"The democracy that hates you is less dangerous than the dictator that loves you."
From The Case for Democracy Natan Sharansky (p95).
My Sharansky - Bush's favorite book doesn't always endorse his policies. By Chris Suellentrop:
Reason: Stigmatizing Fathers: Dads lose both ways in adoption cases: "In the end, our society sends men quite a mixed message. If your partner gets pregnant and decides to keep the baby, you're liable for 18 years of child support, whether or not you want to be a father. If she doesn't want to be a mother, she can give your child to strangers and there isn't much you can do. Then we complain that men don't take parenthood seriously enough."
The New York Times > Washington > Backers of Gay Marriage Ban Use Social Security as Cudgel:
"WASHINGTON, Jan. 24 - A coalition of major conservative Christian groups is threatening to withhold support for President Bush's plans to remake Social Security unless Mr. Bush vigorously champions a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage."
The New York Times > Science > Gray Matter and Sexes: A Gray Area Scientifically:
For Dr. Summers and others, the overwhelmingly male tails of the bell curve may be telling. Such results, taken together with assorted other neuro-curiosities like the comparatively greater number of boys with learning disorders, autism and attention deficit disorder, suggest to them that the male brain is a delicate object, inherently prone to extremes, both of incompetence and of genius.
The New York Times > Science > Gray Matter and Sexes: A Gray Area Scientifically: "Yet Dr. Summers, who said he intended his remarks to be provocative, and other scientists have observed that while average math skillfulness may be remarkably analogous between the sexes, men tend to display comparatively greater range in aptitude. Males are much likelier than females to be found on the tail ends of the bell curve, among the superhigh scorers and the very bottom performers.
Among college-bound seniors who took the math SAT's in 2001, for example, nearly twice as many boys as girls scored over 700, and the ratio skews ever more male the closer one gets to the top tally of 800. Boys are also likelier than girls to get nearly all the answers wrong."
That's what I've been saying for years. One can't just compare the tops, because the variability could be larger for men.
Dubium fiat! What creationists want to do is to use intelligent design (ID) to drive a wedge of uncertainty into the theory of evolution. Or rather, there's already a crack of uncertainty in all scientific theories; and ID proponents want to widen that crack to a full-blown fissure.
However, if the goal is to make the creationism alternative more credible, they are using the wrong tool to do so. Doubt, once engaged, will easily be turned against ID as well. This is a point that both pro- and anti-ID people don't get: doubt is good for science but bad for religion. So science teachers should welcome doubt into their classrooms. See what happens when doubt and scientific thinking are applied to ID itself.
If ID is taught in school science class, it could follow along these lines:
1. there's no biological complexity-creating agent - ie, theory of evolution
2. there are biological complexity-creating agent(s) - ie, ID
This view branches:
As you see, ID leads to a number of interesting branches. Most ID proponents don't want the branching to be taught in school. Why? Because their goal is to put doubt into evolution and to follow up that doubt by creationistic, ie, biblical, teaching (a subset of (2a)) in churches. But once they open ID for discussion, why should we stop with a statement of doubt? We should follow ID to its implications: a multitude of agent-oriented theologies.
ID is valuable for science. It brings doubt back into the picture. And doubt is a wonderful creator of new thoughts. Maybe there is an agent of uncertainty which spawns new thinking; we could call it the god of doubt. Or maybe there's one God that said, Dubium fiat (Let there be doubt) and it was good.
Philip Glass on NPR: "We stop playing (being children) when we take the world too literally."
How cold is it? (from NPR)
... brain freeze without ice cream.
... brass monkeys leaving.
... boogers can freeze.
... smoke stands still.
... colder than yenti's balls.
... freeze the ticks off a moose.
... colder than a witch's tit.
Philosophy Now: "One of his main arguments in Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is that people can understand the moral law without the aid of organised religion. It is simply redundant as a moral aid. He goes even further: There is an inherent tension between morality and religion because there is a danger that people may act morally not because it is the right thing to do but because their religion prescribes it. This would take away the value of a good act: Kant is convinced that we can do the right thing for the wrong reasons, which would be devoid of moral merit. Achieving desirable outcomes is not enough; moral merit lies in the right intentions that are freely willed. Freedom is the necessary ground for the existence of the moral law."
Economist.com | The economics of happiness: "Among many things, the behaviourists have found that it is relative, not absolute wealth, that matters most to people. Mr Layard cites as evidence a study in which Harvard University students claimed to prefer earning $50,000 a year when their peers are on only $25,000 to a world in which they earn $100,000 while their peers get more than double that amount."
This seems obvious too. You are comparing yourself to people as close to you as possible, in order to gage whether your choices and innateness is what has given you success. A Harvard student does recognize that their fair competitor is another Harvard student, not an orphan from genocide in Rwanda. Their school counterparts are versions of themselves, that is, parallel lives, and the Harvard student is in a competition with the choices they could have made.
Likewise, neighbors who compare the greenness of each other's lawns are in competition with what else they could have done (after all they can't blame the weather - it was the same for their neighbor). The comparison of lawns is fair. Which is why so many hire designated hitters, the gardening services.
Economist.com | The economics of happiness: "Lord Layard devotes a good portion of the book to a summary of what is known about how to be happy. Much of it will appear self-evident: cultivate friendships, be involved in a community, try for a good marriage. But his big idea is controversial. It is that a zero-sum game of competition for money and status has gripped rich societies, and that this rat race is a big source of unhappiness."
Why would this be controversial? It seems perfectly obvious, and probably supported by psychoneurology too. After fufilling basic needs, we move up in Maslow's pyramid to achievement. That's where we bump into all those other people trying to achieve too. In fact I believe that's people join bowling and billiard leagues - to give themselves an area for success (outside of work). We can't all be boss, but some of us have a great softball pitch.
City Journal Autumn 2004 | The Frivolity of Evil by Theodore Dalrymple: "Everyone has a right to health; depression is unhealthy; therefore everyone has a right to be happy (the opposite of being depressed). This idea in turn implies that one's state of mind, or one's mood, is or should be independent of the way that one lives one's life, a belief that must deprive human existence of all meaning, radically disconnecting reward from conduct."
Economist.com | Human evolution
This is a typical example of the sort of game that economists investigating game theory revel in, and both theory and practice suggests that a player can take one of three approaches in such a game: co-operate with his opponents to maximise group benefits (but at the risk of being suckered), free-ride (ie, try to sucker co-operators) or reciprocate (ie, co-operate with those who show signs of being co-operative, but not with free-riders).
And the three strategies did, indeed, have the same average pay-offs to the individuals who played them—though only 13% were co-operators, 20% free-riders and 63% reciprocators.
levirate. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.: "The practice of marrying the widow of one's childless brother to maintain his line, as required by ancient Hebrew law."
opsonin. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000.: "Latin opsnre, to buy provisions (from Greek opsnein, from opson, condiment, delicacy; see epi- in Appendix I) + –in."
