Bushisms

People have made fun of Bush for nearly a decade for his inarticulate speech and lack of diction. I'm sure somebody has addressed the issue of why he is the way he is, but I haven't seen it.

18th century rhetorical theorist Hugh Blair says, "Speech is the great instrument by which man becomes beneficial to man: and it is to this intercourse and transmission of thought, by means of speech, that we are chiefly indebted for the improvement of thought itself."

He's saying that speech and the ability to use it to take a thought from my head and put it in your head is responsible for nearly all advances in everything from culture, to science, to technology. But more fundamentally, the ability of reason itself stems from our ability to transmit thoughts and ideas, not just to each other, our contemporaries, but to people who will come later.

It is the fact that we have all of this combined knowledge from all of those people who lived before us that we are able to do all of the things that we are able to do today. Communication is the key, in other words, to everything.

So, where do bad communicators come from? How come there are so many today? I'm talking about boring, uninspiring speakers who don't give people anything useful. Bush, Kerry, Obama, Clinton, uh...Paul, etc etc. They are terrible speakers who give their hearers nothing but canned stump speeches that have been tested before focus groups, and pushed forcefully through speech writing mills, basically, in an effort to--in their mind--distill the essence of whatever truth it is that they are trying to transmit.

Whether you believe that Bush is deliberately trying to pull the wool over the eyes of America is beside the point here. Whether Bush is deliberately playing dumb to appeal to dumb people, is not on the chopping block for this particular tirade. What's really important is the fact that Bush is boring. The only emotions he can inspire in the people of America are fear and anger. And he's losing the knack for the former.

But why?

A poll during one of the past elections (I can't remember which one, nor do I care) revealed that Bush Jr. was the candidate that the electorate would most like to sit down and have a beer with. The Onion parodied this very nicely back in 2005. The article smacks of truth. The perception that Bush is "just like me," is what got the fucker elected in the first place. Right?

Now, why in all of the universe, would you want a president who was just like you? Think about it. Look at yourself. You're flawed. You've got problems. You make mistakes. You're not as smart, attractive, ambitious, talented, friendly, or decent as you wish you were. You're not as good a Christian as you think you should be. You're not as hard a worker as the guy in the next cubicle. Bush is not those things too! In fact, in all reality, you are probably smarter, more attractive, more talented, much more friendly...though probably not more ambitious, than our current commander in chief.

So why is this? Why elect this guy?

I think I have a theory, and it's about who the president is trying to appeal to. It's not the whole story, but it's part of it. The reason the founders of this country were so eloquent has everything to do with the fact that they were a) all educated and b) only hung out with a bunch of other people who were very educated. They didn't hang out with people who were "just like me." They never had to deal with people like us. They never had to appeal to us. Just the opposite, in fact. They constantly had to make sure that their proverbial asses were covered--logically speaking. These people would tear you a new one if you weren't completely sure of what you were talking about. These people were all well versed in the art of rhetoric. They knew how to persuade intelligent people. If you can persuade a smart person, then the rest of the country, the cattle, are easy.

Today, partly because nobody has an attention span long enough to listen to an entire speech--and for this reason, I'm reasonably certain that no one will read this entire post--and partly because these candidates have to appeal to the masses, the stupid, moronic, uneducated masses, there is a unilateral lowering of the bar to meet that standard.

If you use a word like "defenestrate," as in "I would like to defenestrate the president," nobody will know what you're talking about. But if you say, "I would like to throw the president out of a window," then people will understand you. The diction is lower, even if the meaning is the same.

People are stupid, and our politicians are getting stupider to reflect that fact. And it's all your fault. Shame on you.

Venn Diagram

I never wanted it to go this far. I missed Countdown last Friday. But I found this. Now, maybe it's time to get angry, take up the political pen. It's downright frightening what this man is capable of. O'Relly, I mean.

One of my favorite articles by the infamous Maddox was this one. The title of the article says it all. Now, I don't think that Maddox is particularly great. I think his work is a little mis-directed, petty, and, while it all has excellent grammar, it isn't particularly insightful. He doesn't use his power for good, is what I'm saying. He's also devastatingly misogynistic. But to make the claim that Bill O'Reilly is a "big blubbering vagina," and have nearly two million people read it, is impressive to say the least.

The problem is that I think Maddox might actually be wrong. Papa Bear is not just a big blubbering vagina, he's a fucking monster. He calls J.K. Rowling a provocateur. Isn't this a case of the proverbial pot calling the proverbial kettle.... a provocateur?

