Now, first off….

http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20091216/cm_huffpost/394085

There.  That’s a link to a little piece on the Huffington Post explaining how Joe Lieberman’s willingness to vote against health care reform illustrates that we need to fix the rules for filibusters.  Why?  Because filibusters give “outsized power” to single individuals to hold up legislation – because Lieberman is saying he might vote against it, making the potential vote 59-41 (assuming party-line votes), he holds all the cards and gets all the attention and say-so on the bill.

Now… let’s take a more careful look at what they say there, because it’s very telling.

“To pass the most important elements of the progressive agenda, the Senate must change its filibuster rules.”

If the Republicans had 59 votes, and were saying that the filibuster rules needed to be changed for the purpose of passing the most important elements of the conservative agenda, the Dem’s would be screaming bloody murder.  They don’t want the filibuster rules changed – that’s the last thing they want… except when they’re in power.  Then change the rules all you want – get those d#$%ed dinosaurs out of the way and let us at the levers of power, because that’s the way things should be!

Because we’re right, they’re wrong, and there’s no possible way that this could ever go wrong.

Those of you who are long-term readers might remember that I had words about this in my previous diatribes about binary thought disorder.  I’m confident that I’m right in saying that the Democrats would scream bloody murder if it was a Republican bullet point that was going to be pushed through for one simple reason.

They did, just a couple years ago.  Again, this isn’t a Democrat thing – the Republicans grumble about needing to change the rules every time they want to do something that the Democrats want to filibuster too.  And then?  Then the Democrats and the lib’s in the media and the blogosphere start screaming as though the world were about to come to an end.

There y’go, folks.  Think about it – the filibuster is meaningless if the rules to break it are adjusted willy-nilly by a simple majority (which they can be).  That very fact has meant that changing the filibuster rules is often referred to as the nuclear option – using it is a court-of-last-resort move, because it lets the proverbial genie out of the bag.  It’s true – the Constitution doesn’t say a thing about filibusters being allowed.  You can change them however you want… but guess what.  It doesn’t just change for you.

Of course, there’s a simple way around that too.  Just change the rules back before you lose power.  Of course, that makes it an even more baldfaced power grab, but is that a bad thing?  After all, it’s really only a symbolic gesture, one that lets you scream at the other guy when he changes the rules back so you don’t have a say in anything.

The filibuster exists for the purpose of making sure that the minority can stop the majority from pushing things through without an overwhelming majority.  That’s the entire reason it exists.  And that’s why, for very well over a hundred years, it has remained an option in the Senate.  There is only one reason to change it – because you want to take more power.  Forget the fact that they’re talking about health care.  That’s not what they’re talking about. 

Changing the rules of the filibuster has nothing to do with health care reform.

It’s just a smokescreen.

Changing the rules of the filibuster is something that you only do for one reason.  Because you’re trying to ram something down the throats of the public, opposition be damned.  If the Democrats go and change the rules for the filibuster, they’ll allow themselves to force a simple majority vote on anything that goes through.  Don’t kid yourself about Point #3 in that little article calling for the change – do you really think that the change wouldn’t, effectively, mean that a simple majority of democrats can vote anything through?  Even the system suggested there simply makes the filibuster a formality to wait through – go ahead and go home while the other guys rant and speechify to keep you from voting.  Then come in a week later, and push for cloture with 51 votes, before you go ahead and pass whatever legislation you want with 51 votes.

Health care would be the first thing pushed through, sure.  But would it be the last?  I don’t think so.  They’d promptly push through every single liberal talking point, one week at a time. 

Gun control restrictions?  There y’go.  It’ll cut down on the bill for our health care reform, after all.

Expanded welfare?  Well, hey, we just put you all on Government health care, why not on the Government payroll too?

Gay marriage?  Well… no, probably not, since The One has come out saying he’s against it.  But, if he’d agree to sign it, why not?

On-demand abortion?  It’ll be harder, but we can probably pull it off.

