The diginity of stupidity.

I'm listening to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, and they've mentioned a kind of a stupid thing: evidently, the President's Council on Bioethics has come out against eating ice cream in public. It's offensive to human dignity, or some damn thing like that. Want to read more? Go here.

Since I don't have much to add on the whole ice cream controversy, I'll instead direct your attention to the Table of Contents of the 555-page report, which includes the phrase, "How to Protect Human Dignity from Science". That seems even more funny to me than the ice cream thing. I imagine a bunch of septuagenarians in lab coats at chalkboards, examining trajectories of banana-cream pies to establish a maximum of hilarity and a minimum of dignity.

How can I get a job there? Do I have to apply directly to Gary Larson?

And how does this "protection" work, anyway? I mean, Bush has already come out against condoms; what kind of prophylactic could he possibly endorse to prevent science/dignity interaction? A giant rubber sheet? It would work well, but is it too much like a dental dam? You tell me. I'm not on the President's Council for Bioethics, so obviously I'm an idiot when it comes to this stuff.