What harm belief?

Well, I'd say that we have enough problems just trying to rationally deal with real world problems using science and reason. I don't see how muddying the waters with superstitions or beliefs will help in any way whatsoever. Maybe it's just me.

Thankfully, I'm not alone.

McClellan Bombshell

Sure we all knew that his job was to lie to the World about the real machinations going on inside the White House. Apparently, after 3 years he couldn't take it. Now, even after being a Bush insider and friend for 7 years, he's written a book finally talking about what really happened. Wow, now that no one is putting words in his mouth he can say what propaganda driven lies we were told and likely are still being told by this Administration. No shocker there -- but from a Bush insider? That's a shocker.

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL - Honoring Veterans

Since it's Memorial Day, it's only fitting that we think about how we can best honor our veterans, both living and dead. Certainly the very least we can do is to care for them and their families as they face the hardships of returning from battle -- the battle we sent them to fight -- for us. Whether or not we believe in the cause, they have to fight it on our behalf -- even when they don't believe in it, they have to fight it!

So to stand behind the troops, these Americans putting their lives on the line, the very least we can do is to provide sufficient medical care, mental health facilities and possibly educational opportunities to better themselves upon their return -- at least, for those lucky enough to return. So why is that Walter Reed Medical Center is a cesspool? Why is it that we're not providing adequate post traumatic stress treatment when 20% of them need such care? Why is the VA trying to withhold funding to save the many who are attempting suicide upon their return? Why is it that the Republican party, who supposedly stands behind the troops, was behind the Walter Reed debacle and is now trying to vote down the G.I. Bill for veterans of the Iraq war? Is it because they are now suddenly fiscally conservative? After spending a Trillion dollars, BILLIONS of which are unaccounted for? Or is it because they just can't make any money off that decision because there are no corporate lobbyists offering them payola for our veterans? I'm pretty sure I know the answer.

What I'm not so clear on is how the Republicans neutered the formerly "straight-talking" McCain into being FOR torture but AGAINST the G.I. Bill. Wow -- that saddens me! He was able to withstand years of torture as a POW but threw away his principles in order to run for President. It makes me want to cry.

The great Bill Moyers has more to say on this very important day:

The (non)Change You Deserve

Geeks and Guinness

Sounds good to me! Apparently, Science Cafes are catching on in Europe and have started to be exported to America. According to one organizer:

'It's great, as you get to think about things you wouldn't normally talk about
in everyday life,' said 24-year-old Madeleine Milan, who works in
communications. 'It's all really relaxed and you don't feel intimidated about
challenging speakers' beliefs or scientific research. Science is becoming more
part of our lives, and I want to hear about it from the experts.'

These are popping up all over the world. Here's one in LA.

The $3,000,000,000,000 Shopping Spree!

See if you can think of a better way to spend $3 Trillion:

more here

Boy are we screwed!

Bill McKibben: Civilization's last chance

All of a sudden it isn't morning in America, it's dusk on planet Earth.

There's a number -- a new number -- that makes this point most powerfully. It may now be the most important number on Earth: 350. As in parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

A few weeks ago, NASA's chief climatologist, James Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several coauthors. The abstract attached to it argued -- and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper -- that "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm."

Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points -- massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them -- that we'll pass if we don't get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer's insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.

So it's a tough diagnosis. It's like the doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high and, if you don't bring it down right away, you're going to have a stroke. So you take the pill, you swear off the cheese, and, if you're lucky, you get back into the safety zone before the coronary. It's like watching the tachometer edge into the red zone and knowing that you need to take your foot off the gas before you hear that clunk up front.

In this case, though, it's worse than that because we're not taking the pill and we are stomping on the gas -- hard. Instead of slowing down, we're pouring on the coal, quite literally. Two weeks ago came the news that atmospheric carbon dioxide had jumped 2.4 parts per million last year -- two decades ago, it was going up barely half that fast.

And suddenly the news arrives that the amount of methane, another potent greenhouse gas accumulating in the atmosphere, has unexpectedly begun to soar as well. It appears that we've managed to warm the far north enough to start melting huge patches of permafrost, and massive quantities of methane trapped beneath it have begun to bubble forth.

Speaking of right-wing group-think

Actually, "think" is a mistatement since it's more about not thinking and instead just parroting the Republican talking point dujour. It's disgusting that important political discussions have degenerated to propaganda pushed at the masses in 30-second commercials, sound bites and repetitive talking points. Where are we supposed to get any substantive discussions about these important issues?

As a result of this sad state, we do occasionally get the minor benefit of catching one of these boneheads sticking their foot in their mouth. I love seeing dumb people skewered, especially when they arrogantly deny this patently obvious fact. If they had any humility and were willing to discuss things they could salvage some respect. Sadly, this guy doesn't. He would rather just say the same thing in a loud voice hoping that this will pass for a rational argument. Read a book dude.