A special Presidential police force, to make sure those dangerous Right Wing lunatics stay in line?  Well of course!  We’ve taken away their chance to do anything through the system, we’d better make sure they don’t do anything outside the system too.

The list can go on, getting increasingly ridiculous all the way along.  Eventually, they’ll probably lose power… at which point, blast it.  The Republicans take over, and use the same rules to go ahead and change back parts of the system (abortion and gay marriage, probably… maybe gun control.)

Congratulations.  The system has become completely controlled by whichever side scores 51 votes, unless the Constitution specifically says you need more.

Yes, that’s a slippery slope argument.  It probably wouldn’t go that far, that fast.  But it illustrates the way that it could go.  If you think that pushing through those points, 1 week at a time, by virtue of having temporarily claimed a slim majority, is a good idea?  Congratulations.  You’re not a Democrat. 

You’re a fascist.

And I mean that by the real definition of a fascist – somebody who believes that the government should control the people, that the people exist for the service of the state, not the other way around.  You just only believe it when the government agrees with you, and you’d be screaming that every one of your rights is being violated if the Republican flavor of fascist were doing it instead.

So don’t go getting hacked off about the other side wanting a little control even when they’re the minority… because one of these days, you probably will be too, believe it or not.  And when that happens, you’ll bitch all the louder about any attempts to further limit your power.

That’s just how politics seems to work these days.  And that’s why the important question isn’t Republican or Democrat, it isn’t left or right - it’s politician or civil servant.

And those of us on the civil servant side have a smaller number of representatives than any other party you could name.

Okay.  I tripped over this little post on Snopes today, about people doubting that in 2010 the entire House of Rep’s would actually be up for re-election.  Moreover, they stated that they can’t remember this ever happening before – why isn’t the Media making a bigger deal of this rare, unprecedented event?

Because, as you would know if you’d paid attention in your freakin’ 4th grade social studies (which is the EARLIEST point I remember being taught about it, but that’s probably because of a spotty memory), this happens every two freakin’ years.

That’s right ladies and gents – it says right there in the Constitution that the entire house of representatives goes up for election every two years.  Pelosi?  She’s up in 2010.  Baldwin?  Up in 2010.  If they’re a congressional representative without the word “senator” in front of their name, they go up in 2010.

Similarly, 1/3 of the ones who do have the word ’senator’ in front of their names go up in 2010. 

Just like they were in 2008, when everybody was swooning over electing the first black President.

Why is it so freaking hard for people to figure out?

Probably because (a) half these people don’t bother to vote except for President (and even then, we have piss-poor turnout rates) and (b) when they do, they just tick their name down next to ‘incumbent’ and ignore it, or worse, next to the party line box… which, due to the rampant gerrymandering on both sides, is often basically the same thing.  Because of this sort of thing, we never hear about those elections except for commercials we’ve taught ourselves to tune out

This is the sort of thing that pisses me off, people.  The idea that there are people in this country – people who say they’ve been voting for the last 30 freakin’ years – who can’t even remember the simple fact that, yes, your congressional rep goes up every 2 years.  These people are voting… and they are demonstrating, at the same time, such a dunderheaded ignorance about the very system they’re proudly (or, sadly, more often reluctantly) taking part in that it’s frightening.

I’m not saying we should have a basic civics test in order to vote (though I wouldn’t be against it, I’ll admit).  Those sort of things are fairly easy to manipulate.  But tell me.  Who did you vote for in the last election?  I can, at least for the national-level elections.  If you want to ask, I even will.

Now, if you can remember who you voted for, can you remember why?  I’ll admit, I’m sometimes part of the problem that I’m railing against here.  When I don’t know much about either candidate, if I’m satisfied with the way things are going, I’ll vote for the incumbent, all other things equal.

But that’s after I’ve looked into most of the races that are for something more important than dog-catcher, run through my head for any names that ring a bell for or against, and then (I’ll admit) considered whether or not the party they’re running under generally agrees with my politics.  I only go “Incumbent” when it’s Republican or Democrat and I’ve got nothing else to go with.  It’s a court of last resort for me.  For a lot of people, it’s just the default – who cares about the race, unless it’s a big one for the President?

