I am clearly better looking than you.

Guess the race of this athlete...

2006-04-29T10:05:00.000-07:00

"What Hawk lacks in elite athleticism he more than makes up for with instincts, toughness, speed, quickness, and power."

Speedy, quick, and powerful, but not athletic? That's even better than when commentators declare that a white WR has "deceptive speed." Jesus, guys, just say "he's pretty damn fast for a white guy!"

Cheney Shooting

2006-02-14T13:31:00.000-08:00

Well, this administrations hatred of the free flow of information has really come back to haunt them. This shooting should have been a non-story, mistakes were made, hunting accidents happen, and the injury was serious, but it doesn't look life threatening. Cheney was careless, but not criminally so, yet the fact that the VPs office didn't come right out with the story in its entirety has led reporters to go hunting. Furthermore the slow release of information has led to some hillarious headline juxtapositions. With the latest AP story, the headline runs "Hunter Shot By Cheney Has Heart Attack", but right below the story there is a link to an earlier AP story "White House Finds Humour in Hunting Mishap". This sort of thing is what lead the story to retain muster whereas if the office had immediatley released the story in its entirety when it happened, on a weekend, it seems that we may have already forgotten about it. Is it just me, or did the VPs press office really bungle this one?

Despicable Super Bowl Commercials

2006-02-07T13:52:00.000-08:00

A couple blogs are commenting on an aspect of the super bowl commercials that I completely missed. If you recall, Ameriquest had a couple of adds featuring people caught in misleadingly incriminating positions, followed by the tag line "don't judge to quickly". What I had forgot is that Ameriquest has just settled a lawsuit for hundreds of millions on account of their predatory lending practices. They did some really awful stuff, worst of all was convincing people to falsify their employement information in order to get mortgages that they could not possibly afford, causing Ameriquest to foreclose on their houses. In response to this, they use the line "don't judge to quickly"? Seems like another case of a large corporation screwing the little guy, getting caught, and still attempting to avoid the implication they did anything wrong. As Elizabeth Warren says on tpmcafe "what is Ameriquest’s response? Not: 'We’re sorry.' Not: 'We promise to be trust-worthy in the future.' Not even the all-purpose 'mistakes were made.' Nope, their response is a Superbowl ad that says 'Don’t judge too quickly.' In other words, it is all a joke, and the wink-wink implication is that they didn’t really do anything very bad. " I'm sure all the people who lost their homes were cracking up.

Fuck You

2006-02-05T22:03:00.000-08:00

and your whole god damned crew.

mmm, virolicious

2006-02-03T08:25:00.000-08:00

Over at DailyKos, there's an excellent interview with Tara Smith, a microbiologist and epidemiologist from ~~Iowa State University~~ the University of Iowa. Of particular interest is the details of why the H5N1 (avian) flu strain is such a great public health risk, and why our current preparedness strategies are insufficient. Off to work!

More nonsense from James Dobson

2006-02-02T19:02:00.000-08:00

But it's a little different this time, and so factually inaccurate that my chin literally* hit the ground when I read it. From ESPN.com,

"Pittsburgh, 33-21. Why? Demonstrated superior ability to run and pass -- and the moxie to win."

Excuse me? Willie Parker and that ole tub-o-lard Bettis have demonstrated superior running ability to Shaun Alexander running behind 4 pro-bowlers? And boy, howdy, have the Steelers racked up those passing yards this year. Good enough for 24th in the NFL (then again, they were first in yards-per-attempt). I think the man should stick to telling fathers to shower with their sons and avoid football prognostication.

*figuratively

Who says God doesn't care about football?

2006-01-21T22:32:00.000-08:00

Lots of people will be praying tonight to the popular God for a Seahawk victory on Sunday. So may I suggest some prayers to the ones that might not currently have their attention on The Big Game. I, for one, do request meddling from His Noodly Appendage to cause butterfing'ritudity in Steve Smith.

