[Which really serves me right, considering I spent Saturday swimming in Anahuac (not off the coast, for heaven's sake...in a pool) and most of yesterday trying to get caught up on The Venture Bros. and The Shield instead of paying much attention to the outside world.]
Anyway, does anyone besides me remember when the United States was actually a leader in science?
A measure by Reps. Mike Castle, R-Del., and Diana DeGette, D-Colo., would lift Bush's 2001 ban on the use of federal dollars for research using any new embryonic stem cell lines.
"I made very clear to Congress that the use of federal money, taxpayer's money, to promote science which destroys life in order to save life — I'm against that," Bush said. "Therefore, if the bill does that, I would veto it."
I wouldn't worry. Our children's children won't need stem cells, because "abstinence only" sex education, the suppression of birth control information, and the re-criminalization of abortion will ensure everyone has plenty of offspring to harvest for bone marrow and organs.
Bush began the day at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast where he was cheered for urging people to "pray that America uses the gift of freedom to build a culture of life."
The remark was a public reaffirmation of his position on sensitive issues such as abortion and stem cell research.
Bush recalled the legacy of the late Pope John Paul II and said, "The best way to honor this great champion of human freedom is to continue to build a culture of life where the strong protect the weak."
It's a new definition of irony when the leader of a country with the highest capital punishment rate in the "civilized" world, and one who has sacrificed hundreds of our own soldiers can trumpet a "culture of life." And he can keep a straight face while using the leader of the Catholic Church as an example of the "strong protecting the weak."
In other news, it seems that not even the dinosaurs are safe:
The razor-toothed Tyrannosaurus rex, jaws agape, loomed ominously over the gentle Thescelosaurus, looking for plants to eat. Admiring the museum diorama were old and young visitors, listening on headphones to a stentorian voice describing the primeval scene.
But the Museum of Earth History is a museum with a controversial difference. To one side, peering through the bushes, are Adam and Eve. The display is not an image of the Cretaceous. It is Paradise. 'They lived together without fear, for there was no death yet,' the voice intoned about Man and Dinosaur.
Nestling deep in the Ozark mountains of Arkansas, in the heart of America's Bible Belt, this is the first dinosaur museum to take a creationist perspective. Already thousands of people have flocked to its top-quality exhibits which mix high science with fundamentalist theology that few serious scientists accept.
What am I supposed to add to that? These same "thousands" of people who seem to have no problem ignoring everything physics, geology, and the fossil record have taught us aren't going to be stopping by APCB so I can ridicule them. Living in ignorance has its comforts, which explains the fundamentalist mindset pretty well.
What I will say, as I have before, is that the Ozarks where the only place I ever saw a flyer advertising Saturday Night Dwarf Tossing. And that was in 1984.
Even as America's scientists make advances in palaeontology, astronomy and physics that appear to disprove creationism, Gallup surveys have shown that about 45 per cent of Americans believe the Earth was created by God within the past 10,000 years.
And yet Saturn got all the rings. Wise up, girlfriend.
Isn't the GOP claiming they support a "culture of life" just as hypocritical as claiming they are the champions of smaller government, even while they strengthen the part of the government that suppresses our personal freedoms? Anyone want to move to Canada and start a commune?
I think it's funny that a party so thirsty for fossil fuel use can simultaneously deny the fact that fossils exist . . .
Oh, fossils exist, but depending on some extreme outlooks, they were either placed there by Satan to instill doubt in the faithful, or by God to provide a test of faith.
I once saw a kids book at a Christian bookstore that explained, in loving and adorably-drawn detail, how dinosaurs were on the ark. Eek.
That Creation Truth organization is a hoot! Religious Wrath and Fervor needs some editing and technical writing!
"What are the implications of these terms? You see, if God is the eternal Creator, and the Genesis account of beginnings records the "creatio ex nihilo" (creation out of nothing as preformed by this supernatural being, then it stands the God of Holy Scripture owns us, and He alone is the law maker, and we are accountable to His standards and only His standards. Obviously the pagan’s world view will not permit this kind of outside authority because they are a law unto themselves. Therefore they have designed, by Satan’s inspiration, a
"scientific" doctrine to justify their atheism, i.e. The Doctrine of Evolution which is firmly based in nothing, and from which they view the world. "It is true. "The heathen rage and the people imagine vain things." G. Thomas Sharp Ph.D."
Oh, right, the fossils were planted to test our faith. And to fuel our godly SUVs.
"Even as America's scientists make advances in palaeontology, astronomy and physics that appear to disprove creationism, Gallup surveys have shown that about 45 per cent of Americans believe the Earth was created by God within the past 10,000 years."
. Wrong, but thank you for playing.
The periodical referenced in this quote - Scientific American (February 2002) - actually cites a Gallup poll in which 45 percent of the respondents said God created HUMANS — not 'life;' not 'the Earth' — in the past 10,000 years.
Sheesh. You'd think fundamentalists who insist on quoting and citing one book literally would be capable of doing so with other printed material.
Depends on who you ask. Some creationists feel that humans were created at the beginning of the Genesis storyline, which would make the creation of Man and the universe itself more or less simultaneous.
And so I dub them Heretics! Everyone knows the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.
True, it appears the Guardian mucked that up. The poll also says that 45% of respondents believe God created humans in their present form.
That doesn't necessarily make me feel any better.
I suppose if aliens created us during the course of an experiment to forge their genes with ours and then left a big, mysterious obelisk in the middle of the badlands (just like in that Stanley Kubrick film about space) with the Ten Commandments inscribed upon it before imparting a fantastical creation myth to these monkey-alien hybrids through unexplained visions via hypnosis and UFO monitoring of the new species and planned to save only a select few who actually "got it" at the "end of the age"...then, yeah, I guess the fundies could be right.
;-)
So what was the alchemy exhibit like? Golden?
Wasn't swimming in a non-pool setting in Anahuac the origins story of The Toxic Avenger?