A surprising Nobel

I would never have guessed this one. The Nobel Prize in Medicine has gone to Robert G. Edwards for his pioneering work in in vitro fertilization. It surprises me because it’s almost ancient history — he is being rewarded for work done over 30 years ago. It’s also very applied research — this was not work that greatly advanced our understanding of basic phenomena in biology, because IVF was already being done in animals. This was just the extension of a technique to one peculiar species, ours.

I don’t begrudge him the award, though, because the other special property of his research was that it was extremely controversial. These were procedures that simply burned through scores (or hundreds, if you count the ones with such little viability that they weren’t implanted) of human zygotes in order to work out reliable protocols, and throughout faced serious ethical risks — these were procedures that had a chance of producing the worst possible result, a viable embryo that came to full term, but had serious birth defects. The public opposition to the work was tremendous, funding was tenuous, and even many in the scientific community opposed the work and ostracized Edwards and his colleague, Steptoe (who did not live to see this day, and so did not receive the award).

Nowadays, IVF is practically routine and about 4 million people were ‘test tube babies’. It’s still controversial, though, with extremist anti-abortion groups, such as the Catholic church, still fighting it, and the redundant, unused zygotes from the procedure still being a point of major contention (ever heard of ‘snowflake babies’? That’s what they’re talking about).

I’m reading a couple of messages in this award. One is simply acknowledging a hard-working scientist, but the other is a signal that we should soldier on through all of the opposition to reproductive health technologies, that science will be rewarded and the Luddites will find themselves in the dustbin of history. I can’t help but see this as, in part, the Nobel committee making an unmistakeably rude gesture at the anti-science, anti-choice fanatics of the religious right.

(For those who are unfamilar with the IVF procedure that Edwards and Steptoe developed, here’s a lovely summary diagram from the Nobel Foundation.)

i-5d01af28ca8b01b68397187e22e125c4-ivf-thumb-317x450-56550.jpg

Our students aren’t children, but Republicans apparently are

So I’ve just told you to avoid underestimating college students, but I guess you shouldn’t do the same with Republicans, especially Breitbart-style Republicans. Their latest embarrassment is yet another piece of work from James O’Keefe, the young mastermind who dressed up as a pimp and dishonestly edited a videotape to make ACORN look like it supported prostitution, and then also bungled a break-in to bug Sen. Mary Landrieu’s Louisiana office, and is now continuing his career as a professional idiot and thug with a flopped attempt to catch a CNN reporter using her sexual wiles to bamboozle him.

It’s unbelievably stupid. The reporter gave no indication of flirting for information, but O’Keefe apparently assumed that any blonde reporter was a bimbo. He invited her to come to his boat for an interview, and then stocked it with all the paraphernalia a misogynist might imagine a woman would find irresistible: porn mags, dildos, handcuffs, mirrors on the ceiling, that sort of thing, and hidden cameras. The plan was to have Abbie Boudreau show up, wave a dildo seductively at her, and when she succumbed to his charms to get top secret Republican operative information from him, catch it all on tape.

It’s just astonishing. Where did O’Keefe get his ideas about how to seduce a woman, from men’s wank magazines? He must have had some delusion that his scheme would actually work, rather than ending with him writhing on the ground cradling his bruised privates while the CNN reporter stormed off of the Love Boat with a juicy story about sleazy Republicans.

Fortunately for all concerned, one of the organizers of this tasteless charade had a scrap of a conscience and told all, sparing O’Keefe a pair of splattered testicles but still giving CNN a great story (the conscientious person has apparently been fired…unsurprisingly).

Boudreau herself has written up the full story.

I have to ask…why does Breitbart and his little acolytes still get air time on the news networks? Why isn’t O’Keefe in jail for his criminal attempted wire-tapping stunt? Why aren’t we seeing a takedown of his prior video staging to falsely indict ACORN? Why aren’t small children breaking into tears and adults spitting on these people when they walk down the street?

Taibbi among the teabaggers

Matt Taibbi is one of my favorite political writers, and he’s perfect for scrutinizing the Tea Party movement — he’s a gonzo swashbuckler who specializes in exposing the inanities of American culture, so plopping him down in the midst of the teabaggers is like opening the henhouse door for a wolf.

