Posts tagged science

Humpty Flake-​​y

37
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

Humpty Dumpty

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scorn­ful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean — nei­ther more nor less.”

“The ques­tion is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many dif­fer­ent things.”

“The ques­tion is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be mas­ter — that’s all.”

— Through the Look­ing Glass, Chap­ter 6

Just like Humpty Dumpty, Repub­li­cans in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and their Fox News enablers have started to decide what words mean. This week’s word: sci­ence.

Yes­ter­day, DC out­lined how the Republican-​​controlled North Car­olina State Leg­is­la­ture has tried to define an accept­able rate of sea level rise from global warming.

Pig (left); Con­gress­man Jeff Flake (right)

I’ve writ­ten about how a Republican-​​led leg­is­la­ture in Ten­nessee decided that cer­tain reli­gious beliefs are actu­ally sci­ence, while global warm­ing is not.

Dur­ing the Repub­li­can Pres­i­den­tial debates, can­di­date Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Michele Bach­mann (R-​​Stillwater, MN) just plain made up sci­ence to fit her preëx­ist­ing belief system.

And of course, the decades-​​long Repub­li­can War on Sci­ence is well-​​documented.

So it should come as no sur­prise that National Sci­ence Foun­da­tion (NSF) fund­ing bill amend­ment, spon­sored by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jeff Flake (R-​​Mesa, AZ) and passed by the House last month, pur­ports to define what is, and what is not, “science”.

(more…)

Why Science is Religion

39
1 year ago
by dcpetterson in
Cosmic neurons

Cos­mic neurons

Fair warn­ing to our Loyal Read­ers. This arti­cle will be dif­fer­ent from what you’ve come to expect. It’s not about politics…except that it is. It’s not about cur­rent events…except that it is. It’s not about Democ­rats and Republicans…except that it is. And it is intensely personal…except that it’s not.

It’s about sci­ence and spec­u­la­tion, and whether we as a nation should fund basic research with no expected prac­ti­cal ben­e­fit — except it’s really about reli­gion and spir­i­tu­al­ity and why we should fund that.

I make my liv­ing writ­ing soft­ware. I also write fan­tasy and sci­ence fic­tion nov­els. I’m also a min­is­ter. Here’s why it’s all the same thing. (more…)

Former Ambassador Jon Huntsman Announces Candidacy

24
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

Jon Hunts­man June 21, 2011; Ronald Rea­gan Sep­tem­ber 1, 1980. Top photo: Chang W. Lee, New York Times.

Jon Hunts­man for­mally kicked off his cam­paign today in New Jer­sey, in sight of the Statue of Lib­erty — which accord­ing to some is a reminder from the French not to embrace social­ism — evok­ing the spirit of Pres­i­dent Ronald Rea­gan as he announced his can­di­dacy for the 2012 Repub­li­can Party nom­i­na­tion for Pres­i­dent of the United States.

He invoked Rea­gan directly, say­ing that Rea­gan was a can­di­date in a sim­i­larly dif­fi­cult time in the nation’s history.

Politico’s Alexan­der Burns reports that he plans travel to New Hamp­shire later today, South Car­olina on Wednes­day, Orlando, Miami and Naples, Florida on Thurs­day, and Utah plus Nevada on Fri­day. He will set up his national cam­paign office in Orlando, home of his wife, Mary Kaye.

Huntsman’s can­di­dacy is con­sid­ered a long-​​shot. At this writ­ing, he is trad­ing at 12% on Intrade and has a 1.3% polling aver­age at Real Clear Pol­i­tics. Nate Sil­ver gives him odds of 25–1.

I don’t think you need to run down anyone’s rep­u­ta­tion to run for pres­i­dent. I respect my fel­low Repub­li­can can­di­dates. And I respect the pres­i­dent. He and I have a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion on how to help the coun­try we both love. But the ques­tion each of us wants the vot­ers to answer is who will be the bet­ter pres­i­dent, not who’s the bet­ter Amer­i­can. — Jon Hunts­man, in pre­pared remarks reported at Politico

The arti­cle below is an updated and reprinted ver­sion of one that appeared Feb­ru­ary 2, 2011. (more…)

E Uterus Unum

0
2 years ago
by Monotreme in

Organum Non Grata

Florida State Rep. Scott Ran­dolph (D-​​Orlando) is frus­trated with the 18 bills reg­u­lat­ing abor­tion being con­sid­ered by the Florida State Leg­is­la­ture. He feels that the leg­isla­tive pri­or­i­ties are mis­placed when Florida’s econ­omy, like much of the nation’s, is in dis­ar­ray. Dur­ing a debate on a bill that would pro­hibit union dues being deducted from work­ers’ pay­checks, Ran­dolph (quot­ing his wife) sug­gested that she should “incor­po­rate her uterus” so that Repub­li­cans would leave it alone.

That raised the ire of the Repub­li­can House Speaker, Dean Can­non. Accord­ing to his spokes­woman, Kate Betta, the word “uterus” is no longer to be uttered (utered?) in the Florida Legislature:

(more…)

Made It, Ma! Top of the World!

0
2 years ago
by Monotreme in

Jimmy Cagney in White Heat (1949): “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”

Jor­dan Ellen­berg has a great arti­cle up on Slate on “The Math­e­mat­ics of Nar­cis­sism.” There are two related themes run­ning through it.

One theme sur­rounds the over­haul of the cur­rent Diag­nos­tic and Sta­tis­ti­cal Man­ual of Men­tal Dis­or­ders, Fourth Edi­tion Revised (DSM IV-​​R), the “Bible” for psy­chi­atric pro­fes­sion­als. The DSM is the way in which psy­chi­a­trists and psy­chol­o­gists clas­sify men­tal dis­or­ders into clumps so that we can use a com­mon lan­guage in talk­ing about patients and dis­eases. The other is about the rank­ing of grad­u­ate pro­grams. Find­ing the com­mon­al­ity between these two themes is a great rea­son to read the arti­cle, which I highly recommend.

The over­haul of the DSM is an infre­quent and impor­tant event in psy­chol­ogy and psy­chi­a­try. In the immor­tal words of Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden, “It’s a big fuck­ing deal!” Basi­cally, the revi­sions in the DSM cod­ify and stan­dard­ize the cur­rent mod­els of how the mind works. In order to stan­dard­ize the clas­si­fi­ca­tion and treat­ment of psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders, we need a book that describes to the best of our cur­rent abil­ity what is wrong and what is right.

(more…)

Science Marches On

0
2 years ago
by Monotreme in

©Sid­ney Harris

On Fri­day, Decem­ber 17, the Obama Admin­is­tra­tion issued a for­mal mem­o­ran­dum say­ing that gov­ern­ment offi­cials should not inter­fere with science.

[Crick­ets.]

So, why is this an issue at all?

I know my fel­low lib­er­als are some­times accused of blam­ing the Bush Adminin­stra­tion for every­thing. In this case, how­ever, the shoe fits.

The Bush Admin­is­tra­tion had a strong and unequiv­o­cal record of deny­ing the exis­tence of sci­en­tific data that con­flicted with their polit­i­cal and social views. The trend became so bad that thou­sands of sci­en­tists felt com­pelled to start an orga­ni­za­tion called “Defend Sci­ence” and issue a man­i­festo out­lin­ing the var­i­ous sorts of manip­u­la­tion, fab­ri­ca­tion, and out­right naked deceit that became the modus operandi of the pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tion. (more…)

Go to Top