February 8, 2010
Category: Policy and Politics
In May, 2008 creationist bigot Martin Cothran complained at the Disco. 'Tute blog about John Derbyshire reviewing a shitty movie without having watched it:
That's right: Derbyshire reviews "Expelled" without actually having seen it. This is a man who has friends he has never met, and who can review movies he has never seen. It is perhaps fortuitous that Bill Buckley, the founder of National Review, recently passed from among us: this is a talent I am not sure he would have fully appreciated.
This ability to judge a movie without having to suffer the indignity of actually watching it surely sets Derbyshire apart. Who else could accomplish the task with so few tools: a little hearsay, a few second hand reports—and perhaps a Ouija board. This is a critical skill at which the rest of us can only marvel.
Most film critics attend screenings; Derbyshire conducts a séance.
Creationist bigot Martin Cothran complains about Ayn Rand's shitty books at his own blog without having read them:
I tried The Fountainhead, and after several chapters just put the sorry thing down, wondering what it was that had so transfixed so many of my friends.
I would have tried harder, but I had already read Whitaker Chambers famous literary take-down of her books written more than 50 years ago now in his review of Atlas Shrugged…
Now a Randian could argue that I have not read the books, and that therefore I cannot judge them, to which I can only say that I am not judging them. I am only explaining why I have not read them: because I have never yet encountered anyone whose literary tastes I respected say they were worth reading--and plenty whose tastes I did respect who assured me I needn't bother.
Now I could say that it's hypocritical of Cothran to now defend reviewing things without having read them, but he is, in some narrow sense, right. I haven't read Ayn Rand's books, and I know they're shitty, and I don't plan to read them. I know it the same way I knew
Expelled: No Intelligence would be a shitty movie before I saw it. Then I saw it, and it was a shitty movie. John Derbyshire made the right choice to avoid seeing it. And Martin Cothran owes him (and
National Review) an apology.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 10:28 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
From Nature's news section, Philip Ball reports on research showing Dog bites man Morals don't come from God:
[In] a new paper by psychologists Ilkka Pyysiäinen of the University of Helsinki and Marc Hauser of Harvard University … individuals presented with unfamiliar moral dilemmas show no difference in their responses if they have a religious background or not.
The study draws on tests of moral judgements using versions of the web-based Moral Sense Test … These tests present dilemmas ranging from how to handle freeloaders at 'bring a dish' dinner parties to the justification of killing someone to save others. Few, if any, of the answers can be looked up in holy books.
Thousands of people — varying widely in social background, age, education, religious affiliation and ethnicity — have taken the tests. Pyysiäinen and Hauser say the results (mainly still in the publication pipeline) indicate that "moral intuitions operate independently of religious background", although religion may influence responses in a few highly specific cases.
In other words, morality is independent of religion or religiosity. Religion may be a means to pass down certain cultural norms about moral behavior, but there are plenty of other ways to do the same thing. As one theologian of my acquaintance put it, there are many paths to the top of the mountain.
Theists can take comfort in that notion, secure in the thought that their god(s) shaped the world so that everyone was led to moral behavior. Atheists can take this finding as further proof against the refrain of certain religious people that erosion of religious faith will result in erosion of morality. And the rest of us can take comfort in the notion that we're behaving well, and the reasons why we behave well aren't that important.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 10:34 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
A few weeks ago, televangelist Pat Robertson got in some righteous trouble for claiming that Haiti deserved its earthquake devastation because Haitians two hundred years ago "sw[ore] a pact with the devil."
Turns out, Robertson knows something about making deals with the devil:
Former Liberian president Charles Taylor, testifying in his war crimes trial in The Hague on Thursday, said that his government had awarded American televangelist Pat Robertson a gold mining concession in 1999 and that Robertson later offered to lobby the Bush administration on the government's behalf.
The revelations came in the midst of Taylor's U.N.-backed trial on 11 counts of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity during Sierra Leone's 1990s civil war. Taylor is accused of directing a Sierra Leonean rebel group, the United Revolutionary Front, in a campaign aimed at securing access to the country's diamond mines. The rebel movement stands accused of committing mass atrocities in the West African country in the late 1990s, including the mutilation of thousands of civilians.
Prosecutors at the Special Court for Sierra Leone contend that Taylor offered concessions to Westerners in exchange for lobbying work aimed at enhancing his image in the United States.