Scanning the thousands of hopped-up faces in the crowd, I am immediately struck by two things. One is that there isn’t a single black person here. The other is the truly awesome quantity of medical hardware: Seemingly every third person in the place is sucking oxygen from a tank or propping their giant atrophied glutes on motorized wheelchair-scooters. As Palin launches into her Ronald Reagan impression — “Government’s not the solution! Government’s the problem!” — the person sitting next to me leans over and explains.

“The scooters are because of Medicare,” he whispers helpfully. “They have these commercials down here: ‘You won’t even have to pay for your scooter! Medicare will pay!’ Practically everyone in Kentucky has one.”

A hall full of elderly white people in Medicare-paid scooters, railing against government spending and imagining themselves revolutionaries as they cheer on the vice-presidential puppet hand-picked by the GOP establishment. If there exists a better snapshot of everything the Tea Party represents, I can’t imagine it.

Read the whole thing. Who are the teabaggers? Cranky, ignorant old racist hypocrites who are all about me-me-me-me, deftly manipulated by the big business establishment.

Obsessed with a gay young man

Anderson Cooper nailed Andrew Shirvell. Shirvell has been on a long-running crusade against a fellow named Chris Armstrong, creating a blog called “Chris Armstrong Watch” (always a bad sign), picketing his house, monitoring his facebook page, making wild accusations that Armstrong is abusing his power, etc., etc., etc. Shirvell is the perfect picture of insanity. He’s so out of control that he was invited to appear on CNN, presumably because crazy haters make good copy.

Shirvell acknowledged protesting outside of Armstrong’s house and calling him “Satan’s representative on the student assembly.”

“I’m a Christian citizen exercising my First Amendment rights,” Shirvell told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “I have no problem with the fact that Chris is a homosexual. I have a problem with the fact that he’s advancing a radical homosexual agenda.”

Of course Shirvell is a Christian fanatic. He’s also dishonest: browse his blog and you can tell he is just freaking out over the fact that Armstrong is gay…it’s all he talks about. He’s a militant radical gay activist who hates God, Christians, the unborn, and wants to have gay sex with everyone but Andrew Shirvell.

The scary part is that Armstrong is just the student body president at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, a position with almost no power. Shirvell is an assistant attorney general for the state of Michigan. Let’s just hope that that is the peak of his political career.

We are not #1, and we are getting worse

Be depressed. The reports are in, and American education sucks and is hurting our economy.

Stagnant scientific education imperils U.S. economic leadership, says a report by leading business and science figures.

Released Thursday at a congressional briefing attended by senators and congressmen of both parties, the report updates a 2005 science education report that led to moves to double federal research funding.

Nevertheless, the “Rising Above the Gathering Storm” review finds little improvement in U.S. elementary and secondary technical education since then.

“Our nation’s outlook has worsened,” concludes the report panel headed by former Lockheed Martin chief Norman Augustine. The report “paints a daunting outlook for America if it were to continue on the perilous path it has been following”.

It’s true. I’ve been seeing progressively more poorly educated students arriving at college over the course of my career — the students of 2010 are just as bright as the students of 1980, but they’ve been badly served (in general) by the public schools, and come in with sometimes frightening intellectual deficits. How can students graduate from high school and not know basic algebra? How can those same students then think they can go on to college?

Jingoistic patriotic Americans like to delude themselves into thinking we’re #1 at everything. We aren’t. In education, we’re like #48. It’s hard to think up a proud chant over that statistic.

There is one ray of hope for the US. The UK is contemplating euthanizing their research program. America could always hope that every other country will similarly scuttle their science and technology advantages and sink to our level.

I’d call it a great example of shooting themselves in the foot, except that they’re being so dumb about it that they’re shooting themselves in the head instead.

So that’s their strategy

Minnesota should be embarrassed to have two organizations targeting our elections with the goal of blocking the possibility of gay marriage. The Nincompoops Opposing Marriage (NOM) is campaigning for the Rethuglican candidate for governor, Tom Emmers, while the Catholic church is sending out DVDs whining about gays. But they’re both following the same playbook: they’re making these pious, earnest appeals that it’s only fair that the issue be put to a vote, and they’re sounding exactly like the creationists, who make similar pleas for their pseudoscience.

What they so blithely ignore, though, is that just as science is not decided by the popular vote, neither should the civil rights of a minority be placed at the whim of a majority. It’s fundamentally demagoguery that they’re playing at — calling to the bigoted and ignorant to squash the truth and what is right at the polls.