Otherwise, how do you explain Congress having approval ratings lower than Bushes and the same party that was in power at the time staying there?  How can we have sub-20% approval ratings, and a 90% retention rate of incumbents?  Think about it, folks.  Two people out of every ten approve of the job that the candidates are doing… and yet they keep 9 out of 10 candidates on the payroll, so to speak.  How does this happen?  Laziness, pure and simple – there’s no other reason.

Personally, I dislike the incumbents we have in there enough that, sometimes, I vote against the incumbent on principle.  On the national level, there is only one incumbent who can be reasonably sure of getting my vote – and I’ll tell you exactly why he’ll get it.  When Senator Feingold comes up for re-election, I’ll be voting for him, as long as I’m still a Wisconsinite.  Why?

When the PATRIOT Act came up for its first votes, it passed with one single dissenting vote – Feingold’s.  Everybody else in the Senate who had the balls to speak up apparently felt that we needed a bill that trampled over civil liberties and ground them into the dirt.  Nobody else seemed to think that this bill could be abused, or at least that if it could be, that we could deal with that later.  Frankly?  Bush didn’t abuse the PATRIOT Act nearly as much as he could have, and consider all the noise we heard about it then.  Obama had been known to campaign on the fact that if he’d been in the Senate at the time, he’d have voted against it too… funny, how that rhetoric went away once he was in the Senate and had voted to extend and expand upon the worst parts of it.

I’ll admit, I’m a little paranoid about my governing officials.  I tend to believe that, if you go ahead and give them a way to punish dissenters and silence opposition, eventually some of them are going to think to go ahead and use it.  Consider, if you will, the fact that the EPA was given the power to basically pass law without having to go through that pesky legislation process, by declaring a substance hazardous to human health.  Now, they’ve done exactly that with CO2 – giving them carte blanche to ‘regulate’ a substance that we’ve just discovered poses an overblown threat at best, thanks to a few hackers hitting the CRU.

I don’t mean for this to turn into a PATRIOT Act rant, or one about ClimateGate.  All I want to do is to spread the word.

Yes, you IDIOTS, the entire House of Representatives DOES come up for re-election every two years, along with 1/3 of the Senate.  So guess what.  Quit bitching about the fact that you don’t like your Congress.  Quit bitching about the fact that they’re not doing any good.  Admit that there’s a freakin’ reason that even the mainstream media had to finally come out and admit that Congress – especially the House, which was then under Democratic control – had lower approval ratings than Dubya, widely perceived as the most unpopular President in decades.

AND VOTE THE BUMS OUT.

You realize, deep down inside, that both sides are corrupt as all Hell.  That the Democrats and the Republicans are both in the pockets of big-money special interest groups.  The Republicans are all getting their funding from big corporations – big banking, big oil, and big insurance.  The Democrats are all getting their funding from… big corporations – big banking, Wall Street fat cats, and groups like ACORN (or, as I like to call them, H&R Block for child sex slavers.)  They’re both taking money out of the same tills.  They’re both beholden to exactly the same special interests.  And as long as the American public keeps proving that the best way to keep in office is to blanket the media with ads, there’s no reason to actually behave like the American public matters – because they don’t.  What matters is your ability to schmooze and collect funds so you can buy more ads and better spin doctors.  And once you get in that office, milk it for all you can, because you’ve got a 9/10 chance of sitting there for practically eternity.

We, the People, have created a monarchy in this country.  It’s time we started switching the King and his Court out every once in a while… the way we were meant to when we became We, the People.

In the news the other day, Pat Buchanan announced that, since there’s no actual proof of climate change, and yet we’re talking about remaking our entire infrastructure and economy based on its presumed existence, we should also transform our country into a theocracy despite there being no known proof of the existence of God.

