The following from Paul Broun, a representative. The following from another representative, Todd Atkin. I suppose it follows that women who claim rape & are fortunate enough to not become pregnant are liars, they enjoyed it, and/or they enticed some upstanding citizen to commit an act he would not have done on his own imitative. What is worse than the above bozos being representatives, is the fact that they are both on the House Science committee, with Broun allegedly being a high ranking member. BTW: Broun is a practicing MD & has a degree in chemistry from (I think) the University of Georgia). I would like to see a final exam he passed. Perhaps it had questions like the following. Which of the following is an inert gas? Choices: Mercury, Sodium, Carbon, Helium It is a shame that there was no prominantly published outrage about the views of these congressmen.
True, but there's also an old saying. "Don't let the bastards grind you down." Yes, there are countless examples of politicians saying the goofiest of things: 'Human brains grown on mice...' 'I'm not a witch. I'm you.' I remember an office setting I worked in where a coworker was a staunch believer and proponent of Astrology. During lunch breaks, we'd debate- which usually led to her throwing a fit of anger. I stopped debating (since it did no good) but what I noticed about most people that worked there was they never bothered to question her constant pushing of astrology. That didn't mean they believed it. It meant they didn't give two craps and stayed quiet about it. So what was it: Maybe, offhand guess, 3% of that buildings workforce believed in something absurd. But that 3% sure was loud and they were met in return with a loud burst of silence. You just can't let the small crowd trick you into thinking they are larger in numbers than they are. Nor, let them grind you down.
Provided they let more foreign students and scientists to come in , otherwise it will go down the hill. American students are interested in business and management.
Agreed. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! There are some dolts and idiots around us - just look at the examples in this site!!! - and some of them manage to make it into public office. There's nothing surprising about this at all. <shrug>
Yes. American technology enriched by foreign scientists has always been the norm. Leave to Americans to manage and do business with new technology which is national trait for then, no?
What the? The whole lot of ya are immigrants and foreigners. A little over what- 200 years? My ancestors have been here for thousands of years. It's always been the norm because they're all foreigners.
It is odd, actually. A lot of the Democrats seem to think that scientific spending is best deferred to social welfare programs. A lot of Republicans seem to think that science is the devil. Thankfully, scientific endeavor, innovation and inventiveness have a long standing history of success in the USA. There's a strong push for that to continue. I see the grin and assume the intent- But I think you don't realize what those words might mean to me.
Certainly not in the shorter and more easily predictable time-scale of years and decades. The US is actually doing very well in science, comparatively speaking, ranking among the world's leaders in most research areas. I don't anticipate that changing short-term. I do think that there is likely to be a general world-wide decline in scientific productivity, longer out. That's not going to be a US specific problem though, it will be pretty-much everywhere. The easy low-hanging fruit will already have been harvested, making future discoveries more and more difficult and dependent on increasingly costly "big-science" laboratory infrastructure. And humanity might have started to experience the peak and subsequent unpleasant and possibly violent decline in industrial civilization world-wide, due to resource depletion in strategic commodities, increased competition, and so on. Civilizations typically don't last for ever, they rise and fall. And when our globalized world-wide science and engineering based manufacturing civiliation finally falls, the resulting dark-age is likely to be world-wide too, and hence extremely prolonged. My guess is that humanity might never see another scientific-industrial civilization like this one, after it's finally gone. For one thing, there will be few deposits of mineral raw materials left world-wide that will be easily workable with the limited technologies that would be available to agricultural post-industrial cultures. The barriers to recreation of an industrial civilization will probably be a lot higher next time than they were in the 18'th and 19'th centuries.
society will not fall that easily and if it does certain things like the transistor will not be forgotten , if we would really revert back to a agrarian culture pre 18the century then metals would be extremly easy to come by as they will be plentiful in old cities. We've also build some sturdy structures over the years, places like hoover dam for example and then their are surprisingly strong fortresses like the entire country Iceland even during a global war it will probably be ignored and they are almost completly self sufficiant.