Too bad the old McCain isn't running

This new McCain is just a glad-handing, puppet of the Republican party who sadly has reversed himself so many times that the hypocrisy is sad to witness. I might have voted for the original McCain, the principled war veteran who was willing to speak his mind and challenge the status quo. This new guy has drunk the red Kool Aid and speaks only in the sound-bite groupspeak of the right-wing propagandists. Too bad.

Here's a recent example:
Exclusive Video: McCain Was For Talking To Hamas Before He Was Against It...

McCain 2008 -- A path to extinction

Yeah sure, I believe that Republicans are interested in the Environment and care about Global Warming -- youbetcha. That's why they've been systematically denying that there's anything wrong and throw under the bus anyone who says otherwise -- even in their own Administration. Yeah, they meet secretly with big oil and coal producers, don't fine the polluters and put Exxon in charge of our energy policy and, what the heck, let's toss in the national parks system. Them trees & mountains ain't making us enough money just sittin there being pretty! F#@$ them!

What's next, putting aligators in charge of babysitting? Let's hear what the Daily Show thinks:

Just when you think GW can't get any worse

He tops himself again not just with his typical lies, stupid comments, disregard for democracy, poor treatment of the military, or craven attempts to build & keep power at ALL costs. No, he does all this at the same time -- it's a quinfecta!

Here it is, two different ways -- so choose your medicine: Olbermann ...
(transcript here)


...or Stewart...

85% of Americans Want a Presidential Debate on Science

This makes sense -- not only because it's rational to look for answers to many of our current problems in healthcare, global warming, peak oil, food/water shortages, etc; but also I think because we've been so starved for any science from the current administration for the last 8 years. If anything, they've been anti-science. It's about time the pendulum swang back the other way -- let's just hope that it's not too late!

More on the Templeton Debate

I see that in my earlier post I neglected to link to the site. Here's some additional commentary, this time by renown skeptic, Michael Shermer:

"Religious faith and belief in God have equally adaptive evolutionary explanations. Religion is a social institution that evolved to reinforce group cohesion and moral behavior. Religion is an integral mechanism of human culture to encourage altruism, reciprocal altruism, and indirect altruism, and to reveal the level of commitment to cooperate and reciprocate among members of the social community. Believing in God provides an explanation for our universe, our world, and ourselves; it explains where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going. God is also the ultimate enforcer of the rules, the final arbiter of moral dilemmas, and the pinnacle object of commitment.

But it is time to step out of our evolutionary heritage and our historical traditions and embrace science as the best tool ever devised for explaining how the world works, and to work together to create a social and political world that embraces moral principles and yet allows for natural human diversity to flourish. Religion cannot do the job because it has no systematic methods of explanation of the natural world, and no means of conflict resolution on moral issues when members of competing sects hold absolute beliefs that are mutually exclusive. Flawed as they may be, science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our only hope for survival."

I wish I had said that.

The press is manipulated by the Pentagon -- and they *like it*

Wow, I thought it was bad enough that the press was secretly manipulated by the Pentagon and indirectly (constantly?) by this Administration. It's much worse than that. Not only is the press not angry, or not fighting back, they are trying to whitewash their complicity -- virtually guaranteeing that this will continue because they are too afraid (I guess) to even stand up for themselves -- 0r too interested in the money train. Wow -- it appears that the press has silenced itself. They've turned into willing puppets of the Executive Branch and their advertisers.

What happened to the Fourth Estate? Oh that's right, we allowed it to become a profit center for ever larger media conglomerates who not only don't care about the public, they don't care about the news! That is, unless they're trying to shovel their own personal agendas upon us and make us think that it's news (think Faux News). No wonder people don't watch TV anymore and are turning to the Internet. It's our last hope of knowing what's really going on.

Edwards Endorses Obama

Finally!

Did You Know - Shift Happens

I've commented on this before, so this time I'll let the content speak for itself:




Our kids are already living in a much different world that we are. Try to imagine what it will be like for their kids!

Fiona Apple - Criminal

Since I ran into Fiona Apple I thought I'd share this classic video. Good thing for her that I have this blog, eh?

50 Most Memorable Movie Cars

Kind of a fun list from Rotten Tomatoes.

The Adam Carolla Radio Show - enjoy

I always knew that this guy was funny, smart and entertaining. You can listen to the show live in the morning (good), download MP3 segments (better) or get the RSS feed (best). Here are some sample clips for your enjoyment:
This Week in Rage
Fighting Chicken-S Tickets

Mr. Fish

Why is it that humor can tell the truth better than anything?

Does science make belief in God obsolete?

