Tea at Trianon: Lizards on Treadmills and Quail on Cocaine

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, June 3, 2021

Lizards on Treadmills and Quail on Cocaine

From Gregg Jarrett:

If only the U.S. Government were able to help the American people in time of a financial crisis such as Americans forced to stay home during a global pandemic, without further going into bankruptcy. Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky shined light on the sobering reality as to why it cannot.
On Friday, Paul chastised both parties on the Senate floor for “squandering tax dollars to fund pseudoscientific ‘research” reports The Western Journal. Paul is a physician and used the examples to express his opposition to the $110 billion Endless Frontier Act. The act’s sponsor is Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York who claims the passage will help the U.S. stay technologically ahead of its foreign rivals such as communist China.
Unfortunately, as Paul points out, there is very little reason to trust Schumer and leadership with so much money. As proof, Paul gave examples as to what American tax dollars are going towards; and it’s painfully embarrassing.

Money has gone to research projects including “cocaine and risky sex habits of quail” and walking lizards on treadmills. These are actual studies that the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and other federal agencies wasted money on last year.

How many Americans were helped, or better off in any way during the COVID-19 pandemic due to these projects? Frankly, has anyone anywhere ever been better off because of these studies? Perhaps only the researchers who received salaries to conduct these asinine games under the pretense of “research.”

Rand Paul tweeted about the study with the caption; “NIH Spent over $800,000 to study whether Japanese Quails are more Sexually promiscuous on cocaine. I think we could have simply polled the audience…and of course, found they are…”

A photograph accompanying the tweet read, “Cocaine and Risky Sex Habits of Quail, $874,503. What common sense suggests, science has confirmed over and over again; namely, that cocaine use is linked to increased risky sexual behavior…Just to be sure, however, one federal agency thought it should test the hypothesis on a new subject: Japanese Quail.” (Read more.)