Up a bit later than usual perusing the web as it's not a "school night". Found this hilarity.

( GNR Isn't A Pepper, Too... LMAO )

The GOP ticket's appalling contempt for knowledge and learning.

Christopher HitchensPosted 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.)



-Christopher Hitchens 

 

 

Happy All Hallow's Eve, All Soul's Day, All Saint's Day, Halloween, Día de los Muertos, or what have you to all.  That Movies and Music performance was an astoundingly fun. I guess that's what I get for not having played one in a year's time.  Cheers.   C.

EPA Dumps Yazoo Pumps

On September 2nd, the EPA took the final step to veto the Yazoo Pumps Project, an antiquated Army Corps of Engineers project that would have destroyed over 200,000 acres of wetlands in Mississippi, including habitat for the endangered Louisiana black bear. This is
only the 13th time in history that the EPA has used their veto power to protect wetlands.



Whoot!

http://healthygulf.org/

The "classmates" message below was written by a Bryn Mawr grad who lives in Alaska and was forwarded to me by a friend of the recipient.

(...And so on...)


 Dear  classmates,

As an Alaskan, I am writing to  give all of you some information on Sarah Palin, Senator McCain's  choice for VP. As an Alaska voter, I know more than most of you about  her and, frankly, I am horrified  that he picked her .  
 

The most accurate description of her is red neck. Her husband works in the oil fields of Prudhoe Bay and races snow mobiles. She is a  life time member of the NRA and has worked tirelessly to allow indiscriminate hunting of wildlife in Alaska, particularly  wolves  and bears. She has spent millions of Alaska state dollars on  aerial hunting of these predators from helicopters and airplanes,  dollars   that should have been spent, for example, on Alaska's failing  school system. We have the lowest rate of high school graduation in  the country. Not all of you may think aerial predator hunting is so bad,
but how anyone (other than Alaska wolf-haters, of which there  are many, most without teeth), could think this use of funds  is appropriate is beyond me. If you want to know more about the  aerial hunting travesty, let me know and I will send some links  to informative web sites.

 She has been a strong supporter of increased use of fossil fuels, yet the McCain campaign has the nerve to say she has "green"  policies. The only thing green about Sarah Palin is her lack of  experience. She  has consistently supported drilling in ANWR, use of  coal-burning power plants (as I write this, a new coal plant is being  built in her   home town of Wasilla), strip mining, and almost anything  else that will unnecessarily exploit the diminishing resources of  Alaska and
destroy its environment.
 
Prior to her one year as governor of Alaska, she was mayor of Wasilla, a small red neck town outside Anchorage. The average maximum  education level of parents of junior high school kids in Wasilla is 10th grade.
Unfortunately, I have to go to Wasilla every week to get  groceries  and other supplies, so I have continual interaction with the  people who   put Palin in office in the first place. I know what I'm  talking about.  These people don't have a concept of the world around  them or of   the serious issues facing the US. Furthermore, they don't  care. So long
as they can go out and hunt their moose every fall,  kill wolves and  bears and drive their snow mobiles and ATVs through  every corner of the  wilderness, they're happy. I wish I were  exaggerating.
 
Sarah Palin is currently involved in a political corruption scandal. She fired an individual in law enforcement here because she  didn't like how he treated one of her relatives during a divorce. The  man's performance and ability weren't considered; it was a totally  personal firing and is currently under investigation. While the issue  isn't close to the scandal of Ted Steven's corruption, it shows that Palin isn't "squeaky clean" and causes me to think there may be more issues
that could come to light. Clearly McCain doesn't care.

 
When you line Palin up with Biden, the comparison would be laughable if it weren't so serious. Sarah Palin knows nothing of  economics (admittedly a weak area for McCain), or of international  affairs, knows nothing of national government, Social Security, unemployment, health care systems - you name it. The idea of her  meeting with   heads of foreign governments around the world truly  frightens me. In an increasingly dangerous world, with the economy in shambles
in the US, Sarah Palin is uniquely UNqualified to be vice president.
John McCain is not a young man. Should something happen to him such that the vice president had to step in, it would destroy our country  and possibly the world to have someone as inexperienced and inappropriate as Sarah Palin. The choice of Palin is a cheap  shot by  McCain to try to get Hillary supporters to vote for him. when McCain  introduced
her today, Palin had the nerve to compare herself with  Hillary and Geraldine Ferraro. Sarah Palin, you are no Hillary  Clinton.

