Policy and Politics
tfk | May 18, 2010The Pope is likely to have a lot of reading soon:
Roman Catholics can send now text messages of support to Pope Benedict XVI, Italian public television said Saturday, as the Church faces an international paedophile scandal.â¦
All messages sent to the special number -- +39 335 18 63 091 -- will be passed along to the pope by the end of May, the broadcaster said. They will be shown from Sunday during the television show "In His Image".
Interestingly, there are a number of websites that will let you send free SMS messages to an Italian number.
tfk | May 18, 2010
In the video above, you can watch Indiana's Rep. Mark Souder yammer about creationism with staffer Lisa Jackson. He crows about his on-screen experience in Expelled: No Intelligence, and his efforts to twist Smithsonian emails into a conspiracy.
Souder recently won his primary election, but just resigned from Congress after revealing that he carried on an affair with Ms. Jackson. Given that the two also made a video about the importance of abstinence, the affair is a little bit embarrassing. It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.
tfk | May 14, 2010Retiring Rep. Bart Gordon wins the internet with this comment:
"For anyone that is concerned about federal employees watching pornography, they just saw a pornographic movie. It's called; 'Motion to Recommit,'" Rep. Bart Gordon (D-TN) said. "It was a cynical effort to undermine an important bill for my 9-year-old daughter, for your kids and your grandkids."
He's talking about a GOP-sponsored motion that blocked passage of a science jobs and education bill. Republicans wanted to add a provision cutting off paychecks to federal employees who watch porn on their government computers. Rather…
tfk | May 13, 2010Ophelia Benson continues to tangle with the silly and unjustifiable argument by Sam Harris that science can produce morality. Harris has shown himself to be beyond the realm of reason on this matter (and perhaps others), but if it brings her joy, I say mazel tov. At long last, someone is deploying against Harris what may be the most powerful argument against using theism to justify morality: Euthyphro's dilemma.
Classicists reading this will recall this from the Socratic dialogue in which Socrates prepares to fight the accusation that his views corrupted the youth of Athens. Euthyphro is…
tfk | May 12, 2010So remember how I posted a thing about how "critical analysis" is just another Marxist/postmodernist catchphrase adopted by fundamentalists to advance their religious/political agenda? I thought it was interesting, but relatively uncontroversial.
Rob Crowther, Disco. 'Tute's scribe in residence, objects not because of the basic thesis of the piece, but because I didn't clearly indicate that Crowther thinks Camille Paglia is a creationist. That, at least, is what I take him to mean by saying I "impl[ied] the exact opposite" of this:
Camille Paglia has made interesting comments about global…
tfk | May 11, 2010When I first heard about an attack ad in Alabama charging that gubernatorial candidate Bradley Byrne was in favor of evolution, I didn't even bother blogging it. Of course Roy Moore â famously removed from the state judiciary for unconstitutionally forcing religious symbols into public places â would use evolution as a weapon against his opponents.
But now former state board of education member Byrne is defending himself against the attack, not by standing up for evolution, but by denying the charge that he thinks "evolution ⦠best explains the origin of life." According to Politico,…
tfk | May 10, 2010Those who follow creationism carefully know that after it became clear that Intelligent design would fail in court, the new strategy which took the field often simply called for "critical analysis" of evolution. The practical effect is the same as when creationism is forced into the curriculum, but the phrasing is more pleasant to the ear. I was reminded of this in reading a generally insipid conversation between Margaret Wente (bolded) and Camille Paglia:
But in education today â even in primary-school education â all we hear about is âcritical thinking.â All the facts are available on the…
tfk | May 10, 2010I'm honestly undecided about Elena Kagan's nomination to the Supreme Court. She's got a distinguished record of legal service and scholarship, though few publications to document her views. Larry Lessig likes her, Glenn Greenwald doesn't. At the end of the day, President Obama likes her, and the general sense is that the Senate will like her well enough. She'll be confirmed, becoming the 3rd woman on the current Court, and the 4th ever to serve on the nation's highest court. Maybe Diane Wood will get the nod next time.
There's been some obnoxious nosecounting about her religious views,…
tfk | May 10, 2010Chris Mooney interviewed Elaine Ecklund about her just-released Science vs. Religion, and takes issue with her claim that second-generation atheists (those raised by atheists) are less anti-religion than first-generation atheists. As a counterargument, he writes that he is a second-generation atheist, but:
I was pretty angry at religion when I was a college atheist activist. I was pretty driven. Yes, I mellowed with timeâbut I was and still remain second generation.
I think a lot of people on the 'tubes will be surprised to know that Chris was ever a fire-breathing atheist. Bear in mind…
tfk | May 6, 2010Jim Lippard is tracking down the origin of the term "woo". He finds a few references (mostly to "woo-woo" or "woo woo") in the 1990s, and then a gap until this, from The North British Review, vol. 1, no. 11, p. 340, in a discussion of "Our Scottish fishermen" from 1842:
When beating up in stormy weather along a lee-shore, it was customary for one of the men to take his place on the weather gunwale, and there continue waving his hand in a direction opposite to the sweep of the sea, using the while a low moaning chant, Woo, woo, woo, in the belief that the threatening surges might be induced…
tfk | May 6, 2010S.E. Cupp has become a minor bete noir here, partly because I've been tracking reaction to her profoundly inaccurate book. But today, she actually says something I agree with. Or at least, she accidentally implies something I agree with.
