He's Right

Going To The Dogs

When I was, oh, maybe six or seven, a friend and I were playing outside, doing something fun enough that when he said he had to go home to poop, I talked him into doing it under a tree instead. I was a year older than he. "Dogs do it," I pointed out. Accurately, I might add.

When I was in my surgical residency, a friend's house was robbed. Whoever did it, in addition to taking her stuff, took a dump on her bed.

If I correctly understand the RWS™ position on the fact that, as a nine-year old, Barack Obama did what his dad told him and tasted dog meat, the two acts of toiletry are equivalent. They're telling us, after all, that a nine-year-old agreeing to dog-nibbling is the moral equivalent (worse, actually) of an adult choosing to strap his dog to the roof of his car and driving thusly for twelve hours.

And now you know what to look forward to for the next six-and-a-half months. I don't know about you, but I'm not sure I can last that long.

Hubba-Hubba

Above is one of the latest from Hubble. (It gets bigger when you click on it.) My cosmologist friend knows more about what we're looking at than I do, but I know this much: it's spectacular. If the word "awesome" has any meaning left, it should apply only to things like this. Our minds can't contain, let alone fully comprehend it. Amazing as it is, this picture is like trying to understand a desert by looking at a grain of sand.

And here's another thing: the light from these images has traveled for billions of years. We know this. It's measurable; there's no other way to explain it. To look at this picture and still believe the universe is six thousand years old is not only to be willfully ignorant, it's to lose the opportunity for inspiration and wonder -- at what is, at how we know it, and how much more there is to know. All you need of gratitude and joy of being here is in that picture.

Guy I went to college with was one of the astronauts who did the first fix on Hubble, floating out there in space, making one of humankind's greatest achievements closer to perfect. Haven't seen him since college. Can't imagine what it must have been like to be him at that moment. How did his heart not burst? (Other than the pressurized suit, I mean.)

15 Seconds

A valued reader let me know that an essay I wrote on this blog several months ago made its way to one of the most widely-read blogs there is, and a favorite of mine, namely Pharyngula. It was edited some, eliminating a reference I'd made to Pharyngula itself. Anyhow, since I sort of like it in the re-reading, and since, as usual, it didn't get much notice here, I'm printing the referred-to version below. By way of bragging, I guess:

Here’s a confession: I find myself resisting describing myself as an atheist, and I wonder why that is. Since I can’t claim certainty, I suppose I could use the rubbery rubric of agnosticism. But right or wrong, I can’t believe there are gods (and there have been times when I’d have liked to). So why the reticence? Maybe it’s fear of reprisal; it is, after all, an untidy time for people like me, whose offense is only looking at the world with clear eyes, neither willing nor able to go beyond reality and the observable; the constitutional inability to make a leap of faith, even as our country seems unstoppably heading toward theocracy. But I think it’s something different.

As I’ve thought about it, it seems that atheism ought to be the default assumption, for anyone. Certain things ought to go without saying. One should not have to describe oneself, for example, as a mathist. Or a gravitist. (Yes, I realize the analogy is sort of a semantic contradiction, but you get the picture.) I believe the grass grows; I believe in chlorophyll. I (sort of) understand radioactive decay, and I understand (to a degree) its relation to measuring the age of the earth. I know (mostly) why planes fly and I don’t need to claim an angel holds them up; I don’t think the earth rides on the back of a turtle, and it seems reasonable that anyone would assume that about me. Nor does the fact that I don’t know everything lead me to fill in the blanks with imaginary answers. I can wait. Belief in the demonstrable ought to be the default baseline for anyone, and it shouldn’t need a particular label.

Okay, maybe “realist.”

Or “normal.”

It’s when you begin to come up with magical explanations (ones, I must point out, that other believers in other magic will decry ferociously and consider false magic, capital blasphemy, compared to their version of it, with no sense of irony whatever), that it seems labels should be applied. I think of those judges who sentence people to wearing a sign after they stole something. People who didn’t steal anything don’t need a sign saying so. Not believing in gods oughtn’t need particularizing any more than breathing does. I do breathe; I admit it. But it’d be strange to identify me as a breather, wouldn’t it?