To those of you who, like me, supported Hillary and were upset that she did not get the nomination, please don't think that Sarah Palin  is a worthy substitute. If you supported Hillary, regardless of what  you think the media and the Democratic party may have done to  undermine her campaign, the person to support now is Obama, not Sarah  Palin.
To those of you who are independent or undecided, don't let  the choice of Palin sway you in favor of McCain. Choosing her shows  how unqualified McCain is to be president. To those of you who are  conservative, I guess you have no choice for president. But please  try to see how the poor choice of Palin tells us a great deal about  McCain's judgment.
 While the political posturing inherent in the  choice of Palin is obvious, the more serious issue is the fact that  the VP is,
literally, a heartbeat away from the presidency. Sarah  Palin is totally and unequivocally unqualified to be vice president,  let alone president.
 
I know this is a lengthy and emotional email, but the stakes are high. I thought it might help for all of you, regardless of  political affiliation, to know something about Palin from someone who has to live with her administration in Alaska on a daily basis.  

Jackie  S.

Not sure if you saw the news, but earlier this week GRN worked with filmmaker Walter Williams and his character Mr. Bill to say Shell Nooooo! and demand that Shell Oil pay to rebuild the wetlands they have destroyed.

Louisiana loses about a football field worth of our coastal defenses every 45 minutes. Did you know that Shell takes in about $2.3 million in profit in the same amount of time?

The current estimate of the cost to fix our coast and secure our communities is $50 billion. Taxpayers can't and shouldn't shoulder that burden alone. Coastal scientists estimate that oil companies have caused 40-60% of the coastal land loss Louisiana is experiencing.

While all the oil companies that have operated in the Louisiana coast have contributed to the problem, Shell has publicly expressed concern over the future of our coast, going so far as to help fund a public relations campaign to tell the rest of the country about our coastal crisis. Unfortunately, that PR effort fails to mention the oil companies' role in the devastating wetland loss we're experiencing. Louisiana will likely need a lot more resources than the federal taxpayers will contribute, so tell Shell to put their money where their mouth is and fix the problem they played a major part in creating:

http://action.healthygulf.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=24446

As if you need other reasons to boycott their product

The Gulf Restoration Network is a diverse network of local, regional, and national groups and individuals dedicated to protecting and restoring the valuable resources of the Gulf of Mexico.

www.healthygulf.org.

Feeling a ton better as of last night and today. The packing up process has been going so well. It's quite a relief to just accept the first defeat and move forward.
Everything has been moving so even and smooth

since I've decided to make a 90° turn.
It's funny how things can run in your favor so suddenly if you give yourself other options. Stop trying so damn hard to scale the brick wall and instead walk around it.
I no longer feel irrational worries as often. There's a huge fee for breaking the lease here and I have no intention of paying it. Hence the gentleman's sport references before.

Seattle is a place I might have enjoyed at some other hardline phase of my life. For instance, when I was okay with forging metal all day to create a vision of what I required in the world... maybe. It's a place that never seems to culminate greatness. Just sort of mediocre at best. I feel like I've already partook in a large majority of what's here in less than 6 months time. And yet even in knowing that the place isn't as important or even relevant to what the person and his or her actions dictate an experience be... I know this just hasn't been right for me. If you plucked any ol' Louisiana city out of the lower south and replaced Seattle with it; nestle it right down here within the Cascade Mountains - well you'd have one damn fine city indeed. The greatness that is here is the picturesque quality that exists. The rocky, barnacle beaches, the greenery, the bike lanes carved throughout. There are many things here I can't even articulate that bug me though - a consistent set of experiences I've tried to brush off and look ahead rather than behind me - yet they return.
I must leave before i become something I don't want to be. I am very centered in myself right now as I was before I left La. I don't want to take that for granted and let any vision I have slip away. Things are within me that I cannot envision in Seattle; that I'd never be able to conceive of here. It's intuitive. It's just not right. It's easy to recognize.


"Well, it started out just like a dream And like a dream I knew that what we had Would have to end." - Jim Croce