Congressman Lamar Smith, the author of the legislation, must have joined the Senate Science Committee under the impression that science is what he’ll be fighting there. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Several Republicans on the House Science Committee are planning to propose legislation that would require Congressional oversight of all scientific research sponsored by the National Science Foundation, which proves that there are federal regulations that Republicans can actually support. This legislation, if passes, will put the Republican Party in the position to decide what is science and what isn’t, and it’s more or less common knowledge that many Republicans distrust the concepts and theories accepted by the consensus of scientific community. But that’s not because Republicans don’t believe in science, it’s because many conservatives rely on a different, conservative science. Here are 10 of the fundamental principles of the conservative science.
1) Cosmology: “Universe was created in 6 days.” True. If God hadn’t been in such a rush to design, develop, and release the Universe by Sunday’s deadline, we as the end users wouldn’t have to deal with such a buggy and problem-ridden product.
2) Climate: “There is no global warming”: True, especially when it’s snowing outside. And at all other times, get an AC!
3) Natural Selection: True: there is overwhelming evidence proving the theory of natural selection, of survival of the fittest and those adapting quickly to changing conditions, and annihilation of the weakest. However, the concept is false outside of the free market.
4) Solar Energy: “Solar energy is not a reliable power source”. True: the Sun will explode in just a few billion years and therefore we can’t count on the solar energy to be there forever.
5) Theory of Relativity: True: everything is relative; any idea, such as tax increases or a health insurance mandate, is great or terrible only depending on which party proposes it.
6) Arctic Ice: “The ice is not melting”: According to the oil companies which are the most reliable experts on the weather and ice levels, the ice is definitely not melting, but thanks to the constant expansion of the open water, they will soon be able to drill anywhere in the Arctic.
7) Fossil Fuels: “Coal is our future”. True: in a few millions of years, our dead bodies will fossilize into coal and oil to be mined by the future Republican generations.
8) Political science: “Government is the problem”. True: just look at the House and Senate Republicans.
9) Wind Power: “Wind Power is unreliable and we cannot trust it”. True: Wind consists of oxygen and nitrogen molecules, which may have flown in from Mexico, Middle East, or China. These molecules cross our border without any papers, don’t speak our language, don’t follow our customs, and steal the jobs of American oil and gas industry workers.
10) Civics: “USA is a Christian country, because all our Founding Fathers were Christian”. True, and since all the Founding Fathers were white and male, the entire country is supposed to be white and male too. Whoever disagrees can go transvaginal-ultrasound themselves.
List of X 
So, we’re just beta-testing this Universe? That explains a lot.
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I’m not sure why I capitalized “universe”. It normally Bothers me when people Capitalize random Words for no apparent Reason.
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apparently, The syndrome IS universal
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WHAT’S HAPPENING HERE!?!
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$%&&5@#?&%#’:*-/
must be yet another glitch in the universe. letting go of caps lock button may help.
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It is beta-testing, except there won’t be any patches, and at some point everything will be uninstalled.
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It’s a shitty time to be a T-cell. Maybe they should change their name to Dubbya cells or jail cells.
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If they change themselves to Dubya cells, they can get into an ivy league college!
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Right, Ivy league schools don’t admit single-celled organisms and other primitive creatures, unless they are sons/daughters of alumni and/or a VIP.
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It’s never a good time to be a T-cell. It’s a horrible job – they are over-stressed, underpaid, work 24/7 and hardly ever get outside.
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I love how they worship the Founding Fathers, yet know nothing about them. So cute. Like, of course they were all Christian. That’s why Jefferson tore out all the Bible that didn’t suit him. Wait. That IS what many Republican Christians do. Hmm.
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“Whoever disagrees can go transvaginal-ultrasound themselves.”-
I’m with you Alice!
This is too good.
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Thank you!
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I may have already said this somewhere else before, but Thomas Jefferson wrote so much and on so many topics, that you could pick a quote from him to justify any position. He’s like a one-man Bible. And to complete the comparison, Republicans cherry-pick his quotes just as they cherry-pick the Bible.
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2 thumbs UP!!!!! My reader is broken..What the heck?! I have to come stop by to see if you’ve posted new..Must have a 6th sense or something..Question: Is there a reason my reader is only showing certain posts or isn’t it suppposed to show all on my fave blogs list? I’m still new, sort of, so any explanation is welcomed..
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Thank you! I don’t know why the reader doesn’t show some posts, but it happens to my reader and to my posts too. Thankfully, I only post once a week or so, so you can’t miss much here 🙂
If it’s really bad, you could do is set the reader to send you e-mail notifications when posts are published, and you can pick these notifications to go to you instantly, daily or weekly.
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Sweet! Your best yet! That is from an unscientific poll of one person, just like the Republicans use!
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Thank you! But it’s the unscientific poll of a scientific person, so that makes the entire poll scientific.
