of the VatulBlog RSS broadcast system, which has been a bit wonky of late.
If you see this post in your feedreader or don’t, please let me know in the comments’ section.
Nothing is going to significantly change in America in the next two years, ok?
I’m a football fan, remember? The gridiron gridlock. I can already feel it.
This is why I don’t care what happened last night as long as funding cuts to education are not carried out and science classrooms remain sacrosanct and supported at the state and local levels. Look, here’s what it comes down to:
You cannot have it both ways. You want sustainable and meaningful jobs that put us back on the path to American exceptionalism? Then don’t support the hatemongers who say evolution = liberalism, even and especially if they’re in your camp. It’s not meaningless noise; that drivel eventually trickles up, it hardens into policy and our country suffers. You want oil and gas for business and transportation preferably from this nation’s natural resources and strong research into energy alternatives? Then do not consort with those who equate faith and scientific inquiry when needlessly miscalculating the age of the earth just so your party wins elections. Don’t put them in a position to dictate terms to you.
Critical thinkers are the true salvation of this nation, not blind adherents to religion and ideology disguised as fiscal conservatives. So, in the name of our near-term and long-term future, don’t use the next two years to throw the baby out with the Bush-Obama bailouts or whatever it is that angers you TODAY. Religion has no business driving state matters just as much as the state should stay out of religious affairs. Let’s keep it that way.
We“re now on our final week of the Science Bloggers for Students donation drive. Help me move America forward, help us all do something truly positive by donating to impoverished classrooms this week. By the time they reach high school, many of our kids have never even seen a microscope, hand lens or chemistry set, while elementary school students in Spain, India and China learn physics and biology and world history. Yesterday, I received this note from a science teacher in a high-poverty Baltimore classroom:
Awesome! You guys ROCK!!!! I am so looking forward to getting these supplies in my room and teaching earth science like it should be! We are going to have pictures of all the experiments and investigations I have planned with these materials. Thank you again for being there for science teachers that want … no, REQUIRE, all the opportunities that our children need to be successful in their future endeavors!
This right here is what sets us apart from the apes in the trees, not the electoral hand-wringing and poo-flinging. Enough despair. This is part of the plan. Get on it.
The costumes. This is why you have to go vote today. So I stop inflicting these nerdy, quadruple-entendre getups on you.
The sad part is D’s costume didn’t take all that much effort and HE got high fives and “Duuuuude” all day long, while people came up to me and said, “What are you?” (or yelled “Love the hat! What are you?”) If I have to explain this nation’s love-hate relationship with Louisiana and its fuel sources as well as the (most recent and arguably) worst environmental disaster in US history to a bunch of folks attending the Stewart-Colbert Rally For Sanity, we’re in a lot more trouble than people not getting my costume.
The last time I was in Washington D.C., neither was I an American citizen nor was the geology section of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History open. Double whammy. To make up for it, Saturday saw The Dude and me on the National Mall, with me dressed as a cross section of Southern Louisiana. Done and done.
You can smell the power, security, wealth and sense of entitlement in Washington D.C. the moment you cross over from Maryland.
And we have given them that.
We continue to give them the two stifling parties, the House, the Senate, the courts, the executive order, the guns, the lobbyists and all the tools with which to increasingly strip away our power and ability to thrive.
Meanwhile, we scrounge and our future is dying in wars to protect our “freedom.”
We argue about another battle, a pantomime between the forces of Public and Private when they are all in bed together, with everyone getting kickbacks. It is all about a few people making all the money and placating the masses with fractions of scraps, enough to keep us at bay.
We talk about protest, but this country has no culture of meaningful, bring-the-system-to-its-knees revolt and the power structure knows that we may bark a little but will really do anything to prolong a system that benefits us now, who cares what lies down the road.
We worry very well over whether President Obama should be a crafy politician or a wise statesman, when he should be what and why he is one or both at the wrong time. All this while our country moves to the right and the choice we are increasingly forced to make is not between liberals and conservatives but zero-sum business interests and crazy wingnuts with zero-sum business interests.
We force ourselves into ridiculous categories and then try to break free.
They have us where they want us. We are utterly and totally fraked.
So bitching about Jon Stewart telling us not to bitch is much like complaining that the bars of our jail cell are plated in silver and not 24-karat gold (which is admittedly more malleable, but …). All while what you could read from what the man has to say is to stay calm and sane, and not dig ourselves deeper into a pit of nonsense, in order to get the hell out of here.
What he’s telling us is not to turn into that which we hate the most in order to win the false war. Actually, what he was telling us not many of us could hear because of the crappy PA system that only amplified the music, so we simply blissed out to a beautiful day on the Mall surrounded by others in costume with whom you could make actual decent conversation and not have it turn into a shouting match. It was about the crowd.
As of today, I am no longer a second-amendment liberal or a Democrat but an American scientist who votes for candidates that really want to take us forward. And, no, I’m not running for anything other than queen of my side of the bed. I like my sanity.
