"Biology is the only science in which multiplication means the same thing as division."

Attitudes About the Organisms That We Study

• Nonhuman Animal Speciesism
  A prominent animal-rights activist has defined a "speciesist" as one who "allows the interests of his/her species to override the greater interests of members of other species." According to this definition, a human eating a fish is a speciesist. However, if this definition is true, then nonhuman animals should be held to the same standard. Thus, a bear eating a fish would also be a speciesist, as would a bear eating an animal rights activist.
  
  
• Kingdomism
  Kingdomism is the oppressive discrimination by animals against minerals and plants. Corn and string beans are helpless victims of kingdomism. Astute teachers of geology will note that "pet rock" is an oppressive, kingdomistic term that should be replaced by the more sensitive phrase "mineral companion." The term "botanical companion" is what you should call your favorite plant, flower or corsage.
  
  
• Fortuitarianism
  This is the politically correct behavior that results from humans having no "right" to interfere in natural cycles. Consequently, humans should eat only plants parts that have become separated from their parent plant by natural events (e.g. wind), and meat from animals that have died accidentally (e.g. opossums that have been flattened by cars). If you're insensitive enough to eat meat, be sure that it's road kill.
  
  
• Honey, Milk, Eggs, Wool
  These are products stolen from nonhuman animals by human animals. To enforcers of political correctness, these thefts are unconscionable violations of the rights of nonhuman animals. Politically correct biologists know that the four major food groups are stolen animal products, fortuitarian comestibles, victims of speciesist slaughter, and brutally betrayed botanical companions.
  
  
• Dead
  This term should be replaced immediately by the more sensitive term "metabolically challenged." Refer to living organisms as being "temporarily metabolically abled."
  
  
• Fish
  I never realized how offensive I was when I referred to the guppies in my classroom aquarium as "fish." The only politically correct way to refer to these nonhuman animal companions is as "ichthyo-Americans." Referring to my guppies as ichthyo-Americans has greatly improved their self-esteem.

How We Were Trained & Got Jobs

• Credentialism
  You were probably hired because your school practices credentialism, a plague on society in which people discriminate against others by forcing them to provide evidence of experience, knowledge, integrity or ability before being hired, admitted to a college, etc. To hire qualified people instead of unqualified people is unacceptable. After all, no one is really unqualified; instead they are "uniquely qualified."
  
  
• Biology Departments
  If you got a degree (i.e. a credential) from a biology department, you've helped perpetuate the oppressive, credentialistic culture that underlies our educational system. According to the Berkeley Rhetoric Department, biology departments are nothing more than places "where animals are tortured and then murdered to fulfill the sadistic fantasies of white male scientists lackeys of imperialistic drug companies." Perhaps you did not know this.
  
  
• Educational Testing
  Politically correct teachers call these tests "needs assessments." Pathetically insensitive people like me have not yet learned that the word "test" is terribly offensive because it puts the responsibility for learning on students rather than on society.

Our Students

• Failing grades
  Never tell students that they have failed. Rather, declare that students who learn nothing in your class "have successfully achieved a deficiency." It is also acceptable to refer to them as "knowledge-based nonprocessors."
  
  
• Cheaters and Liars
  Students who lie, plagiarize, and copy the work of other students are not liars, plagiarists or cheaters. rather, they are "morally challenged" or better yet, "ethically disoriented."
  
  
• Lazy
  To be a sensitive biology teacher in the millenium, refer to lazy students as "persons of torpor" or say that they are "motivationally deficient." The term "lazy" is offensive because it blames students for a condition that should be attributed to the failures of --yes, you guessed it -- society. Politically correct teachers know that no student should be held accountable for his/her own actions; society is the mantra on which we can blame everything that's negative. However, society has nothing to do with anything positive that our student do or achieve; all the credit for those things go to us.
  
  
• Emphasize Good Writing
  Effective biology teachers often use biology as a means of teaching important skills such as effective writing. According to Tom Fox, director of a writing program at California State University at Chico, the qualities of good writing are that it "be relentlessly plural, interrogate political inequities, and oppose homophobia." Be sure to tell that to students before asking them to write an essay about mitosis, photosynthesis or digestion.

So, wondering "What's hot on the tube this month?" This new biology series is a ER's dream.

A new dramatic series set in the hustle bustle world of high fashion protein synthesis It's ...

See the drama of these hot young ribosomes as they fight to save proteins, surrounded by the harsh and cruel reducing environment of the big cytoplasm.

Watch as the mutilated remains of spliced and modified RNA come into the ER to be transformed into hardy new proteins. Ready to take on anything the extracellular environment can throw at them, as they go for the Golgi.

One order of bad jokes, coming your way!