Politics
pharyngula | January 6, 2007Richard Dawkins sure does a fine job of placing sticks of dynamite under people's chairs and blowing them up. I've been out of town and I haven't even had net access for the past day, so nobody can blame me for this latest round of anti-atheist outrage going on in these parts.
Dawkins' latest op-ed suggesting an alternative reason for not assassinating people like Saddam Hussein was more than enough to provoke frantic scurrying in these parts. Barbara calls him a "fundamentalist atheist" (that tired old slander), Chris is horrified that Dawkins seems to feel "justified in objectifying Hussein…
clock | January 5, 2007Here is a post exactly a year old (January 02, 2006)
------------------------------------------
There was an interesting discussion a few weeks ago on The Carpetbagger Report about the viability of third parties in the US political system.
Of course, the US system is officially a multi-party system. There are dozens of political parties out there, each with a name, a logo, a platform, elected officers, a newsletter, etc. Several have managed to field candidates in local and statewide elections. Greens, Libertarians and Reformists have had Presidential canidates and some impact during the…
evolvingthoughts | January 4, 2007Courtesy of Thoughts from Kansas comes a link to this site where a short test using the standard diagnostic criteria for psychopathy allows you to decide if Bush is a psychopath. My own assessment gave him 38/40, which is well above the dividing line of 30/40, although it is likely I was marking the whole administration, particularly Rumsfeld, Cheney and Rove, as well as Bush. The average so far is around 31/40.
clock | January 4, 2007Top Ten Workplace Safety Stories of 2006 on Confined Space is worth a careful read.
Hat-tip: Lindsay
clock | January 4, 2007Hal Crowther on Iraq
Kirk Ross on Edwardses
Lisa Sorg on the Chapel Hill event
j7uy5 | January 4, 2007...from a psychological standpoint, that is. This is the
topic of an article in the current edition of
style="font-style: italic;">Foreign Policy.
In it, the authors examine the effect of common systematic
cognitive errors, or biases, on the process of evaluating the prospects
for war. They argue that when a country's leaders are
contemplating war, the hawks invariably have an advantage in the debate:
style="font-weight: bold;"
href="http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=3660">Why
Hawks Win
By Daniel Kahneman, Jonathan Renshon
January/February 2007
...In fact,…
clock | January 3, 2007...about the launch of the Edwards campaign can be found and linked on this Diary on DailyKos. Go and Recommend it.
evolvingthoughts | January 2, 2007In yet another attempt to Catholicise the Australian options on health, Minister Tony Abbott, a Catholic, continues his reckless quest by assigning to the Catholic Church in Australia a contract to provide pregnancy counselling services. This is in part because he wants to reduce the number of abortions.
Under the fold is the text of the Canberra Times editorial, which gets it exactly right. Having failed to control access to abortifacients, stem cell research, and the like, Abbott really ought to be removed from his office for this blatant grab for control of Australian polity. There's a…
oracknows | January 2, 2007About a month and a half ago, the California Supreme Court ruled on a case in such a way that I'm conflicted about. As anyone who's read this blog knows, I'm very much an advocate of free speech and the First Amendment. The case is Barrett vs. Rosenthal, and it involves the question of whether the reposting on the Internet of material written by someone else can be defamatory. In brief, it involves the question of whether the reposting on Usenet of an opinion by someone else, as the defendant Ilena Rosenthal (a notorious "breast implant activist" and die-hard altie) did, can result in…
pharyngula | January 2, 2007Wilkins is wondering when the real criminals will be punished—he's talking about the abuses of power by the current Republican administration, ranging from the evisceration of civil liberties in our own country to criminal and unjustified foreign wars, with the concomitant loss of hundreds of thousands of lives. I think I can answer that one.
Never.
Bush will leave office with the praise of his sycophants ringing in his ears, and that will include the national media. He will go off to a happy retirement, smirking all the way, and will only ever appear at voluntary events hosted by other…
clock | January 2, 2007First posted on December 15, 2003, then reposted on August 25, 2004, it is interesting how everything changed in two years - I would have never written this if I knew then what I know now and how the whole thing would turn out in Iraq. I was too optimistic. Based on some interviews with Iraqis at the time of their elections I got the impression that there was much stronger national identity with the state of Iraq and did not predict a slide into sectarian violence and civil war. Also, three years ago I expected that, by now, the Iraqi government would be much more independent and would…
evolvingthoughts | January 2, 2007I was watching the Frontline report "The Enemy Within", on the FBI and a prosecutor who got an obviously innocent couple of Muslims convicted of terrorism in Lodi, California, and the prosecutor, McGregor Scott, was obviously uncomfortable about his role in this travesty, but he continued to toe the party line.
On the other side of the Democrat victory in November, clearly those who have played a part in this witch hunt are starting to worry about what the repercussions will be once the Congress is no longer just an Administration rubber stamp. But I wondered: will there by any punishment for…
goodmath | January 1, 2007The big news over the last couple of days has been the execution of Saddam Hussein. I
want to put in my own two cents about it. It's not math, but it does at least involve a bit of logic.
I wish I could remember who first said this, but I really don't know. But the important thing,
in a moral sense, about the whole mess with Saddam is that he was a thug. A vicious,
bloodthirsty, sadistic, evil thug who believed that *power* justified itself. *He* was the
strongest thug in Iraq; therefore, according to his own worldview, he got to do whatever he
wanted until someone stronger came along. Rape,…
pharyngula | January 1, 2007Why is it that I, nasty ol' atheist who is completely ignorant of theology and religious history, can see the parallels in the execution of Hussein, but our theocracy-sympathizing leaders bumble along, failing to see the damning errors of their position? Glenn Greenwald's post on the ineptitude of the lynching is chilling.
One participant described the meeting this way: "The Iraqis seemed quite frustrated, saying, 'Who is going to execute him, anyway, you or us?' The Americans replied by saying that obviously, it was the Iraqis who would carry out the hanging. So the Iraqis said, 'This is our…
pharyngula | January 1, 2007The declining scientific content expressed by the National Park Service has been an issue for years; the latest complaints (that I wrote about, and that Wesley Elsberry has now brought up) are just recent flareups of awareness. The National Park Service seems determined to strip out anything intellectually challenging from the experiences in their parks — the ideal seems to be Chevy Chase's reaction from the movie Vacation (if you don't know what I mean, here's a short homage). Pete Dunkelberg has brought a letter in Science from 28 October 2005 to my attention — it accuses the Park Service…
pharyngula | December 31, 2006Read the account of Saddam Hussein's last moments—it's a strange thing. Hussein was an evil man, but still, he carried himself at the end with strength and courage and a good amount of anger. The whole scene sounds like it was tawdry and crude; the US continues to reinforce its growing reputation for cheap barbarity. And the unseemly guards, with their chanting and sneering at a man about to die…that's who is going to run that country after we leave? I have no confidence.
I don't think our country did itself any favors with this act, and Hussein went out of this world a bit more impressively…
jlynch | December 31, 2006"Spc. Dustin R. Donica, 22, of Spring, Texas, was killed Thursday [December 28th] by small arms fire in Baghdad, the Defense Department said." (source)
jlynch | December 31, 2006Real headlines:
AP poll: Americans optimistic for 2007
Poll: Americans see gloom, doom in 2007
... and these are talking about the the same AP-AOL News poll.
clock | December 30, 2006...I attended the Edwards rally in Chapel Hill, NC, together with some 5000 other people. My musings can be found here and here.