A world-view ought to start with reality. Reality is enough. Reality is, for one thing, real. Realists shouldn’t need to explain it, or to have (loaded) labels applied. Nor, for that matter, should they feel the need to brag about it, or get in the faces of others. Why should the world need a movement that announces its commitment to reality?

Except for the fact that any realist can’t help being shocked, worried, and appalled at the direction we’re headed in the US, as magical thinking has become the basis for a major political party; as intelligence, the quest for knowledge, are considered elitist and abhorrent, actively and proudly mocked and scorned. In that party, belief in god seems to have become synonymous with rejection of science, with denialism, with economic amnesia. It needn’t be thus; it wasn’t always so. But those who wonder why there are suddenly a few highly outspoken and, as some have called them, “militant” atheists out there need only look at today’s Republican party, its teabaggers, its “values voters” for the answer. Scary, hateful, regressive, aggressively ill-informed people.

There’s where labels belong, seems to me.

When I posted it here, it was called "Labels." It was a good title, too.

Sometimes I wish I had more readership -- I had a lot more on Surgeonsblog -- but this one is mostly a way toward personal depressurization after I read another day's worth of what's going on out there. Few minds, including mine, I'm sure, are changeable anymore, so the writing is just because I seem to need to.

I will say, though, with respect to changing minds, since mine is among those that believe in chlorophyll and carbon-dating and provable stuff like the failure of Reaganomics, it's not the one that needs changing.

Bad Science

For the reviled-by-Republicans and decreasing number of us that still believe in the value of science, this is disturbing:

In the fall of 2010, Dr. Ferric C. Fang made an unsettling discovery. Dr. Fang, who is editor in chief of the journal Infection and Immunity, found that one of his authors had doctored several papers.

[...]

The journal wound up retracting six of the papers from the author, Naoki Mori of the University of the Ryukyus in Japan. ...

Dr. Fang became curious how far the rot extended. To find out, he teamed up with a fellow editor at the journal, Dr. Arturo Casadevall of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. And before long they reached a troubling conclusion: not only that retractions were rising at an alarming rate, but that retractions were just a manifestation of a much more profound problem — “a symptom of a dysfunctional scientific climate,” as Dr. Fang put it.

Dr. Casadevall, now editor in chief of the journal mBio, said he feared that science had turned into a winner-take-all game with perverse incentives that lead scientists to cut corners and, in some cases, commit acts of misconduct.

“This is a tremendous threat,” he said.

The thing about science that so many fail to understand (other than the whole thing) is that it is, as opposed to political dogma and by definition, self-correcting. That's how this sort of stuff is discovered, and expunged. Still, as standards of truth and honesty seem to be eroding steadily and irreversibly, it's worrisome. (Yes, the quoted paragraph refers to a Japanese researcher, but the article identifies the trend across the board; and, by its measure, the greatest number of retractions come from The New England Journal of Medicine, of all places.)

The flaws aren't in the scientific process: they're in the people doing it. People cheat everywhere, in all things. But when it happens in science, the implications are global. Honest errors are another matter, and are expected; which is why the scientific method includes efforts to corroborate and to falsify. It's part of the deal. But you'd think the incidence would be sort of steady-state. If people are becoming more greedy, less careful, more deliberately dishonest, or just less well-trained, it bodes ill. (Interestingly, one explanation for the increased number of retractions that the authors mention is the internet: papers are now readily available to countless more people, making errors more likely to be discovered.)

Far be it from me to extrapolate overmuch. But in the US, the climate of derogation of expertise, of displacing science with religion, of failing to teach people rigorous science -- not to mention the political modeling of lying and deception -- is hardly conducive to producing good science from good scientists. Nor is the increasing trend of rejecting data that might prevent one from cleaving to their preferred misconceptions.

