Surprising maybe one catatonic person in outer Mongolia, political appointees won’t let the Park Service tell visitors the geologic age of the Grand Canyon. Apparently this controversial science known as geology conflicts with the unerring truth as-it-is-written in the Koran Bible.
Awhile back rightwingers reacted with outrage that I would paint George Deutsch, the anti-big bang jihadist at NASA, as an example of how the president staffs our government. Sadly, these retards truly are everywhere. Some are merely making life difficult for park rangers and confusing tourists. But like hungry squirrels released in a bomb silo others have found a way to screw up things that matter. I have only read portions of Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City (thanks to all of you who bought out the first printing) but I have seen enough to understand that our crucial early months of occupation ran on the same mix of naivete, inexperience and blind loyalty tests that fueled the appointment of underage nincompoops like Deutsch at NASA. If rebuilding Iraq is not too important to put experience before blind partisan loyalty then it is really, really hard to think of something that would make the cut.
Good luck to the next president in weeding out the George Deutsches and convincing professionals to come back. In the meantime we get to enjoy two more years of bright-eyed, ideologically pure squirrels in the wiring.
***Update***
Lots and lots of squirrels. via comments.
***Update 2***
The press release is bogus, according to this article in Skeptic magazine. Guess neither I nor they were skeptical enough the first time.
ThymeZone
They’re not?
Good Christ, that’s comedy gold. I don’t think any spoofer can ever top this Grand Canyon = Noah’s Flood thing.
capelza
It is unbelievable really except it actually is happening. And people tell me I am overreacting to the creeping religious takeover of this government.
Norris Alderson is still my favourite though. The *Veterinarian* that was briefly appointed to head the Office of Women’s Health of the FDA. That it fell so flat it couldn’t be ignored and they tried to deny he had been chosen is another story. This admin thought a veterinarian was sufficient for women.
Not to mention the new wingnut religious crackpot in charge of family planning in there now.
US Park Ranger
Noah’s Flood caused the Jameson-esque pink crack in the Earth, damn you. Nevermind that a flood wouldn’t, by its nature, wash large cracks in the Earth as much as drown poor Black people.
How dare you question the Bible, especially the part about Eve having two sons, so any offspring that followed had to be by Eve having sex with her sons. Incest is best. Just ask Missouri.
demimondian
Meh. This is all a tempest in a teapot. a drop in the ocean.
VidaLoca
If the George Deutsches were just “political appointees” it would be bad but they could be weeded out. But it’s even worse than that — a lot of these people have been co-opted into civil service positions which means that they’ll be the gift that keeps on giving long after Bush is gone.
Don McArthur
It’s a pervasive problem. The next time you see ‘journalist’ Kate O’Beirne pontificating on TV, remember that her husband is a White House appointee to the Pentagon. His job? He does religious litmus testing for contractors who want to grab some loot in Iraq, querying them as to their stand on abortion, etc.
So O’Beirne’s family income is dependent on keeping the White House happy. Hmmmm….
Steve
I keep trying to point out to my wife that if we think anti-science stories like this are ridiculous, then we need to be a little more accepting of the use of actual science to establish things like, you know, the safety of cloned meat.
However, I keep losing the argument. Naturally.
ThymeZone
Now you tell me.
Youth is indeed wasted on the young.
The Other Steve
The problem with the USDA argument is not the safety of cloned meat.
It’s the steady decline of biodiversity.
So now not only are we limited our meat production to one breed of cattle, we’re going to limit it down to one single representative DNA.
So if we find out later that cow that was chosen has a genetic problem which makes it susceptible to a disease and all the cows die.
Wow, I guess we’re just fucked then.
Davebo
I’d agree if that were the case, or even a part of the overall plan. But since it’s not, it’s sort of a mute point.
Zifnab
I’m confident there will be at least some degree of bio-diversity. At least as far as patient law will allow it. And this is more a problem for the meat industry than it is for the consumer. If the price of steak goes through the roof because all the cows in Montana just go belly up, then you just buy chicken, and Montana farmers learn not to play god with beefsteaks. If the chickens go belly up too, you start eating alot more beans and rudabega.
This is a classic example of where the government just needs to step back and let the market take care of itself. Organic vegetables are doing quite well. I’m confident someone will start releasing “Diversa-Beef: From Real Diverse Cows! Taste the Rainbow! (TM) ” and make a killing.
SeesThroughIt
* rimshot *
craigie
Uh, so to speak.
Steve
I’d argue that it’s more of a moo point. /Joey
dreggas
Willing to steak a claim on that?
Zifnab
I would, if you’d be willing to meat and shake on it.
dreggas
only if you don’t go and get some fancy lawyer to butcher the cash cow it could be.
Krista
Exsqueeze me? A veterinarian? Not that I don’t have high respect for vets, but that just really seems inappropriate.
demimondian
Yes, Krista, a veterinarian. You know, because women are just cows that drop calves and produce milk, after all.
Horrifying, isn’t it?
Andrew
It’s okay. It was a large animal specialist.