Rowling, in the course of answering a casual question with a casual answer, "I always thought of Dumbledore as gay," has suddenly created a scandal. Now, in England, this is no big deal. No one probably cared. If they did, they'd be laughed at.

The bottom line is, Bill O'Reilly actually thinks--insofar as he thinks at all--that being tolerant of homosexuality is undesirable in America. Yeah. Seriously. He thinks that.

Dear readers, and friends, and anyone out there in cyberspace who enjoys a good laugh, some gentle satire, or, heaven forbid, the occasional act of sodomy, we need to do something about this. Now, the news directors at Fox News have distanced themselves from Bill O'Reilly, but he still has the ears of millions of Americans. When you have someone out there, who doesn't want to play nice, someone who is just downright mean, that person needs to be dealt with.

A boycott won't work--because anyone who would boycott that bastard already is. Murder is unethical--I repeat, don't kill him, we need him so we can study him. But there's gotta be something we can do.

Leave all suggestions in the comments section. I'm serious. He must be stopped.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck Vindicated

The image, stolen from Wikipedia is of one Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. He was a naturalist in the 19th century and was one of the earliest proponents of evolution. The difference between his theory and Darwin's was the idea of when changes or adaptations occurred. Lamarck believed that changes occurring during the life time of a given animal would be passed on to it's young. So basically, if you're a giraffe, and you're constantly stretching your neck to get at higher leaves, then your children will have longer necks because your neck got infinitesimally longer throughout your life.

It turns out that Lamarck wasn't totally wrong. He was just not right in the way he thought.

Nova is the single best science show in the history of mankind. I got into an argument with a friend the other day about the idea of epigenetics. He had never heard of it, though I had just watched Nova's new documentary, Ghost in Your Genes.

Here's the deal. DNA is the blueprint for an organism. That much is certain. But there has to be a mechanism built into our cells that interprets that DNA and decides which bits of it to use. This mechanism is what's responsible for things like cell differentiation. It's why eye cells are different from heart cells are different from liver cells. Different bits of the DNA are turned on in each different type of tissue in your body. Basically, if the DNA--the genome--is the blueprint, then methylation and chromatin remodelling--the epigenome (literally "above the genome")--is the architect that interprets it.

Okay, but the crazy thing is that, as it turns out, some of these epigenetic features--sometimes those acquired during your lifetime--appear to be transgenerational. That is: they are passed down from one generation to the next. Your bad eating habits, in other words, could affect whether your grandchild gets diabetes.

Yeah. Fucked up.

DNA is largely static. It doesn't change much. It is very, very good at duplicating itself with near impossible accuracy. But it appears that natural selection has a place for nurture. It's like a quicker version of evolution. It's evolution on the fly that happens in the short term (short meaning hundreds of years rather than thousands or millions). It won't make new species, but it will change the way species are affected by their environment.

There's a lot of really interesting research into this stuff, and you'd be hard pressed to find a more frantically researched aspect of genetics in this day and age. I mean, a few years ago, when they were scrambling to finish up the Human Genome Project, they thought that they were inches from the key to understanding everything. They were wrong, of course.

It seems like the deeper you burrow down the rabbit hole, the deeper it appears to be.

About the Election Bug

This is not a political blog.

I repeat: this is not a political blog.

That said, I'm planning on voting for Dennis Kucinich in the primaries. The reasons are varied, but most of them involve Obama being a pussy, Clinton being a...wussy, and everyone else being a cock biter.

Kucinich is not only the only candidate in the entire election who doesn't appear to base his stances on focus groups, but instead has the policy and voting record of..well...a person who isn't a fascist. He didn't vote for the Patriot Act. He wants to pull out of Iraq. That sort of thing. I don't like his stance on guns, but then, nobody's perfect.

But mostly, I want to vote for him, because he looks so damned much like a Vulcan.

Edit: I just googled "Kucinich is a Vulcan." Apparently, I'm not the first to make this observation. My favorite thing that I read was, "I just don't think America is ready for a Vulcan president."

Classic.

I'll have some humiliation with that.

The legal ramifications of using a Trademarked logo in an amateur blog notwithstanding, I want to talk today about McDonald's. Well, McDonald's and sex.

I don't know if you've heard about this, but it's a real doozy. The fact that the event--or events--has a Wikipedia page is telling. I mean, this is not small news.

