opposition research

Hey, a biologist at Liberty "University" brings his Advanced Creation Studies "biology" class students to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

They look at the dinosaurs and discuss how they were created on the sixth day and all lived on the earth with mammoths and humans. They talk about how the earth is 6000 years old. They look at all of the stuff the Smithsonian, that proud bastion of evolution, puts out their to support the Darwinian case.

Class instructor David DeWitt says, "As an educator, I want them to see the most up-to-date material." And says "We come every year, because I don't hold anything back from the students."

"I don't hold anything back from the students?" Somehow I doubt it. There is no way to make a creationist case without holding something back.

Now I can understand his students being ignorant and/or faithful enough, depending on whether you feel like being factual or charitable, to believe in creationism, especially the literal young-earth creationism that DeWitt and his colleagues espouse.

I don't understand how somebody can get a biology degree from a reputable university like Michigan State and a PhD in neuroscience from a reputable university like Case Western Reserve and still believe in the young earth myth (to call it a "hypothesis" or "theory" would be to grossly overstate its credibility.

The human capacity for self-delusion truly is impressive. And whenever I read or hear young earth or any OTHER type of literal creationists explain their cases, all I can think is truly, their logic is dizzying.

another reminder that george w. bush isn't president

President Obama is going to lift restrictions on stem cell research. And the White House is going to issue guidelines that should shield science from politics.

Good signs. Sometimes science says things I don't like. For example, I really don't like what most reputable scientists believe is likely to happen as we spew more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere; global warming, climate change - I don't like them.

But that doesn't mean you ignore them.

qualifications for federal jobs, republican style

Today's theme is what the Republican Party sees as qualifications for different kinds of federal jobs. We'll start at the Cabinet level. If the leaks (which I suspect are intentional) are accurate, Tim Geithner, president of the New York Federal Reserve, will be nominated to be Barack Obama's Secretary of the Treasury.

Geithner, just 47, brings finance experience to the job. Heading up the New York Fed is hard-core economics and finance, skills that will be useful at Treasury as we try to survive the Great Financial Melt-Down. For example, Geithner joined Treasury in 1988 and while there, worked on the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s.

But, sayeth the Post, "others" wonder whether Geithner can inspire confidence. The only "other" quoted was former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein, who said "Tim at 47 looks 32, and you need to have in these compelling times gray hair and gravitas."

Wow we're boned. Is it to late to change my vote? I mean, John McCain has WAY more gray hair than Barack Obama, and probably gravitas too, whatever that is.

Seriously, gray hair is more important than actual knowledge for the job? Maybe we can do a Ronald Reagan-in-reverse on Geithner, and put some Bizarro World Grecian Formula on his hair to gray him up a bit, and send him to the plastic surgeons for an anti-Botox treatment, or a wrinkle transplant or something.

Meanwhile, Republican political appointees, probably as much out of fear of trying to find a job in this shitty economic climate (even shittier for a former Bush staffer I'd guess), are continuing to burrow in, claiming permanent civil service jobs regardless of the thinness of their resumes. Today the Post highlights a few instances where these types are getting what look like to be serious scientific type jobs.

Not to pick on anybody in particular, but one example is a guy called Todd Harding who is a political appointee at Energy. Harding, who at age 30 presumably has less gray hair or gravitas than Tim Geithner so it's a good thing he's not going to Treasury, is going to work on space-based science including meteorology at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Harding's academic qualifications? A bachelors degree in government from Centre College, which despite the spelling is in Kentucky not Canada.

Wouldn't a degree in something like physics or weather forecasting be better? Nah. Qualifications are for DEMOCRATS. Harding's KEY qualification was earned at Centre, where he was the head of the College Republicans. In the de facto Bush Administration, that's enough. And compared to the home-schooled theocons who graduated from Regent University law school and ended up at the Department of Justice, Harding looks positively OVERQUALIFIED.

it's in the stars

Big news - in August (11-12 peak) the Perseids meteor showers will be even more spectacular than usual because we will be passing through the tail of Comet Swift-Tuttle!

So let's analyze this, shall we? First, it isn't the first time Earth has passed through a comet's tail. It hasn't killed us before, so I like the odds of us surviving this one - though Gregg Easterbrook's article in a recent issue of The Atlantic - republished here - about how many scientists now believe the odds of being hit by Something Big Enough To Wipe Out Humanity, or At Least A Significant Chunk of It, are much much higher than believed before certainly made me contemplate the stars with a little more trepidation.

Anyway, I think we'll survive the Perseids and Comet Swift-Tuttle. So continuing the analysis, what will the effects be on the Presidential election, the Beijing Olympics, and the international oil markets?

