It is true, biology programs discriminate against idiots all the time

Texas, you are a wonder. You don’t have any protections against workplace discrimination on the basis of sex or gender — that might hurt bidness, you know — but you’re considering a bill to protect creationists from discrimination.

HB 2454

Sec.A51.979.A A PROHIBITION OF DISCRIMINATION BASED ON RESEARCH RELATED TO INTELLIGENT DESIGN. An institution of higher education may not discriminate against or penalize in any manner, especially with regard to employment or academic support, a faculty member or student based on the faculty member’s or student’s conduct of research relating to the theory of intelligent design or other alternate theories of the origination and development of organisms.

I understand how discrimination rules work in employment: for instance, when we’re looking at job applications, we have to justify every rejection as well as our acceptance of the person we want to hire; when we develop a list of candidates we want to interview, it’s sent off to the administration for review. If we said we wanted to do phone interviews of six candidates, and all of them were men, they’d look at the applicant pool and tell us if we were somehow biased against women.

I’m wondering, though, how this one will work. Will a Texas biology program have to send their list to an administration that will scrutinize them and tell them they need to include more creationists in their interviews?

I would also like to see what kind of creationist “research” these faculty and students are thought to be doing. Sitting around reading a Bible isn’t science.

Why I am an amoral, family-hating monster…and Newt Gingrich isn’t

Today is my wedding anniversary. I’ve been married to the same woman for 31 years, without ever straying. Newt Gingrich has been married 3 times, divorced one wife while she was recovering from surgery, and has had extra-marital affairs.

Guess who is considered the defender of traditional sexual morality?

It’s a strange situation where the political party with more ex-wives than candidates, that houses and defends a disturbingly amoral network of fundamentalist operators is regarded as the protector of the sanctity of the family. They’re anything but.

I think I understand, though — it doesn’t matter what you do, all that matters is what you say. The Republicans support a version of marriage that rests on tradition, authority, and masculine dominance, and everything they do props up one leg of the tripod or the other. Public piety reinforces religious tradition; the insistence that there is one true form of marriage, between a man and a woman, which represents a legal and social commitment is part of the authoritarian impulse; and of course, if a man steps out of the matrimonial bounds, it’s an expression of machismo and patriotism and entitlement.

There’s no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and that things happened in my life that were not appropriate. And what I can tell you is that when I did things that were wrong, I wasn’t trapped in situation ethics, I was doing things that were wrong, and yet, I was doing it. I found that I felt compelled to seek God’s forgiveness.

Gingrich was cheating on his wife, but it’s OK — because he also tells us that it was wrong and inexcusable, and then he wraps it all up in God and country to make excuses for it. Hypocrisy is acceptable as long as the right words are said to reinforce the public face of propriety.

Now look at those dirty rotten hippies, like me. We say the ties between a couple should be made with respect and affection, not the strictures of law and precedent; letting gays marry, for instance, strengthens the public approval of our kinds of bond, while weakening the authoritarian bonds. Our ideal is a community of equals, while theirs is a hierarchy of power, a relic of Old Testament values in which marrying a woman was like buying a camel, a certification of ownership, and nothing must compromise the Big Man’s possession of properties.

If we strip marriage of the asymmetry of power, as we must if we allow men to marry men and women to marry women, then we also strip away the man and wife, dominant and submissive, owner and owned, master and servant relationship that characterizes the conservative view of marriage. This is what they want to preserve, and this is what they are talking about when people like Gingrich echo those tired phrases about “Judeo-Christian values” and complain that their “civilization is under attack”. And it is, when we challenge their right to treat one partner, so-called, as chattel.

And once you look at it that way, you see no abuse of their values when Gingrich goes tomcatting around—he’s simply asserting his traditional privilege as the Man.

Paradoxically, though, it turns marriage into a brittle business where women are stressed by subservience and oppression (believe it or not, women are human beings who might resent being treated as servants), and men feel it is their right possess any woman willing to surrender to them. It’s not surprising that their relationships break up in courtroom battles.

I don’t condemn Gingrich for getting divorced, since it just means that so far he has managed to make a couple of women very happy twice. It’s also paradoxical that I see absolutely no problem in dissolving those bonds — if two people aren’t happy together, they should separate — and that that attitude can also make a marriage stronger.

