Politics
clock | September 17, 2008When I posted this originally (here and here) I quoted a much longer excerpt from the cited Chronicle article than what is deemed appropriate, so this time I urge you to actually go and read it first and then come back to read my response.
From Dr.Munger's blog, an interesting article: Liberal Groupthink Is Anti-Intellectual By MARK BAUERLEIN, The Chronicle Review Volume 51, Issue 12, Page B6 (that link is now dead, but you can find a copy here):
Hmmmm, why was the poll conducted only in social science departments (e.g., sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, anthropology, perhaps…
clock | September 16, 2008Under the fold....
What Makes People Vote Republican?:
Not everyone who votes Republican has been 'duped'. Conservative ideals appeal to some because they reflect heartfelt visions of a 'good society.
The Religious Right's Religious Right:
One of the fascinating things about the Palin story to me is how it has demonstrated the split between the mainstream religious right and the far, far religious right. I'm talking about the serious whackos like reconstructionists, the ones even the wingnuts think are wingnuts. While most religious righters have embraced Sarah Palin's candidacy as one of…
clock | September 16, 2008
This post was initially published on September 16, 2004. It takes a critical look at some UCLA studies on brain responses of partisan voters exposed to images of Bush and Kerry:
Using M.R.I.'s to See Politics on the Brain
The researchers do not claim to have figured out either party's brain yet, since they have not finished this experiment. But they have already noticed intriguing patterns in how Democrats and Republicans look at candidates. They have tested 11 subjects and say they need to test twice that many to confirm the trend.
The Political Brain
Do liberals ''think'' with their…
gregladen | September 16, 2008I'm back from HQ and I must say phone banking is both frustrating and rewarding. Let me tell you some facts about Minnesota's third congressional district:
1) Nobody is home.
Well, OK, that's one fact, but a very solid one.
But seriously, Starting tomorrow and for ten days hence, Madia HQ has some super hot technology to make the phone calling more effective and efficient. If you've thought of putting in some volunteer time for Madia in the MN 3rd district, make contact with your contact and book a time!
Madia is a great guy, but he's starting to get a bit spooky with this technology…
jrosenhouse | September 16, 2008Yesterday, John McCain said this:
We know there has been tremendous turmoil in our financial markets and Wall Street. And people are frightened by these events. Our economy still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong.
“The fundamentals of our economy are strong,” is a standard cliche politicians use when faced with a shock to the economy. It is one of those useful, empty statements that sounds intelligent and can be used to deflect political blame in the face of bad economic news.
Sometimes it's even true. There are times when a shock to the economy causes short-term hardship, but…
jrosenhouse | September 16, 2008So far I'm really liking Rachel Maddow's new MSNBC show. She reminds me a lot of what Keith Olbermann used to be (and sometimes still is). On last night's edition she had a nice summary of precisely how pathetic the McCain campaign has been recently:
See, saying “It's not fair the way I'm losing,” translates to the American people roughly as, “I'm a loser.” That's the dilemma facing Barack Obama's campaign right now, as the McCain campaign keeps lying over and over and over and over again. No, Sarah Palin did not say thanks but no thanks to that bridge to nowhere. People making $42,000…
gregladen | September 16, 2008Republican right wing women threw a hissy fit (as Republicans are famous for doing) because Oprah Winfrey chose to not interview Sarah Palin. The Oprah Empire appears to be unaffected by this reactionary bullying.
So, does this mean that Palin's policies when she becomes president will include dictating who does what on TV? Does it mean that Palin supporters believe that they should control the media?
pontiff | September 16, 2008This morning, John McCain's top economic adviser made a bit of a mistake:
Asked what work John McCain did as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate's top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.
"He did this," Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. "Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you're looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that's what he did."
Al Gore, call…
jstemwedel | September 16, 2008... but the questions that they were answering!
Regular readers will know (from these posts, among others) that I think the extent to which presidential candidates have gotten right with science (or with reliable advisers on same) is important information for voters to have.
Indeed, I was hoping to get some nourishing information (building an informed electorate and healthy democracy with 12 vitamins and minerals!) when I checked out Obama's and McCain's answers to the Science Debate 2008 questions. And, while it is possible to glean information about McCain's and Obama's attitudes toward…
drorzel | September 16, 2008(Over the course of this week, I'm going to post a handful of things about talks that struck me as particularly interesting at last week's conference. The order will be chosen based on how much time I think I will have to write them up, given SteelyKid's demands for attention...)
