Struggling against the almighty tides of eventuality

I’ve gotten an uptick in comments on my blog in the past few days. Like, I’ve gotten three. From three different people. That’s an increase of hundreds of percent over the norm. What I found most odd, though, was that 66 percent (i.e., two) of those comments were on my ResearchSaves.org blog post. I find this very curious.

My curiosity led me to Google, whereupon I realized that my humble blog post with its stupid subtitle (which I still need to change, so, please give me ideas) is the second hit for ResearchSaves.org. What I haven’t been able to find, is whether there’s been a recent upswing in marketing from them. It seems that’s the only reason people would be taking a sudden interest.

Of course, despite repeated comments from rakaur (Eric), I haven’t changed my stance. In fact, I don’t think he really said much that I didn’t already think about the whole thing, although he had a much more defend-the-science approach to it all. I’m not going to advocate animal testing. I know it saves human lives. It ends animal lives in the meantime. Predators in the wild also end animal lives, though usually less slowly and painfully (usually). The sooner we get a viable alternative working to animal testing, the better. I’d give ideas for the alternative, advanced simulations, etc., but that’s what we pay the scientists for.

Incidentally, according to Twitter, at least, ResearchSaves.org is related to the Foundation for Biomedical Research. This is hilarious to me, as I’ve received a few E-mails from them titled “HORSE VIDEO.” I’ve never watched it, but it has something to do with using equine biological research to cure some minor ailment. It takes a good few paragraphs to get to that description though, which led me to believe for quite some time that, not only had I gotten bestiality porn, but that whoever made it was really excited about it.

Finally, in closing: no, the place I work doesn’t have any sort of established official opinion as far as I know about this whole thing. I say this because plenty of jerkoffs, jackasses, and shitheads like to politicize science and use any excuse to choke off funding to work that can actually save lives. They get understandably very antsy about it at work so, suffice it to say, I don’t speak for them.

I’m thoroughly unsurprised to hear that the Supreme Court has cockblocked Democracy.  Whereas previously we had the illusion of a people with a voice, now we’ve got companies freed from their shackles to spend whatever ungodly amount of money crushing their opponents as they’d like.

Take a gander at some relativity on recent news.

The health care reform is an important issue; I know far too many people who work “part-time” jobs more than 40 hours a week and get health care coverage that basically amounts to “we’ll buy you some vitamins at the Safeway.”  That so many people should go without health care completely and others who have it should have such marginal coverage, in our behemoth of a wealth-generating nation, is a travesty.

Democrats being terrible at campaigning and losing at key issues when they have all the leverage is an important issue; see health care reform above.  It shouldn’t come as a shock that people are pissed off that Oakley lost, it was a deck horribly stacked against the Republicans and she couldn’t be bothered to win cause she needed some time to take down her Christmas lights or whatever.

But these issues are all passing problems; if health care reform passed in any form, it’d be repeatedly challenged.  If Democrats had won in MA, they’d still face down a hard fight in November and in 2012.  They are things that require passion on both sides; Democrats to be infuriated that their party is so impotent, and Republicans to be spurred on by their victory.  This verdict handed out by the Supreme Court is a body blow to both sides.

You see, as it was previously, there was already a value assigned to a seat in Congress, or to the White House.  You couldn’t get your foot in the door without millions to advertise and put your name out there.  With PACs and other outside donations, the latest presidential race reached astronomical financial proportions.  The only thing holding the reins back was the fact that the richest constituency, the faux people created at each and every corporation to provide a taxable singular entity, were barred from unlimited contributions.

The donations provided by individual Americans were a huge boon to the Obama campaign.  However, if you think of what sort of amazing advertising can be bought with $100 million, think about the fact that during the 2009 Super Bowl, NBC sold their spots for $209 million, and that’s not including the production costs.  Hopefully, once you realize that the budgets of all the camps in the biggest presidential campaign in history was blown for one day of advertising by the private sector, you’ll see how the Supreme Court just fucked America.