Taylor is known as one of Africa's more brutal military dictators, a distinction of genuine consequence. His bands of underaged soldiers raped and murdered anyone who stood in Taylor's way. He ate the flesh of his rivals and ordered his army to do the same. Aided by Taylor, Sierra Leonian rebels created their own child army in which soldiers were encouraged to chop off the arms of people in villages, to rape and murder at whim, to cut off the genitals of captured children. All to gain control of local diamond mines.
Sometimes, an incident perfectly captures a moment in history, and this is one such instance. Pat Robertson and Charles Taylor are both monsters. Monsters on a deep and moral level. And they saw some glimmer of similarity in one another. The similarity is not rooted in religion, but in political outlook.
I oppose Pat Robertson because I oppose authoritarianism, and Pat Robertson's theology and politics both lead to authoritarianism. Not necessarily to Charles Taylor's style of authoritarianism, but authoritarianism is authoritarianism. If Pat Robertson wanted to be an asshole in his private life, his friends could choose to ostracize him until he learned a lesson, or he could be a private asshole whose dickery didn't affect anyone else. That's his right, I suppose. The problem comes not when he starts thinking stupid things, but when he tries to impose those things on other people.
This is why I find the whole "it's not about politics, it's about epistemology" argument so frustrating. Fuck epistemology. Pat Robertson and Charles Taylor didn't pair up because of a shared epistemology, they paired up because of politics and money. And Charles Taylor's epistemology didn't cut the genitals off of children, or gamble on the sex of unborn fetuses and then cut them out to test the bet. Charles Taylor's politics did that. A lesser form of that politics drives the creation/evolution fight. It's what drives anti-vaxx. It's what drives global warming denial. It's what drives decisions about how to fund public education, and how to value scientific expertise. If you ignore the politics, you miss the point.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 12:30 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 5, 2010
Category: Policy and Politics
This week put to rest a significant part of the anti-vaccine movement's claim to scientific legitimacy. A paper purporting to show a link between the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine and autism rates was retracted by The Lancet. The journal, which published the 1998 paper, based the decision on a finding by a British medical panel that one author (Andrew Wakefield) had violated certain human experimentation regulations and had misreported how the data was gathered. As Chris Mooney observes, this follows a string of other reviews of the paper which found its conclusions unwarranted by the data and unsupported by attempts to replicate the study. A 2004 review by the Congressionally-chartered Institute of Medicine found that the paper was "uninformative with respect to causality" and that, in general, "the evidence favors rejection of a causal relationship between MMR vaccine and autism."
This has been clear for some time (just ask Orac), and the continued efforts to discourage vaccination based on the study can clearly not be ascribed to any scientific basis. Like creationism, global warming denial, stem cell opposition, and anti-GMO sentiments, this is a cultural and political battle being confusingly fought on scientific turf. As such, the debunking of this and any other supposed scientific basis for opposing vaccines does not ultimately dissuade anti-vaccine activists from their work. And public health suffers as a result.
This is similar to the situation in the creationism wars. We spend a lot of time on blogs and in books and in the occasional debate arguing about fossils and genes and homologies, but none of that will ever convince someone wholeheartedly committed to creationism. No one becomes that sort of creationist on the basis of the science. They become a creationist of that sort because of how they see religion, and how they think that relates to science.
This is why I think Orac is right to object to the conclusion to Chris's article on the vaccine result. He notes that the anti-vaxxers have already integrated this paper's retraction into their paranoid worldview, but then he writes:
I believe we need some real attempts at bridge-building between medical institutions—which, let’s admit it, can often seem remote and haughty—and the leaders of the anti-vaccination movement. We need to get people in a room and try to get them to agree about something—anything. We need to encourage moderation, and break down a polarized situation in which the anti-vaccine crowd essentially rejects modern medical research based on the equivalent of conspiracy theory thinking, even as mainstream doctors just shake their heads at these advocates’ scientific cluelessness. Vaccine skepticism is turning into one of the largest and most threatening anti-science movements of modern times. Watching it grow, we should be very, very worried—and should not assume for a moment that the voice of scientific reason, in the form of new studies or the debunking of old, misleading ones, will make it go away.