I know. I’ve been married for 31 years, and my relationship with my wife is solid. Not because I’ve got her shackled with a prenup, a pile of legal documents, and a willingness to abuse her to keep her in her place, but because we’re comfortable together, she with me and me with her, and there’s no stresses that might tear us apart. With both of us in academic careers, there have been years where we’ve had to live apart, and those separations have been made with complete trust in one another — while we’ve both had times when we’ve “worked far too hard,” and we’ve been “driven” by passions for our work, strangely enough it never seems to have the side effect of sending us shopping for a different mate.

So, just a suggestion: if you want a relationship that lasts, don’t rely on god, lawyers, and social pressure to force it to work. Love and reciprocal trust are the only chains that last, and the only ones that make you feel happy while wearing them.

I think those are the “secular, atheist” values that Newt and his ilk find heretical and threatening. Those values allow me to sit smug and content in a happy home while watching authoritarians discard wives.

i-965543834f7c6f52e488a2b93626411c-mgm_pzm_1980.jpg

Michele Bachmann writes a letter

Minnesota’s own pious Republican idiot (uh-oh, I repeated myself three times) has chastised Obama for his wickedness in a recent letter. His crimes are many. In a recent speech in Indonesia, he 1) referred to our national motto as E pluribus unum, not “In god we trust”, 2) quoted a small part of the Declaration of Independence that did not include the word “Creator”, and 3) mentioned that the US is unified under one flag without saying the magic phrase, “under god”. Now I know that Bachmann is an amazing expert in American history, so I think Obama should give this letter all the attention it deserves. The historicity of her complaints in this letter are thoroughly documented.

However, I’m afraid I must bring something even more significant to everyone’s attention. Recently, Ms Bachmann had a national platform in which to discuss important issues: she gave the Teabagger response to the President’s State of the Union address, and I notice something terrifying in the text of that speech.

She fails to acknowledge any gods anywhere in the speech, except as an afterthought in the very last sentence. Never mind that the speech was total BS, by her own standards, she must demand a retraction and apology from herself for its appalling absence of public piety.

I must also note something else. She is a woman. She is also working outside the home. And she has displaced a man, who could be holding down the position she is occupying. Under normal conditions, this would not be a problem, except that Ms Bachmann would like to return our country to the high moral state that it held in the 17th century, before the Enlightenment and secularism tainted our government with its ungodly latin motto of E pluribus unum, and impious independent women who deprived men of their exalted status really are guilty of a great crime.

Therefore, Michele Bachmann is a witch. I demand that we put her to the test.

Somebody tell them…Dickens’ London was not a utopia

Jane Cunningham, a Rethuglican (of course), has sponsored a bill in the Missouri congress that will disillusion you a little further today. Behold, SB 222!

This act modifies the child labor laws. It eliminates the prohibition on employment of children under age fourteen. Restrictions on the number of hours and restrictions on when a child may work during the day are also removed. It also repeals the requirement that a child ages fourteen or fifteen obtain a work certificate or work permit in order to be employed. Children under sixteen will also be allowed to work in any capacity in a motel, resort or hotel where sleeping accommodations are furnished. It also removes the authority of the director of the Division of Labor Standards to inspect employers who employ children and to require them to keep certain records for children they employ. It also repeals the presumption that the presence of a child in a workplace is evidence of employment.

OK, that’s enough. I’m not reading any more email this morning. Instead, I think I’ll zip down to the liquor store and pick up a gallon jug of rum and curl up in a corner, weeping.

Damn, no. We’re in the middle of a storm with 35-50 mph winds howling outside. I guess I’m just going to have to face this universe sober.

Markey is a hero, Rethuglicans are morons

Lately, I’ve completely given up on giving any credit to the Rethuglican party at all — where once I could have grudgingly admitted that perhaps some conservative policies were sensible, the current party is no longer conservative, but simply insane. As an example, I give you The Energy Tax Prevention Act of 2011, a Republican-sponsored, Republican-promoted exercise in outright science denial blessed by Koch Industries.

To amend the Clean Air Act to prohibit the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency from promulgating any regulation concerning, taking action relating to, or taking into consideration the emission of a greenhouse gas due to concerns regarding possible climate change, and for other purposes.

