Drugs are how we get through meetings, though

While I’m off absorbing knowledge, entertain yourself with this video of drug-treated spiders. I’m going to be the one on caffeine, I think.

SICB update: last night was a social evening, and I got to meet John Lynch for the first time. In person, he’s actually exactly like he is on the blog: friendly and talkative, and he paid for my beer. Definitely an appeaser, in other words. Grrl Scientist was mysterious and prettier than the two of us put together (again just like her blog). Me? I was just surly and hateful, standing up every once in a while to deliver a ranty denunciation, just like the blog. They’d better agree with me, too—I get peevish with these people who always say I’m milder mannered in real life than they expect, and I might have to denounce them rantily, or have them put in a concentration camp and sterilized.

As for today, I can tell this is one of those meetings where there are long juicy sessions that suck me in for long periods of time. I’ll be parking my butt in room 103B for the symposium on “Linking Genes and Morphology in Vertebrates”, and I might not move all day, other than staggering out for coffee now and then.

If the terrorists attack, we know who will be pleased

Pat Robertson .

In what has become an annual tradition of prognostications, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson predicted Tuesday that a terrorist attack on the United States would result in “mass killing” late in 2007.

“I’m not necessarily saying it’s going to be nuclear,” he said during his news-and-talk television show “The 700 Club” on the Christian Broadcasting Network. “The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.”

Hang on there. A possible nuclear attack by terrorists? We’ve heard this possibility discussed before as a justification for torture. Robertson knows something. Quick, call Kiefer Sutherland and let the waterboarding begin!

Once he breaks, he’ll lead us to the terrorist mastermind (codename: Lord), and then we can send in a Ranger battalion to take him out.

Later in the article, though, he admits that last year’s prediction of a tsunami striking the US was fulfilled by heavy rain in New England; given that level of slop in his prediction, next year he’ll be able to claim that the nuclear attack prediction was met by that time Dick Cheney had a particularly gassy burrito.

Pessimism

Wilkins is wondering when the real criminals will be punished—he’s talking about the abuses of power by the current Republican administration, ranging from the evisceration of civil liberties in our own country to criminal and unjustified foreign wars, with the concomitant loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. I think I can answer that one.

Never.

Bush will leave office with the praise of his sycophants ringing in his ears, and that will include the national media. He will go off to a happy retirement, smirking all the way, and will only ever appear at voluntary events hosted by other criminals who will be anxious to continue applauding him. Personally, I think that at every public event at which he shows his face from now on, people ought to spit on him…and he and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and the whole rotten gang ought to be shipped off to an international war crimes trial today. It won’t happen.

One reason is the remarkably timid complacency of the citizenry. We have a president who signs away our liberties, and the people just yawn. This is a nation of sheep, bred to follow authority, no matter how odious or insane. It’s frightening how much reverence for authority people will grant to piddling wankers like Bush, or televangelists, or media figures—these people can do anything, and the public will rush to hush anyone who criticizes.

Another reason is historical. Read this account of what the United States has done in the past—along with the sheep, we are a nation of monsters. John Milton Chivington would have been an exemplary soldier in the War on Terror. But, you see, we don’t learn from history: our kids do not learn about the Sand Creek Massacre in school, and they will not learn about Abu Ghraib and habeas corpus in the future.

Our kids don’t even learn about Nixon, except that he was a president; if they are particularly diligent, they might discover some of the press hagiography about him. That’s it.

There’s a fantasy of America the rich and wise and powerful and gracious and self-sacrificing that has a powerful resonance in this country. Unfortunately, we’ve learned that we can close our eyes and wallow in the myth, and we don’t actually have to try and live up to it…and we haven’t. Ever.

Strange visitors arriving in Phoenix…

Prepare yourselves, Arizona! John Lynch, GrrlScientist, and I will be wafting into Phoenix tomorrow, and here’s a short version of our busy calendar:

  • All week: Science! I’ll plan on posting updates about various cool things I learn, as I’m sure my SciBlogs colleagues will also do.
  • Friday, 6ish: we’ll be at some place called Seamus McCaffrey’s Irish Pub. That Lynch fellow is making us go, and he’s probably going to force us to drink Guinness. I think he’s buying, though, so it’s OK. Anyone can show up for this one.
  • Saturday, 5:30-8:00pm: Jim Lippard is hosting a social at his place. Limited space; contact him to RSVP and get directions.

I’ll be leaving Phoenix on Sunday for New York for a few days, and various social events there. It’s busy, busy, busy for the next week!