And there are two very interesting things about the whole event. First of all, it is a smashing real-life reproduction of the Milgram Experiment. Basically, these store manager's have been duped into believing that whoever was on the other end of the line was an authority figure. I'm reiterating a lot of what was in the Wikipedia article, I know, but it's amzing that these morons let it go this far. Again, "Foot-in-the-door" effect notwithstanding, this is absurd! Not once, did the manager think anything that the caller requested was completely out of the realm of possibility for police procedure. Right down to forcing the poor girl to perform oral sex.

There are several layers of percieved authority here. First, there's the manager who doesn't question the guy on the phone--I wonder if it was on speaker phone--and then there was the girl who didn't question her manager, the guy who was fucking her face.

This is one of the hugest problems with modern society's obsessive need to be controlled. I don't know if I should be pissed off at the manager or the instigator for doing the things that they did, or the girl and the manager for allowing them to fucking do it. It's absurd.

It's a problem with perceived authority, and it's a problem with people who abuse that authority. It's the reason that most people should be mistrustful of cops or anyone who claims authority.

I have to hand it to the caller that he thought it through to the point where fast food restaurants would be his primary targets. Their rigid policy codes and whatnot makes it really hard for these lackeys--termed "managers"--to deal with anything out of the norm. They are easier to manipulate, not harder.

The other thing that I found remarkable about the whole story is how they caught the fucker. First, an employee dials *69, they find the pay phone that the guy used. The find the serial number of the calling card used. Traced the calling card to the store where it was sold--a Wal-Mart, no less--and then used the video surveillance tapes to find the sonofabitch himself.

How's that for Big Brother, huh? We don't need cameras in our houses, like Orwell thought. We just need them everywhere else.

On the plus side, the girl who was assaulted was awarded 6.1 million dollars for her trouble. Which just goes to prove, that you can still get rich while having your rights trampled and your self-respect shattered.

Superficial Sacrifice

As you may well know, technology is the illegitimate love child of science and human caprice. We live in an age when technology reigns supreme. Everything we do is steeped in technology in some way or another. We can't even wake up in the morning without some form of high tech gadgetry announcing it. I use my goddamned cellphone as an alarm clock for chrissake.

It always gives me a small sense of satisfaction when something like this pops up in the ether.

This is how truly enlightened people solve their problems. Animal sacrifice. Yes, it's making a comeback. Ever had computer problems? Of course you have. Solve it by slitting a chicken's throat and letting the blood run over your motherboard. That'll solve all of your problems. Once and for all.

Is animal sacrifice even legal in the US? I'm not sure, and I'm not going to bother finding out, because this is way too tantalizing a practice not to embrace. Why take your TV set to a repair shop, when you can cut out the science and go straight for the caprice? It worked for the ancients, why not us?

It's not about being irrational here, folks. It's about saying "Fuck You!" to the established rules of measure. It's about throwing the industrial revolution out the window and saying, I'm going to do this the old fashioned way. I am going to embrace my animalistic, violent tendencies.

Bear in mind, people, that the airline in question is state-run by the Nepalese government. There are engineers and mechanics and crazy Hindu priests all trying to get to the bottom of this 757's failure. All on the tab of the Nepalese taxpayer.

It's like Henry VIII saying, "Fuck you, Pope. I'm starting my own religion. And people will still believe it like four hundred years later." They are literally making shit up to solve a mechanical--easily rationalized and deducted--problem.

Way to go, Nepal. Way to stick it to science. Way to stick it to rationality. It's a bunch of garbage anyway.

Right?

Growing Pains

Here it is, dear friends and readers. Proof that there is a God. We can rest easy, we can sit back, crack a beer, and look down our noses at everyone who's going to hell, so long as we believe. Just click here.

Here's another chance, in case you didn't click the link. It's really worth it.

Wow. Amazing. You know what's more impressive than Ray's argument? Kirk Cameron, sitting there, staring up at him in wide-eyed admiration.

You know who buys this argument? Kirk Motherfucking Cameron. That's who. Booyaa, bitches.

Kirk's actually been doing this for years, but only now have I taken the time to research his involvement in the big ad campaign in the sky. Kirk and Ray have a website. It's really awesome. That's right, wayofthemaster.com. First, I'd like to point out that it's not a ".org" website. This is a for profit venture, apparently. Now that's all well and good. I'm all about people making money off of other people's insecurities, but these guys are pros! Use a washed up teen idol to sell God! Brilliant!

The website itself is awesome. There's all sorts of good entertainment to be had, and I'm sure you'll all be converted and realize what horrible sinners you've all been and find Jesus, but I want to talk a little bit about the youtube video first.

