Paul Begala: Sarah Palin Turns Pro

Paul Begala: Sarah Palin Turns Pro: "Her statement was incoherent, bizarre and juvenile. The text, as posted on Gov. Palin's official website (here), uses 2,549 words and 18 exclamation points. Lincoln freed the slaves with 719 words and nary an exclamation; Mr. Jefferson declared our independence in 1,322 words and, again, no exclamation points. Nixon resigned the presidency in 1,796 words -- still no exclamation points. Gov. Palin capitalized words at random - whole words, like 'TO,' 'HELP,' and 'AND,' and the first letter of 'Troops.'"

Summer reading: Killer thrillers | Salon Books

Summer reading: Killer thrillers | Salon Books: "What's summer without a big, fat vampire novel? 'The Strain,' by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan, doesn't have the Old World moodiness of Elizabeth Kostova's 2005 bestseller, 'The Historian,' but what it lacks in misty Carpathian landscapes and haunted libraries it makes up for in apocalyptic action and supersize portions of gore."

Carrie Fisher, "Wishful Drinking" | Salon Books

Carrie Fisher, "Wishful Drinking" | Salon Books: "Maybe I shouldn't have given the guy who pumped my stomach my phone number, but who cares, my life is over anyway."

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Part of Sarah Palin's irresistible appeal to her fundamentalist base is her ability to look at the camera with utter conviction and declare black to be white.

The ability to lie well is a valuable part of the fundamentalist psychology. My son isn't gay, he just hasn't found the right woman! Those rocks aren't 50 million years old, they just look like it as a test of our faith! My sexless marriage isn't foundering, it is filled with God's spirit! The minister isn't molesting little Maria, they're just very close! It isn't torture, it is being tough on terrorists!

Fundamentalists can recognize a truly audacious and talented liar from miles away. Instead of running the other way, as you might expect, they gather around the powerful liar, for they know that their own lies will be respected and protected by a leader who understands the paramount importance of preserving their whole system of denial.

Science, religion and our shared future | Madeleine Bunting | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk

Science, religion and our shared future | Madeleine Bunting | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk: "'Transformed knowledge,
which is an unknowing,
it is the way of transparent knowing,
it is the way of unselfconsciousness.

When you learn this,
you can learn everything,
and return to everything,
and praise everything'

translation: if you forget the things you know based on evidence, you will be able to believe in anything, and it will give you the illusion of knowing everything."

Resp:

And if you don't understand the point Eckhart was making about 'transformed knowledge' being an 'unknowing', then it might be a good idea to actually study Eckhart seriously. And I would also point you to the sources of information that I suggested to Foolfodder. Once you've got a good grasp of the subject matter then you might actually be in a position to debate it seriously.

I wouldn't dare to rubbish the fundamental tenets of mathematics or physics because quite frankly my understanding of it is limited. But you feel that it is perfectly valid to throw around cynical, ignorant comments about things you clearly don't grasp.

Quotations

Quotations: "We may be confused about the distinction between tolerance and the refusal of evaluation, thinking that tolerance of others requires us not to evaluate what they do.
Martha Nussbaum
--Cultivating Humanity"

About Butterflies and Wheels

About Butterflies and Wheels: "it is never a good idea to allow one’s political, ideological and moral commitments to infect the judgements that one makes about truth-claims which have nothing to do with such considerations."

how accommodating can you get? « weird things

how accommodating can you get? « weird things: "One of the accommodationists’ favorite tenants is that religion and science pursue different knowledge so in theory, they should have no problem co-existing. But the reality is very different. Religion is a social construct which exists to perpetuate its traditions rather than actually acquire any new insight. All the knowledge it wants is already contained in its holy books and the lengthy ruminations on them. Those who feel inspired to go out and explore, find themselves in the realm of science, a bureaucratic entity which gathers, documents and sifts through new knowledge. It started off as a nearly blank slate and its entire purpose is to find new information and grow with each discovery.

