The NZA Posted October 28, 2008 Author Share Posted October 28, 2008 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the division of joy Posted October 28, 2008 Share Posted October 28, 2008 I HAS METAL GEAR SOLID 4!!!!!!!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reverend Jax Posted October 28, 2008 Share Posted October 28, 2008 Sarah Palin's War on Science The GOP ticket's appalling contempt for knowledge and learning. By Christopher Hitchens Posted Monday, Oct. 27, 2008, at 11:43 AM ET  In an election that has been fought on an astoundingly low cultural and intellectual level, with both candidates pretending that tax cuts can go like peaches and cream with the staggering new levels of federal deficit, and paltry charges being traded in petty ways, and with Joe the Plumber becoming the emblematic stupidity of the campaign, it didn't seem possible that things could go any lower or get any dumber. But they did last Friday, when, at a speech in Pittsburgh, Gov. Sarah Palin denounced wasteful expenditure on fruit-fly research, adding for good xenophobic and anti-elitist measure that some of this research took place "in Paris, France" and winding up with a folksy "I kid you not."  It was in 1933 that Thomas Hunt Morgan won a Nobel Prize for showing that genes are passed on by way of chromosomes. The experimental creature that he employed in the making of this great discovery was the Drosophila melanogaster, or fruit fly. Scientists of various sorts continue to find it a very useful resource, since it can be easily and plentifully "cultured" in a laboratory, has a very short generation time, and displays a great variety of mutation. This makes it useful in studying disease, and since Gov. Palin was in Pittsburgh to talk about her signature "issue" of disability and special needs, she might even have had some researcher tell her that there is a Drosophila-based center for research into autism at the University of North Carolina. The fruit fly can also be a menace to American agriculture, so any financing of research into its habits and mutations is money well-spent. It's especially ridiculous and unfortunate that the governor chose to make such a fool of herself in Pittsburgh, a great city that remade itself after the decline of coal and steel into a center of high-tech medical research.  In this case, it could be argued, Palin was not just being a fool in her own right but was following a demagogic lead set by the man who appointed her as his running mate. Sen. John McCain has made repeated use of an anti-waste and anti-pork ad (several times repeated and elaborated in his increasingly witless speeches) in which the expenditure of $3 million to study the DNA of grizzly bears in Montana was derided as "unbelievable." As an excellent article in the Feb. 8, 2008, Scientific American pointed out, there is no way to enforce the Endangered Species Act without getting some sort of estimate of numbers, and the best way of tracking and tracing the elusive grizzly is by setting up barbed-wire hair-snagging stations that painlessly take samples from the bears as they lumber by and then running the DNA samples through a laboratory. The cost is almost trivial compared with the importance of understanding this species, and I dare say the project will yield results in the measurement of other animal populations as well, but all McCain could do was be flippant and say that he wondered whether it was a "paternity" or "criminal" issue that the Fish and Wildlife Service was investigating. (Perhaps those really are the only things that he associates in his mind with DNA.)  With Palin, however, the contempt for science may be something a little more sinister than the bluff, empty-headed plain-man's philistinism of McCain. We never get a chance to ask her in detail about these things, but she is known to favor the teaching of creationism in schools (smuggling this crazy idea through customs in the innocent disguise of "teaching the argument," as if there was an argument), and so it is at least probable that she believes all creatures from humans to fruit flies were created just as they are now. This would make DNA or any other kind of research pointless, whether conducted in Paris or not. Projects such as sequencing the DNA of the flu virus, the better to inoculate against it, would not need to be funded. We could all expire happily in the name of God. Gov. Palin also says that she doesn't think humans are responsible for global warming; again, one would like to ask her whether, like some of her co-religionists, she is a "premillenial dispensationalist"—in other words, someone who believes that there is no point in protecting and preserving the natural world, since the end of days will soon be upon us.  Videos taken in the Assembly of God church in Wasilla, Alaska, which she used to attend, show her nodding as a preacher says that Alaska will be "one of the refuge states in the Last Days." For the uninitiated, this is a reference to a crackpot belief, widely held among those who brood on the "End Times," that some parts of the world will end at different times from others, and Alaska will be a big draw as the heavens darken on account of its wide open spaces. An article by Laurie Goodstein in the New York Times gives further gruesome details of the extreme Pentecostalism with which Palin has been associated in the past (perhaps moderating herself, at least in public, as a political career became more attractive). High points, also available on YouTube, show her being "anointed" by an African bishop who claims to cast out witches. The term used in the trade for this hysterical superstitious nonsense is "spiritual warfare," in which true Christian soldiers are trained to fight demons. Palin has spoken at "spiritual warfare" events as recently as June. And only last week the chiller from Wasilla spoke of "prayer warriors" in a radio interview with James Dobson of Focus on the Family, who said that he and his lovely wife, Shirley, had convened a prayer meeting to beseech that "God's perfect will be done on Nov. 4."  