I guess I can't say the two trends -- bad science and bad politics -- are clearly related. Much as I'd like to blame it all on the right-wing march to theocracy while trampling on facts (much as wingers are blaming the Secret Service scandal on homosexuals), I don't have the data. Call it a hunch. It'd make a good study, if we could find some reputable people to do it.

(And, sure, I realize I'm opening myself to the random rantings of those who deny anthropomorphic climate change. But that's, in fact, an example of good science: proposed, predictions made and confirmed, studied, collated, challenged, tested and re-tested, and nearly universally agreed upon across the planet. It's not that we have no good scientists left. Just that it's possibly a trend, one which, in the current political millieu is unlikely to improve, if the RWS™ and their oh-WTF-he'll-have-to-do candidate have their way.)

Floating Turd

I can't say for sure, but I think there was a time when I sort of admired Jerry Riviera. Unless I'm wrong, he used to do some actual reporting. What I find most amazing about the above is how he's become the perfectly Platonic ideal of a Fox "news" person: He's going for the fuck-yeah watcher. Which, I'm betting -- if I'm wrong, convince me -- was the reaction of most of his viewers.

Of course it would have been predictable that the Taliban guy (assuming he was real) would use the opportunity to propagandize. One might ask, therefore, what was the point in the first place. But whereas it might have been a bit of a coup to have had an opportunity to hear from one of those guys, it's clear Mr Fox had no intention of using it to produce any kind of insight. As usual, Geraldo made the whole thing about himself. And, following the Fox-what-Ailes-us model, knowing he had no reason to respect his audience, he went for the gut reaction. Right-wing America's trusted (what word comes next?) source.

In a catalog of pathetic examples Fox abandoning any pretense of news, so long as to be impossible to list, this floats to the top like turds (don't click that link) produced by pancreatic insufficiency.

Ads Up

If I had the skills, I'd make a campaign ad for President Obama, post it to YouTube, and make it go viral. Like the videos I posted recently, it'd show a few of Mitt Romney's most staggering lies, maybe a silent clip of him talking, or a picture with mouth moving, Jib-Jab-like, with titled words coming out of his mouth, his lies, one after the other, plastered over his picture until it's entirely covered by them. (There wouldn't be room for them all.) And there'd be a voice-over saying something like this:

In America we've gotten used to politicians lying. We give a pass to those who exaggerate, who stretch the truth. We've even made sure it's legal to do so. But Mitt Romney's lies are different. They're constant, they're obvious, they're beyond anything we've ever seen. He seems physically unable to tell the truth, about himself, about his opponents. Think about it. Do we really want such a blatant and easy liar sitting in the Oval Office? Someone to whom the truth seems to be literally irrelevant? Seriously. Think about it.

Do I harp on Romney's lies too much? Maybe, although I think it's central to who he is. And it's not just me who sees it and finds it alarming. Here's one who may have a better way of looking at it than my view that it's pathological:

A marathon of debates and an eon of campaigning have toughened and honed Romney. He commands the heights of great assurance, and he knows, as some of us learn too late in life, that the truth is not always a moral obligation but sometimes merely what works. He often cites his business background as commending him for the presidency. That’s his forgivable absurdity. Instead, what his career has given him is the businessman’s concept of self — that what he does is not who he is. This is what enables the slumlord to be a charitable man. This is what enables the corporate raider to endow his university. Business is business. It’s what you do. It is not who you are. Lying isn’t a sin. It’s a business plan.

Capitalist

Mitt Romney and the RWS™ will push any lie they think people will buy. Top of the list, other than, you know, the Muslim Kenyan terrorist thing, is that President Obama is a socialist, a hater of capitalism. Not that it would matter to them or their true believers, but this runs in the face of about a billion facts, not the least of which is that the Dow has nearly doubled since Obama took office, Wall Street profits are at all-time highs, corporate taxes are lower, hundreds of regulations have been removed or simplified...

