The New York Times began the week with a hysterical story, “E.P.A. Set to Cancel Grants Aimed at Protecting Children From Toxic Chemicals.”
Children protected. Not old people. The story did not say what the age limit is, which is just as well because the grants were just aimed at protecting them, not necessarily protecting them. Think of it as a covid vaccine for toxic chemicals.
The story said, “The grants are designed to address a range of issues, including improving the health of children in rural America who have been exposed to pesticides from agriculture and other pollution; reducing exposure to wildfire smoke; and preventing forever chemicals from contaminating the food supply.”
Maybe we should place a warning label on wildfires that says, “Be like Bill Clinton and don’t inhale.”
Or better yet, let’s make sure LA keeps its water reservoirs filled with water instead of air.
The hysteria is over the new EPA administrators reviewing grants and awards to see if the grants and awards are legitimate.
The story quoted Tracey Woodruff, an ex-EPA staffer who now teaches at the University of California, San Francisco, as saying, “This is just terrible. EPA’s research program is already woefully underfunded, particularly when considering the enormity of the health problems faced by environmental exposure to the American public.”
The EPA has a $10 billion annual budget. If it doesn’t spend enough money on research, maybe it should not have spent so much on DEI and not have built a museum dedicated to heralding itself.
NYT reporters are not the only weirdos covering Trump.
NBC chimed in on Monday with, “New images could change cancer diagnostics, but ICE detained the Harvard scientist who analyzes them.”
The story said, “A groundbreaking microscope at Harvard Medical School could lead to breakthroughs in cancer detection and research into longevity. But the scientist who developed computer scripts to read its images and unlock its full potential has been in an immigration detention center for two months—putting crucial scientific advancements at risk.
“The scientist, the 30-year-old Russian-born Kseniia Pertova, worked at Harvard’s renowned Kirschner Lab until her arrest at a Boston airport in mid-February.”
What was she arrested for? Smuggling frog embryos. Deportation camp likely is a scene from Alice’s Restaurant.
I walked over to the bench there and there is Group W, where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime. An’ there was all kinds of mean, nasty, ugly-lookin’ people on the bench there.
Mother-rapers, father-stabbers, father-rapers!
Father-rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father-raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean and ugly and nasty and horrible and all kind of things. And he sat down next to me and said, “Kid, what did you get?”
I said, “I didn’t get nothing, I had to pay fifty dollars and pick up the garbage.”
He said, “What were you arrested for, kid?” and I said, “Littering.”
And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and gave me the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, ’til I said, “And creating a nuisance,” and they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin’ about crime, mother-stabbing, father-raping, an’ all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench.
NBC was no Arlo Guthrie in relating this story. It said, “Dr. Leon Peshkin, a principal research scientist at Harvard’s Department of Systems Biology and Petrova’s manager and mentor, received a call from Customs and Border Protection on Feb. 16 after agents detained Petrova at Logan International Airport in Boston for failing to declare samples of frog embryos to be used in scientific research.”
But NBC did reveal that frog embryo smuggling is routine at Harvard. They know the drill.
NBC said, “Romanovsky said that CBP typically imposes two penalties for such customs violations: the forfeiture of the items and a fine, usually around $500, and that ‘for a first-time violation, the fine is typically reduced to $50.’ Instead, officials canceled Petrova’s J-1 scholar visa.”
But under a real president, not just a figurehead like Biden, she frogged around and found out.
As goofy as it may seem to we civilians, frog smuggling is a very big deal—and not just for research. Andrea Terán is an Ecuadorian biologist and herpetologist.
She wrote that frog smuggling endangers species in her home country:
Since my early childhood, nature felt sacred to me. I loved to feel connected to my surroundings and being outdoors made me feel serene. As I got older, I felt a strong urgency to work directly for the environment. As a biology student, I got to see the anatomy of the coastal toad. As soon as I held it in my hands, the toad urinated. It happened to our entire class, and I remember sitting in complete disbelief. Part of me wanted to laugh, but I also felt scared it would give me warts. I eventually learned this was just a myth.
Often, people stay away from frogs or toads out of fear they will get some sort of infection or virus. Since I started working at Wikiri Sapo Parque, educating people on these matters remains one of our main objectives. We aim to bring people closer to amphibians by showing what wonderful, harmless creatures they can be. Toads are incredible creatures that come in a diversity of colors, shapes, and smells. Even those of us who study them still struggle to identify some of them.
In Ecuador and its surrounding regions, illegal species trafficking happens very frequently. I heard reports of people putting rare frogs in Kodak film rolls and transporting them elsewhere. Hundreds of poison dart frogs illegally traveled this way, with most arriving dead at their final destination due to lack of care and oxygen. As long as there continues to be a demand for rare frogs, illegal trafficking will remain an issue.
NPR reported a couple of years ago, “According to the biologists who study the Oophaga lehmanni, smugglers have taken an estimated 80,000 frogs out of the Anchicayá Valley in Colombia, the only spot on the planet where you can find them. Today, there are probably less than 5,000 of them left.”
Why is Harvard smuggling frogs in? Aren’t domestic frogs good enough for taxpayer-paid research? Be American, use American frogs.
Researchers aren’t responsible for all the smuggling but one would like to think that of all places, Harvard would not endanger a species. Yet here we are. Given the billions in research grants paid Harvard, you can see why the university condones frog smuggling.
And Harvard sitting on $53 billion in an untaxed endowment is demanding Uncle Sam continue to give it billions more.
NYT reported, “Harvard, the world’s wealthiest university, sued the Trump administration on Monday, fighting back against its threats to slash billions of dollars from the school’s research funding as part of a crusade against the nation’s top colleges.
“The lawsuit signaled a major escalation of the ongoing fight between higher education and President Trump, who has vowed to reclaim elite universities. The administration has cast its campaign as a fight against antisemitism, but has also targeted programs and teaching related to racial diversity and gender issues.
“Earlier this month, it sent Harvard a list of demands that included auditing professors for plagiarism, reporting to the federal government any international students accused of misconduct, and appointing an outside overseer to make sure that academic departments were viewpoint diverse.”
If you kiss a frog, he won’t turn into a prince. But if you smuggle them into the country, you might knock down billions in research grants.
Unless Trump is president.
This article first appeared on Don Surber’s Substack. Reprinted here with permission.
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