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JISHOU, HUNAN — You win some, you lose some.
In the nifty cool corner, we have NASA scientists discovering a strain of bacteria that actually likes arsenic so much to incorporate it in their DNA. No word yet on their reactions to old lace. Or elderberry wine.
In the dunce-cap corner, we have Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear crowing that the Commonwealth is giving millions of dollars in tax breaks to a Noah’s Ark-themed (as in religious) amusement part.
The first bit of news is exciting, because until this week biologists believed all life on Earth is based only on CHONPS (carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur). Now we know some bacteria can live on CHONAsS. (I can just hear the jokes in high school biology classes now …)
Phosphorous and arsenic are neighbors in the periodic table, with similar chemical properties. It’s what makes arsenic (As) poisonous. Our cells grab hold of the arsenic, thinking it’s phosphorus, but, alas, it’s just different enough that it kills us.
These bacteria, found in an arsenic-laden lake in California could care less. Arsenic, shmarsenic.
Chances are, they were not aboard the Ark with Noah’s kin and all those animals. Genesis says nothing about bacteria, and given the lack of microscopes back then, it’s doubtful Noah could find any, much less identify them. (Unless God gave him microscopic vision. And why are Clark and Jo Nah checking each other out, and not the comely Lana Lang? Hmm.)
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JISHOU, HUNAN — We’ll see how that Rand-y Paul-y thing is working out for ya.
At least, 56% for Rand Paul and 44% for Jack Conway is not the overwhelming landslide Paul had been hoping for, but it does put him in the Senate. Keep on eye on him, to see which way he votes. Will Mr Tea Party abandon his populist, libertarian platform and play with the big boys like Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), or will he stick to his guns and be the maverick-y kind of guy he said he was during his campaign?
On the bright side, some other Tea Party candidates, like Sharron Angle in Nevada and Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, failed in their election bids by closer margins than the Paul-Conway split. This tells me there are lot of other crazy people in Nevada and Delaware beside Angle and O’Donnell, but at least they haven’t taken over yet.
Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) kept his seat. No big surprise.
And big spender Margaret Whitman failed (54% for former Gov. Jerry Brown to her 41% ) to buy her way into win the governorship of California.
So it’s a mixed bag. It should make for an interesting end to Obama’s (perhaps first) term in the White House. Maybe the Senate will play with him, but the House will be a free-for-all.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — Yeah, I’m several thousand miles away from my polling place in Floyd County, Indiana, but I still voted. So, you’d better not have lame excuse about not being to get your butt out to vote. Just sayin’.
I’ve been watching the political polls closely for the races in Indiana and Kentucky (and California, for entirely different reasons), and I’m worried.
Let’s say you’re dissatisfied with the Obama administration. I know I am, and I voted for the guy. But look it at this, most of Obama’s problems in getting the things done that he promised to get done have originated in the Party of No — the Republicans. It makes no difference what Obama proposes, the GOP will just say no. Bipartisanship has been officially dead in Washington for so long I’ve forgotten when Democrats and Republicans actually worked together on something to benefit the entire nation, and not just their own party’s chances of re-election.
So, you’re disappointed with Obama. Voting for a Republican will only make Obama’s job even harder, since none of the Repubs running for office have even remotely suggested they will work with the Democrats, only against them. Choosing a Democrat may have the same effect, but at least there’s a chance the newly elected Dem will stick with his party.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — Hello, Carnival readers! Welcome to my little neck of the virtual woods, coming from you live from “Godless” China. I blog here about teaching English as a Second Language, but also about living in the Middle Kingdom, church-state relations, religious hypocrisy, free speech matters relating to students and teachers, science, and pretty much anything else that pops into my head.
Please take a look around my space here, in between reading these great submissions to the current edition of Carnival of the Godless.
The Postman at “Gone Fishin’: Postcards From God” delivers a heartfelt letter from Gawd to His/Her/Their/Its peeps in “Dear People of the Book.” Gawd has not improved His/Her/Their/Its writing style much in the last 2000 years, since this letter is every bit as confusing and self-contradictory as the Book itself. Perhaps there’s a lesson there for us.