They haven't wrecked the place entirely Well, Rep. Broun is a Republican. Jillian Rayfield addressed the question of the strangeness of people like Rep. Broun and his "legitimate rape" colleague, Rep. Akin, being on the House Science Committee. Turns out, they're not outliers on the Republican-appointed committee: • Let's start with the chairman himself, Ralph Hall of Texas. Though he was once a Democrat, Hall was behind a 2010 effort by Republicans to cut off billions in funding for scientific research and math and science education. He did this by rather cannily tacking onto a bill a provision that would have forced Democrats to vote in favor of letting federal employees view pornography while on the job. Hall also once said of climate change: "I'm really more fearful of freezing. And I don't have any science to prove that. But we have a lot of science that tells us they're not basing it on real scientific facts." • Then there's Todd Akin. In the course of his campaign for Missouri Senate, Akin made the following comments about rape: "First of all, from what I understand from doctors [pregnancy from rape] is really rare," Akin said. "If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down." • Maryland Rep. Roscoe Bartlett had a similar take on pregnancies resulting from rape: "There are very few pregnancies as a result of rape, fortunately, and incest — compared to the usual abortion, what is the percentage of abortions for rape? It is tiny. It is a tiny, tiny percentage." • Texas Rep. Randy Neugebauer is best known for yelling out, "It's a baby killer!" during the House debate on Obama's healthcare reform bill. But did you know he also drafted a resolution for Americans to "join together in prayer to humbly seek fair weather conditions" after a series of destructive tornadoes and droughts? • In 2007, Congress held a hearing on a report that found global warming to be "unequivocal." Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, who has no truck with man-made global warming, was skeptical about testimony regarding a period 55 million years ago when similar dramatic climate change occurred: "We don't know what those other cycles were caused by in the past. Could be dinosaur flatulence, you know, or who knows?" • Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin is a renowned climate change skeptic who has alternately decried "scientific fascism" and described research on climate change as an "international conspiracy." • Allen West-backed Sandy Adams lost her Florida primary this year, but she still managed to serve on the committee while bad-mouthing evolution. "I'm Christian. I believe in the biblical terms of how we came about," she once said. Adams also voted in favor of a bill to have teachers "teach theories that contradict the theory of evolution." As Steve Benen put it, "Remember, the House Republican leadership makes committee assignments, and felt these lawmakers are the best qualified members to serve on the committee related to science." All things considered, though, this assembly of the stupid isn't the biggest threat to American scientific education and endeavor. It's actually what American parlance describes as "capitalism". That is, while it's true that capitalism is a great driver of innovation, the underlying priority of that innovation is not, in this pseudo-capitalist outlook, "What needs to be done?" Rather, it is, "How much profit can I make doing this?" Despite the amount of money NASA pours into the private sector, there are many who would like to kill the agency altogether, and put the whole idea of an American space program in the private sector. What's the difference? NASA is obliged to mission success. The private sector is obliged to profit. It's simply a matter of priorities. House majorities and committee assignments come and go. The longer trend is the desire to constrain innovation to profit considerations. Discovery is no longer important, unless there's a ton of money to be made. I mean, sure, NASA has pretty much proved last week that water once flowed on Mars. Sure, there are the formalities of writing up the papers and surviving peer review, but it's all but certain. Why do I mention this? Because the implications for our station in the Universe aren't that important. Right now, there isn't any money in it. As I suggested recently: I can tell you one basic difference. First, imagine a symposium at which scientists introduce the world to Bacillus titania, a bacteria recovered from Titan by a NASA mission. Now imagine a billboard beside the highway: "Say hello to Bacillus titania™, a Lockheed-Martin® organism!" This is the biggest threat to science in our culture. We'll survive the religious nutjobs and tinfoil conspiracy theorists. At least, we have thus far. True, they're a determined bunch, but they haven't wrecked the place entirely, and more and more people are recognizing the threat, and working to stop them from achieving their goal. ____________________ Notes: Rayfield, Jillian. "Least scientific members of the House Science Committee". Salon. October 8, 2012. Salon.com. October 9, 2012. http://www.salon.com/2012/10/08/least_scientific_members_of_the_house_science_committee/ Benen, Steve. "Only the best for the House Science Committee". The Maddow Blog. October 9, 2012. MaddowBlog.com. October 9, 2012. http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/09/14317026-only-the-best-for-the-house-science-committee
@Dinosaur actually I kinda feel sorry for these congressman. they're saying such stupid things because they are trying to appeal to their idiotic electorate.