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I concur with Steve… without question your best yet!
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Thank you, but I hope I can still top that eventually.
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The GOP ideas about science are a little odd. Your list is a great one. You’ve captured the flavor of GOP science. Very warped.
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Their ideas about science are can probably be described as “OLD” rather than “ODD”. It’s like their understanding of science is years, if not centuries, behind the rest of the world.
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Oh so very good. I’m placing your post on my reactionary republican high school hot topics page. They will be soooo pissed!
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Thank you! Pissed or not, but at least it will get them talking about science for a change.
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This was funny. I started laughing when I saw that you had managed to form a sentence using the words ‘conservative’ ‘scientific’ and ‘wisdom’ all at the same time.
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It took me a long time to get all three words into the title, and it still didn’t make a complete sentence.
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It made no sense at all. That’s why it’s funny.
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A lot of conservative science just doesn’t make sense.
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Or they just ignore it.
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I love all you posts but this one is about SCIENCE!!!! Whohooooooo!
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Thank you! Then maybe you should start worrying about the legislation I mentioned. If that passes, John Boehner or Mitch McConnell could well decide that planarians don’t warrant any further research.
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All jokes aside, you are absolutely right. This is amusingly dangerous (does this make sense)? In a very real sense, you will never know how fundamental research will result in a practical application. One of my favorite examples is the research on the venom of certain marine snails that allowed the development of a medication currently used on cancer patients with otherwise intractable pain. Who in their right mind would think that a marine snail can help alleviate the suffering of a cancer patient? A scientist, that’s who! Anything that hinders this type of creativity can deprive the public of unexpected benefits… (:-)…
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I have a science-related degree, and even though it’s just a BA, I do realize that science requires hundreds of experiments to hopefully produce 1 useful result. Even then, this 1 result may not become useful until decades later. And if someone without any scientific background will start making decisions today on what research will be useful, we’ll have this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism
As I commented on one of your posts, we need amateurs in science, but they should not be the ones running it. Especially the people who are not only amateurs, but are also committed to suppressing the areas of science they don’t like.
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That’s one of the sad things, if they actually were amateurs, at least they would have an intelligent appreciation for what science can bring. These are the same people that would argue for cutting funds for math, physics or biomedical sciences and immediately demand internet security, great, reliable cell phone signal and “light blue love pills”…
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Yet more proof that Bill Gates is, or at least was till a few years back, God. Even his products resemble God’s products, being even buggier and more problem-ridden than God’s own product.
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At least Gates kept trying to release better versions of his product and provided some tech support for it.
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You are so awesome with your lists I am nominating you to become a new religion.
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Amen!
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Thank you, but I’m not really on good terms with religions, so I’d rather not become another one 🙂 But I do appreciate the thought.
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Brilliant, I love this one. Sharing far and wide!
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Thank you, and thank you for sharing!
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First-time visitor as Doggy’s Style directed me here. This is simply wonderful! Nothing like laughing while shaking your head at Mr. Smith and his minions.
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Frank you only go to the best places …
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Hi Elyse. I just follow the Queen’s throng.
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I may have to follow you just to see what are these other best places you go to.
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Elyse is the Queen with the polite wave and the threat of beheading.
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Thanks for the warning, I’ll mind my manners on her blog.
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Thank you, though I think laughing and shaking your head at the same time could cause neck problems 🙂
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With those clowns, very understandable.
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These folks would be so entertaining if they weren’t so frightening, don’t you think. Like perhaps we can put them into a sit com and pay them lots of money to stay out of our lives.
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If we had lots of money, we’d probably find better uses for it. So instead we have to watch these people as a reality show.
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“Whoever disagrees can go transvaginal-ultrasound themselves.”—Haha. Loved that. Your post is funny, but the concept is scary, isn’t it? Especially after some of the theories these guys have on rape and the possibility of preventing pregnancy by just ‘shutting the body down.’ Ick.
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Oh yeah, I am well aware of that too, and that’s also an important part of the conservative science. I may add a follow up list eventually, because these groundbreaking scientific ideas definitely deserve a mention.
Most of my posts on this blog are about scary concepts like guns, politics, North Korea, or Bush’s library, but I hope this won’t scare you away 🙂
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I don’t discuss politics on my own blog, but I can’t shut up about it in the ‘real’ world. And don’t even get me started on Donald Trump…
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I think #8 is honest-to-goodness GOP strategy. And it makes sense in a weird way. If a lot of your theme as a party is that government doesn’t work, why would you want to do things that would make government work and contradict yourself?
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Yes, that makes a lot of sense – though it seems they were still trying to make the same point when they were running the government.
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For some reason I read this in Dubya’s voice.
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I am having trouble visualizing that: for some reason I still can’t picture Dubya talking about anything science-related, even if it’s conservative science.
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