I really don’t understand Republicans

Somebody has to explain the logic of certain Republican values to me. Introducing something called the “Middle Class Job Protection Act” (which is actually, of course, nothing but a massive corporate tax cut), our own Little Miss Chipper Crazypants, Michele Bachmann, thinks this is good news:

I am so proud to be from the state of Minnesota. We’re the workingest state in the country, and the reason why we are, we have more people that are working longer hours, we have people that are working two jobs.

Once upon a time, we had this thing called the 40 hour work week — the idea was that it was good for the middle class to be able to get a living wage from a reasonable amount of effort. Now we’ve got Republicans handing out corporate welfare and getting excited because the working class has to labor for longer hours in order to make ends meet. I don’t get it. Do they think their local mechanic likes having to put in longer hours grubbing in grease and barking their knuckles and wrenching their backs?

I remember a few rough years when my father had to work two jobs, a day job reading water meters for the city and then doing custodial work in the evenings. It wasn’t because this was a fantastic opportunity to achieve prosperity — it was because he was desperate to pay the rent and keep food on the table. When people are having to work harder, it’s not a sign that the middle class is thriving.

I’ll have to remember this one for when Bachmann tries to run for reelection.

(Hat tip to John McKay)

A Florida rumor

I heard this third hand, so it’s not exactly the most well-founded rumor around, but a contact with inside information in the Southern Baptist Ministries has heard that they want to help out with the koo-koo descent into creationist madness that is Florida. They have asked their Florida churches to send information to businesses and school boards — a fine idea, and perfectly acceptable practice, I would think — but you have to see the “information” to believe it.

The rumor is that they’re going to send a tract called Apes, Lies, and Ms. Henn. That’s right, a Jack Chick tract.

I’m torn. It seems unlikely, but on the other hand, it’s just stupid enough that it could be true. On our side we have the whole of the scientific literature; on theirs, a comic book featuring a little girl saying “We didn’t come from monkeys.” And which one will win is uncertain.

Floridians, keep an eye open and let me know if there is a sudden influx of Chick inanity in your community.

For the chess fans

Here’s an interesting twist of view: comparing the perspectives of a Law (Paul Davies) and Chaos (yours truly*) and applying the ideas to chess. Even in a relatively simple system where all the rules are fixed and known, is there an orderly, formulaic solution to the problem?

*There is a reason my oldest son is named Alaric, and why there is a shrine to Arioch in the infernal pit in the subbasement.

Droolworthy

Ahhh…in case you hadn’t heard, Apple came out with an new machine yesterday, the MacBook Air. I want. It’s one of those superslim portables, with the usual Apple elegance — this would be a perfect travel machine.

Except for the price: a bit less than $2K for the low end model, over $3K for the high end, all solid state model. I think I’ll have to wait a few years for the price to drop significantly.

Huckabee is a raving lunatic

Here’s his latest suggestion: that we we amend the Constitution to be more biblical.

“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution,” Huckabee told a Michigan audience on Monday. “But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living god. And that’s what we need to do — to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view.”

Whoa.

We have a candidate who openly wants to make the US a religious state, and he’s the frontrunner on the Republican side. There are a large number of people who want this demented fuckwit to run the country. And the pundits of the news media are sucking their thumbs and watching; here’s what one commentator had to say:

Geist further noted of Huckabee that if “someone without his charm,” said that, “he’d be dismissed as a crackpot, but he’s Mike Huckabee and he’s basically the front-runner.”

Popularity excuses all affronts, I guess. Did your mother ever ask you, “If your friends jumped off a cliff, would you?”

I’m feeling a bit like I’m watching a whole country merrily running towards that cliff right now.

Where do the hagfish fit in?

Blogging on Peer-Reviewed Research

Hagfish are wonderful, beautiful, interesting animals. They are particularly attractive to evolutionary biologists because they have some very suggestive features that look primitive: they have no jaws, and they have no pectoral girdle or paired pectoral fins. They have very poorly developed eyes, no epiphysis, and only one semicircular canal; lampreys, while also lacking jaws, at least have good eyes and two semicircular canals. How hagfish fit into the evolutionary tree is still an open question, however.

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