I know this, you know this, GP knows this, and Republicans know it. They're making the argument because they think they can win with it, not because they think it's rational.
Well, a plucked bird does look pretty different. Then again, fossilized feathers for dinosaurs have been found, so it's not like we're completely blind to that, either.
Even that being true, it's readily apparent that Christians always choose which scriptures to highlight. The fundamentalist ones will say you must take the whole bible or nothing, but that's not how they behave. Not at all.
Let's assume the homophobic translation of Romans 1 is the correct one. Is any given Christian talking about that, or are they talking about being kind to the poor, pointing out the hypocrisy of religious leaders, or that the literal, obvious interpretation of "rich men can't get through the eye of a needle" is the correct one? There's so many scriptures they could be highlighting, and it's conspicuous that they choose to make a homophobic one really, really important to them.
MAGA Christians tend to get very angry if you point this out. The usual responses are along the lines of "you only know a few cherry picked scriptures as talking points" or "you atheists would burn alive if you actually read the bible".
There's a defensible argument that Paul invented Christianity. Jesus (whoever he was historically) does not appear to have intended to produce a separate religion from Judaism. Paul did that.
It's not a complete slam dunk, but even if you don't buy it, it's still very apparent that Paul was the central figure in shaping what Christianity would become.
Strictly speaking, I don't think there's a single scripture that specifically calls out sexual abuse of children. There's general prohibitions against sex outside of marriage and such, but nothing that applies directly to pedophilia.
You get there by not being a monster. Literal, direct interpretations of the Bible won't do it.
The more conservative American Catholics have a theology that's close to the right-wing, protestant-derived groups around them. Ask Paul or Rick about how their views on evolution jive with the Vatican's official position, and they'll start to squirm.
Yeah, this stuff takes time to work out. As long as the side effects aren't a big deal, they might err on the side of too much.
Covid vaccines were something of an exception because they were motivated and infections were widespread. Lots of chances to get good data. Treatments for other diseases don't have those advantages.
The HPV vax, for example, was released in 2016 on a three dose schedule. There's some studies out there that argue two doses would be plenty, but it's not a consensus, either. That's after almost a decade.
PrEP is already keeping HIV infection rates pretty low, at least in rich countries where there's money to do these studies. Not going to be good data on dose schedules for many, many years. Maybe even decades.
They may have been a foundation to build on, but they largely failed in their goals. There was a sudden surge in cities proposing budgets that defunded the police. Once the sausage making process was done, those budgets largely reflected the status quo.
The best you can say about its direct practical effect is that Chauvin was convicted. I do think we're seeing more cases of abusive cops actually being prosecuted for misconduct, or at a minimum, losing their job.
It's still taking some effort to even get that, though. I just ran across a case in my YouTube feed, where a civil rights lawyer with a channel brought attention to a case. This had happened months ago, but all the sudden, the prosecutor dropped the charges and the cop was fired. If it weren't for it blowing up on YouTube, that probably wouldn't have happened. There's almost certainly thousands of stories like it in process right now that aren't getting that attention.
Oh, and we got Juneteenth added as a day off. I guess that's nice. Except some companies have already dropped it from their holiday list (mine did).
The Estes Corporation makes rockets that will do 600 meters.
It's great that Honda is doing this. We really need other companies in this area, because SpaceX is dominating it. Even if Elon weren't a walking disaster, we don't want one company so badly outclassing everyone else.
It's not just breeding. Are the offspring sterile? A male horse and a female donkey will get you a hinny, but they're sterile. Male donkey and female horse makes a mule, which are almost always sterile with a few exceptions.
Eh, it's just a start of development. It only goes 300 meters. Blue Origin goes higher, but even they aren't in orbit.
Japan also has some odd limitations on their rockets as part of their self defense only constitution. They don't build a rocket that could potentially be used to strike mainland Asia.
Who could have guessed that ahead of time? The industry is famous for seeing a successful new strategy and then driving it into the ground with a list of copycats. The strategy has made so much money before; why would it ever have failed this time?
/s
(Let's all laugh at an industry that never learns anything tee hee hee)
I know this, you know this, GP knows this, and Republicans know it. They're making the argument because they think they can win with it, not because they think it's rational.