Politics
clock | July 6, 2006When 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…
hrynyshyn | July 6, 2006Last weekend's Los Angeles Times included a curious essay by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert titled "If only gay sex caused global warming." How can you resist?
The basic thesis, drawn from evolutionary biology, is threats are meaningless without a face to associate. To wit:
...global warming lacks a mustache. No, really. We are social mammals whose brains are highly specialized for thinking about others. Understanding what others are up to -- what they know and want, what they are doing and planning -- has been so crucial to the survival of our species that our brains have developed an…
stcynic | July 6, 2006Vanity Fair has an article about some of the revelations that have come out in the wake of the Duke Cunningham and Jack Abramoff scandals, and how it reveals the seedy side of Washington. The article only scratches the surface - bribes to get CIA and Pentagon contracts, free trips to lavish resorts, hookers, drugs, envelopes full of cash being handed over in broad daylight. I've been telling folks for years that if they honestly had any idea what went on in Washington, they'd be stunned. I know personally of parties with multiple members of Congress showing up with goblets full of cocaine and…
stcynic | July 6, 2006Michael Shermer writes of a fascinating experiment on how the brain processes statements and claims about which one has a powerful attachment to the truth being a certain way. It may well illuminate the sort of irrational thinking driven by political partisanship. I'll post his description of the experiment below the fold:
This surety is called the confirmation bias, whereby we seek and find confirmatory evidence in support of already existing beliefs and ignore or reinterpret disconfirmatory evidence. Now a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study shows where in the brain the…
clock | July 6, 2006Again, an article echoing Lakoff's argument, with which I agree:
Why Conservatives Can't Govern:
If leaders consistently depart in disastrous ways from their underlying political ideology, there comes a point where one has to stop just blaming the leaders and start questioning the ideology.
The collapse of the Bush presidency, in other words, is not just due to Bush's incompetence (although his administration has been incompetent beyond belief). Nor is it a response to the president's principled lack of intellectual curiosity and pitbull refusal to admit mistakes (although those character…
pharyngula | July 5, 2006The only eulogy Kenny Boy needs is Al Swearengen's (warning: not for the lily-livered or the sanctimonious.)
jlynch | July 5, 2006Radical Islamic militia fighters in Somalia shot and killed two people who were watching a banned World Cup soccer broadcast, a radio station reported Wednesday.
The hard-line Muslim fighters, who have banned watching television, opened fire after a crowd of teenagers defied their orders to leave a hall where a businessman was showing Tuesday's Germany-Italy match on satellite television, according to Shabelle Radio, an independent local station. It said the businessman and a teenage girl were killed.
Hard-line Muslim fighters, who wrested control of the Somali capital from warlords in June,…
pharyngula | July 5, 2006Reading some of my favorite blogs today, I can't help but feel the looming hand of fate preparing to destroy us all.
Jon Voisey is praising a director of the Oklahoma ACLU, Joanne Bell. You're in Kansas, Jon. It's not that far from Oklahoma. What happened to Bell could happen to you.
Ophelia Benson is saying harsh words about Mother Theresa. An uppity woman criticizing an icon of Christian charity? Someday, you could be in a hospital with a hatchet-faced nun looming over you, contemplating how best to chastise your body before your immortal soul meets the god who will fling you into the…
oracknows | July 4, 2006I've said it before and I'll say it again: The war in Iraq has to be the worst foreign policy mistake the U.S. has made in my lifetime. Certainly it's the worst foreign policy mistake that I can remember (I wasn't old enough to remember the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that got the U.S. more deeply involved in the fighting in Vietnam.)
That being said, though, this has to be the stupidest idea for a protest against the war that I have heard of in a very long time:
Hollywood stars Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon are to join a fast protesting against the Iraq war.
Protestors will each give up food…
pharyngula | July 4, 2006Since it is the Fourth of July, it seems only right to post something from the Revolution. Our reading for the day is the Age of Reason, by that fierce freethinking firebrand, Thomas Paine.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to…
oracknows | July 4, 2006Besides our current President, the other factor that has done perhaps the most to drive me from the Republican Party over the last decade has been its falling under the sway of Christian fundamentalists who want to impose their view of morality, religion, and Christianity on the nation as law. Of course, our current President is simply the culmination of nearly three decades of the party's courting them and using them to attain power, and now moderate Republicans are shocked--shocked, I say--to find out that these folks mean what they say when they assert that God claimed the U.S. over 200…
oracknows | July 4, 2006This article originally appeared on July 4, 2005.
