My little brother, Jim, once won a blue ribbon at a summer science fair. He played a pre-taped screech of the opening of our old refrigerator door causing Franklin, his pet hamster to do double time on his hamster wheel, thinking some iceberg lettuce was coming his way. Jim proved Pavlov right, and inadvertently predicted some later family food issues. Nonetheless we were proud of him.

The summer of 2012 was one of the biggest science fairs ever.

When the physicists at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson, it was 3 a.m. in the Brown University Physics lab. My friend, the I.T. go-to-gal there, said they had a champagne fueled all-nighter to honor the discovery of the Higgs field and the long work of one of their own labmates, a particle physicist who had worked on the boson for fifty years.

The confirmation of the discovery will help particle physicists understand the basic building blocks of matter and could open up a “new” physics beyond current theories.

It was another early morning when the Mars Space Landing spacecraft robotically and safely landed a third payload on Mars. The Curiosity, twice as long and five times as heavy as the two previous payloads, successfully completed the seven minutes of terror descent into the Martian atmosphere and nailed its landing in the Gale Crater. The scientists at the Jet Propulsion Lab also popped some late night corks and rightly saluted their accomplishment.

What a pleasure to celebrate the achievements of real physicists and engineers!

The current state of anti-science is fact-free-and-proud, rife with assertions from the schvitzing climate change deniers, the we-only-go-back-4,000- years Creationist Theme park rangers, and the because-I-said-so social scientists.

Now I am not a scientist; I don’t even play one on TV (though for Halloween one year, I did dress up as Marie Curie). Though wildly excited by science news, I can barely grasp the implications of these mind-boggling discoveries. But one political science principle I do understand: For every scientific achievement there comes the inevitable opposite, but not at all equal, anti-science backlash.

The Higgs boson has been called, “the God Particle” and despite the fact that the phrase makes fact-based scientists’ skin crawl and blotch, expect recriminations from the I-don’t-need-no-stinking-beaker set: “How dare you reduce God to a particle? I and everyone in my church know that God is a big big Big Deal.”

Sunday’s sermon: Obamacare Makes God a Particle.

Descendants of conspiracy theorists who claimed the moon landing was some CIA shenanigans staged at a small studio in Torrance, California, will try to demonstrate thatCuriosity is a hoax. “See that shadow? Bigfoot.”

In the afterglow of Higgs boson and Curiosity, I wondered wistfully if they might be the last actual science we would ever see. Anti-scientists feel they already have all the fundamental answers to life’s questions. They are anti-curiosity and thus anti-life. Could it just be home-school baking soda volcanoes from here on out?

Meanwhile, you know that when the Earth’s heat gets even more unbearable, One Percent Airways will already have their summer schedule geared up for on-the-hour flights to Mars’s vineyard. They’re no dummies.

Kate Clinton is a faith-based, tax-paying, America-loving political humorist and family entertainer. See more from the legendary Kate Clinton at KateClinton.com.

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If Sarah Palin asks again, I’m doing pretty good with “that hopey changey thing”.  I watched the Democratic Convention on CSPAN with USOpen breaks, except on opening night of football and that night there was some partisan bickering for clicker dominance. 

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BY KATE CLINTON

Really I don’t think I could have handled four nights of the GOP convention in Tampa. Thank goodness I was able to flip between tennis and the convention: The USOpen, The USClosed, US open, US closed.

It was like being in some horrible comedy club – Tampa’s Yuck Yuck [as in icky] Comedy Cellar. The opening acts were teabagging Governors, also-rans and up-and-comers roasting Obama, whom I choose to call President Obama. I don’t know if I was more disheartened by the stand-ups or the fact that they got such huge laughs in the hall.

The first night headliners were Ann Romney who wanted to talk to us about love, then Gov. Chris Christie who didn’t want to talk about love and mistakenly gave an angry acceptance speech. That made Condi Rice look like a reasonable person. The second night headliner VP nominee, Paul Ryan gave himself goose bumps and fact-checkers time and a half. The theme of the third night was “Awkward” and showcased Clint Eastwood, exhibit A of how the GOP will treat seniors and finally Mitt Romney, who succeeded by not being Clint Eastwood. Cue balloon drop and many many adorable blonde mini-mormons ignoring their parents.

The front of the house was chaotic and unfocused. Because the embedded media was fascinated with the train wreck of a convention, they never covered the backstage where all the cut-throat fund-raising and focused fat-cat deal-making was happening. The clever GOP ploy worked.

I am going to talk to an empty chair now.

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Kate Clinton is a faith-based, tax-paying, America-loving political humorist and family entertainer. See more from the legendary Kate Clinton at KateClinton.com.

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There seems to be a finite amount of freedom to go around. They gave some to the gays, so they’ve had to cut some from another group. Sadly they’ve had to take some from the ladies. Women are the new gays.

The takebacks include defunding Planned Parenthood, defunding contraceptives, de-personhooding women and other schemes to keep women down. It also doubles as a long-range GOP jobs program. Without childcare or pre-K programs, women with children have to stay home so men can take the jobs.

So called “rape jokes” are part of the takebacks. It’s about taking freedom — of assembly at a comedy club, in this case — away from women. Kudos to the courageous woman in the audience who said that rape jokes aren’t funny. Her statement is described as heckling. Her simple comment destabilized the daring Tosh. He responded by suggesting a gang rape.

I loathe the band of comic brothers [and sisters] with their mealy-mouthed chickenshit excuses for rape jokes. I loathe the equivalency examples in this national conversation: it would be as if a woman comic made a Bobbitizing joke, and some guy said that’s not funny and then she sicked all the gals with knives in the audience on the complainant. As if.

They talk freedom of speech, lecture about comic tradition and yes they have daughters and girlfriends and it pains them to defend their fellow comic Daniel Tosh but defend him they must.

To review: rape is not about sex. It’s about power and dominance. It’s true of prison rape, child rape, date rape which are also staples of comedy clubs. Comedy does club.

Do not even suggest that I don’t have a sense of humor. Get your rape joke heckle on. It’s apparently quite effective.

Kate Clinton is a faith-based, tax-paying, America-loving political humorist and family entertainer. See more from the legendary Kate Clinton at KateClinton.com.

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