The conflict between the two spheres happens when scientists discover something that contradicts religious dogma and the people who rigidly follow their holy texts mount a campaign to defend their worldview from the new information. Do you honestly think that fundamentalists are interested in broadening their horizons when their primary concern is to make sure everyone around them does as they say? In the supposed war between science and religion, the actual facts take a back seat. Rather, the debate is about whether we could pick and choose our personal worldview regardless of the facts. Creationists aren’t mad because they did a study that found major contradictions in evolutionary biology. They’re mad because scientists dare to tell the world about evolution and use facts they passionately want to ignore to teach this knowledge in schools.

Stephen Jay Gould, "Nonoverlapping Magisteria," 1997

Stephen Jay Gould, "Nonoverlapping Magisteria," 1997: "I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or practice. But I have enormous respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated me, beyond almost all others (with a few exceptions, like evolution, paleontology, and baseball). Much of this fascination lies in the historical paradox that throughout Western history organized religion has fostered both the most unspeakable horrors and the most heart-rending examples of human goodness in the face of personal danger. (The evil, I believe, lies in the occasional confluence of religion with secular power. The Catholic Church has sponsored its share of horrors, from Inquisitions to liquidations—but only because this institution held such secular power during so much of Western history. When my folks held similar power more briefly in Old Testament times, they committed just as many atrocities with many of the same rationales.)

I believe, with all my heart, in a respectful, even loving concordat between our magisteria—the NOMA solution. NOMA represents a principled position on moral and intellectua] grounds, not a mere diplomatic stance. NOMA also cuts both ways. If religion can no longer dictate the nature of factual conclusions properly under the magisterium of science, then scientists cannot claim higher insight into moral truth ...

The Censorship Canard, Again | The Intersection | Discover Magazine

The Censorship Canard, Again | The Intersection | Discover Magazine: "29. Peter Beattie

I’d be happy to defend the position that science has plenty to tell us about how our actual behavior actually affects other people and ourselves. And how science can help us peer into moral gray areas. And tell us about how we make moral judgments in reality, and how that might contrast with how we think we should be making moral judgments. And how are supposed values line up with how the world actually is. And how knowing how the world actually is can help us make better value judgments, and help set priorities among competing values, and how realistic or arbitrary our values are, and so on."

Metamagician and the Hellfire Club

Metamagician and the Hellfire Club: "The sad thing about this is that church is, among other things, a way to get together with other people and focus the mind on being good. The religious version of being good is not always on the mark, to put it mildly, but even the opportunity to contemplate goodness seems valuable. This is something it's truly hard to reproduce with secular institutions. Politics seems like the closest thing to a substitute, and it's not a very close match."

Seeing and Believing

Seeing and Believing: Jerry Coyne

Scientists do indeed rely on materialistic explanations of nature, but it is important to understand that this is not an a priori philosophical commitment. It is, rather, the best research strategy that has evolved from our long-standing experience with nature. There was a time when God was a part of science. Newton thought that his research on physics helped clarify God's celestial plan. So did Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist who devised our current scheme for organizing species. But over centuries of research we have learned that the idea "God did it" has never advanced our understanding of nature an iota, and that is why we abandoned it. In the early 1800s, the French mathematician Laplace presented Napoleon with a copy of his great five-volume work on the solar system, the Mechanique Celeste. Aware that the books contained no mention of God, Napoleon taunted him, "Monsieur Laplace, they tell me you have written this large book on the system of the universe, and have never even mentioned its Creator." Laplace answered, famously and brusquely: "Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothese-la," "I have had no need of that hypothesis." And scientists have not needed it since.

...

Perhaps what we mean by "religious truths" are "moral truths," such as "Thou shalt not commit adultery." These rules are not subject to empirical testing, but they do comport with our reasoned sense of right and wrong. But for almost every "truth" such as this there is another one believed with equal sincerity, such as "Those who commit adultery should be stoned to death." This dictum appears not only in Islamic religious law, but in the Old Testament as well. (It seems wrong, by the way, to call these truths religious. Beginning with Plato, philosophers have argued convincingly that our ethics come not from religion, but from a secular morality that develops in intelligent, socially interacting creatures, and is simply inserted into religion for convenient citation.)

