"Santorum: 'Science Should Get Out Of Politics.'"

That's the headline at Talking Points Memo — a twist on the conventional statement Religion Should Get Out of Politics. But what did Santorum actually say?

The Des Moines Register reports from a Santorum campaign stop at the University of Northern Iowa, where he talked about education:

Discussing controversial classroom subjects such as evolution and global warming, Santorum said he has suggested that “science should get out of politics” and he is opposed to teaching that provides a “politically correct perspective.”

TPM follows up with a cute Simpsons reference — "A prayer in a public school! God has no place within these walls, just like facts have no place within organized religion!" But what was Santorum really saying? "Science Should Get Out Of Politics" is the kind of provocative line that can work in a speech precisely because it has a bad interpretation. The listeners perk up, and the speaker proceeds to lead them to a very good interpretation. I'm sure there's a Greek name for that rhetorical device.

The Des Moines Register doesn't give any more context for the quote, however, and when I Google it, it get a string of hits for the quote — taken out of context — on numerous apparently left-leaning blogs. For example, The Stranger blog Slog says:

Buttsex-Obsessed Jesus Wizard Rick Santorum Says "Science should get out of politics"

What a fucking moron:

Discussing controversial classroom subjects such as evolution and global warming, Santorum said he has suggested that “science should get out of politics” and he is opposed to teaching that provides a “politically correct perspective.”

Rick Santorum is such a bucket of Santorum.

In the last line, "Santorum" is linked twice to the website used in the campaign to turn Santorum's name into a neologism with a filthy meaning. That campaign is affecting web searches on his name so that it's hard to Google for anything serious about Santorum. I did find his official website (by Googling "santorum official website"), and I've poked around over there but not found the text of the science-out-of-politics speech or anything that helps me figure out the context of the remark. I'm guessing the context has to do with the misuse of science somehow.

Perhaps Santorum people monitor what people are saying about him on blogs, and they'll respond to this post by sending me the text of the speech, which I would like to analyze.

"It's become some sort of glamour protest. It's all see and be seen now."

Says Meade when he comes home from the Capitol this evening with these pics. Were these kids putting on a show?



And this young lady...



... what does she think she's doing?! It's a clown show....



ADDED: You think it would make more sense with video...



... but you are wrong. [AND: I love that you can see the instant when the still camera flash goes off (and that Meade wields both cameras simultaneously).]

"Few people know it, and he does everything to hide it. But it's true: Homer J. Simpson is Catholic."

Proclaims Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, which isn't infallible.

"A man was arrested after stealing author Jonathan Franzen's glasses from the writer and demanding a ransom of £100,000 ($158,808) at a book launch."

"Police said a helicopter was called to chase the culprit, who jumped into the Serpentine lake in London. The 27-year-old has since been released with no further action being taken and the glasses have been recovered."

A helicopter? I mean, I know Franzen's book — "Freedom" — is considered tremendously important, but... it was a pair of glasses. Why chase the guy with a helicopter?

Is it because those glasses are part of his signature look? Quick! Which one is Franzen?



Without the glasses... he could be... just anybody.

Some book journal editor who was at the scene of the crime, said: "It was frankly quite bizarre. Considering the seriousness of Franzen's work, this is the last thing anyone expected at his book launch."

Considering the seriousness of Franzen's work! I don't understand literary-journalist logic. It's exactly seriousness that inspires absurd prankish tweaking. (If you don't understand my logic, you need to watch a few Marx Brothers movies.)

"Will the new Forbes Law School Rankings reduce the influence of the U.S. News rankings?"

Asks Instapundit, linking here, and what's a harried law school applicant to think? Forget Harvard! I'm aiming for Williams Law School. And if I can't get into Williams, here's hoping for Princeton Law School — good old Princeton Law School. It's always been so well thought of! *

Now, I can see that way down at the bottom of his post — the one headed "Forbes Law School Rankings" and displaying a list of 50 schools that are not law schools — TaxProf gets around to saying:

Forbes reportedly is at work on its first law school rankings, based in part on an alumni survey and salary information (immediately after graduation and five years out), which Forbes will use to produce a "return on investment."

An interesting calculation. I can already hear the lawprofs' complaints about penalizing schools that support students going into public service. Ah, but here at Wisconsin, the tuition is relatively low. Let's see how we rank, relative to our U.S. News ranking, before we snipe at Forbes. That was my first thought, and I'll bet it's the way most lawprofs think.

***

* That sent me looking for a quote I remember about how well the nonexistent Princeton Law School would rank in any survey of the reputation of law schools. Ah, here it is: a 1998 NYT article by Jan Hoffman — I love Jan Hoffman! — about the problems with the U.S. News rankings:

The deans said that law schools should not be ranked at all.... They protested the reputation questionnaires, which ask respondents their opinion of all the law schools in the country.