The joke of O’Donnell has got to be wearing thin soon, right?

It’s one of the oldest, most ridiculous canards creationists use: “Why aren’t monkeys still evolving into humans?” And here’s Christine O’Donnell thinking it’s a valid argument.

I think she was also about to claim that Darwin retracted his theory, before she got cut off…and that’s another creationist lie.

Maher also misses the point in his answer. This isn’t an issue of evolution being too slow at all; it’s a creationist misconception that evolution is directed towards a goal, and that that goal is humanity. Monkeys are evolving into monkeys, not people.

Maher is also astonished that someone like this could be a viable candidate for the senate. What’s the matter with him? Hasn’t he looked at the Republican senatorial roster lately? She’ll fit right in!

(via Climate Progress)

Got student loans? Don’t want to pay them back? Become a priest!

Believers get another phenomenal reward: if they have student loans, they can all be forgiven by working for a non-profit, which includes most churches. I can approve of the idea of rewarding people with debt forgiveness if they dedicate themselves to charitable works, but most priests are more interested in spreading the useless noise of the gospel rather than helping real people, and most churches do not deserve their status as a charity — and if they do, they ought to open their books to the same level of scrutiny as a secular non-profit, and they typically don’t.

Say, why don’t we forgive the student loans of people who go to work in science or education, instead? Maybe we should be giving incentives to teachers rather than preachers.

What the Republicans really want

All you have to do is look at their official state party platforms. The platforms are typically wish lists forged at multiple levels: I’ve been involved a little bit with our local Minnesota DFL, and anyone can show up and propose an addition to the party platform, which means you’ve usually got a few pie-in-the-sky items suggested…and those all get voted on at the local convention and then at the state convention, and the wackier or excessively improbable items get winnowed away in the voting. If you look at the Minnesota DFL platform, for instance, you find a rather idealistic document that gives you an idea of what the Democratic electorate wants to do. It’s not entirely practical (“We oppose terrorism” isn’t exactly breaking news), but it’s at least representative of a liberal/progressive party, and I’m not at all embarrassed to be part of that political party.

Look at the Texas Republican platform, and you see something different: they’re for God and guns, and against gays and Darwin. It seems to be a nationwide theme for Republicans. The Montana Republican platform is in the news because it actually endorses something entirely illegal.

At a time when gays have been gaining victories across the country, the Republican Party in Montana still wants to make homosexuality illegal.

The party adopted an official platform in June that keeps a long-held position in support of making homosexual acts illegal, a policy adopted after the Montana Supreme Court struck down such laws in 1997.

Like I said, party platforms often aren’t practical guidelines for specific legislative action, but they do reflect the will of that segment of the electorate. The heartening part of this news, though, is that at least some Republicans are embarrassed by their own party platform. Now if only the ones who favor such medieval nonsense would split off and join a new party (Teabaggers!) and let the Republicans equilibrate back to something slightly more sensible.

(via Kobra)

The Iranian Official Perspective

A reader, who apparently did some work for Iran some years ago, now regularly gets missives from the Iranian embassy, and he forwarded this one to me. It’s about Iran’s official response to the proposed Koran burning in Florida.

I’ve checked out the email headers and can verify that at least it came from the purported source and there is an Iranian embassy at that address, but I can’t vouch for the full legitimacy of the email.

Subject: Supreme Leader’s Message

Dear Sir/Madam

Please find attached the text of the message of the Supreme Leader of the
Islamic Republic of Iran on the desecration of the Holy Quran in the United
States.

Regards

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful

“It is we who sent down the Koran, and we watch over it,” says God

the Mighty, the Wise [Holy Quran, 15:9]

Great Iranian nation, great Islamic Ummah!

The insane, revolting insult to the Holy Quran in America, an incident
occurring under the security provided by the US police, is a major tragic
event that cannot be considered merely as the foolish act of a few worthless
mercenaries. This is a preplanned act by those who since years ago have put
Islamophobic and anti-Muslim policies on their agenda and have tried to
combat Islam and the Quran in numerous ways resorting to a myriad of
propaganda means and campaigns. This is another link in a chain of shameless
measures launched with the blasphemy of Salman Rushdi, the apostate,
followed by the insult of the base Danish caricaturist, tens of anti-Islamic
movies produced in Hollywood and now crowned by this disgusting show. Who
and what is behind such evil acts?