This the third of the Templeton Foundation sponsored debates on the Big Questions. Steven Pinker, psychology professor at Harvard University, answers the above question most closely to how I would (were I a bit more eloquent):

Yes, if by "science" we mean the entire enterprise of secular reason and knowledge (including history and philosophy), not just people with test tubes and white lab coats. Traditionally, a belief in God was attractive because it promised to explain the deepest puzzles about origins. Where did the world come from? What is the basis of life? How can the mind arise from the body? Why should anyone be moral?
Yet over the millennia, there has been an inexorable trend: the deeper we probe these questions, and the more we learn about the world in which we live, the less reason there is to believe in God.

Start with the origin of the world. Today no honest and informed person can maintain that the universe came into being a few thousand years ago and assumed its current form in six days (to say nothing of absurdities like day and night existing before the sun was created). Nor is there a more abstract role for God to play as the ultimate first cause. This trick simply replaces the puzzle of "Where did the universe come from?" with the equivalent puzzle "Where did God come from?" What about the fantastic diversity of life and its ubiquitous signs of design? At one time it was understandable to appeal to a divine designer to explain it all.

No longer. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace showed how the complexity of life could arise from the physical process of natural selection among replicators, and then Watson and Crick showed how replication itself could be understood in physical terms. Notwithstanding creationist propaganda, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming, including our DNA, the fossil record, the distribution of life on earth, and our own anatomy and physiology (such as the goose bumps that try to fluff up long-vanished fur).

For many people the human soul feels like a divine spark within us. But neuroscience has shown that our intelligence and emotions consist of intricate patterns of activity in the trillions of connections in our brain. True, scholars disagree on how to explain the existence of inner experience—some say it's a pseudo-problem, others believe it's just an open scientific problem, while still others think that it shows a limitation of human cognition (like our inability to visualize four-dimensional space-time). But even here, relabeling the problem with the word "soul" adds nothing to our understanding. People used to think that biology could not explain why we have a conscience. But the human moral sense can be studied like any other mental faculty, such as thirst, color vision, or fear of heights. Evolutionary psychology and cognitive neuroscience are showing how our moral intuitions work, why they evolved, and how they are implemented within the brain.

This leaves morality itself—the benchmarks that allow us to criticize and improve our moral intuitions. It is true that science in the narrow sense cannot show what is right or wrong. But neither can appeals to God. It's not just that the traditional Judeo-Christian God endorsed genocide, slavery, rape, and the death penalty for trivial insults. It's that morality cannot be grounded in divine decree, not even in principle. Why did God deem some acts moral and others immoral? If he had no reason but divine whim, why should we take his commandments seriously? If he did have reasons, then why not appeal to those reasons directly?

Those reasons are not to be found in empirical science, but they are to be found in the nature of rationality as it is exercised by any intelligent social species. The essence of morality is the interchangeability of perspectives: the fact that as soon as I appeal to you to treat me in a certain way (to help me when I am in need, or not to hurt me for no reason), I have to be willing to apply the same standards to how I treat you, if I want you to take me seriously. That is the only policy that is logically consistent and leaves both of us better off. And God plays no role in it.

For all these reasons, it's no coincidence that Western democracies have experienced three sweeping trends during the past few centuries: barbaric practices (such as slavery, sadistic criminal punishment, and the mistreatment of children) have decreased significantly; scientific and scholarly understanding has increased exponentially; and belief in God has waned. Science, in the broadest sense, is making belief in God obsolete, and we are the better for it.

Ben Stein has lost it

Apparently, our favorite teacher from Ferris Bueller, Ben Stein, has gotten senile. I don't think that we need to actually watch his new movie Expelled, just listen to him being interviewed about this anti-Evolution, pro ID screed:

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Yeah, sure thing Ben. Before The Origin of Species was published, there weren't any massacres, pogroms, slavery, forced conversions or torture. Especially by people with religious beliefs.

Thanks Boing Boing.

The Supremes

Once again, Supreme Court Justice Scalia shows that he's a Supreme A-hole.

Scientology explained

In case you can't keep your Body Thetans straight from your Endgrams without a playbook, no worries Boston Legal can sum it up in 2:47.

Manufactroversy

What a great new term, manufactroversy:

1. A manufactured controversy that is motivated by profit or extreme ideology to intentionally create public confusion about an issue that is not in dispute.
2. Effort is often accompanied by imagined conspiracy theory and major marketing dollars involving fraud, deception and polemic rhetoric.

Although it's unfortunate that it had to be invented at all. This article shows how this wonderful concept weaves together the equally sad but otherwise seemingly disparate issues:

• global warming skepticism
• AIDS dissent in South Africa
• the intelligent design movement’s “teach the controversy” campaign including Ben Stein’s new misguided movie, Expelled
• the link showing that smoking tobacco causes cancer

And for those "open-minded" folks who are quick to remind us that there are always two sides to every argument... yes, we know there are; but please note that the truth is not equidistant from each extreme. Sometimes, one side is right and the other is just plain wrong.