Hey! I made you guys a present!

Don't say I never did anything for you! (wink)

It's not perfect, but I had some fun making it today. Hope it gave you all a chuckle. And if you'd really like to snag it, feel free. I'm thinking of resizing it and putting it by my Trekkies for Obama button. Ha ha!

I'm not going to beat the fruit fly thing to death, but it did get me thinking a lot today. (Uh oh....) As I told Indigo, last night I had steam coming out of my ears, but I'm a little more reflective today. Before I got up this morning, I was thinking about what it is that bothers me so much about not just Palin, but the general tone of the GOP's campaign lately. The word that sprang to mind was "incurious," and when I read my comments, my friend Dan-Guido had remarked that Palin isn't "intellectually curious." We both had the same thought, but I definitely like his phrase better!

That's something that is really bothering me lately. It's not just the recent GOP tactics of portraying anyone with a college degree, or anyone who dares to show a broader knowledge of issues and a broader world view, as someone who is "not one of us," it's the general pervasiveness of anti-intellectualism. The campaign keeps throwing out that word "elite." The liberal elite...the Washington elite...it seems that anyone who doesn't believe the way they do, or shows a desire to look beyond the superficial meaning of things, is somehow "elite."

I'm not sure when a thirst for knowledge became something to be ashamed of. This was something that was fostered in me and my sisters by my parents, and encouraged in Ken by his father, and by his mother in her love of reading. Palin's ridicule of fruit fly research in Paris, France (and I do wonder if she was referencing the Pasteur Institute) was cringe-worthy. Did she or her handlers not bother to do at least minimal investigation as to how something like that might be important? Google "fruit fly research," for Pete's sake, and you'll turn up all kind of references as to how these tiny insects have aided scientists in numerous research efforts and countless studies. It is not something to take lightly, and it disturbs me that she seems patently unable to understand that.

Palin strikes me as someone whose world view is so narrow that she simply cannot comprehend why something that makes no sense to her whatsoever might be important to someone else. If it doesn't exist in her world, it's not worth learning about and it's not important. This is not just about the campaigns and those involved with them; I've seen it in people I encounter in daily life. A feeling that someone who is curious about the world around them is somehow pretentious, or a know-it-all, or "putting on airs." There is nothing wrong with a healthy curiosity about a variety of subjects, and it's an admirable goal to want to further your education. Not everyone is able to do this, but that doesn't mean that learning has to stop. It didn't stop for my parents, although they didn't go to college.

I'm also disturbed by the fact that Levi Johnston, the father of Bristol Palin's baby, has dropped out of high school in order to get a job in the oil fields. I'm not mad about it, I'm not self-righteous about it, I'm not condemning anyone for their decision...I just find it really sad that the kid (and yes, he IS a kid) is not finishing high school. I wonder what kind of life they will have, and I hope that he is able to at least eventually get his GED.

The narrow-mindedness I've been encountering lately boggles my mind. The inability to see a broader world view is not only sad, it's dangerous. I know it's not easy to step outside our comfort zone, but it's imperative that we begin to do so, and try to understand that we are not the center of the world, anymore than the Earth is the center of the solar system, as so many once thought. (Copernicus got a raw deal, didn't he?) I had an email this morning from one of my uncles about a forward he'd gotten concerning alleged quotes from Obama's books. My uncle said that he knew I'd read the books, and he wanted to know if these quotes (mostly concerning race) were real...and if so, didn't I find them scary? I wrote back that one suspicious thing was that no page numbers were provided, that I thought that they were taken out of context, and that some of these quotes rang a bell, so I did a Snopes search. Sure enough, the exact email he sent me has been widely circulated, and the quotes were either out of context, rearranged, or were not Obama's words at all. My 80-some year old uncle cared enough to ask me if it was true. Why are others not investigating what is truth and what is lies?

But again, this transcends politics, although Palin's lack of intellectual curiosity (thanks, Dan!) is what got me to think along these lines. This is about an inability to take "one step beyond," and to realize that there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. The attitude of ridiculing someone for furthering their education, or for pursuing research that you have deemed laughable, is not being "salt of the earth." It is foolish and dangerous.

It's not paranoia if they're really out to get you

My pal Possum has pointed out something that I've been noticing for a couple of days now.