It simply blatantly redefines “pollutant” to exclude carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and any other substance that science might discover contributes to climate change, and says the EPA cannot regulate them. As you might guess, the oil and coal companies, as well as agribusiness, are drooling over the prospect of gutting the EPA.

The hearings on this bill have been a series of scientists testifying to the lunacy of it all, with Rethuglican ignoramuses responding with canards and stupidities. One guy did stand up for reason, Representative Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachussetts.

Mr. Chairman, I rise in opposition to a bill that overturns the scientific finding that pollution is harming our people and our planet.

However, I won’t physically rise, because I’m worried that Republicans will overturn the law of gravity, sending us floating about the room.

I won’t call for the sunlight of additional hearings, for fear that Republicans might excommunicate the finding that the Earth revolves around the sun.

Instead, I’ll embody Newton’s third law of motion and be an equal and opposing force against this attack on science and on laws that will reduce America’s importation of foreign oil.

This bill will live in the House while simultaneously being dead in the Senate. It will be a legislative Schrodinger’s cat killed by the quantum mechanics of the legislative process!

Arbitrary rejection of scientific fact will not cause us to rise from our seats today. But with this bill, pollution levels will rise. Oil imports will rise. Temperatures will rise.

And with that, I yield back the balance of my time. That is, unless a rejection of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity is somewhere in the chair’s amendment pile.

That last remark is a little bit unfortunate, since the fundagelical zealots actually do hate the theory of relativity. They really are that crazy.

My hat is off to Ed Markey, and right now, I’d like to make him president. Unfortunately, the Rethuglican chaired and dominated House energy and commerce committee subsequently proceeded to approve the bill.

Do you get that?

The Republicans have decreed that pollutants are not pollutants, therefore we can ignore them.

Rand Paul’s poop is more important than any mere woman

I’m stunned. People actually elected this lunatic, Rand Paul?

So, somehow, Rand Paul, who is 100% anti-abortion, deeply resents the fact that the government wants to enforce energy efficiency and insist that we should conserve resources, because it infringes on his right to buy old hot wasteful light bulbs and toilets that use lots of water when they flush. Priorities!

If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office.

(via Jezebel)

Bravo, Oregon!

The Oregon House has passed a bill removing the special protections for faith healers. Sorry, god-botherers in Oregon, you don’t get to claim the approval of gods to justify torturing, maiming, and killing your children with neglect.

It passed unanimously, too, although of course a couple of Rethuglicans had to voice reservations. Why? Because they’re idiots.

Rep. Jim Weidner, R-Yamhill, said he worried “we might be heading down a slippery slope.” He said he prayed earlier in the day about his son’s severe tonsillitis. His wife took his son to the doctor Thursday morning, he added, but “am I going to go to prison because I took the time to pray with my child?”

No. Notice the part where his wife took his son to the doctor? That’s what’s important. Not whether he also mumbled magic words, or patted the kid on the head, or went home and sacrificed a chicken for the child’s good health. All that matters is that you don’t neglect necessary care because your superstitions say it is alright.

More Rethuglican inhumanity

For a party that campaigns on small government and reducing interference in private lives, the Rethuglicans sure are ready to heap more restrictions on women. Look at the consequences of Nebraska’s anti-choice law.

In Nebraska, one law already in existence heaped needless trauma on a mother’s tragedy. Thirty-four-year-old Danielle Deaver was 23 weeks pregnant when she faced a fate “worse than your own death”— her baby would not make it. Her water broke early and, without amniotic fluid, the fetus would not develop lungs to survive outside the womb. Deaver and her husband decided they wanted to let “nature take it’s course” and would not risk harming the child further, so they asked their doctor to help “put an end to this nightmare.”

But because of Nebraska’s law prohibiting any abortion after 20 weeks, the doctor could not assist or he would “face criminal charges, jail time, and lose his medical license.” Her doctors told her “she’d just have to wait.” So she did, in “torture,” and gave birth to Elizabeth at 3pm, watched her gasp for breath, and then watched her die at 3:15pm on December 8, 2010. “The outcome of my pregnancy, that choice was made by God,” said Deaver, but “how to handle the end of my pregnancy, that choice should’ve been mine.”

Why, she sounds like some godless liberal atheist who deserved everything she got.

