Cold-Fusion Republicans

"Pathological Science" is a term used to descirbe where an experiment is only used to produce an accepted answer.

Steven Jones, the scientist at BYU performing experiments with hydrogen on palladium wanted to come up with an answer for the exstence of helium in the earth's crust that would point to an earth that could be shown to only be a few thousand years old. He was a devout Mormon, and as such mixed religion and science to the point where objective reality was lost.

Stanly Pons and Martin Fleishman were performing experiments at Univ. of Utah on the same type of elements. They were chemists, and not physiscists. When physisicsts saw their press conference it immediately became apparent that something was amiss. As one physiscist put it , "What was amazing was that they say they were producing fusion yet they still had all their body parts since the neutron flux that would be produced from the experiment that they described if it was actualy doing what they said it was doing should have killed them long ago."

Cold Fusion is one of those chimeras like snake oil that are just perfect for rubes. The subject is far enough over the heads of the average person that extraordinary claims are what is seized upon rather than truth. We see this happening all the time with 2000MPG cars and Snake oil cure alls like Electro-zappo bracelets that cure arthritis and warts and what not. In politics we are seeing it with never ending tales of doom in social security and wars that will "soon" be over.

The theory of pathological science could here be termed "pathological politics". By pointing to a doom and gloom outcome, the republicans are showing a big rock candy mountain future that can only be acheived through subscribing to their tennants, and anyone who speaks out against them must be silenced. This perhaps is the one reason they want so much to have the 10 commandments in public buildings, not so much for the other 8 but for the first two commandments

Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me. And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

To paraphrase these two commandments:

"I am in charge now I have political capital and I will spend it, and woe be unto those that have a different opinion or even dare to question me as I will sic my Swift boaties or other GOP attack dogs upon you because I am easilly pissed off."

Hmmm sounds familiar, and it's looking more and more like a type of pathological politics by the day.