Astral Clarification

Sean, by Astral, I meant Star. That is what I get for writing up the post late at night. As for the ad hominem nature of hate, I did consider that the next day, but at the time, I had narrowed my choices down to I Think Sarah Palin is Bad for Science in America Alpha and I Hate Sarah Palin Alpha. I decided that the former was too long a title to get into the preview. Call it a Madison Avenue-style decision.

Also, having read up on the existing star projector (a Zeiss Model VI Planetarium Star Projector which can project some 8,900 fixed stars down to magnitude 6.5, along with 17 star clusters and nebulae), I still don't understand how this became an overhead projector in the presidential debate. I still get images in my head of John McCain standing in the center of the planetarium with a plastic transparency and shining a flashlight through it.

As for being Muslim, I'm waiting for the day that Buddhism is declared to be a dangerous religion. At which point, the billions of Chinese and Indians will rise up like red tide and end the oppressive Caucasian supremacy with real culture. The secret ninja cells are already seeded across the world as pacifistic monasteries. That's real bureacratic organization: large, unwieldly, implacable, and unstoppable.

And now I'm going to go back to making graphics for this blog. I only made this post because 4shared is down for maintenance this morning.

Political Statement

I usually like to keep my political views separate from my digital creations, but I listened to Sarah Palin decry the wastefulness of fruit fly research today. I yelled at the television when John McCain bashed bear genetics. I yelled at the television when John McCain attacked the Adler Planetarium for needing a new star projector. I don't believe that the Republican ticket believes in science or wants to support scientific research. However, attacking the work horse of the genetic community, Drosophila melangaster, is too much. After hearing Sarah Palin mock fruit fly research and call it a waste of money while simultaneously declaring that understanding autism needed more funding, I felt a need to state just how much I dislike Sarah Palin and the hypocrisy of declaring that research which has produced understanding of autism is pork and doesn't deserve to be funded. Do not attack the fruit fly. The fruit fly is our friend. If we didn't have the fruit fly, we'd be cutting up babies to figure out these scientific truths.

Four years ago, I feared that the economy would be ruined if Bush was re-elected. My fears have been realized. If Sarah Palin should become Vice President, I fear that scientific progress will come to a halt in the United States.

Alpha