Last September 19th, a very sad thing happened. I hardly talked like a pirate at all. I wasn’t adequately prepared. But not this year — now that I’ve watched How to Talk Like a Pirate, I’m ready.
Don’t forget! Tuesday is Talk Like a Pirate Day. This is especially important for my fellow Pastafarians.
I won’t address here exactly how, or even why the Republican party has made itself an enemy of reason and scientific research. From what I’ve heard, if you haven’t already realized that this is true, Chris Mooney makes a pretty good case. While reduction of scientific funding is an issue facing the field, the real problem is much larger.
Ironically,the very defense craze that has been milked, re-milked, milked again, and then milked some more, the constant fear-mongering wherein one hand is waved to distract us from the actions of the other, entirely misses the long-term issues of defense.
I’ve been reading Ray Kurzweil’s recent book, The Singularity is Near, and even if you don’t believe his well-referenced assertions about humans transcending biology, you’ve no choice but to believe the evidence he gives for our approaching mastery of nanotechnology. This all sounds pretty good until you get to the latter bits. The parts where he talks about anyone in the world being able to access, say, instructions for bioengineering microbes or viruses, or even completely synthetic nanomachines. You may be quick to dismiss this — surely such information will be carefully kept off of the internets. Perhaps then you’d be alarmed to find instructions for making a fission bomb on the BBC website?
If the US wants to be able to counter groups with real weapons of mass destruction, we need to have not military prowess, but scientific prowess. No army can stop the spread of self-replicating nanomachines. Sabotoging the nation’s science programs in the interest of pandering to religious insecurity is a giant leap in the wrong direction. People such as the President seem to forget where all of the weapons they use came from. They forget that the cruise missiles they fire off would go nowhere without computers, without GPS, without radar. God will not power or direct cruise missiles. Go bless a piece of PVC pipe, or even the sleek (but empty) fuselage of a cruise missile, which was designed with scientific knowledge, and see if it flies to its target. I would bet every dollar and every possession that I have that it would not.
Luckily, it seems that other nations are destined to overtake us. In academia, I am continually surrounded by the finest minds in the world, many if not most of which are not American. Yes, they do still come here to continue their careers, but we cannot expect that to last forever if we are a nation hostile to science. This may not be the best for America, but at least we can hope that if religious fundamentalists bring our progress to a halt, some other peace-loving, sane, and intelligent nation will carry forward.
I have made the mistake of neglecting such considerations in my short voting career. This year, and in every election to come, evaluate who operates on reason and who believes the fairy tales written in a book of lies. The former may be a little more socialist than I would like, but the latter will keep moving us down the path of ruin.
You may have heard me complain about the Intelligent Design movement, what a load of bunk it is, and how much damage its proponents are doing to scientific understanding and progress. However vast and harmful that may be, in degree it doesn’t hold a candle to firebombing people’s houses, bomb threats, and the other nastiness perpetrated by the hypocritical animal rights groups.
Look, I’m vegetarian. I’m a Buddhist. I don’t think we should be eating animals en masse for a variety of reasons, the most important of which is health. I don’t have a problem with animal research, though. There are strict guidelines in place to ensure that it is done in a “humane” way. And even if that weren’t the case, is threatening someone, and firebombing their house a better way to act? What if that molotov cocktail had exploded, the house had burned down, and someone had died?
The ethical hypocrisy from these groups is monstrous.
Please, no matter how much you love animals, and want to see them treated well, do not let words like these (from the article) come out of your mouth, ever:
… force is a poor second choice, but if that’s the only thing that will work … there’s certainly moral justification for that.
ADDENDUM: You really should read the comments over there. Some of the comments from the animal rights nuts leave me agape. They also reveal a bit of a misunderstanding: they seem to think scientists like vivisection, like the pure glee of it drives them to do it. They seem to think if research is not on AIDS or cancer, then it’s “esoteric” and frivolous, and that no benefit can come from it.
Clearly there’s a major gap between public perception and reality when it comes to scientific research. What can we do to eliminate that gap?
ADDENDUM 2: I think we need to call the science nazi, as I mentioned with regard to ID a little while ago.
I tried to read this garbage while I was eating dinner. I had to stop because I almost vomited. I guess it’s Safe For Work, unless you’re a biologist.
I realized a little while ago that any money I dumped toward Washington would have a far greater effect than my one-in-several-million vote(s). To that end, I started financially supporting the EFF, and so far they seem to be putting my money to good use. Here’s the latest:
San Francisco – A federal judge has refused to dismiss the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s (EFF’s) case against AT&T for collaborating with the NSA in illegal spying on millions of ordinary Americans, setting the stage for a congressional showdown over proposed dramatic changes in federal surveillance law.
EFF filed the class-action suit against AT&T in January, alleging that the telecommunications company has given the National Security Agency (NSA) secret, direct access to the phone calls and emails going over its network and has been handing over communications logs detailing the activities of millions of ordinary Americans. The government intervened in the case and asked that it be dismissed because the suit could expose “state secrets.” But Thursday, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker refused: “The compromise between liberty and security remains a difficult one. But dismissing this case at the outset would sacrifice liberty for no apparent enhancement of security.”
“We are gratified that Judge Walker rejected the government’s overbroad claims of secrecy, and that our case on behalf of AT&T customers can go forward,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “Judge Walker correctly found that the government, after having already admitted to and extensively commented on the NSA’s spying program, cannot now claim that it is a secret and sweep AT&T’s role under the rug.”
The whole post on the EFF blog is here.