(By the way, judging from His/Her/Their/Its blogroll, I think Gawd lives in Kentucky now. This explains a lot about the Bluegrass State’s politics – confusing and self-contradictory. But I digress.)
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JISHOU, HUNAN — The USA now is just like the Roman Empire before it collapsed, says Rand Paul, GOP nominee for Senator from Kentucky.
Wrong.
Here’s what he said to a Tea Party crowd in Shepherdsville:
"In the latter days of Rome, the economy was crumbling, the emperor ... would placate the mob with bread and circus -- food and entertainment to placate them since the economy was in shambles and dwindling around them," Paul told several hundred people gathered for the rally in a Bullitt County park.
"Now in our country, as our economy is in shambles, they give us Cash for Clunkers and a stimulus check and they tell us to go to the mall and spend your money and everything will be OK ... That's not how you become prosperous as an individual or a country," he told the crowd of supporters.
And the crowd cheered wildly, I’m sure. (“Yay! The USA is falling apart. Yay! Let’s go to Shoney’s afterward to browse the salad bar!”)
Comparing the USA to the declining Roman Empire is as sensible as equating President Obama to Adolph Hitler, the latter of which right wingers (like Glenn Beck) seem to do on a daily basis anyway.
Paul is partly right, the economy of the Western Roman Empire was in the crapper, but he conveniently skipped the reasons. (This is assuming he and his audience know anything about history, which I suspect is not the case.)
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JISHOU, HUNAN — OK, maybe that’s a bit harsh, but his political ideas are trash.
A blog criticizing Paul’s brand of politics has been simmering in my brain ever since he got the GOP Senate nomination in Kentucky last month, but it all gelled today when I read Paul wants to amend the Constitution so that children born on US soil do not automatically become US citizens.
Normally I avoid discussing politics on this blog, because there are so many political blogs that do a much better job, but this Paul guy is a definite nutjob. Don’t vote for him. Please.
So, we have this so-called problem with illegal immigrants. Apparently they are stealing all those cool jobs from all those legal Americans lining up to work 18-hour days for less than $5.25 an hour with no benefits and no paid vacations (or vacations at all). Paul’s solution is to rewrite the Constitution to remove a “loophole” in immigration law.
Because the first thought of pregnant immigrant women is to risk life and limb to sneak into the USA to get low-paying, backbreaking work and coincidentally have their babies.
Because the best way to get rid of annoying mosquitoes is to shoot them with a rocket launcher.
I’m serious. Amending the Constitution is big-time stuff. It’s intended to be a difficult task: we don’t want politicians mucking around with the very foundation of the US political system on a whim. The framers of the Constitution were wise; they knew politicians can seriously fuck things up given half a chance. Take health care reform, for example.
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JISHOU, HUNAN — So, it goes like this. A high school football coach loaded 20 of his players on a school bus, and took them to his church, where several of them were baptized while the school superintendent watched.
There were just two little problems with this trip. One, not all the kid’s parents signed off on this trip. Two, the kids go to a public school, so the coach and his superintendent more than likely violated federal law (like the Constitution).
Except they don’t see it that way, because the trip was “voluntary.”
Predictably, the high school is smack dab in the Bible Belt, in western Kentucky.
Here’s a little cultural background about western Kentucky, which Coach Scott Mooney and Superintendent Janet Meeks should have already known. Back in Kentucky’s early years, there were two main religious groups, the Baptists and the Catholics. When I lived in western Kentucky, my friends told me about the stories they heard about the “other” people, how Baptists almost drowned their young or Catholics go drunk during services.
Suffice it say, the two groups did not exactly trust each other, for a long time.
So, for Mooney and Meeks to so blithely whisk away 20 teenagers to their Southern Baptist church for a revival, a free steak dinner, and coincidentally to have some of them baptized either indicates the two are stupid or playing some dominionist games.
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