On Thursday, the Science in the 21st Century conference featured a lawyer. Well, a law professor, anyway-- Beth Noveck of the NYU Law School gave a talk on Science in Government 2.0 (FriendFeed microblogging). This wasn't as odd as you might think at a Web 2.0 kind of meeting, because she talked about her involvement…
illconsidered | September 16, 2008I wasn't going to talk about McCain's VP pick, Sarah Palin again, but I felt compelled to share this one unique video and make a couple of last observations....
The video is a very rear glimpse of a republican operative speaking honestly about Palin (well about anything I suppose), a revealing look inside their thinking:
Not that it was not obvious, but here is a little hard evidence that Palin's pick has nothing to do with competence or experience. Forget what this says about her, what does it say about McCain? This is his first serious decision as would-be president. I guess he choses…
laelaps | September 16, 2008Over the past few weeks a number of visitors have made it to this blog by searching the web for information about Sarah Palin & dinosaurs. Previously there wasn't much to say beyond a 2006 quote, but now new evidence has appeared that suggests that Palin indeed tried to get creationism into the classroom despite her public comments that she desired no such thing.
According to a little muckraking done by David Talbot for Salon.com, Palin may very well be a young earth creationist who tried to sneak fundamentalist religion into public schools;
Another valley activist, Philip Munger, says…
gregladen | September 16, 2008Don't forget to visit "A Vote for Science" (where I've posted this, and there are several other interesting items as well).
Are you feeling frustrated with the current election? The most current polls actually show McCain and Palin winning in Minnesota!!!! Unbelievable.
There are two things you can do to feel better. Send money, and go and work for a candidate. Tonight, Amanda and I are going to stuff envelopes (or whatever) for one of the candidates we caucused for this year.
Go do something, it will help. Of course, if your candidate loses, you'll feel even worse....
clock | September 16, 2008 Before the days of Times Select, David Brooks used to provoke long rants twice a week. This post from October 24, 2004 is one of those.
David Brooks is so predictable. Every week or so, he comes up with a new scheme to explain the polarization of America. Each time he uses what seems to be different criteria, but are really just different terms. The funniest (and the worst) so far was the division into "spreadheet" and "paragraph" people (link: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/9660863.htm?1c ). This week, he came up with yet another one (link: http://www.nytimes.com/…
clock | September 15, 2008The Power of Political Misinformation:
As the presidential campaign heats up, intense efforts are underway to debunk rumors and misinformation. Nearly all these efforts rest on the assumption that good information is the antidote to misinformation.
But a series of new experiments show that misinformation can exercise a ghostly influence on people's minds after it has been debunked -- even among people who recognize it as misinformation. In some cases, correcting misinformation serves to increase the power of bad information.
Why the Facts Don't Matter in Politics:
What's interesting about…
evolvingthoughts | September 15, 2008
Mohan Matthen, a philosopher of biology, has a very nice takedown of Thomas Nagel's qualified support for teaching creationism on his blog. Hat tip Leiter.
Richard Losick has an excellent piece on the problems of using cultured lab strains when studying microbes, at Small Things Considered.
A new blog on politics and science, A Vote for Science, has started up at the mothership. Hopefully, when the present unpleasantness in the US has concluded for four years, we can get onto some wider and more interesting matters.
Wesley Elsberry has a plaintive cri de coeur about the joys of sleep…
clock | September 15, 2008 This post from October 21, 2004 laments the lack of spatial and temporal context for Lakoff's theory of political ideology.
As I have complained before, Lakoff's theory leaves me wanting for a spatial and a temporal context. In other words, I believe that current analysis will remain untested without a comparative study between USA and other countries, as well as without a historical study of changes in two forms of worldviews over the past couple of hundred years of history here, as well as the past couple of millenia around the world.
The only reference to any differences between the…
pharyngula | September 15, 2008Get ready for more fallout over Sarah Palin, who seems to be even crazier than I thought. There was an attempt to rehabilitate her from the accusations of pushing creationism recently, but the counterclaims got the facts all wrong. They claim that she only said that schools ought to "debate both sides," but that's the creationist position — pointing out that she was reciting creationist slogans does not somehow get her off the hook. And then there's this litany of eyewitness stories from residents of her home town, who seem to be cheerfully trotting out to stick a knife in her campaign.
At…
razib | September 15, 2008In response to the debate between David Frum and Andrew Gelman about whether inequality is bad for Republicans, Jim Manzi crunches some data. Below is Manzi's chart which shows that as you increase inequality (shifting to the right) you decrease the percentage of those voting for George W. Bush (decreasing along the Y axis). Read Manzi's whole post for methods and interpretation! The only thing I would add, which Manzi alludes to, is that interaction effect between regions and inequality probably matters, tying back to Gelman's point that Frum should be cautious about extrapolating from the…