I think it will give McCain a bump. It will make some superstitious religious types afraid of God's wrath just a bit more, and those types tend to flock to the party of superstition and religion, the Republican Party, which believes in divine providence, supply-side economics, and other baseless fallacies.

It will help the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Liberia win more medals because all of those countries have stars on their flags.

And it will make Peak Oil come that little bit closer to reality because of all the gasoline people will waste driving out into the countryside to get a good look at the meteors, away from blinding city lights.

unsurprisingly, cheney interferes again

This report, that the office of de facto Vice President Dick Cheney, prevented the Director of the Center for Disease Control from discussing the possible damage to human health from climate change in her testimony before Congress, is interesting.

But completely unsurprising of course. The VP and his tight little office operation have already shown their willingness to browbeat other parts of the Administration from saying things that Cheney disagrees with. Climate change and energy are just particularly frequent targets of the Cheney truth squad.

The White House of course defends itself from such interference by claiming the science is unclear and all that. Which of course does not stop it from asserting confidently that science it and its supporters like is crystal-clear. Such as the physics behind shooting bullets with bullets in the ongoing porkathon known as missile defense...

the cover up continues! (not really)

The British Ministry of Defense has released two decades of data about UFO sightings.

The conclusion? Most sightings could be explained by things like the tipper being tipsy, and a journalist professor who follows UFO issues, David Clarke, said “The government has been telling us the truth. There are a lot of weird things in the sky, and some of them we can’t explain, but there’s not a shred of evidence for a single alien visitation.”

That of course is NOT what the UFO zealots want to hear!

With this crowd you can't win. Not releasing information makes them ask, what is being hidden? And releasing information will bring charges that the REAL stuff is being withheld.

I suspect there is intelligent life out there somewhere. But honestly, I think if it visited Earth, we'd know about it pretty soon. And it would be beyond the ability of terrestrial governments to hide it.

not a phony war on science

Former Bush speechwriter turned Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson today complains that "There are few things in American politics more irrationally ideological, more fanatically faith-based, than the accusation that Republicans are conducting a 'war on science.'"

To prove his point, Gerson points out three scientists who have done good work in the de facto Bush Administration; of course, none of them are involved in climate change, setting pollution standards for water, teaching evolution, stem cell research, or any of the other more controversial areas. And Gerson brings up the old conservative attack by alleging that liberals favor eugenics, and mentioning the Nazi Party in Germany.

Let's ignore that rhetorical head-fake, shall we? Are the allegations of a Republican War on Science accurate?

Unfortunately, yes. For the past 40 years the GOP has been far more willing than the Democrats to lie and obfuscate about science in order to protect their ideological golden oxes.

Currently perhaps the best known example is climate change. It is REPUBLICANS who have led the campaign to cast doubt on the science about the causes, mechanics, and possible catastrophic effects of climate change. It is Republicans, and their corporate allies at Exxon and elsewhere, who support the fringe lunatics. They have moved their line, from "climate change is a hoax" (still believed by Senator James Inhoffe and other Republican stalwarts) to "climate change is happening but it's not our fault" to "climate change isn't going to be that bad anyway", refusing to acknowledge that we maybe we should try to so something in the off-chance that we could be provoking a civilization-ending transformation in our climate.

It is Republicans and their Christianist allies who insist on "teaching the controversy" about evolution, trying to foist their narrow Biblical view of Creation on the rest of us, wasting valuable time and energy and money, and not helping us improve our science education while students in other countries continue to study biology without crazy hang-ups about God. The same people are pushing their ridiculous views of geology, trying to make the evidence of a billion-year-old planet fit with their myth of a planet built in 7 days about 6000 years ago.

Republicans (shamefully supported by some Democrats) have denied the cause and effect relationship between smoking tobacco and lung cancer. And between various other chemicals and other cancers, because to do so would be inconvenient and costly for their corporate pals.

Republicans (not all, though) have fought and fought against stem cell research, based on absurdly narrow moral grounds, driving jobs out of the US and possibly costing lives to protect cells that are not going to become lives. (Not to mention that the GOP only cares about children before they are born; afterwards, let 'em eat cake.)

Hell, just to pick a narrow sample of their selective use of science, remember the Republicans claimed "well golly shucks, we couldn't have predicted a hurricane like Katrina" when scientists had been warning about the effects of a direct hit on New Orleans for decades.

Don't let GOP operative Gerson fool you. There HAS been a Republican War on Science. And we all are paying for it.

if it feels good, do it

Are you a pervert if you help an old lady across the road and it feels really, really good? Not necessarily. In a classic "it's a Monday on a holiday weekend" article, the Post reports that scientists at the National Institute of Health have found that when you do an altruistic act, there is activity in the "primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex."

In other words, there is a scientific as well as a moral reason to know that it does feel good to do good.