Policy and Politics
tfk | February 5, 2011Popular Mechanics asks Bill Nye about anti-evolution efforts in schools:
It's horrible. Science is the key to our future, and if you don't believe in science, then you're holding everybody back. And it's fine if you as an adult want to run around pretending or claiming that you don't believe in evolution, but if we educate a generation of people who don't believe in science, that's a recipe for disaster. We talk about the Internet. That comes from science. Weather forecasting. That comes from science. The main idea in all of biology is evolution. To not teach it to our young people is wrong.â…
tfk | February 4, 2011Via BRAD BLOG, a transcript of Rush Limbaugh mocking attacks on journalists in Egypt on Thursday:
LIMBAUGH: Ladies and gentlemen, it is being breathlessly reported that the Egyptian army --- Snerdley, have you heard this? The Egyptian army is rounding up foreign journalists.
I mean, even two New York Times reporters were detained. Now, this is supposed to make us feel what, exactly? How we supposed to feel? Are we supposed to feel outrage over it? I don't feel any outrage over it. Are we supposed to feel anger? I don't feel any anger over this. Do we feel happy? Well --- uh --- do we feel…
tfk | February 2, 2011The violence in Cairo â violence instigated by agents provocateurs hired by the Mubarak regime, is shocking and dismaying. After the people took to the streets en masse, and quietly and peacefully forced Mubarak to announce his eventual exit from power, to see those same protesters shot at, stabbed, beaten, run down on horseback and camelback, crushed by rocks, and burned by Molotov cocktails is inexpressibly sad.
Graeme Wood's description of the fighting in Tahrir Square is heartrending: "Each side threw so many stones that they were practically unpaving downtown Cairo, and in moments…
tfk | February 2, 2011John Pieret â who is to blame for the recent kerfuffles here â surveys the trouble he started:
As usual, there is much talking past each other.
I think Russell Blackford has, perhaps unintentionally, hit on the problem that we "accommodationists" see with the "incompatibleists." In defending Coyne, Russell says: the "anti-accommodationist camp ... see a genuine and serious difficulty in reconciling a worldview based on science and reason with worldviews based on religion." I agree!
But the question really is whether "a worldview based on science and reason" is the same thing as "science." I…
tfk | February 2, 2011Daniel Davies offers The How-To of Fascism: A Guide for Aspiring Dictators:
There is always a level of civil unrest that outstrips the capability of even the most loyal and largest regular armed forces to deal with. In all likelihood, as a medium sized emerging market, you will have a capital city with a population of about five or six million, meaning potentially as many as three million adults on the streets in the worst case. Your total active-duty armed forces are unlikely to be a tenth of that. When it becomes a numbers game, there is only one thing that can save you.
And that is, a…
tfk | February 1, 2011Anyone know of archeologists reading the tea leaves on the implications for Zahi Hawass being made a cabinet minister in Egypt? Hawass is the telegenic spokesman for Egypt's rich trove of antiquities, regularly featuring in TV shows about mummies and pyramids, and undoubtedly helping keep tourists flowing to Egypt (tourism is the major national industry).
In the political shakeup over the weekend, Mubarak used his nominal political power to create a new cabinet position for Hawass: Minister of Antiquities.
On one hand, I'd think archaeologists would be glad to see their field getting such…
tfk | February 1, 2011Jerry Coyne â president of the Society for the Study of Evolution, self-styled "internationally famous defender of evolution", and professor â is miffed at my snarky comments a couple days ago. So he did what anyone would do, he made a cartoon making fun of my profile photo.
I'd call it childish, but most kids know better than that.
For the record, the photo is of me skinning a vole. The pile of powder is sawdust, used to absorb the fat so you can keep a grip on the skin. It is not nutmeg. I leave that to the fine people of Connecticut.
Coyne also can't fathom why I titled a shortering…
tfk | February 1, 2011PZ has decided he hasn't peeved enough people, and made a list of atheist arguments he dislikes. And he's right. For instance, he's down on:
Dictionary Atheists. Boy, I really do hate these guys. You've got a discussion going, talking about why you're an atheist, or what atheism should mean to the community, or some such topic that is dealing with our ideas and society, and some smug wanker comes along and announces that "Atheism means you lack a belief in gods. Nothing more. Quit trying to add meaning to the term." As if atheism can only be some platonic ideal floating in virtual space…
tfk | January 31, 2011Sean Carroll reads Jerry Coyne so you don't have to. His summary of Jerry Coyne's post about his talk at the First United Methodist Church of Chicago is decidedly kinder than John Pieret's, or my own last post, and so it serves as a good starting point for the promised kinder, gentler reaction to Coyne's piece.
As you recall, Coyne went to the church to talk with a book group there about his book Why Evolution Is True. Sean summarizes:
You can guess what happened â or maybe not. There was a productive two-hour conversation in which both sides learned something.