Not news: teabaggRs will believe anything. News: Obama has managed to play it in such a way as to lose people on the left and the right. As Gov. Spitzer says, his words piss off Wall-Streeters, his actions piss off liberals. Despite flourishing under his presidency, the über-capitalists are sending their money to Mitt. And liberals are adding this to their growing list of disappointments.

In the same zone: the romneying of Obama's energy policies. You hear Mitt talk, our president has all but completely corked the flow of oil. You learn the facts, you know that under Obama, drilling has quadrupled compared to Bush, and that we're closer to energy independence than we've been in a generation. And yet, proving the success of the deliberate dumbification by RWS™ and Fox "news," there was a letter to the editor in my local newspaper the other day, asking when liberals would demand Obama end the ban on drilling so gas prices can go down.

The made-up Obama has been an awful president, a destroyer. A communiss. Never the far-lefty he was called by Fox "news" and the rest of the RWS™, the real one has been a middle-of-the-road disappointment to many liberals. So he's fighting lies from one side and truth from the other. Tough gig. (If you want an even more compelling look at how Obama is anything but a socialist, and is, in fact, an economic conservative, read this amazing article. And yet, the lies from the right take hold like crabgrass.)

By far, the best thing Obama has going for him in the general election against Mitt Romney is Mitt Romney. A Romney presidency -- since he believes in nothing -- would be an unencumbered breezeway for takeover by people like Mitch McConnell and John Boehner and Wayne LaPierre and Louie Gohmert and Virginia Foxx and Michele Bachmann... god, the mind reels. Dark ages theocracy. Zombie economics. A hatefest. A lost future.

That's why Obama deserves to win. Well, that, and ending the war in Iraq, the Ledbetter law, health care (which could have been way better), the automobile industry, reversing the economic collapse, progress on equality (but not enough), believing in science (but kind of ignoring it, vis â vis climate change)... So, yeah, I'll vote for him, and not really reluctantly. But wishing he'd been stronger in many things, while certain it'd have been much worse under McCain/Palin, and would be even more so were Mitt to sit in the Oval Office.

Speaking Of Footprints...

I think we need a definition of "Romney," like we have for "Santorum." Could be an adjective, meaning something that can't be made to stand up. "Cook the noodles until they're romney." A noun would work there, too: "We were making love, but then I got a romney." Or maybe a verb, referring to lying so transparently that some people nearby laugh out loud, while others have their heads explode. As in, "Caught with a bagful of jewels outside the jewelry store, Joe denied everything. This isn't me, he romneyed. I'm across town having a beer."

Beyond Parody

The above clip is more documentary than satire. The latest pander (although by the time this is published there'll undoubtedly be more) is Mitt's talk to the NRA, where he channeled Wayne LaPierre and announced that if he's reelected, Barack Obama will take away our gun rights. He also announced that Obama hasn't done enough to protect them, either. Which is pretty weird, when you consider how he's pissed off liberals for doing nothing at all to regulate guns, and that his only actual action was to allow them in National Parks.

Rising to the top of my reasons to want President Obama to be reelected is to see what the insane paranoiacs will say when none of their dire predictions come to pass. I'm sure they'll come up with something. They always do.

Meanwhile, it'll be really entertaining to see Romney backtrack during the general election phase, like I used to do, as a kid, in my snow footprints. I could never make my footprints look undisturbed, though. He won't either.

“According to a Romney adviser, his private view of immigration isn’t as anti-immigrant as he often sounded.”

What exactly does that mean? Does it mean Romney said things that he doesn’t really believe? What are we supposed to make of a candidate who takes certain public positions to court one group of voters — and then tries to reassure an entirely different group of voters by leaking the fact that he doesn’t really believe what he said to win votes from the first group? How many other “private” positions does Romney hold that we don’t know about?

Sunday Sermon

Couldn't have said it better, although god knows I've tried.

