Suspended belief

Does anyone really believe Bush's early ending of his vacation (by 2 days) has anything to do with the people in the disaster? It does have to do with the hurricane... the oil supply is threatened! To bad the recent energy bill had better things to do than address the lack of redundancy in the US supply.

On the topic of the hurricane... public officials should stop telling people to pray!! Clearly god doesn't care!

Big Pharma and Socialism

Watching this (the Medicare update video) PBS report really makes me take seriously the arguments of Libertarians for small government (or at least no public Medicare). I doubt that any of this would be possible if the American electorate wasn't soo ignorant. But since I sincerely doubt that the electorate will become more educated maybe the "hands-off" approach would be better since it's unrealistic to believe the politicians and corporations won't take advantage of the situation.

Or maybe this is just another case of the old proverb, "a fool and his money are soon parted." Even if the government wasn't [effectively] stealing and misspending their money they'd probably get swindled out of it anyways. I guess the lesson is you can't solve the ignorance problem with government or markets.

Slogans

I've been wanting a T-shirt with slogans I like, but I think it be better to have a slogan with two parts. One part that is disagrable to others (but is the core message) and one that is almost unarguable. Something like:
"Down with religions, up with kittens."
If someone said what a offensive shirt you could call them a kitten eater (which a lot of the public knows from Buffy) and move on. Or,
"Religion dumb, U2 sang numb."

Leaving Iraq

I think I am missing some important piece of logic for the "out-of-Iraq" movement. I realize I'm an outside and far from the reality of the situation, but I can't see how withdrawing the troops right now (or soon) with have a stabilizing effect. Currently as I understand it, it is might that is in control and since the insugence is well armed they will become the dominant power if the US leaves. With three different factions separated by centuries of conflict I fail to see how the pull out won't result in further destabilization. All I can imagine is a civil war with in Turkey is pulled in since the Kurds may take this as an opportunity to try and get a Kurdish nation. Couple that with a what is going on in Iran and how the Shiites is influenced by Iran and I can't see the rational. The ensuing chaos would be worse that the Israeli conflict and people would clearly (and rightfully) blame the US.

From what I understand about the motivation of many of the western world attackers, they are tired of the foreign policy that hurts their people. If this is true at all and I'm not completely wrong about the effects of the pull out, wouldn't it be the worst move?

Executive Power

I like this quote:
"The power of the executive to cast a man in prison without formulating any charge known to the law and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government, whether Nazi or Communist" -Wiston Churchill (21 November 1943)

Imagine the situation he faced, the world most powerful army of all time (up to then) at his doorstep with Britain having a real possibility of losing the war. They had actually fought many battles and had their cities bombed and he said this. Is the threat Bush sees more than that what Churchill faced justifying (in Bush's mind,lol mind) gitmo?

Some got it some are still lost

Reading this article in NYT made me happy and annoyed. The initial answer of Herbert A. Hauptman was right on the nose! Dr. Weinberg's remarks where also sharp, but this was just picture perfect:

But Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary theorist at Oxford, said that even scientists who were believers did not claim evidence for that belief. "The most they will claim is that there is no evidence against," Dr. Dawkins said, "which is pathetically weak. There is no evidence against all sorts of things, but we don't waste our time believing in them."

Damn the British have a great way of putting things! The other scientists who profess basically show themselves weak when it comes to personal conviction and so take the easy path of a prepackaged belief system based on myths and magic. But the fact that the National Academy of Science has a profession rate of about 10% is encouraging. Two-hundred years ago it would have been much worse, so as the general public's intelligence catches up with the top (not just scientist, since there are plently of intelligent non-scientists) we'll all be better off.

Note: For intelligence I mean: the ability to make logical conclusions form logical reasoning.

Militant leftwing articles and reason

When I read some of the "left" articles it strikes me that some of them need to think out their ideas more. A good example is "Buy nothing Day." I think it can be a good idea but not for the same reason. I don't think there is anything wrong with profit, but I do think there are types of consumerism that are harmful. For instance I see nothing wrong with a consumer of services. Paying someone to do your laundry, house work, errands and cutting your hair seems completely benign (too me). I do think that chronic buying something can be harmful to people's idea of happiness, but that's their problem, not mine. What I think "Buy nothing Day" could be morphed into something like "understanding what you are buying day," where people may only buy non-harmful products. The problem ,as I see it, is ignorant purchasing. For instance buying Nikes when you are against forced child labor, or worrying about the environment and buying gadgets not knowing they generate many times more waste than the material in the final product. The idea (I guess) comes from the 3-R's, Reduce, Reuse and recycle and it is definitely true that the first two have been mostly ignored compared with the third. But the point is that writers need to propose solutions or at least vague vision for their articles. They should not just say,"this must go" as if there is one topping on an otherwise perfect pizza and if you throw it away all will be well.