There was indeed a lot of…
tfk | January 31, 2011From the Guardian's liveblog of Friday's protests in Egypt. Earlier in the day, police were sent to attack protesters after Friday prayers, but the crowd pushed back, apparently taking control of the streets in Alexandria, Suez, and at least parts of Cairo. In response:
Mubarak has sent in the army to restore order in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez but protesters cheered the army in some areas, calling on them to side with them against the police (3.43 pm). In some areas the army has done so. Soldiers have shaken hands with protesters in Alexandria and in Cairo. Demonstrators have clambered…
tfk | January 31, 2011John Pieret reads Jerry Coyne so you don't have to. He notes that Coyne's experience at a moderate church reading group sounds awfully accommodationist, and it does!
Of course, "accommodationist" is a highly mutable term, so I'm sure Jerry will say he isn't really, and the label doesn't really matter. The important thing is that Coyne's experience seems to have planted at least a little doubt in his mind about the need to undo all religion. There's a lot in there that I can agree with, and I'll have another post about that shortly.
But rather than bridge from snark to praise, I'll just…
tfk | January 29, 2011Shorter Sam Harris: A Response to Critics:
People are saying mean things about my bad book and I don't know what to say.
[6600 words later]
If I pretend morality is just like health, then all the objections are wrong.
tfk | January 27, 2011A year ago, I was at a conference in Alexandria, Egypt, and then spent a few days in Cairo. I got to experience the Egyptian culture, to see antiquities, and to meet some amazing people. It was my first trip outside the bubble of Western developed democracies, and was an eye-opening experience.
Cab drivers and others I talked with all remembered President Obama's speech in Cairo and seemed to think highly of him and of the US. Despite my fairly Jewish looks and inescapably American affect, I never detected any animosity. Even the panhandlers and minor scam artists on the streets were…
tfk | January 21, 2011I started writing this post hoping to craft an argument that Ayaan Hirsi Ali â a Somali-born atheist (formerly Muslim), a former member of the Dutch Parliament, a screenwriter threatened with assassination for helpng Theo van Gogh (who was assassinated) criticize Islam's treatment of women, a feminist critic of Islam who has won acclaim across the political spectrum in the US and Europe â ought to avoid testifying in forthcoming hearings on Islamic terrorism out of enlightened self-interest. The hearings have never been about anything but attacking Muslims in America, continuing the crusade…
tfk | January 18, 2011The other day I laid out a bit of my position on the importance of being self-consciously political, and Amanda Marcotte has a great post on a related issue:
Nowadays, however, the verb âto politicizeâ is used, 90% of the time, to suggest that politics and government are silly little trifles that shouldnât be involved when something really serious is on the table. Thatâs how the word has been used in the past week, by right wingers trying to deflect criticism of their very serious actions by suggesting that this massacre is too serious to involve politics. But you see it a lot, and sadly not…
tfk | January 10, 2011Eve Conant and Claire Martin dig into Jared Loughner's background, trying to explain his mass murder. I think the first half the piece is weak, alas, but the second half is dynamite. The first builds on interviews with his neighbors, who say that the 22 year-old liked to walk the streets in a hoodie with his earbuds in, and didn't respond to greetings. That could be a sign of mental illness, I suppose, or it could mean he's a disaffected 22 year-old guy who lives with his parents and isn't happy about it. If we rounded up all the guys or gals who wear hoodies and listen to iPods, we'd…
tfk | January 9, 2011Daniel Hernandez, intern, stays by Gabrielle Giffords' side:
Daniel Hernandez had been U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords' intern for five days when she was shot Saturday outside Tucson.
The junior at the University of Arizona was helping check people in at the "Congress on Your Corner" event when he heard gunfire. He was about 30 feet from the congresswoman. When the shots began, he ran toward them.
Hernandez, an unpaid intern who hadn't even finished his first week on the job, ran toward the shooting. He administered first aid, never worrying that his clothes were soaked through with blood (…
tfk | January 9, 2011In my post yesterday about the shooting of Rep. Gabby Giffords, I tried hard not to say that Loughner's mass murder was caused by insanity, or by violent political rhetoric. We don't know anything about that, and we'll know more once he goes to trial. What we'll find at trial is surely that his actions had complex causes that are hard to untangle: that's the nature of most things people do. But we can still look for major causes, even if they can't explain all of his tragic decisions.
Vaughan Bell has an important essay at Slate, making clear that "he did it because he's crazy" isn't…
tfk | January 8, 2011President Josiah Bartlet:
The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels tonight. They're our students and our teachers and our parents and our friends. The streets of heaven are too crowded with angels, but every time we think we have measured our capacity to meet a challenge, we look up and we're reminded that that capacity may well be limitless. This is a time for American heroes. We will do what is hard. We will achieve what is great. This is a time for American heroes and we reach for the stars.
Today, Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head while meeting constituents…
tfk | January 7, 2011This week's Nature has a great report on efforts to get scientists more active in policy discussions. It starts with an ecologist who got some media training, which gave her the courage to go on the Colbert Report and defend a paper she co-authored about the dangers of mountaintop removal. From there, we get a survey of recent attacks on science, and efforts to push back.
Nancy Baron quotes the late and lamented Stephen Schneider, "Staying out of the fray is not taking the 'high ground'; it is just passing the buck," and she adds this useful trick for dealing with the boundary between…