Andrew
Okay, sorry for that. I kid, I kid! Don’t beat me. Please.
Zifnab
Hehe. He just called you a fatty.
TenguPhule
Because you know they’d only make a hash of it.
TenguPhule
I may stew a little before I chuck-le at the ribbing.
TenguPhule
And what’s your beef with the obesity impaired?
Tsulagi
We have a government approved/endorsed/whatever book for sale at the Grand Canyon National Park saying the canyon was created by Noah’s flood apparently less than 6,000 years ago?
???????????
Kids going to school in short busses would laugh at these retards.
ThymeZone
This meat-based pun cascade?
It’s rare to find such good punnish humor around here. This isn’t a medium that encourages it.
It’s an A-1 way to get the New Year’s weekend under way.
Well, as they say, ‘Tis the Seasoning.
With that, I think you can say without a Chateubriand of a doubt, I’m well done. Oh, I’ve been called a pinko, if only in the middle, but that’s not the most juicy thing that’s ever been said about me.
Okay, off the other threads, I’m feeling lean.
And mean, but mostly lean.
Don’t like my jokes? Bite me.
TenguPhule
I agree it is rather rare, but the humor hasn’t completely bled out of here.
First we must ketchup to you from the flank, Chuck.
I fully expect to roast for this.
ThymeZone
You’re a gyro in my eyes.
automandc
Haven’t we been eating what are essentially cloned foods for at least 100s if not 1000s of years in the form of plants? Maybe a horticulturist or plant biologist can elaborate or correct, but don’t many agricultural practices result in genetic identity between “parent” and “child”?
I would be more worried about the “mad scientists” who are out there changing the cow (pig, chicken, rice, etc.) DNA to make “better” cows (etc.) — not the ones who like the cow(s) we have already, and think we should keep making more of the same….
Darrell
Ok libs, if you’re willing to accept putting the cross back on the LA County seal, then I think we should put the geology science back in the Grand Canyon parks dept. Fair enough? Removing one in the name of separation of church and state is just as extreme as removing the other in the name of Christianity.
TenguPhule
As long as I’ve carved out my piece and not been a jerky.
TenguPhule
Shorter Darrell: If you want your facts, you need to accept that Christianity owns ah juu!
ThymeZone
God, you’re fucking stupid.
How about if the Park Service sells a book that says that the canyon was dug by good fairies? Okay with you, Darrell?
TenguPhule
ThymeZone, this is Darrell you’re talking about. It’s redundant.
A pity that he decided to come and pee in this thread.
Binky
I’m a grad student in CompSci. As many of you can probably guess, a lot of my fellow students (order 50% or more) are from overseas and of that group, the vast majority are from China and India. They look at this stuff and they ask us US students “what the f*ck are you guys thinking?” They’re polite so they don’t laugh out loud; it comes across more as sympathetic than anything else. But I’d say, yeah, there’s a little bit of smugness there.
Hard to blame them, really.
Steve
Even Darrell agrees this is nuts. Thread over.
Incidentally, I sent the link to my friend the national park ranger, who seemed rather nonplussed. “Well, you never know what to say, you hate to offend anyone…” Indeed.
Zifnab
No need to worry. We’ll all be speaking Chinese in 50 years anyway. I, for one, choose to embrace our insect overlords.
Zifnab
Just don’t say “Happy Holidays.”
Binky
Zifnab,
I know you’re joking about this, and … what else can a person say?
I have to tell you, though — to sit around in some of the conversations I’ve sat through and try to explain how, yes, there really are people in the United States of America in the year 2006 who will pull their kids out of school and “home school” them to believe that the earth is 6000 years old and God put dinosaur bones in the earth to puzzle the scientists and Noah brought a couple of T.Rex’s along in the Ark and the Flood created the Grand Canyon — and it’s into the hands of these people that we’re going to entrust the last 100 years of scientific and technical expertise that we’ve built in this country…
It just sorta takes the wind out of a person’s sails, y’know?
Zifnab
I’m sure they’ll keep snickering right up until the Christian Wave sweeps right over the Middle Kingdom.
I can speak from personal experience about the FOB Baptist Churches in Houston filled to the brim with asians touched by the power of Jesus. I’m sure your classmates will get a rude awakening to exactly how bad the Evangelical Ignorance problem really can be once it takes hold.
ThymeZone
You can say that again.
You can say that again.
You can say that again.
etc.
Digital Amish
Christ on a crutch! Is there no thread safe from Darreliction.
CaseyL
One thing we’ve learned from the cloning done so far is that the offspring are not, in fact, absolutely identical to the original. Yes, you start with the same genes, but they still express differently. That’s why, for example, the cloned critters don’t have the same markings as the ‘parent.’ My question is, does this different expression result in functional variations, or just somatic ones?
Also, the problem of diversity isn’t confined to cloning. ‘1491’ and ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’ both posit that Native Americans were/are particularly susceptible to new diseases because they started out as a genetically small group and even a millenium of migration and selection didn’t result in enough genetic variation to withstand the influx of exotics. This is a huge, huge argument in favor of exogamy. And “purebred” anything – dogs, cats, cattle, humans, trees – is bound to be more vulnerable to genetic defects and exotic diseases.
