I love the smell of hagfish slime under a Haitian sun

Kathie Olsen
Senior Advisor, National Science Foundation
Office of Information and Resource Management

Dear Mrs. Olsen,

I'm both saddened and joyful over reports that you've stepped down as the Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation. I'm saddened because the work you did thwarting science and silencing heresy at NSF was exemplary, but I'm joyful over news that you successfully burrowed into a civil service position, there, and will be able to continue your work in some fashion.

Unfortunately, I'm certain the Obama administration will make it difficult for you. They will do whatever they can to replace faith-driven research and profit-driven outcomes with a more empirical approach to acquiring knowledge. Lord knows that's bad news for global warming deniers like ourselves.

So where does that leave you? Will you now be forced to approve only those grants that deal in real science? Certainly, you'll no longer be allowed to do the good and righteous work of supplementing the oil industry's public relations efforts with taxpayer money.

Have you considered doing the research yourself? I understand that hagfish mucous is very sensitive to temperature variations. Perhaps you could use it to disprove all those global warming theories. You'd want to do it in a tropical climate, I think, so you get the most direct sunlight. I hear Haiti's nice. It's a free-market paradise.

You can't expect to be funded by one of your agency's grants, so you'd have to sell it as a cost-cutting measure. Tell them you'll replace your computer and office supplies with a box pencils, a bundle of notepads, and a pair of swim flippers--that's all Jesus needed anyway, and look where it got him! Heck, you won't even need an office. You can write on the beach. Of course you'll also save money by collecting the hagfish yourself (hence the flippers) and by using low-wage Haitians to monitor mucous degradation.

Think about it as one big adventure. Every morning you get up, jump into the ocean, collect hagfish mucous, crawl back onto the beach, rub the slime all over your body, sunbathe for a few hours, and then let a couple of dozen Haitians sniff you before sitting back down to write all about it.

That sounds like working in paradise to me. I hope it doesn't seem a little too sciency for you.

Heterosexually yours in a chaste, biblically appropriate, and non-sciency kind of way,

Gen. JC Christian, patriot