That’s absolutely ridic – wait a second.  I’m getting an update.

Uhm… I’m sorry, it seems I got that totally mixed up.  The only part of that statement which was accurate was that Pat Buchanan was actually there when the stupid statement that follows was made.  And he didn’t make it (which, honestly… pains me.)

In response to the statement that there’s no known proof that climate change is being caused by mankind, by Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift:

“There’s no known proof of the existence of God either!  How much proof do you need, Pat?”

Let me get this straight.  You’re equating the fact that people believe in God based on pure faith, with no known proof, with the fact that people are insisting we need to completely overhaul the infrastructure of the world and its economy because of anthropogenic climate change?

Do you realize that you’re also stating that AGW is an issue of faith, not of proof?  Because that’s basically what you’re saying.

You see… we aren’t a theocracy.  We don’t allow what is perceived as God’s word to dictate how we run our economy.  If we did, we would ban lobster fishing, and allow people to capture Mexicans and Canadians as slave labor.  We would also make homosexuality punishable by death.  Because that, apparently, is God’s law, and if we disobey we’re in for major punishments.  We would be making those decisions based purely on faith, because we believe that the invisible man in the sky is telling us that we should.

Instead, because we aren’t a theocracy, we make our laws based (at least somewhat) based on things we do have proof of, or believe for reasons beyond the “invisible man in the sky” argument.  Because there’s no reason to believe that homosexuality is actually equivalent to murder, we don’t execute gays.  Because there’s no reason to believe that we have a divine mandate to conquer the world, we don’t legalize taking foreign nationals as slaves.  Because we know that shellfish actually can be eaten safely, we don’t make them illegal to harvest and consume.

Similarly, because we are supposed to be making laws based on common sense and scientific evidence, rather than proof, we don’t make laws mandating that we completely overhaul our economy based on what are, basically, faith-based claims that our current economy is causing the Earth to warm to unsafe levels.

“But hey!”  You might be saying.  “We *do* have scientific evidence!”

And yet… we also have evidence (not scientific, but even better – actual documentation) that the “scientific evidence” was developed using potentially inaccurate numbers, and with a concerted effort to conceal the raw data and silence dissenters.  You don’t believe it?  They’ve got emails from the CRU – the go-to people for climate change information – stating that journals that allowed articles dissenting with the majority view of climate change should be “reviewed” as to whether or not they’re legitimate journals.

We’ve got statements that the researchers would rather dump their raw data than have it made available to people outside their circle.

We’ve got statements that it’s a “travesty” that their models can’t explain the current temperature trends.

We’ve got statements that data needs to be edited in order to get the results they’re publicizing.

Now – I’m in a field that does some public reporting.  And yes, adjustments do sometimes have to be made in order to accurately portray the information.  However, we can explain Every.  Single.  Adjustment.  If we couldn’t, we could lose our jobs, or even end up in prison.  We can’t just arbitrarily say “these numbers look too low – add arbitrary number X to make it fit the trend.”  If we try doing that, we get screamed at from every level of the process, and the media would be having a field day with us.

But this?  Clear evidence and obvious statements that the scientists who’ve been using millions of dollars to fund their research, who are proposing that we make changes that could have billions or even trillions of dollars of economic impact?  We have clear evidence and unambiguous statements that call all of their information into question.

And the mainstream media is being very, very quiet about it.  Why?  Because they’ve drunk the Kool-aid.  After all – there’s no known proof of God, but plenty of people believe in him.  How’s this any difference?

Maybe because we’re actually moving away from the point of considering theocratic dictatorships a legitimate government.  You’d think they’d get with the 21st Century.

I’ve heard that, in the early days of pumpkin pie, it wasn’t made with the pumpkin in the filling – the pumpkin was put in the crust, and then another type of pie used to fill it (possibly pumpkin, possibly other.)

Does anybody know where I might find a recipe that has a pumpkin-based crust?

The Catholic church has declared that, unless changes are made in Washington D.C., it will have no choice but to suspend social services in that district.

