely not the public, unless we keep them as ignorant as possible. The corporations who love this bill are the commercial publishers who profit mightily from scientists’ work. And first among these is Elsevier, the gouging publisher scientists love to hate.

If passed, the Research Works Act (RWA) would prohibit the NIH’s public access policy and anything similar enacted by other federal agencies, locking publicly funded research behind paywalls. The result would be an ethical disaster: preventable deaths in developing countries, and an incalculable loss for science in the USA and worldwide. The only winners would be publishing corporations such as Elsevier (£724m profits on revenues of £2b in 2010 – an astounding 36% of revenue taken as profit).

Since Elsevier’s obscene additional profits would be drained from America to the company’s base in the Netherlands if this bill were enacted, what kind of American politician would support it? The RWA is co-sponsored by Darrell Issa (Republican, California) and Carolyn B. Maloney (Democrat, New York). In the 2012 election cycle, Elsevier and its senior executives made 31 donations to representatives: of these, two went to Issa and 12 to Maloney, including the largest individual contribution.

So Elsevier bought a couple of politicians to get their way. It’s typical unscrupulous behavior from this company; at least they stopped organizing arms trade fairs a few years ago, so we know their evil can be checked by sufficiently loud public opinion.

Tell your representatives to kill RWA. It’s another bill to benefit corporations that will harm science.

(Also on Sb)

Well, aren’t we an optimistic bunch?

First we had Steven Pinker writing about The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, with the thesis that we’re getting more peaceful over time.

Now John Horgan has declared the potential for The End of War — that we have the ability to stop fighting and cooperate.

Horgan makes the point that human nature requires us to fight, and that many people make this fatalistic assumption that it cannot end. It’s a reflection of the usual argument for futility that claims the status quo is thus because it must be so.

It’s also the argument that is made to defend the inevitability of religious belief.

(Also on FtB)