The Science, It Burns

Comes another study explaining the existence of conservatism:

The authors test the hypothesis that low-effort thought promotes political conservatism. In Study 1, alcohol intoxication was measured among bar patrons; as blood alcohol level increased, so did political conservatism (controlling for sex, education, and political identification). In Study 2, participants under cognitive load reported more conservative attitudes than their no-load counterparts. In Study 3, time pressure increased participants’ endorsement of conservative terms. In Study 4, participants considering political terms in a cursory manner endorsed conservative terms more than those asked to cogitate; an indicator of effortful thought (recognition memory) partially mediated the relationship between processing effort and conservatism. Together these data suggest that political conservatism may be a process consequence of low-effort thought; when effortful, deliberate thought is disengaged, endorsement of conservative ideology increases.

Add it to the list, I guess. Not long ago, there was this:

Despite their important implications for interpersonal behaviors and relations, cognitive abilities have been largely ignored as explanations of prejudice. ... In an analysis of two large-scale, nationally representative United Kingdom data sets (N = 15,874), we found that lower general intelligence (g) in childhood predicts greater racism in adulthood, and this effect was largely mediated via conservative ideology. A secondary analysis of a U.S. data set confirmed a predictive effect of poor abstract-reasoning skills on antihomosexual prejudice, ... All analyses controlled for education and socioeconomic status. Our results suggest that cognitive abilities play a critical, albeit underappreciated, role in prejudice. Consequently, we recommend a heightened focus on cognitive ability in research on prejudice and a better integration of cognitive ability into prejudice models.

And I've written here (so often that there are links within links within links) of many other studies confirming inborn neurophysiological difference between liberals and conservatives.

So we should accept that, barring the advent of forward-thinking eugenics, they'll always be around; and that it's not their fault. If their defects were just a harmless curiosity, like two-headed cows or polydactyly, we could cherish conservatives as a sort of colorful part of an often grey political landscape. But we keep letting them take charge of things, even after they've screwed it all up.

What does that say about the rest of us???

Glimmer?

If I thought Democrats were capable of a coherent message and making an obvious case, this would be encouraging:

... the fervor and enthusiasm spurred by the tea party in 2010 appears to have dissipated, with no major tea party rallies taking place this year and fewer Republican candidates latching on to the label. On the presidential campaign trail, the tea party is rarely mentioned.

In contrast, Democrats are actually starting to wield the tea party label as a tool in their campaigns.

[...]

“It’s no longer viewed as a populist, grass-roots organization, but a dangerous group with extremist views that don’t reflect the mainstream values of America’s middle class,” Democratic media strategist John Lapp said.

Well, the fact is that, looking at its congressional representatives anyway, it is a dangerous extremist group, one that's done more damage to our future than any attack on buildings in New York and D.C. could do. It's not a hard case to make. Were the parties reversed, you know Republicans, aided by their 24/7 propaganda network, would be doing it with as much coordination as the landing on Omaha beach.

Experience tells us Democrats are unable to muster such message-effectiveness, even when, as in this case (and health care), the facts are on their side. But teabaggR intransigence and insistence on pre-failed ideas and unworkable numbers, their disbelief in the fundamental need for compromise in a democracy are so obvious that you'd think even Ds could manage to convince enough voters to right the ship.

I take it on faith that people capable of understanding still exist. Right? Right?

Could Be Interesting

Reportedly, there's a liberal mole inside the Fox empire. Since I doubt moles stand much of a chance against foxes, I doubt s/he'll be there for long. Meanwhile, it might be fun, although based on the first report from behind the lines, all s/he can do is confirm what's obvious to every breathing human not in the thrall of their steady stream of bullshit. Referring to "Fox Nation," a gathering place for the lowest of the already low Foxophiles, the writer writes:

The post that broke the camel's back might be familiar to some of you, because it garnered a lot of attention and (well-deserved) ridicule when it hit last August. The item was aggregating several news sources that were reporting innocuously on President Obama's 50th birthday party, which was attended by the usual mix of White House staffers, DC politicos and Dem-friendly celebs. The Fox Nation, naturally, chose to illustrate the story with a photo montage of Obama, Charles Barkley, Chris Rock, and Jay Z, and the headline "Obama's Hip Hop BBQ Didn't Create Jobs."