In the end, then, there is a fundamental distinction between scientific truths and religious truths, however you construe them. The difference rests on how you answer one question: how would I know if I were wrong? Darwin's colleague Thomas Huxley remarked that "science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact." As with any scientific theory, there are potentially many ugly facts that could kill Darwinism. Two of these would be the presence of human fossils and dinosaur fossils side by side, and the existence of adaptations in one species that benefit only a different species.

Pharyngula

Pharyngula: "about the nature of the universe, about our history, about how we function, and then we encounter a conflict: religion keeps giving us different answers. Very different answers. They can't all be right, and since no two religions give the same answers, but since science can generally converge on similar and consistent answers, I know which one is right. And that makes religion simply wrong."

..
Religion, on the other hand, uses a different body of techniques to explain the nature of the universe. It uses tradition and dogma and authority and revelation, and a detailed legalistic analysis of source texts, to dictate what the nature of reality should be. It's always wrong, from an empirical perspective, although I do have to credit theologians with some of the most amazingly intricate logical exercises as they try to justify their conclusions. The end result of all of this kind of clever wankery, though, is that some people say the world is 6000 years old, that it was inundated with a global flood 4000 years ago, and other people say something completely different, and there is no way within the body of theology to resolve which answers are right. They have to step outside their narrow domain to get an independent confirmation — that is, they rely on science to give them the answers to the Big Questions in which they purport to have expertise.

Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends | Brain Blogger

Get By With a Little Help From Your Friends | Brain Blogger: "The closest thing that researchers have been able to identify as a single secret to happiness is successful relationships. High levels of intelligence, social aptitude, physical strength, or mental health mean very little in the pursuit of happiness. Positive relationships — with parents, siblings, spouses, children, friends, neighbors, and colleagues — as early as childhood are the most important predictors of happiness and success as we age. Largely, loving relationships and an appreciation for beauty positively predict life satisfaction."

The Philosophy of Science: Some Verifiable Rational Considerations of Reality

The Philosophy of Science: Some Verifiable Rational Considerations of Reality: "Edward O. Wilson, who describes science as the 'remarkable engine of testable learning',"

Why A Low Calorie Diet Extends Lifespans: Critical Enzyme Pair Identified

Why A Low Calorie Diet Extends Lifespans: Critical Enzyme Pair Identified: "To date, there are only three known genetic networks that ensure youthfulness when manipulated. One centers on the insulin/insulin growth factor-1, which regulates metabolism and growth; the second is driven by mitochondria, the cell's power plants; and the third is linked to diet restriction."

First Image of a Memory Being Made | LiveScience

First Image of a Memory Being Made | LiveScience: "One of the surprising revelations of the new study is that more regions of RNA, a protein-building instruction manual similar to DNA, are required to form the new proteins than previously thought."

Sun CTO douses own cloud in cold water • The Register

Sun CTO douses own cloud in cold water • The Register: "chief technology officer Greg Papadopoulos doubts enterprises will move their existing applications onto this or any other data center in the sky. But Amazon cloud prophet Werner Vogels disagrees.

'I'll pour a little bit of cloud water on this,' Papadopoulos said at the cloud-obsessed Structure 09 conference in San Francisco, California, on Thursday. 'It's generally really hard and expensive and often unwise to be moving your legacy pieces over into something new in computing like this, unless you can really demonstrate what the advantages are."

New chips don't deliver, Facebook says | ITworld

New chips don't deliver, Facebook says | ITworld: "'The biggest thing (that) surprised us is ... less-than-anticipated performance gains from new microarchitectures -- so, new CPUs from guys like Intel and AMD. The performance gains they're touting in the press, we're not seeing in our applications,"

Why Do Atheists Have to Talk About Atheism? | | AlterNet

Why Do Atheists Have to Talk About Atheism? | | AlterNet: "atheists see religion as a lot of things. But for many of us, religion is, above all else, a hypothesis about how the world works and why it is the way it is.

Obviously, we think it's a mistaken hypothesis: inconsistent with itself, inconsistent with reality, unsupported by any good evidence"

More on accomodationism : Thoughts from Kansas

More on accomodationism : Thoughts from Kansas: "nsofar as I’m an accommodationist, then, it’s not because I don’t see the incongruity between relying on faith, and looking for evidence, as bases for knowing. Rather, it’s because I know that many very intelligent people are struggling all the time to make their peace with this incongruity in their own way–a peace that works for them. And so long as they’re not messing with what our kids learn–or, again, trying to ram their views down our throats–then good on ‘em."

