Politics
The Primate Diaries
Category archives for Politics
Jonah Goldberg Likes My Blog. Please Shoot Me Now.
Posted by EMJ on January 29, 2010 Goldberg shown here (right) “gangbanging” with a guy who enjoys making fun of the dead.I must have done something very, very wrong. Jonah Goldberg, that noxious, infected man-tit of a human being, has just praised my work at the National Review. Referring to my series on Deconstructing Social Darwinism Goldberg writes: This is a very comprehensive…
How Can Haiti Be Sustainable?
Posted by EMJ on January 28, 2010 As I wrote yesterday in my piece for The Huffington Post, the history of Western financial involvement in Haiti has been one of growing the nation’s textile industry despite the fact that 70% of Haiti’s annual income comes from agriculture. By emphasizing programs such as HOPE and HOPE II, the United States has increased the…
Remembering Historian Howard Zinn (1922-2010)
Posted by EMJ on January 27, 2010 As reported this evening in the Boston Globe, the internationally renowned historian and bestselling author of A People’s History of the United States died today while traveling in California. For Dr. Zinn, activism was a natural extension of the revisionist brand of history he taught. Dr. Zinn’s best-known book, A People’s History of the United…
The Huffington Post Publishes the Craziest Things
Posted by EMJ on January 27, 2010 Here at ScienceBlogs we regularly take The Huffington Post down a notch by pointing out such cutting edge lunacy as vaccine denialism or pseudoscientific spiritualism masquerading as health advice. Now the latest in a long list of unsubstantiated crazy is on full display. Some writer named Eric Michael Johnson, who clearly thinks he’s so self…
Pat Robertson and the Dominion Meteorology Report
Posted by EMJ on January 24, 2010 Image: Idiot Box / Matt Bors And now, of course, Robertson and his Christian Broadcasting Network can interpret geological events as well. On January 13, just a day after the devastating earthquake in Haiti, the reigning televangelist explained why God hates Haitians:
An Open History of Science – ScienceOnline2010 (#scio10)
Posted by EMJ on January 21, 2010 This is the brief presentation I gave on Saturday, Jan. 16 as part of this year’s ScienceOnline conference. I was thrilled to have PZ Myers, Greg Laden and Janet Stemwedel present (the latter of whom posted her thoughts on the session). John McKay and I led a discussion on the intersection between open access and…
Deconstructing Social Darwinism, Part IV
Posted by EMJ on January 15, 2010 Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 Richard Hofstadter wrote in Social Darwinism in American Thought that this political theory was “one of the leading strains in American conservative thought for more than a generation.” In this series I have shown many of the inconsistencies that exist in the literature on…
The Scientific Revolution is Open
Posted by EMJ on January 14, 2010 Scientific innovation relies on open communication and always has. It has only been through the free exchange of information and ideas that scientific pioneers have expanded the boundaries of knowledge. Through books, pamphlets, letters, journals, and now blogs, scientists communicate their results and imagine new frontiers in the natural world. But even as we reach…
Deconstructing Social Darwinism, Part III
Posted by EMJ on January 11, 2010 Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4 In Quentin Skinner’s celebrated history The Foundations of Modern Political Thought he writes that: If the history of political theory were to be written essentially as a history of ideologies, one outcome might be a clearer understanding of the links between political theory and…
Christianity and the Death Penalty
Posted by EMJ on January 10, 2010 Image: Atheistcartoons.com Of course, you can always count on World Nut Daily to explain the illogic of celebrating a victim of capital punishment while supporting its practice: The reason capital punishment was necessary, God explained, was because human life was so special. There had to be a blood atonement for the death of an innocent…