First of all, let's look at the atheist's worst nightmare: The banana. Yup. You can say it. Holy shit. Yeah, who knew that atheists routinely have horrifying dreams about bananas sending them to hell?

But what's Ray actually saying in the above video clip? He's saying that the banana is an ideal food source almost like it was perfectly designed so we humans could eat it with minimal fuss. It's evidence, he says, of intelligent design. Well, actually Ray is saying it's proof. A crucial distinction. Are we talking about a preponderance of evidence to prove the existence of God? Or are we talking about clinching proof? I'll let you decide that one.

Also, I don't know if you know this, but there's a name for this argument, this intelligent design argument. It's called the Teleological Argument. And it's not new. Kirk is really good at making it seem like this is this new revolutionary idea. But, the first person we know about who put forth a teleological argument was Plato. Who's that you say? Look it up. Yeah, it's that old.

Also, it's pretty convincing. First of all, it can't be disproven easily because it's inductive rather than deductive. Also, it's being pushed by Kirk Cameron, who is so damned earnest.

Here's something else that's cool on wayofthemaster.com. It's a letter from an atheist. Fine, whatever. But I found it under the "Free Tools" tab on the site. But what does this page on the site do? It peddles a book of correspondence between Ray and said atheist. That's fucking amazing!

"Hi kids, I'm Kirk Cameron. I am going to give you something. A tantalizing taste of a battle between the intellectual giants that are Ray Comfort and James The Atheist. But I'm not going to just give you the whole thing. You've gotta pay me money for the whole shebang."

I'm not trying to ridicule Kirk Cameron folks. Far from it. I am lauding the guy as a goddamned genius. Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort--Comfort!--are following in the footsteps of all the great Jesus pushers. They have found a way to get rich off a guy who just wanted people to be nice to each other. Think of Cardinals, Popes, Crusaders, Priests, Televangelists, Ted Haggard, and Fred Phelps. These people are such good Christians that they have found a way to make money off it without besmirching the good name of Jesus Christ. And not only that, they have also managed to lead smashing careers as pederasts, idolaters, homosexuals, and bigots.

It's a sweet deal for those that can swing it, let me tell you. God bless them every one!

He was a fun guy.

This is my back yard. I am giving you this tantalizing view into my personal life in order to share with you something very special. The centerpiece of this image is an oak tree with a disease. The disease is down low, near the bottom. If you know what that is, then you know how vital and important a discovery it is.

If you don't know what it is, then you're asking me, "What the fuck is that brain thing on your tree, Doctor?"

That, my friends, is sulfur shelf. Laetiporus gilbertsonii. It is a highly coveted and much valued fungus among those in the know.

If you know what sulfur shelf is, then you're saying, "Aww, shit, man. Some dudes have all the luck." Just to piss you off more, I'm giving you a closeup

:

Tomorrow (after it has matured just a titch more) I am going to cut it off my diseased oak tree, I am going to cut the thing up into cubes, throw it into a big sauté pan with some butter, a little salt, and maybe a dash of garlic--not too much or it will overpower the natural goodness of the fungus.

It's called the "Chicken of the Forest." It has a texture similar to chicken and some say even a flavor somewhat like chicken, but this is subjective. Everything tastes like fucking chicken.

Finding sulfur shelf is almost as awesome as finding morels. I don't know if you've ever had morel mushrooms (if you're not from the northwoods, it's unlikely) but they are the most amazing thing that sprouts from rotting vegetation. I cook them in spaghetti sauce, or just fry 'em in butter.

The interesting thing about this whole thing is that the oak tree is, in fact, suffering from an incurable malady. The sulfur shelf fungus has bored deep into the wood of the tree and will bloom once a year into the shelf mushroom you see in the image. It is parasitic in a living tree (though they are often found on dead and rotting wood, where they facilitate the rotting process in a healthy way). This fungus could very well kill this tree in a few more years. Maybe longer. I'm by no means a fungologist. In the meantimme, every year, it will bloom one of these babies, and the inhabitant of the house--ideally me--will receive a tasty treat, well worth the suffering of the tree.

You want to know something else interesting about fungi? I thought you did. You see, the cell walls of most fungi are made of a chitin. Yes, that's right. Chitin. The stuff that forms the carapace of insects.

Fungi were once thought to be just plants with bad attitudes. Hell, most of them are poisonous. In fact, who knows if even the relationship between molds and mushrooms was well understood until fairly recently. No, fungi are not plants.