''If they were asked about Princeton Law School, it would appear on the top 20 -- but it doesn't exist,'' said John Sexton, dean of New York University's law school.

***

ADDED: A propos of my anticipated criticism of the Forbes ranking, I feel I must reference this oft-referenced Michelle Obama speech:

And I went from college to law school to a big ol' fancy law firm where I was making more money than both of my parents combined. I thought I had arrived....

.... and I had to ask myself whether, if I died tomorrow, would I want this to be my legacy, working in a corporate firm, working for big companies? And when I asked myself the question, the resounding answer was, absolutely not. This isn't what I want to leave behind, this isn't why I went to Princeton and Harvard, this isn't why I was doing what I was doing. I thought I had more to give.

So people were quite surprised when I told them at the firm that I was going to leave this big lucrative paycheck behind and a promising career, and go on to do something more service-oriented....

Also, there's Lionel Hutz...



... he went to Princeton Law School.

"The concept of depicting a young, fashion-forward female with exaggerated features, including an oversized head and feet, is... unoriginal as well as an unprotectable idea."

Writes 9th Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski, giving the victory to Bratz over Barbie.

Mattel argues that the sculpt was entitled to broad protection because there are many ways one can depict an exaggerated human figure. It’s true that there’s a broad range of expression for bodies with exaggerated features: One could make a fashion doll with a large nose instead of a small one, or a potbelly instead of a narrow waist. But there’s not a big market for fashion dolls that look like Patty and Selma Bouvier. Little girls buy fashion dolls with idealized proportions —which means slightly larger heads, eyes and lips; slightly smaller noses and waists; and slightly longer limbs than those that appear routinely in nature. But these features can be exaggerated only so much: Make the head too large or the waist too small and the doll becomes freakish, not idealized.

(PDF of opinion here. Short news article here.)

Have Patty and Selma Bouvier ever been mentioned in a court case before?

Proto-blogging in 1816.

From "The Last Novel," by David Markson:

Keats stayed up all night on the occasion when he actually did look into Chapman's Homer — and then composed his sonnet so swiftly that he was able to messenger it to a friend to read before breakfast.

You read something quickly. It inspires you to write something quickly and then to get it out instantly to be read. That is blogging, and Keats got as close to that as one could in 1816. But he was reading George Chapman's translation of Homer and writing a sonnet that people will read as long as there are people who can read. That's all very grand, compared to blogging. To counterbalance, the blogger gets the instant writing out to thousands, and Keats only got his poem out instantly to one person.

But would Keats have read Homer and written a timeless sonnet if he could have blogged?

***

I read the first 82 pages of Markson's book out loud as Meade drove the TT up to Fish Creek, Wisconsin and back — via Whitefish Dunes — Thursday and Friday. I stopped reading at page 82 last night at about 9 when the last of the daylight failed. The book is composed entirely of snippets like the one quoted above, and if I'd gotten to the next snippet, it would have been:

Fish feel pain.

Ah! The fish theme! How apt!

Actually, I'm lying. Lying out of love of aptness. For your sake, dear Reader. That fish snippet is at the very bottom of page 82. It was the second to the next one. The next one was really:

If it were up to me, I would have wiped my behind with his last decree.

Said Mozart — after a demand by the Archbishop of Salzburg for more brevity in his church compositions.

There's another Mozart one that led to some laughter and conversation. On page 21:

I wish you good night, but first shit in your bed.

Reads another Mozart letter to Anna Maria.

***

Let me get the jump on the comments and say yes, I know that Kurt Cobain sang "It's okay to eat fish/'Cause they don't have any feelings." And yes, these days, on hearing "Homer," one doesn't think of the Greek poet anymore, one thinks of "The Simpsons." That's what TV and blogging and everything modern has done to us. 

"10 Simpsons Fan Art Pictures Where They Don’t Look Like The Simpsons."

Ha ha.

Homer Simpson tries to vote for Obama.

Live-action "Simpsons."

Via Gawker. Nicely done. This, less so.

ADDED: I've replaced the embeds with links to declutter the front page in preparation for a new home movie that I happen to know you're going to like. I mean it is certain.

Miscellany.

Written by me on that other blog, cross-posted here for your commenting pleasure:

CONTACT LENSES WITH CIRCUITS AND LIGHTS. Is there something you'd like to see with your eyes other than what's really in front of you?

