{"id":3011,"date":"2014-01-23T15:38:21","date_gmt":"2014-01-23T20:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/?p=3011"},"modified":"2014-01-23T15:49:18","modified_gmt":"2014-01-23T20:49:18","slug":"beware-irony-contained-within","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/23\/beware-irony-contained-within\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware: Irony Contained Within"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Seeing how Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has suddenly become a bastion for conservation biology, ornithology and science outreach with the announcement that\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/news\/politics\/stephen-harper-lays-cornerstone-at-hula-valley-bird-sanctuary-1.2506145\" target=\"_blank\">a bird sanctuary has been named in his honour in Israel<\/a>, I put together a little memento for him to hang in his office. Hopefully it will serve to remind him just how awesome birds and nature are, as long as they aren&#8217;t getting in the way of his Albertan oil field development plans, of course.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/23\/beware-irony-contained-within\/stephen-harpers-the-birds-2\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-3020\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-3020\" alt=\"Stephen Harper's The Birds Sanctuary Poster\" src=\"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Stephen-Harpers-The-Birds1.jpg\" width=\"966\" height=\"1500\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Stephen-Harpers-The-Birds1.jpg 966w, http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Stephen-Harpers-The-Birds1-322x500.jpg 322w, http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Stephen-Harpers-The-Birds1-193x300.jpg 193w, http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/Stephen-Harpers-The-Birds1-450x700.jpg 450w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 966px) 100vw, 966px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>All kidding aside, the fact that another country thought that it was appropriate to bestow an honorary doctorate on and name a scientific research facility after\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/confessions\/2013\/05\/20\/the-canadian-war-on-science-a-long-unexaggerated-devastating-chronological-indictment\/\" target=\"_blank\">a man who has been on a not-so-subtle campaign against scientific research &amp; evidence-based policy making in Canada for the past 8 years<\/a>\u00a0is an absolute farce.<\/p>\n<p>I guess in the end the joke is on me though. I&#8217;m the one spending the prime of my life fighting against the anti-science rhetoric being spewed by my elected officials to earn a PhD the old-fashioned way instead of just dismantling research divisions, field stations and libraries that don&#8217;t support my political platform!<\/p>\n<p>Yep, he sure showed me&#8230;<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seeing how Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has suddenly become a bastion for conservation biology, ornithology and science outreach with the announcement that\u00a0a bird sanctuary has been named in his honour in Israel, I put together a little memento for him to hang in his office. Hopefully it will serve to remind him just how <a href='http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/23\/beware-irony-contained-within\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,332,348],"tags":[49,508,210,400,509,85],"class_list":["post-3011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-for-a-good-cause","category-rant","tag-bird","tag-conservation-biology","tag-cruel-science","tag-politics","tag-satire","tag-science","category-156-id","category-332-id","category-348-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3011"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3021,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3011\/revisions\/3021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.biodiversityinfocus.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}