Policy and Politics

A month ago, I posted a link to an op-ed in the LA Times which referred to as-yet unpublished research which purported to show no difference in science literacy between people who don't take part in religion and evangelical Christians. Then I did my own analysis of the data, which found significant differences between evangelicals and the nonreligious. Now, in a special issue of Social Science Quarterly, Darren Sherkat again shows that evangelicals are less science literate than other groups. The analysis I reported in my previous blog post is actually a bit more sophisticated, and Sherkat'…

Sorting through the 320 photos I took at the Oakland general strike today will take some time, as will getting all my thoughts together for a blog post. Meanwhile, here's a mini-essay I posted on twitter. Each point was scheduled to go up at half-hour intervals, starting at 8 am, running through 8:30 pm. I also tweeted from my phone throughout the day to give a sense of the atmosphere at Oscar Grant Plaza. I opened with a passage from the great union hymn "Solidarity Forever," a verse I also borrowed from to make my protest sign: Why we strike: They have taken untold millions that…

Tomorrow, November 2, will be a general strike in Oakland. The move was approved nearly unanimously by the roughly 1600 people voting at last week's Occupy Oakland general assembly, held the night after police from Oakland and several surrounding areas attacked nonviolent protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets, beanbags, flashbang grenades, and nightsticks. The plan is to gather at 9 am in Frank Ogawa Plaza - renamed Oscar Grant Plaza by the folks occupying it - and protest. Different people will surely come focused on protesting different issues, but the major theme is sure to be the…

Due to technical problems with my computer, I lost a long blog post I wrote last week about Occupy Oakland. It was a report on the meeting held the night after Oakland police attacked peaceful protesters, hospitalizing an Iraq veteran and others, teargassing people in wheelchairs and protesters (including children) already in flight. I also wrote a bit about the proposal for a general strike which was approved at that meeting, almost a week ago. Tomorrow, that strike goes into effect. Protests will start in downtown Oakland at 9 am, with others at noon and at 5. That last protest will proceed…

After Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Faye Flam took the Discovery Institute to task for their Hitler obsession and constant violations of Godwin's law, Disco. 'tute fellow Richard Weikart struck back, insisting, "I have spoken with intelligent Darwinists who admit point-blank that they do not have any grounds to condemn Hitler." This is patent bullcrap, but that's nothing new for the Seattle-based belief tank. Weikart didn't, of course, say which scientists he'd heard say this, so there's no way to independently verify his claim. Flam flew to the fracas again, wondering why creationists…

We've discussed yesterday's peaceful protest on behalf of Occupy Oakland, and the violent police response that dispersed that protest, but I want to quote at length from zunguzungu's excellent report: You might find it a bit confusing trying to keep track of the different times the Oakland Police department used tear gas on peaceful protesters yesterday. In the morning, they raided the Occupy Oakland camp and destroyed everything the occupiers had built, as I wrote about yesterday (and you can see video of that here). But then, in the afternoon, this march gathered at the Oakland public…

This morning (as I mentioned) police from Oakland and 15 other local law enforcement agencies sacked and pillaged the Occupy Oakland camp in downtown Oakland. Oakland's mayor was in Washington, DC at the time, trying to secure funding for the Port of Oakland, but insisted that the raid was necessary because of public safety concerns. This evening, protesters gathered to object to this interference in the Constitutional right to assemble, to speak freely, and to petition their government for redress of grievances, to protest police violence, and to restore the camp. While various local TV…

Like a lot of folks, my first reaction to the Occupy Wall Street protests â which began on September 17th, over a month ago â was dubious. While I agree with their concerns over income inequality and the failure of policymakers and law enforcement to hold Wall Street accountable for its role in the financial crisis, the language of occupation, and the vague strategy and early lack of focus left me ambivalent. As time has passed, Occupy Wall Street (and similar efforts in hundreds of cities around the world) have drawn in expertise from organized labor and have transformed this effort from…

Earlier this week, I quoted this from an op-ed in the LA Times: I recently conducted survey research comparing the most conservative of Protestants â those who identify with a conservative Protestant denomination, attend church regularly and take the Bible literally, or about 11% of the population in my analysis â with those who do not participate in any religion. The conservative Protestants are equally likely to understand scientific methods, to know scientific facts and to claim knowledge of science. They are as likely as the nonreligious to have majored in science or to have a scientific…

Sociologist John Evans talks about his research on evangelical attitudes toward science. Writing for the LA Times, he says: I recently conducted survey research comparing the most conservative of Protestants â those who identify with a conservative Protestant denomination, attend church regularly and take the Bible literally, or about 11% of the population in my analysis â with those who do not participate in any religion. The conservative Protestants are equally likely to understand scientific methods, to know scientific facts and to claim knowledge of science. They are as likely as the…