DIGG AND WIKIPEDIA WORK because the vibrant democracy we see on the surface is checked and balanced by a less conspicuous and more reliable elite group — Chris Wilson explains.

"THE KIDS BUYING MUSIC DON'T WANT immaculately-performed songs that remind them of their grandmothers; they want music that will help them get laid, which is exactly what AI's audition process doesn't test for."

ELMO AS KRUSTY. Didn't this happen on the "Treehouse of Horrors III"?

What's Homer Simpson doing with that pagan rain god?

Ring toss! (Via Classical Values.)

Opportunities pursued elsewhere.

Gordon has a post on the Forbes article about Madison, in which he spells my first name both correctly and incorrectly, which leads me into the sort of discussion that exemplifies the kind of thing (other than extra photographs) that I house on my other blog. Even though I don't resist digressions and odd ramblings on this blog, I actually do have standards here. So go to that link if you want to know the travails of a lifetime of saying "no e," the subject of "no e-mail," the Simpsons episode with no "e" key on the typewriter, my mother's answer to the question of "Where do babies come from?" in its entirety, and speculation about the connection between my parents' practices and why I became a law professor.

ADDED: In the interest of preservation, 8 years after this post was published, I'm pasting in the material from the other blog:
ANN/ANNE

The travails of having a name that's perfectly easy to spell and misspell.

I see Gordon linked to me on his blog and managed to spell my name correctly and incorrectly in the same post. There are people in the Law School who have known me for 20 years and still spell my name wrong. "Ann" is such a simple name, the plainest possible name, so plain that it seems people feel a pull to make it less plain. Surely, it can't just be "Ann." It seems to need the kind of fancying up that only an "e" can provide. There, now, doesn't it look so much more elegant, so much more anglophilically royal? I tried to use Google to trace down the reason for the two spellings. I had a theory that "Anne" related to various English queens in a way that led Americans to go for the "Ann" spelling, and a related theory that "Ann" was chosen by various severe Protestant groups who rejected adornment. (I note the Shaker leader Ann Lee.) It's very hard to write a Google search for this, and I was stymied by the tendency of "no e" to draw in "no e-mail." Well, at least that connected two of the banes of my existence: junk email and the "junk" e people want to put on my name--and how hard it is to stop both things. When telling my name to a stranger who is writing it down--such as when making an appointment or placing an order--if I anticipate the problem and say "Ann A-N-N...," the person frequently seems disturbed, as if I think they are an idiot because I'm spelling out such an easy to spell name. If I say "Ann, that's Ann with no e," they often don't hear what I'm saying. (As for my last name, I've learned to spell out the first three letters and then say "house," with no warning that I'm going to stop saying letters in a row, and people always get it. I used to try to say the first three letters, then say "and then just house," which people found puzzling, because of the intrusive "and then" which they just couldn't hear straight. There's no similar solution for spelling "Ann.")

(Hmmm.... my little Google search turned up this episode of The Simpsons, in which Ann Landers is a character and Homer has trouble writing on a typewriter because it has no "e" key. Maybe I'm too lazy to read enough about this episode to see if the answer is on this page, but did Ann steal the "e" key as a protest? Kinda like that "w" key vandalism by the outgoing Clinton people?)

But why did my parents choose "Ann" and spell it that way? My parents thought avoiding nicknames was important and deliberately gave all three children one syllable names so they were unshortenable. They chose "Ann" to produce all As--my middle initial is A too. They liked the idea of "triple A" for some reason, and maybe it helped me be a good student by giving me the sense that I had a special relationship with "A." But why did they pick Ann and not Anne? Why give me the plainest possible name and deprive me of even the last morsel of decoration? Were they interested in rejecting anglophilia? Did they think it was more Protestant? Or was it some concept about being modern? My parents were great at leaving me to figure out things for myself, even if I asked a direct question. For example, the answer to the question "Where do babies come from?" was, in its entirety, "You know how men and women are physically built." So even if you asked, you could at best hope for a clue--oh and an implicit expression of confidence that you could figure it out for yourself or maybe only that you're better off with something to figure out than an answer handed to you on a plate. This may explain why I became a law professor. And it even suggests why they named me Ann in the first place: because it created the question, why Ann and not Anne, which I could wonder about for the rest of my life, without ever reaching an answer, but having various theories along that way that would give me something to think about. That thought reminded me of something my mother used to say, her favorite answer, and possibly her only answer, to the childish habit of asking why: "That's so little girls like you can ask questions." Hmmmm.... that reminds me to try to use the Socratic method more in class, in honor of my mysterious mother, who is no longer in a position even to deflect my questions.

That post contained a couple links, but clicking them now gets me nowhere, which reinforces my commitment to preservation.