As Orac observes, "scientists have been trying to reach out and build bridges to leaders of the anti-vaccine movement for years, if not decades. It hasn't worked." He cites several examples where anti-vaxxers were even invited to take part in the design of experiments, only to turn around and attack the studies when they failed to reach the pre-determined conclusion.
But Orac goes wrong when he writes, "Chris is profoundly misguided in his apparent belief that any amount of 'bridge building' will bring anti-vaccine activists around." Just as there are gradations within creationism, anti-vaxx has its gradations. Duane Gish will never change his mind. Changing Glenn Morton's mind took intense effort, and was not resolved by his awareness of evolutionary science, but his discovery of a suitable theology which could accommodate evolution.
But Duane Gish isn't the target of pro-evolution messages, and neither was the young Glenn Morton. The target is that third of the public which simply isn't aware of what evolution is, and of the range of theological responses to evolution. So the goal is to build bridges through the religious institutions they trust, so that they'll even be ready to hear the scientific message, and then to build bridges through science education, so they see that evolution is good and reliable science and isn't threatening in the ways they've been told. Some of the groups one builds bridges to in that process are creationist in some sense. They might be a Methodist church group which believes God created the world, but is open to the idea that science can explain the way God's plan unfolded. That openness is what allows a bridge to be built, and commerce across that bridge ultimately yields dividends to the community of scientists and to the group being reached out to.
I haven't studied the anti-vaxx movement carefully enough to know what the sticking point is for anti-vaxxers, but I can guess. It's not (entirely) a Luddite movement, any more than creationists are Luddites. They want to control technology and science because science and technology are taking on an ever greater role in our society, and people feel like they are losing control of their lives as a result. Creationism grew out of that same tension in the late 19th century, and came back with a vengeance in the 1960s for similar reasons. Anti-vaxx, anti-global warming, and anti-evolution movements today are rooted in the same fears of anonymous scientists in lab coats (and mounted on ivory towers) controlling our bodies, our economies, and other aspects of social policy.
The solution is surely outreach. But not outreach to the committed opponents. Such outreach rarely serves any benefit, in part because both sides are talking past one another. That's a recipe for a shouting match, but not for dialog. The target for dialog is the middle ground, and that's where the bridges need to be built. The fear driving anti-vaxx and other denialist movements is bigger than those movements, and it can be addressed through an open and thoughtful interaction between scientists and the public. I think the long-term effect of CRUhack will be beneficial in that sense, as it will force scientists to abandon some of their traditional insularity.
(I wrote this on somewhat of the fly, and may return to it and add links inter alia and revise some of this. Suggestions on where those links should be placed, and which passages are ambiguous are, as always, welcome.)
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 7:26 PM • 20 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
Argument over cigarette led to Antioch slaying:
Police have arrested a suspect in the Antioch slaying of a man who was shot after he refused to give a cigarette to the alleged killer's friend, investigators said Friday.
Stagolee has nothing on him.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:42 AM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
Shorter Tom Tancredo at the Teabagger convention:
Things would be better if we elected Strom Thurmond president brought back Jim Crow.
No… really:
The opening-night speaker at first ever National Tea Party Convention ripped into President Obama, Sen. John McCain and "the cult of multiculturalism," asserting that Obama was elected because "we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country."
The political activist group holds its first party convention in Nashville. The speaker, former Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., told about 600 delegates in a Nashville, Tenn., ballroom that in the 2008 election, America "put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House ... Barack Hussein Obama."
A literacy test like
this one?
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 9:42 AM • 3 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 2, 2010
Category: Policy and Politics
Ben Stein, for those of you who have forgotten, played a bit role in the classic '80s movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off. He played the annoying economics teacher, a role he was uniquely qualified for by being boring and having been bored by his father, an accomplished economist. Stein parlayed his fame into a few books on financial planning and a regular column for the New York Times which was canceled when he became a spokesman for a scammy credit check service. Along the way he made what many regard as "one of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a long time." In making Expelled, Stein tricked various scientists into being interviewed, using false pretenses to gain consent.
Stein is no stranger to secretive recordings, being a former speechwriter for the Nixon White House (a job obtained thanks to his father's service on Nixon's Council of Economic Advisors). Nixon, of course, loved to record his office conversations, including those where he and his aides discussed their plans to secretly bug the offices of the DNC and other critics.
