When I was a young farm boy and shoveling out our barn’s manure gutters filled by 20 contented cows during the night, I  hoped that an army of dung beetles looking for delicacies would come and give me a hand...well, sort of. Dung beetles roll their nourishing meals into balls much larger than themselves and then roll them to safe places of where they can eat in peace. According to dung beetle experts they live on every continent except Antarctica. I never saw one in central Minnesota, but some dung beetles are so lazy they just live in it without rolling it into balls.
  I was amazed a couple of weeks ago to read that new research has determined that dung beetles use the Milky Way as a GPS satellite beacon to roll their dung balls away from the source in a straight line. If clouds cover the sky the dung beetle often ends up rolling his meals and home in circles. In other words, dung beetles rely on science to keep their dung balls away from thieves and predators. Scientists have already found that birds, seals, butterflies, and other creatures use the stars to find their way around our world. The Swedish researchers say that the dung beetle is the first creature to use the Milky Way. The dung beetles pushed their balls in a straight line even if the stars and the moon were visible. But they were all lost without the Milky Way. It’s fascinating research. So here we have the lowly dung beetle depending on the science of the universe to safely keep his food and shelter from theft--while we have 46 percent of Americans and a large majority of Republicans denying the overwhelming scientific evidence of evolution.

The Days Of Whine And Rosaries

   The Republican Party has become the party of Know-Nothings and Quackery in their desire to drown government in Grover Norquist’s bathtub. They desperately need to retain the “creationist” evangelical vote. Not only is it the party of legitimate and illegitimate rape, it depends upon God’s grandiose plan to approve certain rapes. Now we have “research” on women who have used birth control pills that “proves” that the 98 percent of Roman Catholic women and others who have used the pill have dozens of tiny fetuses embedded in their wombs! According to Kevin Swanson of Generations Radio “CERTAIN doctors and CERTAIN scientists have researched and have discovered little babies in their wombs that have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.”
    In an interview with Kevin Peeples, the author of an anti-contraception documentary, Swanson discusses why birth control has been accepted by many churches. It’s because women “desire the men’s role and are now missing out on the role God put them in that he laid out in Genesis.” This fits the Christian Taliban’s idea of the role of women: Keep’m barefoot, pregnant, in the kitchen, and ignorant. Now that more than half of university enrollment in the U.S. is female, with many using law as the “finishing” school, I would think that such quackery would further diminish the role of unscientific Know-Nothings in our society. Peeples is working on another documentary on contraception. Perhaps his researchers can find more of those millions of graveyards of little babies through the use of trans-vaginal probes. Any volunteers?

Texas Republicans Say: “Keep Our Kids Ignorant!”

   When discussions of what should be in graduation requirements for Texas high schools in 2012, Republican legislators voted to remove any units teaching “critical thinking skills” because such efforts would have “the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority.” In other words, teach “Creationism” and abstinence. “Thinking” just gets you into trouble. The removal of critical thinking skills will protect our kids from all outside influences! No wonder Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor, while giving a floor speech on why the Republicans might have to change their way of thinking (but not change principles!), called for a complete end to all federal funding for social science research. This would include any research on the gun culture that might answer why the United States has one of the most violent societies on earth. Keep the possible victims ignorant of why they are being shot and killed!
  D.C. House Republicans are also opposed to medical research that might prove that some surgeries and drug treatments are actually more effective than others. The Republicans are opposed to medical doctors evaluating procedures to check the effectiveness of various treatments. Shouldn’t we use medical science that works? The Republicans don’t seem at all interested in learning why our citizens are now living four fewer years than the French while spending $17,000 per capita for health care, twice as much as any other developed country according to World Health Organization research. The French cover everybody, spending $8,000 per capita. We are behind Cuba in 34th place in the ranking of world health care systems.  Could it be the 50 million uninsured U.S. citizens getting none or little health care lowers our ranking?

Virginia Republicans Have Passed one Law
About Climate Change:  Mention “Sea-Level Rise”!

   Large sections of Norfolk, Virginia, the home of our Atlantic fleet, is just about underwater due to the Atlantic Ocean rising from global warming. But the Republican administration of Virginia is flailing away at the growing risks of coastal flooding, passing such idiotic legislation as a law prohibiting the use of the words “sea-level rise!”
  Living in some kind of right-wing fantasy land of “Don’t Confuse Me With The Facts,” Republicans in the 1990s followed the dictates of one of their numerous bosses , the National Rifle Association, by banning any research involving the gun culture such as economic damage due to gunshot wounds and what guns do to a society. After all, who needs evidence to back a position?
  Why is the North Dakota legislature continuing to reject the formation of an ethics committee that would investigate the wrongdoings of state politicians? Most states feel the need—and if you have nothing to hide, why not approve the formation of such a committee? Republican House Majority Leader Al Carlson says it is not necessary because the legislature always has high standards of conduct! That’s a good one, Al! Check the shenanigans of the Public Service Commission, as an example.
  To prove Governor Jindal’s “stupidity” charge, a group of Arizona Republicans are proposing a law that would require all high school students to take this oath: “I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same, that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge these duties; so help me God.”  Such an oath would bar atheists, Muslims, Jehovah Witnesses, Quakers, and many others with some mainstream religions from ever graduating from Arizona high schools. I am old enough to remember the loyalty oath chaos during Republican Senator Joe McCarthy’s reign of terror and error during the Eisenhower years. Loyalty oaths have since been banned. Don’t these guys ever learn anything?