Back in May, I was in Bethesda at a meeting. Because of my interest in World War II history and because I hadn't been to Washington since its completion, I was very interested in seeing the World War II Memorial; so one afternoon I hopped on the Metro and headed down to the Mall to check it out. It provided the material for some photoblogging on Memorial Day. On my way back, I thought it might be fun to wander by the White House before heading back to the Metro. So I did.
I had been in front of the White House at least two or three times…
pharyngula | July 3, 2006
The picture says it all, doesn't it?
Well, maybe not everything. There's lots that could be said, but personally, I find it hard to get much beyond shocked silence.
Can we please take our country back from the christianists soon?
Here's something else to prompt your disgust.
jlynch | July 3, 2006Rob Hood over at the Conservative Voice gives the nine key things that conservatives and Christians believe.
Evolution is a myth. Creation is real. God is real. It is still legal to say the word Jesus.
The Earth is only around 6000 years old. Noah built an ark and the world was flooded which created the Grand Canyon. Millions of years is absurd.
Global Warming is a myth and is totally junk science that should be trashed.
Jesus was resurrected from the dead and will one day return to judge the world and create a new one while the one we live in now will be destroyed.
Merry Christmas! Yes, it…
hrynyshyn | July 3, 2006Would-be 2008 presidential candidate John McCain has had every opportunity to distance himself from the retrogressive anti-Enlightenment policies of the current administration, but he just can't seem to bring himself to do it, even when polls that put Bush's approval rating at all-time lows suggest it would be a good idea.
This past Saturday McCain was given yet another chance to demonstrate his respect for the scientific method during an appearance at Aspen's Evening of Words and Music:
In the final question of the evening, an audience member asked McCain to outline his stance on teaching…
drorzel | July 3, 2006Poking through the archives to find some old physics posts to fill space while I'm away from the keyboard, I realize that back in 2002, I wrote a lot more about politics than I do now.This is largely because most of what I wrote about politics back then makes me cringe now. And, in fact, made me cringe about two weeks after writing it, which continues to be true of most of my writing about politics.
Here's one of the rare posts that doesn't make me cringe (I'm not entirely happy with it, but it's not completely embarassing), on the subject of political rhetoric (which seems vaguely…
j7uy5 | July 2, 2006It was pointed out to me after I put up the FUD post, that Steven
Clemons (of the Washington Note) recently posted an
href="http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/001502.php">excellent
example of the use of fear-mongering:
June 25, 2006
NATIONAL SECURITY FOR FAMILIES: IT'S
FOR KIDS TOO -- ESPECIALLY KIDS!!
Visit www.FamilySecurityMatters.org
-- a site seemingly devoted to convincing a large cross-section of
Americans that they must fear terrorism -- really fear it, now --
tomorrow -- and in the many years to come. It's high-fear exploitation
of the worst kind candy-coated with…
pharyngula | July 2, 2006Wingnuttia, O Wingnuttia. There are so many lunacies uttered in that fabled land that one cannot possibly keep up with them all, so it's useful when one of them distills it all down and gives us a condensed list of the properties of a True Conservative. We have such a useful list, written by Rob Hood in the Conservative Voice. He is a very silly man, but that online rag has him up there on the front page with Robert Novak and…and…well, a lot of ranting nobodies. This is a distinguished host in Wingnuttia, though!
As a matter of fact if you like Ann Coulter and want to make some liberals'…
j7uy5 | July 1, 2006{I actually started writing this weeks ago, got bogged down and
distracted, and never finished it. Now, I have decided to
just go ahead and finish it up, even though I am not entirely happy
with it. Hey, I am not getting paid for this, so so what if
it is not a polished piece of work.}
I just finished reading
rel="tag" href="http://scienceblogs.com/intersection/about.php">Chris
Mooney's column in Seed Magazine,
href="http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2006/06/as_science_goes_so_goes_the_na.php?utm_source=SB-rightcol&utm_medium=linklist&utm_campaign=internal%2Blinkshare">As…
pharyngula | June 30, 2006I can vote for a Christian politician, no problem. I have even liked Obama's sense of vision (although it seems he's been a bit of a flop in execution.) His latest speech, though…
And if we're going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution.
If a liberal Democratic politician wants to buy into the foolish idea that Christians…