Sarah Posner reports from the Values Voters Summit, a gathering of the theocracy-in-waiting. Various GOP presidential candidates spoke, as did Bryan Fischer, of the American Family Association: Fischer followed Romney's speech with an ugly anti-Muslim, anti-gay, anti-liberal speech. Although he did not mention Mormonism, he did emphasize, repeatedly, that the president of the United States "needs to be a main of sincere, authentic, genuine Christian faith." In the rest of his laundry list of presidential prerequisites, Fischer veered from there to discuss the "mythical separation of church…

Modeled Behavior tells A Tale of Two Recessions, noting a rather shocking statistic: as of the last few years the auto fleet in the United States has begun to shrink. That is, we are scrapping cars at a faster rate than we are producing them. Unless something changes in the next 18 months, our scrappage rate will begin to exceed new cars sales by the millions of units per year. In a country that is still growing in population and still adding drivers every year its hard to explain why the optimal path is suddenly for the vehicle fleet to shrink. What economist Karl Smith means is that it's…

Elaine Howard Ecklund has a new paper out, building on her survey of scientists' views on religion, research she reported in a book last year, and in a series of papers over the last few years. In this paper (press release for those of you who haven't got access to the journal), she looks specifically at how scientists perceive the relationship between science and religion. As she reported in the book, 15% of scientists she and her colleagues interviewed reported seeing an inherent conflict between science and religion. Another 15% saw no conflict at all, while the remaining 70% saw some…

A couple weeks ago, Fox News released a new poll asking about evolution and creationism. It didn't strike me as especially noteworthy, though it does show a statistically significant rise in acceptance of evolution (21% think "the theory of evolution as outlined by Darwin and other scientist" is "more likely to be the explanation for the origin of human life on earth") since they last asked the same question in 1999 (when it was just 15%). That matches the small but statistically significant rise in support for unguided evolution seen in the nearly 30 years that Gallup has been polling on…

Kevin Drum takes up a repeated theme: GOP to Country: Drop Dead: We've talked before about the Republican genius for taking advantage of political norms that have traditionally been followed by both parties but have never been actual rules. This has produced a growing list of partisan ambushes like mid-decade redistricting, turning the Senate into a 60-vote body, holding the debt ceiling hostage, etc. So what's the next norm to be flattened by the GOP steamroller in a surprise attack? In what must be a new record, Stan Collender writes today about two norms that Republicans have crushed into…

The problems with the latest reply from Disco. 'tute's David Klinghoffer begin in the title. He claims: "National Center for Science Education Defends Its Association with James Fetzer, Peddler of Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories." NCSE did not address Klinghoffer's specious and slanderous claims; I wrote a blog post on my personal blog. The blog clearly states in the sidebar: The opinions expressed here are [my] own, do not reflect the official position of the NCSE. Lest that leave some ambiguity, I added in the post Klinghoffer is responding to: On this blog, I don't speak in my capacity…

Martin Cothran asks: Are there really 15.1 million poor people in the United States? Short answer: Yes. Cothran doesn't actually answer, but strongly implies that he thinks the answer is: no. To justify this, he claims: A multi-millionaire who owns several houses (with servants' quarters), matching his and hers Bentleys, a luxury yacht, and a private jet could find himself listed as "in poverty" in the United States.⦠the United State Census--where all those statistics are coming from telling us that 15.1 percent of Americans are living in poverty--takes account only of income for the year…

Shorter David Klinghoffer: Strange Bedfellows at the National Center for Science Education: Has NCSE stopped beating its wife? He's writing in reply to my post a couple days ago. I had criticized him for comparing 9/11 "truthers" to scientists who advocate for evolution, when it's easier to find a prominent anti-evolutionist who thinks 9/11 was an inside job. Anyway, Klinghoffer spent his 9/11 decennial writing about how it's totally the other way because he found this one guy who totally proves his point. James Fetzer, a professor emeritus at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, is a…

David Klinghoffer of the Disco. 'tute wants to draw links between evolution and 9/11 conspiracies. In his usual long-winded way, he makes a lot of efforts to link evolution to anything evil, but doesn't offer much beyond hand-waving to back the claim up. This must be the best he can do for the 9/11 memorial week, since I doubt even he can find a way to link al Qaeda to Darwin. After all, Islamic fundamentalism isn't known for its love of Western science! It'd hardly be worth noting, if not for the fact that the only 9/11 "truther" I've seen pop up on either side of the creationism/…

Yesterday's post on Rick Perry's Galileo gaffe has gotten a lot of attention, much supportive, but some critical. On twitter, historians of science Rebekah Higgit and Thony Christie have helped me sort out some of the threads. I don't think this alters any of the basic results, but it's worth teasing out some of the history, both for its own sake, and for whatever relevance it may actually have to contemporary politics. The contentious lines argued that Perry's "opening passage, like his comments on evolution, seem to forthrightly endorse the legitimacy of letting religious and political…