Express Your Opinion of Bush Science (Fiction?) Policies at the UCS Cartoon Contest

Ronald Bailey | September 5, 2006

First there was the Danish Muhammad cartoon contest. Then followed the Iranian Holocaust cartoon contest. Now the Union of Concerned Scientists wants you to vote for your favorite anti-Bush science cartoon.

Actually, I really am torn between #3 and #9.

Vote here.

Comments

|9.5.06 @ 3:12PM|#

Oh, for sure #3!

Tim Cavanaugh|9.5.06 @ 3:13PM|#

I went with #4, but they all stank. And then after you vote they send you to a Ponzi page where you're supposed to email your friends about UCS.

|9.5.06 @ 3:16PM|#

What Tim said. They all suck and blow at the same time.

|9.5.06 @ 3:17PM|#

Certainly, the analogy to the Danish Cartoon controversy is very appropriate, since angry Bush supporters are no doubt burning the headquarters of the Union of Concerned Scientists to the ground and threatening its members with beheading. For good measure, they have probably already put Fermi Lab to the torch.

Since you endorsed this apostasy Ronald, have you gone into hiding yet?

|9.5.06 @ 3:20PM|#

They "bluck."

Tim Cavanaugh|9.5.06 @ 3:24PM|#

angry Bush supporters are no doubt burning the headquarters of the Union of Concerned Scientists to the ground and threatening its members with beheading

Lighten up, Francis.

|9.5.06 @ 3:27PM|#

Sorry to offend Tim. I am just in a mood.

|9.5.06 @ 3:44PM|#

I'm with Tim--forcing me to sign up for something to vote meant that I didn't vote. But if I had, it would've been for Number Six (it is not a number; it's a free cartoon).

Now's the time at Reason when we dance!

Don't know why, but I always wanted to say that.

|9.5.06 @ 3:46PM|#

Hey Tim: The Danish Muhammad cartoons were pretty lame too, though my personal favorite was the one with the tagline: "Stop stop, we ran out of virgins."

URL: http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2006/02/prophet_on_the.shtml

Although, I haven't bothered with the Iranian anti-Holocaust cartoons, I can't imagine that they are a barrel of rip-snorting laffs.

|9.5.06 @ 4:07PM|#

The Union of Concerned Scientists is a joke in and of themselves, they don't need any cartoons sent to them. They have politicized science.

|9.5.06 @ 4:24PM|#

12 votes for Sucks!

The best I can do is vote for least sucky: 5 & 9.

I really expected to lose bladder control considering the fecundity of the subject matter, but I didn't giggle, snicker, or even snort.


By the way, when are we going to get to point our hypocritical, great-satan-blinded orbs at the Holocaust Cartoon Contest entries? I'm dying to put freedom of speech to the test (but not literally).

|9.5.06 @ 4:31PM|#

Uhh, looking at #10, I noticed that a Thailand dossier is featured prominently in the global warming folder. Is the author seriously alluding that the 2004 Tsunami was somehow caused by global warming? And this in a contest run by a Science organization?

Come to think about it, the jury is still out on whether Katrina was a direct result of global warming as well.

|9.5.06 @ 5:05PM|#

deus ex machina, please think before you post; your ignorance of science is staggering. everyone knows that if we immediately stop using fossil fuels, we would be able to cause global cooling, which would lower sea levels as ice built up in antarctica and greenland. all we need to do is lower sea levels by 30ft, and a 30ft tsunami would no longer be a danger to anyone. same thing works for hurricane storm surge.

no one liked number 7? i thought it was kind of cute.

-cab

|9.5.06 @ 5:05PM|#

That's a whole lot of not funny in one place. Only 7 even made me smile.

|9.5.06 @ 5:11PM|#

ok, i see people are finally coming around...

|9.5.06 @ 5:45PM|#

I liked 6.
Process is always part of science.

|9.5.06 @ 6:38PM|#

#6 would have been cute if I hadn't already seen numerous examples of the type of Industrial Age diagrams being mimicked, right down to the input funnel and the coarse shading. It would also have helped if those diagrams weren't explicitly sarcastic themselves. In other words, had the diagram been in some way remotely original to my experience and had not paled in comparison in every way to the examples with which I was familiar, it might have been amusing.

