The New Humanist has a yearly anti-award event, the Bad Faith Awards, given to the “most scurrilous enemy of reason” for the year. Last year, Dinesh D’Souza won; so far this year, two have been nominated, with more nominations to come. The two are Ann Coulter and, of course, Sarah Palin. They asked me to nominate someone, and I’m the wicked fellow who thought Palin was deserving…but perhaps they would have gotten a more persuasive nomination if they’d asked Jerry Coyne.

Even when he’s making an attack ad, Obama keeps it clean.

erv has it.

Personally, I found the little vignettes about ordinary Americans a bit off-putting — political sentimentality makes me cynical. I was more interested in hearing Obama simply speak about his policies. I was most impressed with a superficial factor: wouldn’t it be cool to have a president who could open his mouth and say something and not sound like an illiterate hick?

I’ve written a couple of posts decrying the tactics of Elizabeth Dole — who uses the act of talking to atheists as a smear — and favoring her opponent, Kay Hagan. It seems Ms. Hagan doesn’t like us very much, though.

Democratic Senate candidate Kay Hagan angrily demanded Wednesday that incumbent Sen. Elizabeth Dole take down a new ad that questions the challenger’s ties to an atheist political group, calling the spot a slanderous and pathetic attempt to maintain political power.

Hagan’s attorneys sent a cease-and-desist order to Dole’s campaign, saying the “libelous” ad should come down within 24 hours. The order promised legal action if the ad stays on the air.

So…being called an atheist is “slanderous” and “libelous”, huh? Oh, well, then. Never mind, North Carolina, it doesn’t matter who you vote for in that election, you’re getting a loser. I suppose you should still vote for Hagan, but only for her party and not because she’s on our side.

Big news: the editors of Seed have officially endorsed Barack Obama for President. OK, not surprising, I suppose…any organization that relies on or promotes scientific thinking has absolutely no choice in this election, so Obama is going to get the nod.

I do like one specific statement in the endorsement:

Science is a way of governing, not just something to be governed. Science offers a methodology and philosophy rooted in evidence, kept in check by persistent inquiry, and bounded by the constraints of a self-critical and rigorous method. Science is a lens through which we can and should visualize and solve complex problems, organize government and multilateral bodies, establish international alliances, inspire national pride, restore positive feelings about America around the globe, embolden democracy, and ultimately, lead the world. More than anything, what this lens offers the next administration is a limitless capacity to handle all that comes its way, no matter how complex or unanticipated.

If you have an alternative way of governing, please do tell us about it in the comments.

McCain once again whined about studying bear DNA, and it’s clear that the decrepit old man doesn’t have a clue about the value of biological research. But the other interesting revelation is that while denouncing earmarks for studying bear DNA, overhead projectors, or fruit fly research, the complaint is not about earmarks, but about funding science.

How can we tell? It turns out that Sarah Palin was happy to lobby for earmarks to study recreational halibut fishing, the mating habits of crabs, and harbor seal DNA. Those all sound like legitimate science projects to me, but I doubt that Palin recognized that — all she cares about is diverting money to her bailiwick. This is a different kind of abuse of science, where it’s seen only as a tool for local profit … and you just know that she would not support even local science that interfered with her plans.

The Anchorage Daily News has just endorsed…Barack Obama for president. Say, wasn’t there a favorite daughter of the fine state of Alaska on that ticket?

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Bora has several videos of some fruit fly researchers defending their work. Of course, if you really want to get into the details, here’s the progress report of the very same specific research project that Caribou Barbie dissed.

Walker A Jones
EUROPEAN BIOLOGICAL CONTROL RESEARCH
Director
CS90013 MONTFERRIER SUR LEZ
34988 ST. GELY DU FESC CEDEX
MONTPELLIER,

Research Project: DISCOVERY, BIOLOGY AND ECOLOGY OF NATURAL ENEMIES OF INSECT PESTS OF CROPS, URBAN AND NATURAL AREAS
2007 Annual Report

1a.Objectives (from AD-416)
Explore for natural enemies (pathogens, parasites and predators) in the native range of insect pests identified as high priority targets by the ARS National Program Staff. Identify, colonize and evaluate the most promising natural enemies and ship to U.S. cooperators. Results of laboratory and field studies will be used to improve the ability to predict key factors for application to future programs. Key target pests include the Asian longhorned beetle(Anoplophora glabripennis), emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis), wheat stem sawfly (Cephus cinctus), olive fly (Bactrocera oleae), Formosan subterranean termite (Coptotermes formosanus), and plant bugs (several species).

NP304, Component V: Pest Control Technologies. A key natural enemy of the olive fruit fly in Africa is discovered and shipped to California. The olive fruit fly threatens olive production in California. Long known in the Old World, it invaded California without its co-evolved natural enemies. Among several parasitic wasps discovered from Eurasia and Africa, one from Kenya, and southern Africa was showed to be specific to olive fruit fly. Extensive collections in Kenya, South Africa and Namibia yielded several thousand olive fruit flies which were shipped to the ARS laboratory in France for processing. Seventeen shipments containing over 13,000 parasitic wasps (Psyttalia lounsburyi) were subsequently shipped to California for evaluation and release. If successfully established, it is highly likely that pesticide use and associated costs will be substantially reduced. This activity was accomplished in cooperation with USDA-APHIS, the California Department of Food and Agriculture, and the University of California, Berkeley.

But of course the Republican party opposes that project. It’s one that actually worked.

I think we can all already see the defense the right wing is throwing up to rationalize Sarah Palin’s inane remarks about “fruit fly research in Paris, France”: she wasn’t disparaging all research into fruit flies, but only one specific earmark for studying agricultural pests.

Baloney.

The context of that comment was that she was claiming research had “little or nothing to do with the public good”, and she brought up these seemingly trivial little animals and a place the right wing despises as dogwhistles to her hoople-headed fans. Claiming now that she was making an informed criticism of a specific study is a feeble attempt to distract with a lie.

Remember, this is the crank governor of Alaska who denies evolution and global warming, the backup candidate to a man who mocks research into bear DNA and calls a multimillion dollar educational tool an “overhead projector”, from a party that ridicules people with Parkinson’s because they want more stem cell research, and idiots want to claim that she isn’t really anti-science because in this one case she was actually targeting an instance of applied research that directly benefits agricultural interests?

That’s insane. You have to be a purblind slavering zombie of the Rethuglican party to swallow that.

It goes deeper than just trying to belittle science, too — we are a technological society that is entirely dependent on the advancements science has brought to us, that is facing a new series of challenges that will require new science to overcome. The Assemblies of God churches are not going to come up with anything to help with global warming, alternative energy, new medicine, new reproductive technologies, new discoveries, new ideas. Science is our tool to help people, yet the Republican party only sees it as a kind of armament factory to help them kill strangers in foreign lands. As John Cole put it, “why is it that the people who claim to adhere to the culture of life are so filled with hate for…people?”