In fact, genetically, fungi are much closer to animals than plants. Much closer. Creepily close. Remember the chitin thing? Also, the feed on death and decay. Pause for shudder. The fact that some of them are amazingly delicious is beside the point. My oak tree is suffering so that I can have that delicious treat. I should be ashamed of myself. And so should you.

This video says what words cannot express. You can say it. Holy shit.

There goes the neighborhood.

Dear friends and readers, it is not often that I make mistakes. When I do, I pride myself on being able to do the right thing: act like I planned it all along.

I once made the claim that the coolest possible thing in the universe was the collision of two black holes. I was wrong, but for a very interesting reason. There are... in the universe...these things called Galaxies. I'm sure you've heard of them. In all likelihood, you live in one, or at least vacation in one.

The one I call home is called the Milky Way, named after the popular candy bar.

Far away--about 5 billion light-years....really, really, amazingly, flabbergastingly far away, in other words--four galaxies are currently colliding. Or...were colliding...about...er...5 billion years ago.

Yeah.

Crazy.

You can say it. Don't be ashamed. That's probably the coolest thing that could ever happen. Ever. Four galaxies crashing into each other. Together they are a mass ten times the size of our galaxy. Can you imagine the cataclysm? The carnage?

Imagine if you actually lived in CL0958+4702 about 5 billion years ago. The show would be amazing. Look up into the night sky and see a spectacular, pestilential, cataclysm beyond biblical proportions. Entire galaxies crashing into each other. There isn't a metaphor or analogy strong enough to compare it to because there's no event in all the fucking cosmos that even begins to compare to this spectacle!

The Milky Way crashing into Andromeda, in about 3 billion years or so, will be nothing, a fender-bender, a boring nothingth of a nothing on the Kuha Significance Scale TM. It's a shame, too.

It's exhausting to contemplate. Entire civilizations may have been destroyed. Populated planets decimated. Whole cultures wiped out with no one to mourn their loss.

Well, someone here mourns them. Someone sheds a single tear for all those amazing civilizations that got to die in the most momentous cosmic even in the history of the universe! You know who mourns them? I do, motherfuckers. I do.

It's a Miracle!

It's been a busy week in the world of science. A new Mars probe has been launched, which ought to clear up some big questions in about 300 days or so. Clearly this will serve a dual purpose. They say that they're trying to find evidence of life on the red planet, but scouting out viable sources of water on the planet would be another good use. Don't know if you've ever read Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert Heinlein. I haven't read it either, but I did read the first page last week and was surprised to find out that the minimum trip that a human from Earth could ever take to Mars would be somewhere in the neighborhood of three years.

The trek itself is like ten months. Then you've got to stay there for about a year for Earth's and Mars's orbits to sync up properly again, and then, of course, there's the return voyage. It'd be rough. You'd really get to know your ship buddies. The psychological turmoil would probably be fairly significance. you'd probably want to screen potential trekkers. Wouldn't want any psychotic episodes.

That would make a good suspense movie, though. A quirky crew of astronauts bound for Mars run into a bit of trouble when one of their own decides to stab someone in the throat with the straw he used for his freeze-dried meals. Messed up. Lots of blood. Can you imagine the scene if someone were to bleed out in zero-G? Holy crap would that be fucked! Just little droplets of blood floating, suspended grotesquely in your cramped little cabin of a spaceship.

In other science news: Parthenogensis! Holy, Mary, Mother of God! Jesus, titty-fucking Christ! And the most famous scandal-fucked Korean scientist of the last year discovered something maybe even cooler--and certainly more controversial--than stem cells. I'm sure you all remember Woo Suk Hwang (You Suck Wang?)

It'll change everything. Men, lock up your wives now, because the technology finally exists for them to reproduce without you! Fucked up, right? Soon, it will be just a matter of taking a "pregnant drug" and women will spontaneously give birth to genetically superior offspring. And without all that tedious mucking about with relationships.

"But Doctor!" all you men say, "Won't that leave us with more time to fish, hunt, and masturbate?"

Shaking my head sadly, I say unto you: once women don't need us to make babies with them, they don't need us at all. We're finished. We will no longer be a necessary half of the species. And if I were womenkind, I would have us eradicated. Women might make the claim that they'd keep us around for slave labor. Don't believe them. It's a trick. They're trying to get you to do slave labor. And we all know how fucking bullshit that is.

I think our only option is a preemptive strike, at the heart of the female empire. Um... someone capture Oprah and find out just where the hell that might be. Make it so!

P.S. You know what would have made the Nativity story cooler? If Mary had had eye lasers and Jesus had been born with all the powers of a Bene Gesserit.