This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity. Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author of God Is Not Great.  Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2203120/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaterpillarScheme Posted October 28, 2008 Share Posted October 28, 2008 (edited) Â Holy shit, Kablam!! Prometheus and Bob... Action League Now... Sniz and Fondue! Â Â Â Â Â What an obscure memory this is... It feels super familiar and really weird at the same time Edited October 28, 2008 by CaterpillarScheme Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The NZA Posted October 28, 2008 Author Share Posted October 28, 2008 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jables Posted October 28, 2008 Share Posted October 28, 2008 Â Yeah I don't even know what strip that's from, anyways. The Deep Crow one is cooler anyways. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CaterpillarScheme Posted October 28, 2008 Share Posted October 28, 2008 And it looks like she's grown into her eyes too. Â Yeah, she no longer looks like a muppet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jables Posted October 28, 2008 Share Posted October 28, 2008 I missed the chance to introduce you kids to MachineGun Fellatio while you were here. Â Â Also, Â Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The NZA Posted October 28, 2008 Author Share Posted October 28, 2008 FACT: Dr Seuss created Patapons. Â Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The NZA Posted October 28, 2008 Author Share Posted October 28, 2008 no love for journey at the center of the earth? that's unpossible! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jables Posted October 28, 2008 Share Posted October 28, 2008 Heh. I watched that last night, was arright. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The NZA Posted October 29, 2008 Author Share Posted October 29, 2008 ...and now for something completely different. Â Â this is how CAD ends. Â Â Â ...that will be all. Â Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the division of joy Posted October 29, 2008 Share Posted October 29, 2008 MGS 4 is full of win. As is the new Tiger woods... And farcry 2... Â Fable 2 on the other hand, i bite my thumb at thee! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jables Posted October 29, 2008 Share Posted October 29, 2008 ...and now for something completely different. Â Â this is how CAD ends. Â Â Â ...that will be all. Â Â Is that ending to CAD for real? 'Cause y'know, you'd think making light of abortion'd ne enough. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
the division of joy Posted October 30, 2008 Share Posted October 30, 2008 in this time of changing names, i feel disillusioned with hondos.. Â Yiz are all cunts! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The NZA Posted October 30, 2008 Author Share Posted October 30, 2008 good halloween costumes. Â Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MetalHeart Posted November 1, 2008 Share Posted November 1, 2008 I'm drunk! and for the first time it's off beer! Woah! I'm so excited and surprised! I really lost my faith in beer for while. Or at leat my faitn in getting me drunk. But um, yeah! Very excitez. Totes awes. and shit. Â I miss you guys! Love you all. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HypnotizinChikns Posted November 1, 2008 Share Posted November 1, 2008 The veiw. Â http://current.com/items/89471111_target_women_the_view Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aartemys Posted November 1, 2008 Share Posted November 1, 2008 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
La Lindsay Posted November 2, 2008 Share Posted November 2, 2008 (edited) Â who's dancing in the endzone now, bitches!! Edited November 2, 2008 by La Lindsay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The NZA Posted November 2, 2008 Author Share Posted November 2, 2008 this...this is the future of my living room, right here. Â Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newtype Posted November 3, 2008 Share Posted November 3, 2008 DON'T FORGET THAT THIS FRIDAY IS THE CHRISTMAS IN NOVEMBER. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newtype Posted November 3, 2008 Share Posted November 3, 2008 this...this is the future of my living room, right here.   Is Kertins planning on buying the rest for you? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jables Posted November 3, 2008 Share Posted November 3, 2008 Say what you will, but that sexy, sexy bass is only balanced out by that terrible whack-a-mole Konami drumkit. DON'T FORGET THAT THIS FRIDAY IS THE CHRISTMAS IN NOVEMBER.My guess is it's your birthday. ANd when I pitched 'Christmas in October' to all my friends, I made special point not to include anyone who might read PA so as not to be accused of plaguarism. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newtype Posted November 3, 2008 Share Posted November 3, 2008 To bad the GH:WT drums don't work very well. Â Only you or Nick would get that Christmas joke. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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