Tsulagi
That’s funny.
We’ll get those godless commies! Can we send our Christian warriors (Dobson, Falwell, and PatR) there now? I’d pay for Dobson’s one-way airfare.
Fledermaus
“Incest is best”
Indeed, it is a game the whole family can enjoy.
ThymeZone
God, that was gold. Gold, I tell you.
Krista
I like to think that it was just sheer idiocy that prompted it, as opposed to that conscious train of thought, but then again, those bozos lost any right to the benefit of the doubt ages ago.
Andrew? Go piss up a stump, darling.
TZ:
That WAS nicely done…I actually had to think about it for a second, as we don’t have gyros here, so I had to remind myself how they were pronounced (we have donairs, which are pretty similar, but the sauce is different.)
ThymeZone
I think it might be my Sistine Chapel.
Well, except for the fact that I didn’t have to lie on my back on a scaffold 60 feet in the air all day for four years to create it.
But aside from that, definitely my Sistine Chapel.
demimondian
Indeed we have.
Three words: Irish Potato Famine.
TenguPhule
As long as it has the same taste, texture and nutrients I see nothing wrong with cloned meat, hell they could grow it in boneless masses in vats for all I care.
ThymeZone
Ah, then your wish is granted!
Darrell
I already stated that I think the Park rangers should be able to give their best geological estimate of when the GC was created. I only wanted to point out that your side is/was equally extreme in demanding that the cross be taken out of the LA county seal. I think it’s clear that you liberals have a blind spot to your own extremism, probably because you’re too busy pointing fingers at christians.
And since you bring it up regarding “unscientific” book sales in the park bookstore, I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen books in State and National parks on ghost hauntings and other legends pertaining to certain park sites.. I’m sure you’ve issued your strenous objections to the sale of those books too, right?
VidaLoca
Steve,
Evidently it’s official policy:
TenguPhule
Shorter Darrell: Fuck your seperation of Church and State
You can have your cross on it when I can have my Flying Spagetti Monster(tm) on it too.
Jonathan
Darrell: Actually liberals are pointing fingers at a small but very visible and vocal minority of fundamentalist Christians. Even the fundamentalist Christians are mostly fairly reasonable people who accept the fact that the Earth is billions of years old. The “young Earth” fundamentalists are a relatively small subset of all fundamentalists.
Many Christians are themselves liberal, despite the fact that liberal Christians get very little exposure in the MSM who seem to almost always put the likes of Falwell and Robertson on to represent the “Christian” viewpoint.
As far as the cross on the LA county seal, why should a specifically religious symbol be on the insignia of a government entity in the first place? Such a symbol excludes those who do not subscribe to the religion which the symbol represents, for instance Jews. The USA was founded as a secular Republic and any injection of religion into government is a violation of the founding principles that have helped keep the USA largely free of sectarian violence for over two hundred years now. I’m not saying that the cross on the LA county seal is going to cause sectarian violence, but is an, admittedly very small, step in that direction.
One of the lessons from Iraq is that favoritism of one sect over another by government can lead to sectarian violence just as we are seeing violence between Shia and Sunni there now because Saddam favored Sunni over Shia.
Jonathan
One last thing Darrell, I don’t care whether “young earth” books are sold in Park stores as long as there is no effort made to exclude scientifically accurate books.
Krista
Understatement, thy name is Jeff Ruch.
Zerthimon
Well the official Grand Canyon website doesn’t seem to be following this gag order
http://www.nps.gov/grca/faqs.htm
Sorry, I’m skeptical of this article.
ThymeZone
Faced with a contest between superstition and science, you think there are two “sides?”
Like in a tug of war?
There aren’t “sides.” There’s truth, and there’s lie. It is a lie to say that the earth is 6000 years old or that the canyon was created by Noah’s flood.
When you sign up for a bald-faced lie, you aren’t on a “side.” You’re an outlier, a defect.
Go away.
CalDevil
Looks like the current NPS Grand Canyon Vistor’s Guide also is bucking the anti-geologic age conspiracy that Tim and his friends have bravely uncovered.
http://www.nps.gov/grca/upload/2006winter.pdf
It increasingly appears that many of these “Christianist” conspiracy promoters are guided by the same type of zealous blind faith and resistance to empirical evidence that they claim to be the hallmarks of those whom they scorn. One almost might consider this a religious, if not cult like, mindset.
But then, I’m just a faithless agnostic with a skeptical nature and easy access to internet search engines.
SeesThroughIt
Yes, but that’s because Islam is backward and wrong. Christianity never, ever breaks down to such infighting. Nope. Not once. Government hopping in bed with religion can’t possibly be bad if that religion is Christianity!
(Ouch. Thinking like a wingnut makes my head hurt.)
Zerthimon
Can we get an update to this post that says that the PEER article is a bunch of BS?
bud
I just scrolled up top to see who wrote the original note…
Tim.
Fat chance.