The essay is a bit of sports commentary, or rather sports journalism commentary. She can't fathom why Keith Olbermann is blogging for MLB.com, while Rush Limbaugh wasn't allowed to buy a football team. It all comes down to politics, she's sure. She recites various things Olbermann has said which she finds offensive (e.g., saying President Bush foisted "fake…
tfk | May 4, 2010ThinkProgress rounds up some of the over the top reactions of conservatives to the arrest of Faisal Shahzad. My favorite comes from New York's Rep. Peter King:
Did they Mirandize him? I know heâs an American citizen but still.
Just to stretch that out a bit, King is arguing that he knows Shahzad is a citizen, knows that citizens are guaranteed certain rights, knows that those rights include being read a Miranda warning and also include the various rights listed in the Miranda warning, but he still doesn't think Shahzad should have been Mirandized.
Why this concern? Because he thinks that…
tfk | May 3, 2010No More Mister Nice Blog explains the facts of life to Bobby Jindal:
For the last sixteen months the GOP has been screaming that government is evil, that it is the problem, that we need less regulation in order to be more productive, more profitable, and that rules and oversight aren't needed because the free market will take care of things. You know what? If the booms [meant to keep the oil from spreading] aren't "effective" and the resources of BP are "not adequate" to deal with a disaster of this magnitude, then why the hell are you letting them operate offshore oil rigs off of your…
tfk | May 3, 2010In an interview with Mediaite, the much-discussed S.E. Cupp dribbles:
Chris Matthews purports to be a Catholic.
What the fuck does that mean? She had some similarly dismissive line about Matthews' religion in chapter 4 of her book, which was too small an issue to bother with at the time, but this pattern is odd.
Chris Matthews was raised Catholic, attended a Catholic high school and Catholic college. He continues to profess a belief in Roman Catholic Christianity. He is Catholic, for all meaningful purposes.
But because Matthews disagrees with what Cupp, an avowed atheist, thinks Catholics…
tfk | April 30, 2010There were lots of reasons why I wanted to see Affordable Care (née healthcare reform) pass. Ending the tyranny of "pre-existing conditions," of cruel recissions, and insuring more than 30 million uninsured Americans were big reasons. But it wasn't a perfect bill, and there was a vocal group of Democrats on the leftward fringes of the blogosphere who wanted to "kill the bill" and take a fresh stab at it down the road. Doing so, they insisted, would supply us with a better reform of healthcare in the end.
I rejected that argument for several reasons, all of which continue to be vindicated…
tfk | April 29, 2010Lord love her, S.E. Cupp has posted the first chapter of her book Losing Our Religion: The Liberal Media's Attack on Christianity. That means I've now inflicted two chapters of the damnable thing on myself, and I feel no better for it. You'll recall that the first chapter I saw was her look at evolution. I summarized:
S.E. Cupp's handling of science and religion misrepresents the nature of evolution, obscures the science of biology, and dismisses the deeply-held religious views of most Christians outside of the fundamentalist subculture. This is the sort of misrepresentation which leads her…
tfk | April 29, 2010Yesterday I made the offhand comment, "Say what you will about creationists, some of them have genuine critical thinking skills." I followed that up by adding "garbage in, garbage out." My meaning there may have been obscure, and commenter PhysioProf objected:
Dude, I get that you are now fully invested in how mean and shitty some atheists are and how wonderful and enlightening and allegorical religion can be. But all this "splitting the middle" "both sides do it" false equivalency shit is causing you to lose your fucking mind.
Which wasn't my point at all. My point is that critical…
tfk | April 28, 2010So Fox News breathlessly reported that Chinese researchers had found Noah's ark. "Has Noah's Ark been found on Turkish mountaintop?," they asked, dumbly. "No," answered slacktivist.
Gawker replied at greater length:
A group of evangelicals found some 4,800-year-old wood on top of Mount Ararat. They are "99.9 pecent" sure that it's Noah's ark. This is totally real, which is why it's on the front page of Fox News' "SciTech" section.
Slacktivist didn't actually just say "no," he expanded on the point by noting:
The expedition seems to have found a wooden structure. They hear hoofbeats, so they…
tfk | April 26, 2010Jerry Coyne, in the throatclearing before an otherwise reasonable dissection of wankery on the Huffington Post, brings the ahistorical and gratuitous FAIL:
I’m coyneing the term “New Creationism” to describe the body of thought that accepts Darwinian evolution but with the additional caveats that 1) it was all started by God, 2) had God-worshipping humans as its goal, and 3) that the evidence for all this is that life is complex, humans evolved, and the the “fine tuning” of physical constants of the universe testify to the great improbability of our being here—ergo God.
Two main thoughts…