Deep down, we all want to be Bond villains

lander

I wrote earlier about the latest contretemps in the CRISPR community, and it turns out that I was a paragon of restraint and moderation in my comments. I am not accustomed to this role. I will try harder in the future. For now, I’ll try to turn to turn to Michael Eisen as a model. His review of the very same issue starts this way:

There is something mesmerizing about an evil genius at the height of their craft, and Eric Lander is an evil genius at the height of his craft.

Lander’s recent essay in Cell entitled “The Heroes of CRISPR” is his masterwork, at once so evil and yet so brilliant that I find it hard not to stand in awe even as I picture him cackling loudly in his Kendall Square lair, giant laser weapon behind him poised to destroy Berkeley if we don’t hand over our patents.

I had to laugh, and now I’m wondering what actor will play the Bond villain modeled after Lander.

Just add norovirus and this cruise would be perfect

There’s something called a Conspira-Sea Cruise, and it’s apparently “holistic”, which I suppose is a good thing. You wouldn’t want it to make that trip from LA to Puerto Vallarta in pieces, you know! They’ve got all kinds of speakers: there’s a futurist, a lot of Libertarians, a paranormal investigator, UFO people, a Spiritual Space Cleaner, astrologers, and a child-killer (Andy Wakefield is a speaker), so they’ve got all the people that you’d want to be trapped on a boat with, far from land.

They’ve also got a skeptical journalist on board, giving day-by-day reports of the shenanigans. Thank you, Colin, for taking the hit, and the extra pounds from the buffet, for us. It’s going to be entertaining. It reminds me a bit of the Paradigm Symposium, which I should think about attending this spring, except that it might conflict with a real science meeting I have to attend.

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A delicious twist

A Houston grand jury was convened to decide charges in the case of the faked Planned Parenthood videos. They came to an interesting decision.

A grand jury here that was investigating accusations of misconduct against Planned Parenthood has instead indicted two abortion opponents who made undercover videos of the organization.

Prosecutors in Harris County said one of the leaders of the Center for Medical Progress — an anti-abortion group that made secretly recorded videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood officials trying to illegally profit from the sale of fetal tissue — had been indicted on a charge of tampering with a governmental record, a felony, and on a misdemeanor charge related to purchasing human organs.

Planned Parenthood was cleared of all charges. Slimeball Daleiden who patched together misleading videos under false pretenses…well, he’s going to court.

Unfortunately, the article also features several blustering Texas Republicans declaring that they don’t care about the decision, they’re going to continue to ‘protect life’ by persecuting Planned Parenthood.

Well, it’s Oklahoma

redskins

There is a high school in Oklahoma that calls their athletic teams the “Redskins”. No, really — all the national debate about offensive sports team names sailed right on by them, and after years of public discussion elsewhere, it took until 2016 for McLoud, Oklahoma to stop and debate whether their name is inappropriate.

They had a public discussion, and then the school board voted to keep an ethnic slur as the proud label for their football team.

But that’s not all! Let’s abuse American Indians who argued against the name!

Bella Aiukli Cornell, a 14 year old Native American girl and a citizen of Choctaw Nation, gave a testimony against the name and mascot of the McLoud High School Redskins in December, at a school board meeting. A male peer, and a racist, yelled get off the stage, squaw!

Nice to know the rot extends to all ages.

We’ve got a lot of history, said Albert Baldwin, 74, a life-long resident of McLoud. I don’t know anyone around here that objects to being a Redskin. If there is, I don’t know about it.

That is simply the perfect explanation for this phenomenon.

At least they picked the right place for it

Two men got into an argument over a $25 fee in a gun shop, and what do you know, they all decided to resolve it with — you guessed it — guns. End result: two dead, two in the hospital with critical injuries.

What struck me, though, is where it occurred: Picayune, Mississippi. It seems to me unwise to be selling deadly firearms in a place where you just know petty squabbles are going to flare up all the time.

How depressed do you want to be?

Sean McElwee has been excerpts from a recent book about the Koch Brothers. What happens when cunning, obscenely rich fuckwits get it into their heads to promote their ideas by sinking money into miseducation programs?

kochs

They fill students heads with bad history, grossly oversimplified economics, and the worship of destructive policies. Well, destructive to the country, but great for billionaires.

Lesson plans and class materials obtained by The Huffington Post make the course’s message clear: The minimum wage hurts workers and slows economic growth. Low taxes and less regulation allow people to prosper. Public assistance harms the poor. Government, in short, is the enemy of liberty.

darkmoney

The book is Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer. Now I’m wondering how masochistic I am to want to read it. Talk me out of it, or so help me, I’ll download that Necrokochicon to my iPad and suffer the consequences.