It's like seeing a car commercial that dresses up an actor like Buster Keaton and puts him through some lame pratfall gags in black and white footage with crappy carousel piano recordings and stupid sound effects in the background. It might have been cute had you never seen a Keaton feature, but having seen one it's lameness was accentuated.

|9.5.06 @ 10:11PM|#

I liked 3, 8, and 11. They draw out (unintended pun) problems that can beset scientific research anytime there's government funding or control. I wonder if that occurred to any of the folks at the UCC.

Some of the cartoons were just global warming activist nonsense.

|9.5.06 @ 10:18PM|#

Pro Libertate:

Now's the time at Reason when we dance!

Don't know why, but I always wanted to say that.

Suggest an H&R schprokets thread.

|9.5.06 @ 10:31PM|#

I can't believe no one has voted for #2 yet!

Any cartoon that unironically depicts the FDA, EPA and NASA as bastions of independent science and Truth and as Iraq-hostage archetypes just waiting to be beheaded on the evening news says everything that critics of the Bush administration need to say.

Tuning Spork|9.5.06 @ 11:06PM|#

I thought I would have to vote for lame-o #3 until I came to #11 (the science in the culture of politics one).

Hey, UCS. Project much?

Then I got to where they wanted to send me all kinds of crud just for the priviledge of voting for that howler. No thanks; no vote.

Pick a whiner without me. I've been disenfranchised.

|9.5.06 @ 11:47PM|#

Uhh, looking at #10, I noticed that a Thailand dossier is featured prominently in the global warming folder. Is the author seriously alluding that the 2004 Tsunami was somehow caused by global warming?

Yes.

Bush is so evil, the Earth itself is shaking with fear. The other folder is labeled "Katrina" -- which was caused by global warming about as much as the tsunami was.

uncle sam|9.6.06 @ 12:06AM|#

Gary larson cartooned rings all around these lamosities.

|9.6.06 @ 2:28AM|#

They are all pretty lame. #7 was the best because it has always been fun watching films backwards.

#2 was funny for the same reasons that Eric said.

#3 was ironic because being a scientist myself, it seems that WAAAAAY too many scientists already have conclusions that they want to see, and sure enough, all their research points to their conclusions. Funny how that works. The government and other research bodies do the same thing. They all like to hire people that want to see the results they want.

Stronger Hurricanes? More of them this decade? Alright let's ignore the 20 year on-off cycle that we don't understand as of yet and turned back on in the late ninties after 20 years of inactivity. And let's forget the fact that satellite imagery in the past 20 years has helped us identify storms that are out in the middle of the ocean, that we would have previously had no knowledge of structure or intensity. Could it be global warming? Sure, it could. Could it be better equipment to measure storms with? Yeah, it might be. Could it be other things? Of course it could, and jumping to conclusions is NOT scientific and it is NOT responsible.

UCS, did someone eat your homework?

|9.6.06 @ 3:58AM|#

Thanks Lowdog.

And I did not mean to suggest that UCS "weren't" anti-capitalist, I just saw no obvious evidence. There does from the satement you quoted some evidence of top-down control statist tendencies, etc. But I imagine they don't realyl want to go to an Eco-Stalinist regime. See I neatly avoided invoking Godwins Law by NOT saying Eco-Nazis!

...

oops!

|9.6.06 @ 11:27AM|#

Rick Barton,

Well, there have been times that I'd have liked to have used one of Dieter's other catchphrases to address commenters here: "Your story grows tiresome." :)

|9.6.06 @ 2:06PM|#

The "Censor-Matic" cartoon might have got a chuckle out of me if we could have seen a diagram of the back side of the machine. That'd be the part with the fuel inputs, which are elastic tubes attached to the /a/r/m/s/ wallets of unwilling citizens, strapped down so the Federal Science Bureacracy can suck their life's blood to feed the C-M's furnace.

These guys seriously need to learn Who takes the King's shilling, does the King's bidding.

Kevin