Don't let them gut science

Wherever the Democrats in power have proposed increased funding for science, the Republicans have demanded that funding for science be cut ten-fold. This is worrisome.

Thankfully, Aron McCart has composed a positively beautiful letter (must have facebook to read) to Claire McCaskill (whose contact information can be found here) about the subject. I encourage everybody to read Aron's letter - it is well-informed and not only hits the nail on the head, it brings down the ten-ton hammer and crushes it to smithereens.

Here is my letter, which reaches nowhere near as far as Aron's.

Dear Senator McCaskill,

I am writing you to encourage you to support the funding in Obama's stimulus plan for scientific research.

The only consistent method of revealing the nature of the universe, a knowledge from which we derive every modern technology, has been through our scientific research. The answer to quite literally every problem we face today is not to continue throwing the same amount of money at tackling it using merely our current understanding, but to forge new discoveries that make our investments more efficient - at times to the point of removing the need for them.

This is what must be done to ensure the future of our dreams, and to solve the problems of the present. The acquisition of new knowledge has been the driving force of human development, and it continues to be.

Here are the proposed cuts that have the scientific community and the scientifically informed portion of our populace worried:

NSF 100% cut ($1,402,000,000)
NASA exploration 50% cut ($750,000,000)
NOAA 34.94% cut ($427,000,000)
NIST 37.91% cut ($218,000,000)
DOE energy efficiency & renewable energy 38% cut ($1,000,000,000)
DOE office of science 100% cut ($100,000,000)

Thank for your time.

JT Eberhard

Awe, thanks News-Loser

They printed my response to some anti-gay rights fuckstick and, would you believe it, some bible-thumpers don't think medical experts know what they're talking about and they think I'm an agent of Lucifer himself.

Tsk, tsk. Go voice your support for gay rights. Don't have to debate, just say gays are alright.

JT's Letter to the Editor 5/4/08

There were several letters in the Standard recently talking about how nefarious evangelist Jed Smock does not represent true Christianity. This is my take on the idea:

There is no "true" Christianity.

Again, "Brother" Jed Smock and his posse have come and gone. As usual, many believers in Christ are exclaiming that this group of lunatics does not represent true Christianity. I would ask "Who does?" Surely you must know, if you know that Jed doesn't fit the bill.

Consider for a moment that most of the Christians making this admonishment likely disagree on certain portions of the scripture. Which one of them has the monopoly on true Christianity regarding sex, abortion, or homosexuality? Moreover, how much ground can we possibly cover discussing it from a theological perspective?

Reflect further that almost every Christian who has ever lived has not represented true Christianity by modern standards. Christians from a century ago were busy citing passages like 1 Timothy 2:12 in order to oppose womens' suffrage. Before that, it was slave-holders of the American South using scripture to subjugate their slaves. For centuries before that, we killed red-haired women for witchcraft and burned our best scholars at the stake for even speculating about the Earth's motion (now that we realize that there are no witches and that there never were, one does not know whether to laugh or cry). The history of the Christian faith is a kaleidoscope of unconscionable cruelty and a certain, murderous disregard for truth.

Just think of all the great lights of Christian history who would likely be dismissed from true Christianity by the same crowd for their bouts of holy malice - this list would likely include almost every saint and most certainly every pope. If you believe that people like St. Augustine (who believed that non-believers should be tortured) and St. Thomas Aquinas (who believed that non-believers should be killed) had never read the sermon on the mount, you are sadly mistaken.

The closer you get to Jesus historically from where we stand now, the more monstrous true Christianity has been, and it gets worse as you move into the times before Jesus. The old testament is bursting at the seams with unthinkable savagery that is not only endorsed by god, but mandated by him . The scriptures that lead to these horrors are still in Christianity's holy book. The credit for our liberation from them does not belong to "true" Christianity, but rather to generations of free thinkers who have made Christians ashamed to live by the tenets that have defined Christianity for the last 6,000 years.

There are over 34,000 different sects of Christianity according to the World Christian Encyclopedia, all of which are making claims to being the true Christianity. If we even needed additional evidence that faith is an immeasurably poor means of discerning truth, this is it. It seems clear that there is no such thing as "true" Christianity, there is only millions of people in this country treating their feelings as though they were facts, and people are bound to feel differently.

In summation, Jed is just as much a Christian as any of you, or any follower of the god of Abraham ever. Jed has plenty of faith, and he knows the good book backwards and forwards. He demonstrates the courage of his convictions on a daily basis. Why hasn't Jesus made him a better person? Rather, the fact that Jed "trusts in god with all his heart and leans not to his own understanding" (Proverbs 3:5) has made him into a monster.

The truth of the matter is that Christianity makes claims that can only be true or even justifiable through the lens of faith, and faith can be made to conform to anything. Even if one iteration of Christianity throughout all these long, painful years were true, faith would offer us no way to separate it from the ocean of false Christianity in terms of credibility.

Letter to the College Paper's Editor

So Tuesday, our group, Team The Juggernauts (the atheists you love to hate) had just finished packing up the Brother Jed Carnival. We raised $300.00 for Heifer International, a charity which allows you to buy livestock for destitute villages around the world. All the credit goes to the wonderful student body and a psychotic yet well-intentioned man named Brother Jed. Thanks, kids!
We used your money to buy live rabbits and chickens for six villages.

Anyway, we were naturally famished after a long day of saving the world, so we figured we'd go crash the Student Government Association banquet that they'd planned instead of a meeting.
You know, nom half a dozen slices of pizza each, stuff some brownies in our pockets, steal a couple 2 liter bottles of soda, and roll. We're pirates. We can't help ourselves.

So, anyway, about six of us stroll up to the PSU's fourth floor ballroom, and instantly we freeze. Here we are, half of us dressed in full pirate regalia (as our religion dictates), one of us holding a Satan costume complete with red trident and mask, and me wearing a freshly markered "Satan is my Homeboy" T-Shirt. Every one of us dirty and slimy and sweaty. Resting before us are dozens of tables surrounded by all the normal SGA kids in swanked out suits and dresses.
We're not talking buffet, people. We're talking courses. China plates with cake, salad, chicken... table cloths... more than one fork... the whole shebang. So between the time we hightailed it out of there and the time we arrived back at our base of operations for exorbitant amounts of self-congratulatory pizza, scrambled eggs, and beer (for the so inclined), I got to thinking.

How much is this costing you?

All this talk of missing money, of SGA waste, of cutbacks, of rising tuition, and we're still throwing massive bling away for a big end-of-semester party strictly for the bourgeois Student Government kids? And there's not even free pizza? What shenanigans! Call me ignorant, but I had no idea this kind of stuff was going on right here on our little campus. I knew the charlatans who run this country were blowing our money, but I never thought that it went so far down.

You know, I inquired, and someone told me that last year's banquet cost $300.00. That sounds lovely, but it just makes you wonder what someone could do with $300.00, doesn't it?