The post neatly summed up everything that had been troubling me about my employer: Non sequitur, ad hominem attacks on the president; gleeful race baiting; a willful disregard for facts; and so on. It came close on the heels of the Common controversy, which exhibited a lot of the same ugly traits. (See also: terrorist fist jabs; Fox & Friends madrassa accusations; etc.)

(I mentioned that little BBQ gem, myself.)

To prove insider access, the linked article includes video of Romney and Hannity chatting before going live, Romney talking about his and his wife's horses (don't we all?), and dissing Donald Trump before going on the air and praising him. The expected stuff.

So I doubt it'll break any new ground; and even if it does, nothing will stop Fox viewers from considering it their most trusted news source. But at least -- were they capable of it, that is -- they might have to admit what they like about it is exactly the fact that it's unfair, biased, and mainlining its propaganda straight into their SVCs, reinforcing their low-information prejudices and false beliefs, narcotizing them in the process.

[Update: I wrote the above a couple of days ago. The guy mustn't be all that brilliant, tech-wise, because he got discovered and fired pretty quickly. On the other hand, unless Fox has one of these (they do, effectively: it's called their "news" programming) he can keep on writing about his experiences. Maybe from jail.)

JOBS

Other than a vague awareness that many unions and lots of liberals aren't happy with the just-signed JOBS act, I haven't been paying much attention. But I admit I took a little more notice when I saw the leering face of Eric Cantor hovering over Obama as he signed the bill. Can't be a good sign, I thought. Turns out I may have been right. Matt Taibbi thinks so, anyway.

The "Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act" (in addition to everything else, the Act has an annoying, redundant title) will very nearly legalize fraud in the stock market.

In fact, one could say this law is not just a sweeping piece of deregulation that will have an increase in securities fraud as an accidental, ancillary consequence. No, this law actually appears to have been specifically written to encourage fraud in the stock markets.

Ostensibly, the law makes it easier for startup companies (particularly tech companies, whose lobbyists were a driving force behind its passage) to attract capital by, among other things, exempting them from independent accounting requirements for up to five years after they first begin selling shares in the stock market.

The law also rolls back rules designed to prevent bank analysts from talking up a stock just to win business, a practice that was so pervasive in the tech-boom years as to be almost industry standard.

Even worse, the JOBS Act, incredibly, will allow executives to give "pre-prospectus" presentations to investors using PowerPoint and other tools in which they will not be held liable for misrepresentations. These firms will still be obligated to submit prospectuses before their IPOs, and they'll still be held liable for what's in those. But it'll be up to the investor to check and make sure that the prospectus matches the "pre-presentation."

Without spending way more time than I want to, I'm in no position to comment on the claim (not that that's ever stopped me before). But Matt Taibbi has written some pretty impressive articles, and seems to be an actual reporter of the type that pretty much no longer exists: one who digs deep and asks hard questions of all parties. So it concerns me.

I still believe that the whole idea of encouraging businesses to hire people makes no sense. Unless they're stupid, they hire when there is work to be done, not because they get a tax break or other considerations. The way government creates jobs is to create jobs. Projects, for which it pays.

Meanwhile, it seems Barack Obama is, once again, giving in to right-wingers and their long-since debunked claims that deregulation is the honey that greases the duck. Is it political? To say he's for jobs? Is he still thinking if he just bends over farther still they'll finally start kissing his ass?

Whatever it is, until I learn otherwise, count me disappointed. Again.

You can watch a video of Matt Taibbi on the subject here. Meanwhile, tell me again: in what way is President Obama a socialist???