Saturday, October 25, 2008

Palin: the fruit flies strike back!

Mizz Palin's ridiculous attack on fruit fly research has annoyed many in the science community and outside of it. PZ Myers is appalled. I'm more than that. But he tells it better than I do...

Pharyngula - PZ Myers

I am appalled.

This idiot woman, this blind, shortsighted ignoramus, this pretentious clod, mocks basic research and the international research community. You damn well better believe that there is research going on in animal models — what does she expect, that scientists should mutagenize human mothers and chop up baby brains for this work? — and countries like France and Germany and England and Canada and China and India and others are all respected participants in these efforts.

Yes, scientists work on fruit flies. Some of the most powerful tools in genetics and molecular biology are available in fruit flies, and these are animals that are particularly amenable to experimentation. Molecular genetics has revealed that humans share key molecules, the basic developmental toolkit, with all other animals, thanks to our shared evolutionary heritage (something else the wackaloon from Wasilla denies), and that we can use these other organisms to probe the fundamental mechanisms that underlie core processes in the formation of the nervous system — precisely the phenomena Palin claims are so important.

This is where the Republican party has ended up: supporting an ignorant buffoon who believes in the End Times and speaking in tongues while deriding some of the best and most successful strategies for scientific research. In this next election, we've got to choose between the 21st century rationalism and Dark Age inanity. It ought to be an easy choice.

7 Comments:

At 8:52 PM, Blogger Mad Zionist said...

Seems to me she opposed the FRENCH subsidy, and not all research on fruit flies. I'm quite certain she would oppose any and ALL research in foreign countries that is being paid for as a tax by the American people.

 
At 9:43 PM, Blogger Gert said...

Madze:

She didn't know (or pretended not to know) what the fruit fly research actually is. It suits her (entirely fake) folksy, creationist image down to the ground. No amount of protestations from the science community will change the minds of the ignoramuses that simply don't want to know better...

Seems to me Palin has returned from 'mirage' (your words) status to new-found heroin after you learned she's of Jewish descent.

 
At 12:40 PM, Blogger Mad Zionist said...

Gert, she returned to favor with me when she came out swinging in the debate against Biden. Since then, she has been clear and fiesty on the campaign trail, often ignoring the scripting that got her in trouble to begin with, and attacking Obama's socialist elitism with vigor.

 
At 1:45 PM, Blogger Gert said...

Madze:

Yep, the flag on International Socialism shall soon fly over the WH! American workers and comrades unite and make the Collectivist Dream come true! (nudge nudge, wink wink...)

If Obama's vision for America is Socialism then I must be Karl Marx...

 
At 8:28 PM, Blogger Mad Zionist said...

Gert, this may shock you, but socialism is no longer a dirty word in America. Americans are angry and want the government to soak the rich, take on the employer class, redistribute income, and have the government provide cradle-to-grave healthcare, retirement, banking and lending, protectionist trade policies, jobs, etc.

It is not the center right nation you've always known it to be. It's very populous, very left leaning, and very pro-socialism.

 
At 11:02 AM, Blogger Gert said...

Madze:

"[...] but socialism is no longer a dirty word in America."

Com'on man, they've been trying to pin the S-word on Obama for the last two weeks now. Sure it's a dirty word: associated with Ko-ho-homunism and the perennial foe, the USSR.

We're talking past each other again: the US has had a mixed economy for quite some time now: if that's socialism to you then I guess you're right. But a mixed economy is a very far cry from Warsaw Pact-style command and control economies and the associated undemocratic systems of governance that came with it.

 
At 5:42 PM, Blogger Mad Zionist said...

Gert, you are right. We've been a nation with socialist tendencies dating back to the New Deal of FDR, and especially the Great Society of LBJ. However, since LBJ was sent packing in disgrace we have been chipping away at the socialist influences and entitlements.

The tide has turned: America wants more socialism, more government entitlement, more income redistribution, and even the word socialism has become far more benign than at anytime in my lifetime.

Look, we both know we are not speaking full blown Bolshevism in America, but we are looking at a Western European socialist model that blends democracy with more industrial, monetary, and commercial enterprise under government control.

Democratic Socialism is our future, Gert. You know I am entirely opposed to this, yet I say it anyway. Why do do you think that is? Certainly not because I am advocating such policy.

No, it's because I am a realist.

 

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