I am … unhindered by talent

OpenCongress has a nice piece on what a sham Our Fearless Leader’s blather about “fiscal responsibility” is. I’ll send you there for the text, but the short version is (not surprisingly) this isn’t about responsibility at all, it’s about priorities and (lack of vision) in the White House. He’s happy to spend inordinate amounts of money on his toys, friends, and pet projects, but feign responsibility by whining about what are effectively tiny amounts in the entire budget, but which could make a real difference in people’s lives.

To provide some perspective, we’re spending hundreds of billions on this poorly conceived, poorly planned, dishonest and corrupt mess in Iraq, killing huge numbers of Iraqi people and American soldiers in the bargain. The entire annual budget of UMM is well under $100M, a factor of something like 1/1000. It’s thus absolutely obvious that we could ensure that everyone in the U.S. who wanted to go to college could do so for free, entirely on the Fed’s dime. It is not about resources, it is about choices.

Another take on this is illustrated by the amazing (but very large) graph from SolarPowerRocks.com below the fold, which makes it painfully clear how little the administration really cares about energy independence and planning for the future of our country and our planet.

Selfish, foolish bastards, frankly. Selfish, foolish bastards.

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As has been noted elsewhere by many (e.g., PeeZed), tomorrow night (Tuesday, 13 Nov) PBS is airing Judgement Day. This is a Nova program covering in considerable detail the ins and outs of the trial two years ago in Dover, Pennsylvania, that was, at its heart, about whether “intelligent design” had any pretense to being science. It obviously doesn’t, and the court had the wherewithal to agree.

This has been heralded by many as a landmark case in the fight between science and reason on the one hand and politics, mumbo jumbo, and bizarrely wishful thinking on the other. While I fervently hope that this ruling is in fact a harbinger of a more rational future in the U.S., only time will truly tell. The case is clearly an crucial one, however, both for what it tells us about the powerful, organized, and persistent forces of willful ignorance, and about the ability of the forces of reason and sense to carry the day with clarity and force of their own.

Being out of the country, we will obviously miss the show, although we might get to catch it here later if one of the UK broadcasters picks it up. The most recent Science Talk podcast includes an interview with the show’s writer and producer, Joseph McMaster. Steve Mirsky (Science Talk’s excellent host) obviously really likes the show (he saw an advance tape), which makes me all the more sad that we’ll miss out. Mirsky ends the segment by mentioning that the pro-ID Discovery Institute has preemptively denounced the program, fussing that Nova fails to be impartial and should be more up-front about their clear bias. As Mirsky points out (with a wee twinkle in his voice), Nova could hardly be clearer about their bias: They’re a science program, and ID ain’t science.

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Our fearless leader has apparently nominated someone (James Holsinger) to the post of Surgeon General who is sadly confused about basic issues of science, logic, and argument from evidence. Not good for the nation’s chief doctor, although hardly surprising from Our Friends at the White House. From ABC News:

“You have to wonder given the quality of some of the nominations that have gone forward recently, whether the selection group in the White House has gone on vacation,” Gergen [former adviser to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton] said. “There has been a growing criticism the administration favoring ideology over competence, and this nomination smacks of that.”

Greg Laden nicely takes apart the “naturalist fallacy” in Holsinger’s argument, and I definitely recommend heading over to read that. The short version is that Holsinger’s fallen into something like “the parts don’t fit, ergo homosexuality is unnatural and wrong“. What’s “natural” and what’s “right”, though, have little or nothing to do with each other. My eyeglasses are clearly unnatural, as was my life-saving appendectomy, but I’m hardly returning either of those. Similarly, it’s “natural” (at least we’re genetically predisposed) for men to be physically larger and stronger than women (on average), but that clearly doesn’t provide any justification for physical abuse and intimidation of women by men, or adults beating children just ’cause they’re bigger.

I’m off to write my Senators and express my unhappiness with yet another Shrub appointee…

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One of the recurring features of small town summer parades in the mid-west is politics, and yesterday’s Prairie Pioneer Days parade here in Morris must have had 8-10 different politicians ranging from the local sherriff up to candidates for U.S. Senate.

Included in this motley crew was Robert Fitzgerald, who was a student of mine as an undergrad here at UMM. Now, several years later, he’s running for U.S. senate as an independent here in Minnesota, and was back in town for the parade.

He’s got that politician’s smile down, doesn’t he?

Here he’s working the crowd, and actually talking about policy issues, which I didn’t hear any of the other candidates do. Klobuchar’s people at least passed out a little card with her key policy points on it, but everyone else just passed out stickers and candy and carefully avoiding conveying any useful information.

