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)

Meddling bishops

Catholic-affiliated universities are often very good academically — I can think of a couple of estimable Catholic universities in my area. But I would never recommend that anyone attend one, for this reason.

Bishop Bambera of the Diocese of Scranton has recently requested that the University of Scranton – a Catholic and Jesuit university in Pennsylvania – withdraw its invitation to a women’s rights activist and former United States House of Representatives member, Majorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, who is scheduled to be the keynote speaker for a January 28 event at the University of Scranton encouraging women to become active in politics and learn more about the political system.

Why would anyone want to get an education under the thumbs of superstitious medieval clowns in gilt robes? Especially when they’re prone to silencing dissent? (I remember MMM well — she was my representative when I lived in Pennsylvania, until she was defeated by that Gingrichian wave. She’s good. She’s also pro-choice, so of course the Catholic Church hates her.)

They’re eating their own!

Holy crap. Watch this anti-Romney campaign ad.

It’s from Newt Gingrich. We have a Rethuglican paying to push a progressive liberal political message on television.

When Romney wins the Republican nomination, can Obama just borrow these ads and run them for his campaign? Or won’t it work because Obama has benefited so much from Wall Street donations?

(via Salon.)

New Hampshire has some world-class lunatics

Too bad they’re in the legislature. The latest wacky idea from a trio of Republicans is to require that all new bills reference the Magna Carta.

House Bill 1580 is the product of such a brainstorming session this summer between three freshman House Republicans: Bob Kingsbury of Laconia, Tim Twombly of Nashua and Lucien Vita of Middleton. The eyebrow-raiser, set to be introduced when the Legislature reconvenes next month, requires legislation to find its origin in an English document crafted in 1215.

“All members of the general court proposing bills and resolutions addressing individual rights or liberties shall include a direct quote from the Magna Carta which sets forth the article from which the individual right or liberty is derived,” is the bill’s one sentence.

You might be wondering why the Magna Carta…I think the three stooges should be wondering that, too.

Vita admitted he needs to "bone up" on the content of the charter

In other words, he has no idea what’s in the Magna Carta. I’m guessing he’s also a Christian of the type that has a similar reverence for the contents of a document they’ve never read.

Santorum will tell you how and when you can have sex

He’s a very creepy man. His wife had an abortion to save her life, but he wants to criminalize your abortion. And that’s not all: sex is supposed to be procreative, so he wants to criminalize contraception. In this long painful video, he preaches against gay sex, against contraception, and says we ought to be urging families to have many more children, and thinks a tax deduction of $20,000 per child is reasonable.

So “contraception is a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to the way things are supposed to be”. Woo hoo! I love that license! I don’t think I want to vote for a guy who’d take it away.

Bonus! Santorum also thinks most scientists are amoral.

I have to say, he’s doing a terrible job of campaigning for my vote.