Social Sciences
dmunger | April 13, 2005Yesterday we reported on the results of studies on the impact of media violence. Today we'll discuss theoretical implications and responses to those studies, as reported by Craig Anderson et al. in their report "The Influence of Media Violence on Youth."
Given the fact that there is a significant correlation between media violence and aggression, Anderson and his colleagues believe there are several possible causes. Since humans (and chimpanzees, for that matter) learn a great deal simply through observation and imitation, children may simply be "learning" violent behaviors when they see…
stcynic | April 12, 2005Leave it to the uber-moron Joseph Farah, founder of the Worldnutdaily, to up the ante even higher in the race to see who can be the most ridiculous and extreme in their anti-judicial rhetoric. In this article on the Schiavo situation, he makes numerous false statements about the case and then urges that the Federal judges who opposed him in the case be thrown in jail. No, I'm not making that up:
Members of Congress were huffing and puffing about the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals after its decision to ignore the will of Congress. Yet there has not been a move by the most powerful branch of…
stcynic | March 30, 2005We hear constantly from conservatives about "activist judges" and how horrible they are. One of the grand ironies of the Schiavo case is hearing conservatives complaining that judges aren't being activist enough while still simultaneously complaining about activist judges. It's absolute proof that "activist judges" is a meaningless catchphrase that only really means "judges making rulings I don't like." We hear this catchphrase constantly from those who say that we must have more conservative judges on the court because they won't be "activist", yet in the Schiavo case conservative judges…
stcynic | March 16, 2005Julian Sanchez, the always incisive assistant editor at Reason magazine, has an interesting article about yesterday's California Superior Court ruling that struck down the state's ban on gay marriage as forbidden by that state's constitution. He points out something interesting about the judge's ruling:
But perhaps the most interesting part of Judge Kramer's opinion has received surprisingly little attention. Kramer applied the lowest level of judicial scrutiny when he considered whether marriage discrimination was rationally related to any legitimate state purpose. In this, he followed the…
tlambert | March 12, 2005 A large group of public health experts has criticized the coalition for their continuing failure to count the civilian casualties in Iraq. In an editorial in the British Medical Journal Klim McPherson writes:
Public access to reliable data on mortality is important. The policy being assessed---the allied invasion of Iraq---was justified largely on grounds of democratic supremacy. Voters in the countries that initiated the war, and others---not least in Iraq itself---are denied a reliable evaluation of a key indicator of the success of that policy. This is unacceptable.
Instead the UK…
stcynic | March 10, 2005In a discussion on the religion law listserv last week, in an exchange with Jim Henderson, senior counsel with Pat Robertson's American Center for Law and Justice, the issue of constitutional law and original intent came up. Mr. Henderson was arguing that the original intent of the framers was the primary tool for constitutional interpretation and I, while agreeing with him that it is a very important tool, made the argument that it was not quite as simple as he seemed to think. The most obvious reason is because the framers themselves often disagreed on the meaning of various provisions. In…
stcynic | March 9, 2005Jon Rowe has responded to my post on the polygamy debate that has been going on in the blog neighborhood. He writes:
I don't have time to address all the issues, but I must say that I'm a little taken aback by Ed Brayton's dismissive attitude towards my rationale; he doesn't even examine my underlying premise. But it's a premise that needs to be examined.
First, let me apologize if I appeared to be merely dismissive of his premise. Jon's thoughts on any subject deserve nothing less than thorough consideration as he always presents challenging and well thought out ideas. That doesn't mean we'…
stcynic | February 16, 2005Someone using the name "mynym" has left a couple of comments in reply to this post comparing the arguments against gay marriage with the arguments against interracial marriage. Since my response will likely be very long, I thought I'd move it up to its own post. It's an odd set of comments, addressing arguments I did not make and doing so primarily through a series of quotes from others who disagree with me. Let's look at them one by one.
"This argument, the so-called Loving analogy (after Loving v. Virginia) has force, but it overlooks a major distinction between miscegenation laws and the…
tfk | February 1, 2005A repost from the archives, providing background in theology
The Leaking of the Wedge:
The story begins, so far as the world at large is concerned, on a late January day seven years ago, in a mail room in a downtown Seattle office of an international human-resources firm. The mail room was also the copy center, and a part-time employee named Matt Duss was handed a document to copy. It was not at all the kind of desperately dull personnel-processing document Duss was used to feeding through the machine. For one thing, it bore the rubber-stamped warnings "TOP SECRET" and "NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION…
stcynic | January 31, 2005Newsweek has a story in its next edition about the various battles over evolution and ID going on around the country. The DI is sure to go ballistic over it soon, since it actually tells the truth about ID. But there's one passage in it that just leaps off the page. It's this one:
But I.D. has nothing to say on the identity of the designer or how he gets inside the cell to do his work. Does he create new species directly, or meddle with the DNA of living creatures? Behe envisions as one possibility something akin to a computer virus inserted in the genome of the first organism, emerging full…
stcynic | January 30, 2005A couple days ago, I received an email from a correspondent named Nick, a man I've encountered in a political chat room before as well. He's one of those really hardcore religious right types who, as you will see, absolutely glories in his ignorance, and he was bound and determined to "educate" me. His initial e-mail simply said this:
I know you are smarter than all of these folks but maybe you can learn something
And then it had a link to this article on someone else's webpage. There's nothing original in the article. It is the same article that has been emailed around a million times, so…
stcynic | January 20, 2005Jason Rosenhouse, a fellow Panda's Thumb contributor, has written a thoroughly blistering post about Bill O'Reilly's ridiculous take on Intelligent Design. In a segment about ID, O'Reilly interviewed a University of Colorado biologist, and in his typical smugness-meets-stupidity style, he made quite a fool of himself in the process. This exchange is especially amusing:
O'REILLY: OK. But science is incomplete in this area of creationism, is it not?