You know those word verification letters that some people use to screen out spam on their blogs? I've been noticing that lately a lot of them are starting to make...actual words. Not necessarily English words, but words that can be pronounced. In fact, I don't know what language this might be, but if I were a raging paranoiac, I might start thinking that Blogger is trying to communicate with us. Consider this: "Sheri, Mictin tansher cruntri, Crepo blittili; Simellid bilingen dinedys. Fuwho? Cultil, Ringo."

Who are Sheri and Ringo? And why are they sending cryptic messages to each other through Blogger? If one of us can crack this code, we could possibly expose one of the greatest conspiracies the world has ever imagined. Or possibly the universe, because how can we be certain that Sheri and Ringo are of this Earth? They could be Other. It could be Us vs. Them. We need to get crackin', people. The future of our world could depend on us!

Hey! Did you guys hear a voice?! [eyes darting] I think they're on to me. If you don't hear from me again, you'll know. Don't give up! No surrender! Liberté, égalité, fraternité, ou la mort! Wait, that's French. Don't mess with those bozos. They're over there in that there Paris, France, probably at that stupid Pasteur Institute, messin' around with fruit flies. And don't think that it's a coincidence that they're called "fruit" flies! You all know about the liberal fruit fly agenda, don't you? If not, email me your address. I'll send you a pamphlet.

Did you all catch Thursday night's Weekend Update? One of the things that had us cracking up was Fred Armisen and his Mega Map. I'm intrigued by the touchscreen technology that Microsoft is beginning to market to businesses, and one of my favorite things to see is John King and his map on CNN. You know...he enlarges states, circles cities, changes states from red to blue...it's amazing! Fred Armisen's take on it was hilarious, and I heard that the guy who is in charge of CNN's map actually trained him in the "Mega Map's" operation. This is the entire Weekend Update segment, but Fred's part is about a minute into it. I especially like what he does with Michigan at the end. Ha ha! It's not allowing me to embed, so check out the Mega Map here!

I kid you not!

Specific Brain Protein Required For Nerve Cell Connections To Form And Function

ScienceDaily (Sep. 10, 2007) — Neurons, or nerve cells, communicate with each other through contact points called synapses. When these connections are damaged, communication breaks down, causing the messages that would normally help our feet push our bike pedals or our mind locate our car keys to fall short.

Now scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine have shown that a protein called neurexin is required for these nerve cell connections to form and function correctly.

The discovery, made in Drosophila fruit flies may lead to advances in understanding autism spectrum disorders, as recently, human neurexins have been identified as a genetic risk factor for autism.

"This finding now gives us the opportunity to see what job neurexin performs within the cell, so that we can gain a better insight into what can go wrong in the nervous system when neurexin function is lost" said Dr. Manzoor Bhat, associate professor of cell and molecular physiology in the UNC School of Medicine and senior author of the study.

The study, published online September 6, 2007, in the journal Neuron, is the first to successfully demonstrate in a Drosophila model the consequences that mutating this important protein may have on synapses.

*****

You can read the full story here. I kid you not, Gov. Palin, or anyone else who might be interested!

Stupid, good-for-nothing fruit flies. Everybody knows they don't do anything except fly all over your house when you have cantaloupe rinds in the garbage can. Who cares if those equally good-for-nothing scientists have been using them for decades to learn about stupid junk like genetics. What a bunch of losers.

We've got 11 days to go before the election, and I am giving you ample warning, folks. I have just about reached my limit with this woman, and I'm not sure how much longer I can stay in control over what I write here. You can feel free to take a break from me for the next couple of weeks if you don't care to read it, but I've had it up to here with her ignorance about innumerable subjects. Her glib dismissal of the humble fruit fly--haha, can you believe those dumbass scientists, messing around with a bunch of itty bitty flies?!--which has been an invaluable research tool for years and years, has pretty much sent me over the edge.

Ignorance is not a plus in politics, despite what many politicians seem to believe. Ignorant people get by all the time in local elections...sometimes in state elections...and not infrequently in national elections. However, we're talking the potential vice-president of the United States here, and this woman is no more qualified to hold such a high office than is our cat Sheeba. In fact, I insult Sheeba. I apologize to our kitty. At least he'd sleep for 22 hours a day and stay out of trouble. This woman wants to be in charge of the Senate. She wants to do stuff.

...my head...explosion is imminent...danger! danger!

I kid you not.