Perhaps following in the footsteps of a previous senator from Minnesota, he’s gone for the big, brightly colored campaign bus, which definitely was an eye-catcher in the parade. It would have helped its effectiveness if that bus had been full of supporters (or at least not empty), but such is life.

No idea if I’ll vote for him in November - I just haven’t done the level of homework necessary to make that sort of decision. I can certainly say, though, that he’s vastly cooler than 90-muchly-percent of the politicians currently in D.C. He was an exec at our student radio station, and still comes back to concerts that the station sponsors once or twice a year. Having someone in Washington that understands technological issues and digs Heiruspecs would certainly be a change.

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Yesterday we had our annual “Small midwest town summer parade”, as required by the by-laws of the Small Midwest Town Association. It was the traditional blend of politics, commerce, community groups, bands, flags, and princesses, and despite the fairly atrocious heat was lots of fun. I took way too many pictures, some of which will probably find their way onto Flickr over time.

This fellow was riding his bike down the (quite busy) sidewalk, which was bad. He did have his helmet, though, which was good. But he wasn’t wearing it, which just makes me want to throw things! <Deep breath…>

He was actually riding with a (younger?) girl that I’m guessing was his sister. She was wearing her helmet, which is further evidence that women are smarter than men. The fact that he had his at all is probably due to some parently requirement, but it would appear that a little follow through might be necessary.

Thus endeth the rant…

And big ups to Sub-Evil Boy, who continues to demonstrate excellent judgement in the face of his hormonal heritage: his helmet gets used. Further props to his wonderful Aunt (my wonderful sister) for getting him his first helmet and making sure that they were an integral part of his world view from the beginning.

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…but is allowed way too much TV time…

Pat Robertson is yet another of way too many religious zealots working desperately to further distort the U.S. political spectrum and give religion in this country a bad name. It would appear that now this senior spokesman for a host of Bad Ideas has really and truly gone off the deep end.

For quite some time he’s been publicly (i.e., on television!) praying for openings on the Supreme Court so that Our Fearless Leader™ can appoint some God Fearing Good Guys™ to further the cause of saving us from ourselves. While it is hardly uncommon to wish to replace our political foes with allies, it’s a bit tricky in the case of the Supreme Court since the only two ways out are retirement or death. (Well, you can also be declared unfit, but that seems unlikely in a universe where Robertson still has his job.) So it seems just a wee bit ghoulish for Robertson to be praying for vacancies, and a less generous soul might draw comparisons to things like Khomeini’s call for the death of Salman Rushdie. But I wouldn’t do that. Really. Not even think about it. (We were living in in the U.K. when all that went down, and it was uber creepy.)

Not content with a little anti-democratic religious fundmentalism on his home turf (just what the founding fathers were hoping for), Robertson has now gone international, and in the process gone completely gone ’round the twist. Yesterday, on his depressingly popular TV show “The 700 Club”, he publicly called for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, the elected leader of Venezuela (but not so terribly popular in Shrub Oil circles back here):

If he thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It’s a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don’t think any oil shipments will stop.”

(as quoted by the New York Times).

Simply amazing, ain’t it? You know he’s really gone too far when even the Bush White House and other “Conservative Christians” felt the need to distance themselves from the remark. This is, of course, the very least that we should expect from our leaders in such a situation. As Bernardo Ã?lvarez, the Venezuelan ambassador to the United States, put it quite succinctly:

Mr. Robertson has been one of the president’s staunchest allies. His statement demands the strongest condemnation by the White House.

It’s a sad sign that the poor saps at CBN don’t pull Robertson from the airwaves, or provide any sorts of disclaimers on their web site (as of this evening). Robertson’s remarks are so clearly inappropriate and unacceptable that CBN’s continued tolerance them speaks volumes to how little the ideals of open and informed discussion and debate must count for in that organization.

Sigh…

Props to WeatherGirl (and The Daily Show) for tapping me into this story.

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I’ve never participated in one of these “Answer N questions on a theme” memes, although I was sorely tempted by these questions from ScribblingWoman (see answers by New Kid and Pharyngula for my inspiration). Unfortunately it came up at a bad time in the semester, so nothing ever happened.

However, I just got an invite from hkvam to contribute to an “Author’s interview” meme on Flickr. I’ve never actually been personally invited to participate in such a thing and flattery and ego will go a long way in my petty little universe, so here I am answering some semi-random questions about my photography. This will probably get a bit long and rambly; don’t say you weren’t warned :-).

Not surprisingly, I also posted this (with some minor changes) over on Flickr.

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