GRANT: Science is always incomplete in all areas.
O'REILLY: Well, I don't agree with that. Science is not always incomplete and I'll give you an…
stcynic | January 13, 2005A friend sent me a link to this horrible article on church/state separation written by someone named Michael Tremoglie. It's so badly reasoned that even with the straw man he constructs of his opponents' position on separation, he still has to resort to other logical fallacies and outright falsehoods to defeat it. He begins:
According to the Washington Times, "The California lawyer who tried to have the phrase "under God" removed from the Pledge of Allegiance now wants to legally prevent President Bush from placing his hand on a Bible while being sworn in at his inauguration."
This is just…
stcynic | January 7, 2005Dru Stevenson, an associate professor at the South Texas School of Law in Houston, has linked to my post on the ACLU defending the rights of Christians. He also left a comment in response to the post that preceeded that one, which was about John Scalzi's attempt to find Christian lawyers who did work for the ACLU. First, I want to thank Mr. Stevenson for the link and for the kind words about the post. But I also want to take issue with one thing he said while linking to it. He writes:
Disclaimer: I don't care for the overheated tone of this site. I also think its personal attacks on Pat…
stcynic | December 27, 2004Jon Rowe is guest blogging at Sandefur's place this week, which is great because I only have to go to one place to find both of their posts for a while. Already, Jon has a great post up about Harry Jaffa and his views of homosexuality, and Timothy has a follow-up to it extending one of the arguments with a wonderful passage on the "nudist fallacy" from Daniel Dennett's amazing book, Freedom Evolves.
Meanwhile, Jason Kuznicki is back from his family Christmas with a post about the anti-gay views of Orson Scott Card that reminds us once again what a gifted writer he really is. The first part,…
stcynic | December 27, 2004Here's yet another example of those "family values" we're always hearing about. In Florida in 1995, Judge Joseph Tarbuck ordered that Mary Ward's 11 year old daughter be taken out of her mother's custody and given to her father, based solely on the mother's lesbianism (as is normal in such cases, there was no evidence at all that Ward was a bad mother). In his decision, Judge Tarbuck says, "This child should be given the opportunity and the option to live in a nonlesbian world." He doesn't bother to mention that the father had spent 9 years in prison for killing his first wife in a custody…
stcynic | December 25, 2004Jon Rowe has a wonderful post about Christmas from his secular perspective. It really is a must-read essay on the subject of how the secular and the religious co-exist and blend in American culture. As Jon puts it:
Christmas perfectly exemplifies the larger phenomenon of the unique culture that is the West which has a religious (Jerusalem) and a Secular-Pagan (Athens) origin. Culturally, the West presently is and always has been every bit as much of a Pagan society as it is Christian.
And what makes the West special is this unique combination, this tension between Athens and Jerusalem. The…
tlambert | November 19, 2004 From Kieran Healy I learn that Otis Dudley Duncan has died. It was Duncan who started the investigation into John Lott's mysterious survey. When Duncan first contacted me with his concerns, I found it almost impossible to conceive that someone would fabricate a survey rather then admitting to a careless error, but Duncan's insight into human nature has proven to be much better than mine. Although he preferred to stay out of the limelight, Duncan gave me the benefit of his wisdom on the Lott affair. If my writings on Lott's mysterious survey have been astute,…
stcynic | November 19, 2004Here's a quote you aren't likely to have seen from our old pal Robert Bork:
[I]t is naive to suppose that the [Supreme] Court's present difficulties could be cured by appointing Justices determined to give the Constitution its true meaning," to work at "finding the law" instead of reforming society. The possibility implied by these comforting phrases does not exist...History can be of considerable help, but it tells us much too little about the specific intentions of the men who framed, adopted and ratified the great clauses. The record is incomplete, the men involved often had vague or even…
stcynic | October 25, 2004Our old pal, Rev. Andrew Sandlin, is participating in a debate with David VanDrunen on "the role of God's law in society". His opening statement can be found here, and it sums up perfectly how he and his fellow Christian Reconstructionists think. Some people find it incredible that there are people who actually want to pass laws that stone adulterers, witches and homosexuals; but these people do. First, he explains which portions of the Mosaic Law still apply today in his theological system:
In addressing social and civil ethics, we do tend to focus on the Mosaic legislation because it…