For instance they should not say that corporations are the problem, that's a broad generalization and an oversimplification. They should be talking about restructuring corporations so they are more benign to more people. It's not that all articles have this problem, but a lot do. For instance articles on either end of the spectrum often say things about unions. Unions where a good start, but it's not a final solution since you end up with a bipolar corporation. If the employees had a more direct stake in the company (like being a shareholder, with the total of the employees owning a non-negligible chunk) the corporation will continue to provide jobs for it's employees and make money for others. If the employees have a stake, they won't poison their land (since they most likely live closely). All win. Saying that corporations are the problem is just silly.

Iraq's constitutional Quagmire

The situation in Iraq is a great watch (I'm so glad I don't live there though). You have 3 different groups that are very unbalanced (both economically and population wise) and need to be stitched together. It does seem really strange that the the Shiite want Islam to have a guiding role, they live next to Iran! I wonder if this is due to years of misinformation about Iran's condition or simply part of the cultural difference (Arab vs Persian). But if Iraq wants be a democracy they'll have to give in to the Shiite since they are the vast majority. It's too bad they don't have more time to come up with a more interesting or intricate solution. Either way it seems like a bad idea to draft a constitution under such duress with soo much at stake (a very real possibility of a civil war).

How can you reconcile the fact that the majority of the population want women to be second class citizen and those who want them to be free (Kurds at ~20% of the population)?

Go Oil go!

A new high of $63.95 (US) per barrel! That's great! More tax dollars from the gas tax. The Ontario Liberal said they would earmark the revenue for MRI machines. Hey, if things continue the way they are going the extra revenue may finance healthcare! Hopefully, if prices continue to go up maybe the American public will notice the billions of dollars in tax breaks the energy bill gave!

But your health where your faith is!

Since evolution is paramount to almost all fields of biology and is the same science as medicine I think anti-evolutionists need to make a firm point. They should be like the Amish and reject anything related to evolution on their faith. When they are sick they shouldn't take medicine they should pray and see holy people! If you are going to fight that the science is wrong don't use it! I will (and do) feel bad bout the brainwashed kids who will end up getting hurt (or have such as the unvaccinated religious people in southern Ontario), but one of the prices of freedom is stupidity. Nice article.

Why 'we' must speak up

Hiroshima is a reminder that we scientists and intellectuals must remain vigilant as to who is in power and who uses science. It is the responsibility of the intellectuals to push as much reason into politics as possible. In this respect the fight against the laughable intelligent design is a good start. Groups like The Union of concerned Scientists must gain more support and notoriety to ensure we have an effective voice. I invite any of you to join and speak up.

Bush has it under control

Why is everyone worring about Iraq? Bush said he talked to god about it so we should all just trust him since: "in god we trust" (see American coins).

Biased Media

I think the idea of a biased media isn't addressing the actual issue. The media isn't biased because it's the media, it's biased because most journalists are educated. Educated people tend to be liberals. The fact that they are in the media is largely irrelevant. As one can see by looking at the Fox News, people who are conservative aren't well educated nor too bright. The situation as I see it is companies would want conservatively spun news but the people who watch the news tend to be educated (and they are the ones with more disposable income) so the news channels (except a few) just cater to their target audience.
Therefore I think that liberal biased media is a result of the separation of the educated news consumer and the ... uhhh ... "rest", not some conspiracy or elietest institution. This was best demonstrated when some anchor at Fox news said that Jon Stewart's audience was mostly high high school drop outs (not a double word typo ;) and a survey found they where more informed than the average Fox News viewer (lol... awww I can picture that now).
Which brings me to the larger issue the culture wars. I think the same distinction can be made about anything in the culture wars, they are the result of the gap in education of the people, nothing else. Perhaps they need to make a movie of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion for the "rest."