Now, what changes does it want?  Does it want the city to evict any abortion providers there?  Does it feel that the city’s crime rates are evidence that their services aren’t doing anything, and they would be better applied elsewhere?  Does it feel that the politicians who work there are too sinful to service the district?

Nope!  What it wants changed is a proposed ordinance that would make it necessary for the Church to extend the same benefits to married gay employees that it does to married straight employees.

This ordinance would not make it necessary for the Church to perform or provide space for gay marriages.  It would only make it necessary for them to not discriminate against gay employees.  Employees.  They can feel free to sermonize against the evils of homosexuality all they want.  They can feel free to tell those employees, day in and day out, that they don’t deserve to have their relationships recognized, or to receive the blessings of the Lord.  They can feel free to bar their doors to gay couples who want to get married.

All they have to do is recognize gay married couples as having the same legal rights as straight ones.  Because it’s the law, and… well, they’re not that exempt from the law.

What was it that Christ said again?  Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s?  At any rate.

If they’re required to do this horrible, despicable thing, they’re going to cut off all services to D.C. charities, leaving thousands without support just as winter’s rolling in, because they simply can’t stomach the idea that the gay employees providing those services have the same legal, secular rights as the straight ones.

And they expect to win this fight.  Why?  Because they hope desperately that they can throw the blame on the politicians, instead of themselves.  The politicians, by taking the rights of the gays over the well-being of the homeless, those heartless bastards.  The gay community itself, for not backing down and asking the politicians to stop when the threat was made.  Everybody except the Church, at least in the eyes of the faithful.

They’re turning the homeless and needy of Washington D.C. into hostages, ladies and gentlemen.  Think about that for a minute.  “Do what I want, or I will do something you don’t want me to do that harms an innocent third party.”  What is that?  Hostage taking.  Extortion.

And if they do get away with it – which they just might – it will send a very, very dangerous message.  They will see that they can get away with all manner of similar stunts.

“This neighborhood is home to an abortion provider.  We’re outta here – we’re pulling a Lot, and not even looking back to make sure the Lord will smite you, ’cause we know he will.”

“This state recognizes gay marriages.  We simply cannot, in good faith, provide services in Iowa anymore.  The faithful may still enter, for to do otherwise would be contrary to God’s will, but the doors of the church are otherwise barred.  So sorry – blame your politicians.  Connecticut too, by the way.  We’re just packing up and moving to Maine.  Anybody who voted in support of it?  Welcome to excommunication, and GTFO.”

They can’t get away with this.  Yeah, everybody on the outside who hears about this think it’s ridiculous, but the people inside who are true believers… many of them will probably accept that this is a Sodom and Gomorrah situation, and the Church’s judgment.  I really hope they don’t, and believe that eventually this sort of jackassery will result in a schism of substantial proportions.  Already, the attitude of organized Christian churches in general is driving many otherwise faithful individuals away from the churches, Catholic or otherwise.  Eventually, they’re going to have to split up… or they’re going to cause a new Reformation.

Can’t wait for that to happen, as long as there’s not as much burning of villages in the process.