When, "God Help Us," Just Isn't the Right Thing to Say When, "God Help Us," Just Isn't the Right Thing to Say My late grandfather came from Missouri. He left school and hopped a train west, one of the "never finished eighth grade" types from the Depression Era. He was a good man, to be certain. And he was clearly smarter than Missouri state Representative Rick Brattin (R), who describes himself as "a science enthusiast" and "a huge science buff". Rep. Brattin also introduced Missouri HB 291, the "Missouri Standard Science Act": HB 291, the 'Missouri Standard Science Act,' redefines a few things you thought you already knew about science. For example, a 'hypothesis' is redefined as something that reflects a 'minority of scientific opinion and is 'philosophically unpopular.' A scientific theory is 'an inferred explanation ... whose components are data, logic and faith-based philosophy.' And 'destiny' is not something that $5 fortune tellers believe in; Instead, it's 'the events and processes that define the future of the universe, galaxies, stars, our solar system, earth, plant life, animal life, and the human race.' (Liebelson) When I was a kid, probably ten or eleven—that would be the early 1980s, for the record—my grandfather took a trip back to Missouri and saw some of his family for the first time since leaving. It was a small town, the kind where some homes only recently hooked up to the electric grid and still had backhouses. One of his sisters (or half-sisters) asked how things were going in Seattle. "Have they taken care of that Injun problem?" she asked. We all laughed when he told the story, as did he. But he made clear to us that, yes, it was a serious question. He decided not to tell her about the miracle of flush toilets in every house. Meanwhile, in the present, the Mother Jones article continues: The bill requires that Missouri elementary and secondary schools—and even introductory science classes in public universities—give equal textbook space to both evolution and intelligent design (any other "theories of origin" are allowed to be taught as well, so pick your favorite creation myth—I'm partial to the Russian raven spirit.) "I can't imagine any mainstream textbook publisher would comply with this," Meikle says. "The material doesn't exist." The bill also establishes a nine-person committee (who must work for free) responsible for developing ad-hoc textbook material until appropriate textbook material is found .... .... Brattin argues that there are "numerous college professors within biology, school science teachers" who are "banned from the science community" because they want to teach other theories of origin. The National Center for Science Education's Meikle agrees—the bill really could "open the door for teachers who are opposed to evolution to bring in creationist materials." That's why his group is "hoping it doesn't pass." A similar bill from Brattin and others in Missouri died in committee last year. In 2003, a bill "with near-identical language" also threatened to fire teachers who refused to comply; more than 450 teachers and scientists in Missouri signed onto a public statement reminding legislators that intelligent design isn't actually science. There is, of course, a part of me that wants to say, "Yeah, we've taken care of our 'Injun problem', so can y'all do somethin' 'bout your 'stupid problem'?" But that's not really constructive, is it? ____________________ Notes: Liebelson, Dana. "Anti-Evolution Missouri Bill Requires College Students to Learn About Destiny". Mother Jones. February 8, 2013. MotherJones.com. February 12, 2013. http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2013/02/intelligent-design-missouri-evolution
There are a lot of things about this country that I can handle, that I can engage in apologetics for. This ain't one of them. For this, I'm truly ashamed of my fellow Americans, and absolutely frightened of the implications.
