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Saturday, October 18, 2014

Some Fear Ebola Outbreak Could Make Nation Turn to Science

New Yorker satirist Andy Borowitz captures the sense of it:


Health workers, like these in Guinea, are at serious risk of contracting the disease. (photo: European Commission DG ECHO)
Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

Some Fear Ebola Outbreak Could Make Nation Turn to Science

By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
17 October 14

here is a deep-seated fear among some Americans that an Ebola outbreak could make the country turn to science.

In interviews conducted across the nation, leading anti-science activists expressed their concern that the American people, wracked with anxiety over the possible spread of the virus, might desperately look to science to save the day.

“It’s a very human reaction,” said Harland Dorrinson, a prominent anti-science activist from Springfield, Missouri. “If you put them under enough stress, perfectly rational people will panic and start believing in science.”

Additionally, he worries about a “slippery slope” situation, “in which a belief in science leads to a belief in math, which in turn fosters a dangerous dependence on facts.”

At the end of the day, though, Dorrinson hopes that such a doomsday scenario will not come to pass. “Time and time again through history, Americans have been exposed to science and refused to accept it,” he said. “I pray that this time will be no different.”

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Saturday, August 31, 2013

Don't Panic

We @ RAW thought this was a nice explication of what is about to happen, or not:

In our opinion and from our experience,
there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen
that realistically threatens the United States of America
--John Kerry, in his 1971 Testimony to Congress on Vietnam  

Ain't got no cash, ain't got no style 
Ain't got no gal to make you smile 
Don't worry, be happy  
--Don't Worry Be Happy,  
Bobby McFerrin 
__________________________

Obama Promises Syria Strike Will Have No Objective

By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker
30 August 13
 
ttempting to quell criticism of his proposal for a limited military mission in Syria, President Obama floated a more modest strategy today, saying that any U.S. action in Syria would have "no objective whatsoever."
"Let me be clear," he said in an interview on CNN. "Our goal will not be to effect régime change, or alter the balance of power in Syria, or bring the civil war there to an end. We will simply do something random there for one or two days and then leave."

"I want to reassure our allies and the people of Syria that what we are about to undertake, if we undertake it at all, will have no purpose or goal," he said. "This is consistent with U.S. foreign policy of the past."

While Mr. Obama clearly hoped that his proposal of a brief and pointless intervention in Syria would reassure the international community, it immediately drew howls of protest from U.S. allies, who argued that two days was too open-ended a timeframe for such a mission.

That criticism led White House spokesman Jay Carney to brief reporters later in the day, arguing that the President was willing to scale down the U.S. mission to "twenty-four hours, thirty-six tops."

"It may take twenty-four hours, but it could also take twelve," Mr. Carney said.

"Maybe we get in there, take a look around, and get out right away. But however long it takes, one thing will not change: this mission will have no point. The President is resolute about that."

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