Science Will Tell Us Why Minnesota Moose Are Dying

  Corky and I drove to Duluth for a meeting through a lot of moose country last summer–and did not see a single moose coming or going from Detroit Lakes. We commented about it because we have spent a lot of time camping and fishing in Northern Minnesota and moose country—and have always seen them before. Minnesota is committing $1.6 million to find out why we are down to 2,760 moose. Complex science will probably give us important clues. A fascinating bit from the project.  Some  moose have a  computer implanted in their gut ( A real struggle in itself!) to tell the researchers when they die. They rush to the scene by helicopter and take many “medical” samples. The computer is programmed and maintained by a data expert based in a little cubicle in Germany. Fascinating. That is science.

What Happens When Ignorance Overwhelms Both Science And Religion

   Currently 99.9 percent of the scientists alive today believe in the facts of Darwin’s “theory” of evolution because of carbon and isotope dating, fossil records, genetic sequencing, the measurements of geologic time, plate tectonics, developmental biology, and a myriad of other related scientific methods, studies, and experiments. So far, we have had no one return “from the other side” to counter what scientists in many fields have discovered about the earth and its inhabitants. Oh, there is blind faith in what is contained in each of the 721 translations of the Bible. Some churches do understand that if science finally contradicts what is expressed in the Bible, that will mean the end of those religions. That’s why 46 percent of the American people clutch and cling to the ideas expressed by the supporters of creationism and intelligent design. In the Republican presidential nomination race, at least four candidates vociferously argued that creationism and intelligent design should be taught in public schools instead of evolution. Candidates Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum, recognizing they would need the votes of evangelicals and Know-Nothings to gain the nomination, preached against Charles Darwin. Federal judges have consistently rejected the two religious “curricula.”
   In the 19th Century people would look at the guts of a clock or watch and say: “Man is incapable of planning and making such a complex instrument.  The maker must have had God whisper in his ear.”  Scientists and other creative individuals answered that long ago.
The creationists say that God has created everything within the past 10,000 years. I guess they have dropped Bishop Ussher’s idea that it only took 6,000. Their only evidence can be expressed in three words: “ God did it.” It’s a very short argument used to replace the 13 billion years—so far–of the universe’s existence and all of the evidence collected that turns evolution to a fact.

“Hey Podner, Saddle
Up My Ty Rex! I’m Going
Down To Cain’s Bar
For A Brew!

   Almost half of the American people believe that Adam and Eve nestled closely with dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden. Humans may have saddled dinosaurs for long-distance travel, or perhaps for short runs to the closest watering hole. I can see a dinosaur cowboy now, yelling to his cohort: “Hey, Podner! How about saddlin’ up my Tyrannosaurus Rex? I’m goin’ down to Cain’s Bar for a brew and a raptor barbecue!” Maybe some day we will discover that dinosaurs and humans intermingled 65 million years ago before that asteroid landed in Mexico and  killed off all the dinosaurs. So far the oldest Homo Erectus evidence found is slightly under two million years old. No human bones have ever been found in the bellies of carnivorous dinos. But science marches on!
   The Creation Museum in Kentucky created by Ken Ham, an Australian 10,000-year creationist, is planning to build more religious theme parks. It is filled with psuedo-science and very colorful dioramas, one showing kids and dinos “hangin’ out” together. Another shows Adam and Eve feeding grapes to vegetarian dinos! The governor of Kentucky, a state over-saturated with creationists and designers, has evidently promised Ham a $43 million tax break and $11 million more for roads to Ark Encounter. I wonder if Ham’s ark, built to Biblical specifications, will have two Sauropods on board. They will certainly be a load at 100 feet long and 100 tons.
   I expect that Ham will have two Pachycphalosaurs on board that appeared on earth about 85 million years ago. They were two-legged herbivores possessing thick skulls and horns, relatives of the Stegoceras, a dino with the Greek name “knucklehead.” (I’m not kidding!)  The extremely thick skulls of this dino group suggest the heads were used for head-butting other predators. As a firm believer in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, I must confess I think that perhaps the knuckleheads and head-butters finally evolved into today’s Republican legislators. Then again, I have no idea how many million years ago dung beetles evolved to their present state.