It is perhaps because of nostalgia for those good old days that Stein wants to "Free James O'Keefe." O'Keefe is a young conservative activist known for somewhat flashier roles than Stein's. Most famously, O'Keefe went to ACORN offices to ask for advice about creating a bordello, then editing in footage of himself and an underage woman dressed as a stereotypical pimp and prostitute. A review of the tapes and transcripts by a retired state Attorney General concluded that the editing had changed the questions being asked of ACORN staff to make it seem that they were answering questions about creating a bordello rather than about protecting themselves from an abusive pimp.
O'Keefe returned to the headlines by trying to tap or tamper with the telephones at a district office for Senator Mary Landrieu (D-LA). O'Keefe and three friends posed as telephone repairmen and tried to access the wiring cabinet in one of Landrieu's district offices. Police arrested the crew of young plumbers and they were sent to live in their parents' houses until trial. They don't deny attempting to gain access to federal property under false pretenses for purposes of vandalism, and it's possible that they were trying to bug the phones.
Ben Stein, perhaps recalling his own salad days, thinks that they shouldn't be prosecuted. Why? "These men were journalists trying to get a story." What story? Not clear. "The First Amendment!" Stein replies. But the First Amendment protects speech, not criminal actions. They didn't just "go undercover," an act which can and does result in criminal trespass charges. What undercover investigation was needed in the switching trunk at Landrieu's office? What's the journalistic purpose served by gaining access to the wiring?
Ben Stein's real objection, clear because he puts it at the top of his column, is that these conservative activists are being charged with a federal crime while "a gang of men calling themselves Black Panthers showed up at a polling place in Michigan" and didn't get prosecuted by the feds. Other than standing while black, what charges should have been brought? Stein claims that "They threatened any voter who did not vote for Barack Obama. This was witnessed and documented."
Sadly, No! In point of fact, there were no reports of Black Panthers at polling places in Michigan. There were some stories about a group calling itself "the New Black Panthers" which went to a polling place in Philadelphia before being rousted along by police. There is no evidence that they threatened voters. As Joel Mathis writes for Philly Weekly: "What the Panthers did was … stand there. […] The incident was witnessed and documented, but what was witnessed and documented is a bit different from what Stein describes."
And that's why Ferris Bueller's best move was skipping Ben Stein's class. Ben Stein just makes you dumber.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 5:29 PM • 1 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
February 1, 2010
Category: Culture Wars
Via Lamebook via BoingBoing, an update of the classic beachside homily:
"The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand is when I was off kicking the janitor in the 'nads."
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 7:47 PM • 0 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Category: Policy and Politics
Bruce Chapman, head of the Discover Institute, has a problem. He objects to Richard Dawkins calling out Pat Robertson as a gigantic blowhard. And also doesn't think Dawkins should do things to help the Haitian people (as evidenced, perhaps, by the fact that Chapman and Disco. have taken no obvious steps to encourage aid to Haiti). After excusing Robertson's remarks, Chapman writes that Dawkins thinks:
Robertson must pay. So by amazing extension must Christianity in general, never mind the extent to which the massive outpouring of aid to Haiti is coming from Christian sources. Even the Red Cross is, after all, about a cross, isn't it?
Robertson may be tone deaf about the such events as the earthquake, but it is left to Dawkins to try to turn tragedy into an evangelizing opportunity. His article, if it were about politics, would be dismissed as propaganda. But the London Times seems to think it fit enough.
Now I've had some
modest criticism of the Dawkins-organized fundraising efforts, efforts which themselves go to the Red Cross. But the notion that Dawkins is using this as a chance to evangelize is just pap, and a mean-spirited slur.
More of a slur, though, is the claim that the Red Cross is a religious organization. There is some dispute about the history of the Red Cross's name and chosen symbol, but the group has committed itself to a form of neutrality that prevents it from endorsing any religion at all, and the official story is that the Red Cross symbol is a reversed version of the Swiss flag, not an overt reference to the Christian cross. The Swiss flag is such a reference, of course, but over the last few centuries has also come to stand for a studied neutrality, exactly the image that the Swiss founders of the Red Cross wished to project as they organized a body which could operate freely in the battlefield and move across lines of battle without harm. To suggest that they are a religious group is a lie, and one that would do material harm if repeated too often.
Posted by Josh Rosenau at 5:51 PM • 2 Comments • 0 TrackBacks
Joshua Rosenau spends his days defending the teaching of evolution at 