Looking into this trend of evil, as manifested in recent years in atrocious
operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon and Pakistan, leaves no
doubt that it is designed and masterminded by heads of world imperialism and
Zionist think tanks which have the highest degree of influence in the
government, the military and security agencies of the United States as well
as Britain and some other European countries. These are those at whom the
finger of suspicion of independent truth-finding groups and individuals is
pointed in the case of the attack on the Twin Towers on September the 11th.
The then-president of the US, a criminal, was provided with the pretext to
invade Iraq and Afghanistan; he declared a Crusade and, reportedly, has said
yesterday that with the Church entering the stage the Crusade has truly
begun.

What is aimed at through the recent repulsive incident is, on the one hand,
to take the confrontation with Islam and Muslims to the populace in the
Christian community, to give it a religious coloring and entrenching it with
religious zeal and sentiment by involving the church and, on the other, to
divert the attention of the Muslim nations, enraged and hurt by this hideous
effrontery, away from the issues and developments in the Muslim world and
the Middle East.

This vengeful act is not the beginning of a trend but another stage in the
long history of antagonizing Islam headed by Zionism and the US government.
Now all the heads of world hegemony and impiety are ranked against Islam.
Islam is the religion of human liberation and spirituality, and the Quran is
the book of compassion, wisdom and justice. It is incumbent upon all
free-spirited people of the world and all the followers of the Abrahamic
religions to side with the Muslims in countering these heinous anti-Islamic
policies and acts. Empty, deceitful words cannot exonerate the heads of the
American government from the charge of involvement in this ugly phenomenon.
For years those things held sacred by millions of oppressed Muslims in
Afghanistan and Pakistan, in Iraq, in Lebanon and Palestine have been
desecrated, all their rights and their dignity trampled on. Hundreds of
thousands killed, tens of thousands of men and women captured and tortured,
thousands of children and women kidnapped, and millions injured and made
homeless – all victimized for what? And with these wrongs, why does the
Western media represent Muslims as violence incarnate and Islam, and the
Quran, as a menace to humanity? How can one believe that this vast
conspiracy could be made possible without the support and involvement of the
Zionist circles in the US government?!
O Muslim brethren and sisters in Iran and all over the world!
It is necessary to draw the attention of all to the following points:
First, this incident and similar ones show that what is now being targeted
by the global hegemony and world Imperialism are the very foundations of the
dear Islam, and the Holy Quran. The manifest enmity of the arrogant world
powers towards the Islamic Republic of Iran is because of the manifest
resistance of Iran against them; the claim of these powers in not being the
enemies of other Muslims, and of Islam, is a big lie, a satanic deception.
They are the enemies of Islam, whoever believes in it, and whatever
signifies it.

Second, these spiteful acts against Islam and Muslims stem from the fact
that since a few decades ago the light of Islam has been shining brighter
than ever, its grip on the hearts and souls in the Muslim world and even in
the West has been stronger than ever before. It stems from the fact that the
Islamic Ummah is now more awake than ever and is determined to free itself
of the shackles of two centuries of colonialism and interference. The
incident of insulting the Quran and the Great Prophet of Islam despite all
its bitterness bears great tidings. The bright sun of the Quran will shine
brighter than ever.

Third, we should all know that this incident has nothing to do with
Christianity and the Church; we should not regard the puppet-like acts of a
few idiotic and mercenary priests as those of Christians and church men. We
Muslims will never commit similar acts against what are held sacred in other
religions. Conflict between Muslims and Christians, on a popular scale, is
what our enemies and the stagers of this insane show are after. What the
Quran teaches us is diametrically opposed to this.
Fourth, today the protests of all Muslims are directed at the US government
and American politicians. If they are honest in their claim of not being
involved in this, they must duly punish the main planners and operators of
this heinous crime who have hurt the feelings of one and a half billion
Muslims the world over.

And peace is on him who follows piety.

Sayyed Ali Khamenei

September 13, 2010

I found two things very funny.

They say they’ll never commit similar acts, i.e., desecrate holy books, as if that makes them better people. But instead, they issue fatwahs demanding the death of people like Salman Rushdie, and riot with signs advocating violent acts against other people! I’m not exactly dazzled by their standards of morality. I’d piss on a thousand holy books before I even consider advocating beheading someone.

That last line slays me. One and half billion people are “upset”! It sounds to me like one and a half billion children need to get a life.