After a dead week up here, we get a guest post from Vorex, sometimes commentor, sometimes political debator with myself off the list.  I’ll post my own response later on, but for now, thanks for chiming in, Vorex!

~~~===~~~

Followers of climate change politics will not be surprised that recent news out of Stockholm indicates a practical impossibility of any binding agreement at Copenhagen. It really shouldn’t have taken a disagreement on how the thing would be funded, the fact that every nation in the world is turning up with a ‘you go first’ attitude has made it clear that these talks would be ultimately fruitless. So in the absence of the political will necessary to address this on a global scale what do we have? Well, there’s good news and bad news.

The good news is that it won’t be as bad as some are saying. No matter how bad warming gets it won’t be the end of life on Earth. That’s remarkably hard to do without physically breaking the planet, and even then it’s a job and some. It won’t even be the end of human life on Earth … we’re now so numerous and so technologically equipped that we could probably survive, in some form, even an acute disaster like a catastrophic asteroid impact. We’d manage the gradual creep of climate change. Some of us, anyway.

 The bad news is that it’s not all going to be OK. Oceans will rise, and become more acidic. Sea life, much more abundant than land life, will be affected. Changing climactic conditions will alter the viable range of plants, including food crops. Land will be submerged, some of it highly valuable, some of it highly populated. Most of it problematic. The people of the future will live in a world which is geographically and ecologically quite different to today.

 One of the many distractions taking place in this arena is the question of whether warming is anthropogenic, that is to say are humans responsible? I don’t see that it really matters. The implication in the question is that if it’s not our fault then we don’t have to do anything about it. It equates ‘natural’ (in the sense of not man-made) with ‘benign’ and couldn’t be more wrong. The eruption at Pompeii was ‘natutral’, the recent pacific tsunami was ‘natural’, hurricane Katrina was ‘natural’ and the meteor impact which lead to the K-T boundary was ‘natural’ … but is it safe to say that we would expend significant resources on each of these events had we known with certainty they were coming.

 For that matter, every mass extinction to date has been entirely natural … and yet managed to wipe out vast swathes of life on earth. There remains a debate as to whether we are currently experiencing a mass extinction event (the Holocence) and whether this is anthropogenic or not. Ultimately, again, I think the question is irrelevant. Wherever the extinction event came from (if there is one) we can either act to prevent it, or not. It’s either worth it, or not. Those are really the only two options.

 The same is true of climate change. We are currently in an advantageous climate, and we can either work to preserve it (regardless of the source of change) or not. Politically, it would seem that we have chosen ‘not’.

So, you thought you’d get off that easy?  Hah!  No such luck – there’s one Friday left in October, and I’m gonna use it.  And what, pray tell, do you think I’m going to discuss on this, the evening of Halloween?

What else?  The spirits crossing between our world and the next… the very origin of the holiday.

Ghosts – those spirits of the dead, our little connection to the hereafter.  Now, I’ll be the first to say – I’m a believer.  I’ve got too much in the way of family experience with them, and my own experiences at that.  When you *see* something pushing down the bed that isn’t actually there, you start believing (for the record – we’re pretty sure it’s one of our cats who passed on.)

Now… do ghosts necessarily mean that we’ve got souls and those sort of things bopping around?  Not necessarily.  Go back to quantum theory, as discussed in my Quantum of Lovecraft post.  Places like Gettysburg were events of massive death and emotional strength… while it is plausible that disembodied spirits exist there, it’s also plausible that some sort of shift in the temporal dimensions may be giving us a vision of the past.  For your typical ‘repeating’ haunting, this is a perfectly logical explanation – that we’re somehow seeing a traumatic incident in time, a loop in history that keeps on showing itself off time and again.  However, there are other types of ghosts, apparently – ones who think more, who interact with people.  On a related topic, you have the ‘demons’ and ’shadow people,’ supposedly inhuman spirits that have their own purposes for humanity.

Again, quantum theory gives us a possible explanation.  Creatures that are capable of crossing over between universes where they brush together, where there’s a little overlap… possibly even creatures that can stay in our universe by sliding themselves into one of us.

