Passing of the flame: Broun to BuckBoehner and Cantor had a good laugh when they stocked the House Science Committee with a pack of wild anti-science yahoos like Paul "straight from the pit of hell" Broun (R-GA), Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), Steve Stockman (R-TX), Jim Bridenstine (R-OK),
Dint ol' Ronnie Reagan hisself promis us we dint hafta beleeve in no stuff we dint wanna like no Big Bongs which anyways is just a big bell or somethin' in Inglund?by KenDo you know what the word "choice" means? What it means to choose between options? Yes, you say? You do? Then I'm sorry to have to tell you that apparently you have just been disqualified from being a right-winger.We'll come back to this in a moment.
I spent almost two years wandering around the Indian subcontinent between 1969 and 1971-- Afghanistan, Pakistan, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Nepal and, of course, every region of India. I lived in my van and was broke most of the time and had no choice but to eat whatever the locals were eating. When I got back to Europe I came down with a debilitating illness. No need to go into the gruesome details but I wound up under the care of an elderly physician in Innsbruck who decided he would have to operate on me and that I would have to stay in Innsbruck for six months.
American billionaires pay virtually no taxes in relation to the amount of wealth they have accumulated. We usually read about it-- if ever-- in regard to the unconscionable and growing wealth back in our country. Income inequality is starting to come up, albeit just barely, as a topic of discussion among political elites. But this weekend, the NY Times pointed to another consequence: the privatization of scientific research.
Friday, Alan Grayson endorsed particle physicist George Gollin for Congress from Illinois' 13th congressional district. He began his endorsement with a simple statement you can hear all too often from the more educated members of Congress-- Grayson has three graduate degrees from Harvard: "I’m really getting tired of listening to people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
For the past several years, we've been pointing out how Buck McKeon has a bunch of worthless relatives who work as lobbyists, where they can trade on his name for their personal enrichment. This week Legistorm.com released a list of congressmembers whose direct relatives are also lobbyists-- and McKeon was only the second worst.
Fred Upton sold out his Michigan constituents to the drug companies long agoI spent the holiday season on a ship cruising around the Galapagos, going from island to island. One day the highlight was seeing a sea lion give birth to her first pup and the next was watching an aquatic iguana rape a female iguana. Another day we saw parent frigates take turns caring for their chick while the other one hunted. The Ecuadorean naturalists helped us put the experiences into context.
In The Atlantic on Monday, Mischa Fisher, a GOP operative, tried making the case that Republicans aren't really the anti-science party. Really? Tell it to the victims of Global Warmiong in the Philippines-- or to the 5.6 million residents of Broward, Miami-Dade, Monroe and Palm Beach counties in South Florida who may have to decide between moving inland or drowning.