..
The methods of ascertaining “truth” via faith are either revelation or acceptance of dogma. These methods have produced “truths” like a 6,000-year-old Earth and the Great Flood. Not a very good track record. In fact, I have yet to find a single truth about humans, Earth, or the universe that has come uniquely from faith.

Brain mechanisms of hypnotic paralysis : Neurophilosophy

Brain mechanisms of hypnotic paralysis : Neurophilosophy: "In the controls, feigning paralysis of the left hand led to increased activity in the right inferior frontal gyrus, which is known to be involved in motor inhibition. However, hypnotic paralysis did not cause increased activity in this area, and so it seems not to occur as a result of inhibition of motor planning."

The Theory of Abominable Befuddlement « The Sensuous Curmudgeon

The Theory of Abominable Befuddlement « The Sensuous Curmudgeon: "The continued existence of creationists among us can be cited as evidence against natural selection. Therefore, we must boldly acknowledge the Paradox of Creationism: Creationism exists; and if evolution can’t account for it, then what does?"
..
The brain of a creationist is so scrambled that it cannot be the result of natural processes. The Theory of Abominable Befuddlement (AB) holds that certain features of the creationist brain are best explained by an Abominable Befuddler, and not by evolution. It follows as a corollary that ID is the work of AB.
..
Using this creationist-approved method of investigation, a befuddlement theorist studies the output of creationists, and thus is able to determine whether it is the rational product of an evolved brain, or an example of befuddlement.

ScienceDirect - Applied Animal Behaviour Science : Survey of the use and outcome of confrontational and non-confrontational training methods in client-owned dogs showing undesired behaviors

ScienceDirect - Applied Animal Behaviour Science : Survey of the use and outcome of confrontational and non-confrontational training methods in client-owned dogs showing undesired behaviors: "Dogs presenting for aggression to familiar people were more likely to respond aggressively to the confrontational techniques “alpha roll” and yelling “no” compared to dogs with other presenting complaints (P < 0.001). In conclusion, confrontational methods applied by dog owners before their pets were presented for a behavior consultation were associated with aggressive responses in many cases."

10 Barbecue Restaurants Recommended By Bon Appetit - Travel Getaways News Story - WEWS Cleveland

10 Barbecue Restaurants Recommended By Bon Appetit - Travel Getaways News Story - WEWS Cleveland: "Stacy's Smokehouse BBQ in Phoenix at 1650 E. Indian School Road;"

Denim and Tweed: No room for group selection in disease evolution?

Denim and Tweed: No room for group selection in disease evolution?: "Charles Darwin originally proposed it to explain the evolution of human moral systems: in a tribal society, helping your neighbor might cost you, but it might still help your whole tribe to compete against other tribes. So natural selection on individuals within a tribe may act in one way, but be opposed by group selection arising from competition among tribes."

..
trade-off between transmission and virulence [PDF]. Simply put, if it's easy for a disease-causing critter to spread through a host population, it tends to do more damage to its hosts; and if it is less easy to spread,
...
Kin selection takes into account the effect of natural selection on not just the copies of an individual's genes within that individual's body, but also the copies borne by close relatives; if you're a parasite that reproduces inside your host, making more offspring also means making more competitors for your offspring, and thereby reducing the fitness of the genes that you share with the next generation. So, unless it's easy to disperse to new resources -- uninfected hosts -- natural selection can actually favor prudent reproduction by a parasite, which keeps the host alive longer.

Total knee replacements increase mobility and motor skills in older patients | Science Codex

Total knee replacements increase mobility and motor skills in older patients | Science Codex: "he study examined physical functioning and gauged outcomes in a national sample of Americans aged 65 and older for up to four years—a longer period than previous TKA studies. Relative to the untreated comparison group, recipients of total knee replacements experienced significant improvement in function, including a 17.5% increase in mobility, a 39.3% improvement in motor skills; and a 46.9% decrease in limitations in activities of daily living such as bathing and dressing oneself."