Of course, quantum theory isn’t the only possible explanation.  There’s the standard supernatural – fallen angels and wandering souls – and there’s also more common physics.  By our understanding of physics, it’s not possible for energy – or information – to be truly destroyed; all it can do is change form.  By that logic, there’s no reason for consciousness to necessarily be any different, if the force behind it is strong enough.  The human body generates a small electromagnetic field, and our thought processes take place on an electronic level.  All sorts of signs indicate that human consciousness is an aspect of energy, not physicality.  Based on that, while consciousness could convert, it’s also possible that this conversion would simply be to an energy form – passing from a physical life to an energetic one.  With that possibility (which covers a lot of different phenomena, like astral projection and psychic phenomena), it becomes plausible that sufficient willpower or purpose would allow a ’spirit’ to remain in the world until it’s decided to ‘move on.’

So ghosts aren’t that implausible.  Are they real?  I have no way to prove it.  So far, there’s no way to disprove it.  There is a lot of evidence of some sort of phenomena though (and I’m not counting television appearances, for the record.)  Go out and take a look for it, if you want, make your own decision.  But I will say one bit of advice.

Remember that if ghosts are real, all evidence indicates that it takes a huge amount of dedication and emotion to pull it off.  And that often it involves negative emotions.  Just because you’re dead, it doesn’t mean you’ve become a good person – anybody who believes in ghosts should bear in mind that Casper’s more likely an exception, rather than the rule.  Be careful out there, or you might end up like Micah from Paranormal Activity.

Ah, Non-Sequiter.  There are days when I love you.

http://www.johntunger.com/legal-defense-fund.html

So… lemme get this straight.  It’s not art.  But you’re selling it as art.  And you’re pretending to be the original designer so you can claim the cred for being an artist.

A prime example of “let’s just out-money the sucker, then we’ll get what we want.”  MPAA tactics in reverse.

Ah, the mad scientist.  Where would horror be without Dr. Frankenstein, Jekyll, Sardonicus, and the countless other souls who pushed the bounds of science into God’s domain, only to perish for their efforts?  Of course, there aren’t any real mad scientists out there… are there?

Well, Tesla’s neighbors might have argued.  Besides his somewhat fanciful claims that he could split the Earth with a few well timed explosions, his experiments in broadcast power resulted in massive Tesla coils, hundreds of feet tall, that drew down lightning on the land around them.  Of course, then he told his backer that he was planning on offering electricity to the world for free.  Yeah, guess how quickly those checks stopped being signed.

And, of course, one could easily list Oppenheimer and the other men behind the Manhattan Project as mad scientists, albeit rather more successful ones.  Oppenheimer even had the necessary flair for the dramatic.  “I am become Death, destroyer of worlds,” anyone?

Even the fictional mad scientists aren’t necessarily that out there, in the long run.  Dr. Jekyll’s mysterious salts and ethers that warped the physical form and drove men mad?  Well, what would you say cocaine and other exotic drugs are?  It seems the good doctor accidentally may have created one of the first designer drugs.  And even Baron Doctor Victor von Frankenstein, who raised the dead, seems to have had a real-life counterpart.

But, of course, there aren’t any real mad scientists around today.  Tesla and the like… they were from an era when science was expanding so rapidly that anything seemed possible.  These days, we’ve got a better grasp on things.

And then you hear about DARPA, and their efforts to make cyborg insects, and maybe it’s not so far-fetched after all.  The mad scientists just have the government signing their checks now.

Mad science.  Is it really a bad thing?  Is there a boundary beyond which man wasn’t meant to explore?  That’s one of the hardest questions, and one that’s inspired an entire field of study (scientific ethics).  Some people have very strong opinions that scientists go too far, too fast – people like Mary Shelley and Michael Crichton.  Other people think that science isn’t going far enough fast enough, that it’s being held back unfairly by people’s fears.  What’s the answer?  Really, it’s rather hard to find one.  The only answer everybody seems to agree on is that if something goes wrong, you can blame the scientists.

Is it any wonder that some of them go a little mad?

Speaking of returning unholy, cobbled together bits of the dead and buried to animate mockeries of life, take a look at http://darklylit.wordpress.com, or search for DarklyLit on iTunes and take a listen.  It’s a new podcast I’m working on, where I’ll be doing free readings of public domain dark fiction, and discussing it on alternate weeks.  I’ve got the permission of Nox Arcana to use their music on the podcast (go listen to them now – www.noxarcana.com – they’re great), and I hope to help bring some of the classics back to the public eye.  This week, I pretty well just introduce the podcast.  If you’d rather wait until I’m in the thick of things, then tune in next week for my reading of The Tell-Tale Heart.

Just in time for Halloween.