More states, including Minnesota, are considering forcing more women to go through that pain. Fortunately, our Democratic governor has announced his intention to veto any such bill.

Union-busting jerks

Don’t you know it’s my birthday? There’s supposed to be some happy news to lighten my evening. But no, instead I learned that Wisconsin Rethuglicans made an end run to approve their governor’s union-busting bill.

Phil Neuenfeldt, president of the state AFL-CIO, said Wednesday night’s maneuver “shows that Scott Walker and the Republicans have been lying throughout this entire process.”

“None of the provisions that attacked workers’ rights had anything to do with the budget,” Neuenfeldt said. “Losing badly in the court of public opinion and failing to break the Democratic senators’ principled stand, Scott Walker and the GOP have eviscerated both the letter and the spirit of the law and our democratic process to ram through their payback to their deep-pocketed friends.”

This is what happens when we weaken labor — the rich have free rein to milk the middle-class even further.

Nutjobs in Ohio plan to ask invisible blobs of fetal tissue to speak

This is a 5-week-old human fetus.

i-039ea37186dd98d25aaa3b750f5527b3-5week.jpeg

It’s an awesomely cool period of development. Organogenesis is well under way, segmentation is completely, limb buds are forming. The heart is beating, which is neat, but then you have to keep in mind that you can tease a heart apart into individual cells in a dish and the cells will throb, so it’s not exactly a magical indicator of sentience. Also, the embryo is only 2-3 millimeters long, which I find to be a highly evocative size: that’s exactly how big my zebrafish embryos are when they have the same level of organization, with segments and organ rudiments and a beating heart.

In Ohio, they are proposing to have these fetuses “testify” in support of an anti-choice bill.

Two fetuses will be presented as witnesses before an Ohio legislative committee that is hearing a bill to outlaw abortions after the first heartbeat can be detected inside a woman’s womb.

The fetuses will appear live and in color before the committee on a video screen projecting ultrasound images taken from their pregnant mothers’ bodies. Janet Folger Porter, head of Faith2Action, an anti-abortion group, said the fetuses will be the youngest witnesses to ever testify when they come in front of the House Health and Aging Committee Wednesday morning.

Oh, really? The legislators might want to read up on first trimester ultrasound, first of all.

Transabdominal ultrasound cannot reliably diagnose pregnancies that are less than 6 weeks gestation. Transvaginal ultrasound, by contrast, can detect pregnancies earlier, at approximately 4½ to 5 weeks gestation. Prompt diagnosis made possible by transvaginal ultrasound can, therefore, result in earlier treatment.

Early ultrasound examinations will primarily detect the presence of the extraembryonic sac, not the embryo itself. It’s too small. Around 5 weeks, you might be able to see a fuzzy small blob with a flutter that is the beating heart, but that’s about it, and you do have to use transvaginal ultrasound to pick it up — that is, you have to insert the ultrasound probe deep into the vagina. That isn’t usually done; any mothers out there will tell you about the gel smeared all over their bellies and the external probe pressed up against them, but the transvaginal examinations are only done if there is suspicion of something going wrong.

So I’ll be very curious to see what these “‘live and in color” images actually look like. I’m already suspicious that they’ll be faked — I can already guarantee you that the color will be entirely false. But maybe someone has a higher resolution ultrasound machine than I’m aware of, which is entirely possible.

But even if they do get a nice image of a curled, fishlike embryo that is maybe a tenth as sharp as the worst images of zebrafish embryos that I see in my low-power dissecting scope, so what? It’s not testifying. It’s twitching. You’d get a more intelligent response if you dragged a cow in front of the committee and asked it to moo against slaughterhouses.

And the bill is ridiculous. They want to prohibit all abortions of embryos that have a detectable heartbeat…but 1) heartbeat isn’t a valid measure of personhood, and 2) pragmatically, it shuts down almost all abortions. The heart starts beating at approximately one month after fertilization; the woman may not have even noticed more than a delayed period at that time, and the early symptoms of some water retention and possibly morning sickness are unreliable. There will be many women who are responsible and want to end a pregnancy as early as possible who will be denied a first trimester abortion because it was too late when they were diagnosed!

Ohioans: bills sponsored by the deranged lunatics really shouldn’t be passed. I’m hoping your lawmakers will realize that during this ginned-up spectacle.