RAmen

Questionable Officiating

2006-01-18T13:33:00.000-08:00

Since football is listed among the subjects covered by the blog, I figured it was high time to make a football post before the season ends. Among a host of bad calls made by the officials, the most highly scrutinized was the overturning of Pittsburgh's late interception in the Pitt-Indy game. In watching sports commentators they seem to miss the fundamental reason for the bad call. Every person talking about the play harped on how egregious it was to claim that this was incomplete when Polamalu's arm was clearly under the ball all the way as he rolled along the ground. What they didn't talk much about was the fact that the ref overturned the call based on a misunderstanding of what consituted possesion when determining an int. While the NFL ruled that the ref's interpretation was wrong, I haven't seen any statement, official or unofficial, of what the proper rule is. The oft stated rule is that the catcher must have two feet down and make a "football move". If this is the rule, than the ref's interpretation is certainly reasonable. Pomalu never made it up to both his feet and I don't think it's completely ridiculous to say that rolling on the ground isn't a football move. Furthermore, the ref said when overturning that because the ball popped out before both knees were down, Polamalu didn't have "possesion" of the ball under the two feet down part of the rule. I think it's reasonable from the ref's understanding of the rule to see the replay as clear evidence to overturn. We know now that the rule as the ref understood it isn't the rule, so what is the rule? Argy, maybe you know better than me, but what does it take to get possesion? I really wish the guys on ESPN had talked about this more. Furthermore, this seemed like an opportunity for the league to clarify the rule, but so far I haven't seen any clairification, maybe a possible league interpretation after the end of the season would be proper? Of course Joey "shot in the butt" Porter articulated the real reason for the ref's overturning, the worldwide Colts conspiracy, headed by the grand Illuminatus Tony Dungy (I've successfully restrained myself from making an extremely inappropriate joke about his son). I was glad to see Bill Cowher go easy on the refs, for being such an insane guy, he's pretty reasonable. Hopefully, the officials will get everything right in the NFC championship game, go 'Hawks.

The Alito Nomination

2006-01-13T17:06:00.000-08:00

Much of the talk about the confirmation and nomination has settled around Roe and Alito's view on the right to abortion. Concerns and Alito's desire to overturn Roe stem from writings done by Judge Alito when he was working for the government, or applying to work for the government. However, it's not his views on Roe that most worry me about his confirmation, but his views on the separation of powers, and specifically, the power of the president during war time. Alito hinted in his writings and in his confirmation hearing that he supports at least some aspects of the constituional theory known as Unitary Executive Theory. This theory starts with the premise that the Executive branch is ordered like a corporation, where all the heads of agencies and offices incorporated into the Executive and entirely and exclusively under the control of the President. This premise alone runs afoul of the Constituion, and cannot rationaly be supported, in my opinion, but some Unitary Executive theorists take it further and aruge that actions done by the Executive in arole expressly designated to the executive by the constituion is unreviewable by the other branches of government. This is applied especially to the President's powers as commander and chief. Bush's repeated violation of internation and domestic law in the name of the war on terror has been supported by this doctrine. Bush has argued that he can go around habeus, warrant, and other requirements without court of legislative interference because he is acting as commander in chief and as such, his actions are entirely outside the scope of things that may be addressed by the other branches. Presumably, this theory would also state that Bush can simply ignore the new McCain law against torture. This theory basically misunderstands the idea of separation of powers. It uses the idea that the branches are "co-equal" and takes that to mean that they cannot tell each other what to do. Clearly, the system of checks and balances shows that the drafters intended precisely for the branches to tell each other what to do. The branches are "co-equal" but they have differing roles. Congress was clearly given the authority to pass federal law to apply throughout the country, furthermore, since Marbury, the court has ruled that it has the authority to review executive and congressial actions to determine their constituitonality. Adherence to the substantive portion of Unitary Executive theory requires an unreasonable interpretation of the constituion that is not supported by precedent or by the original intent of the drafters.
So, how does this affect Alito. I have seen nothing to indicate that he is a supporter of the far right interpretaiton of Unitary Executive Theory, but it seems that he sees aspects that he likes, especially in regards to the President's wartime powers. Since he will be on the court as these war of terror cases percolate up through the system, his views on Executive wartime powers are extremely important, yet the confirmation hearings barely touch on them. Among the things I would want to know is whether Alito believes the Constitution makes presidential wartime decisions unreviewable by the court, and even more importantly, what weight he would give to Presidential Signing Statements. These statements are things that the presdient can attach to a bill that, while not going into the text of the bill, explain the way in which the president interprets the bill. For example, Bush signed the anti-torture bill with such a statement that where the war on terror was concerned, he was just going to ignore the law. Historically, they have been given little weight by the court, but a thinker like Alito could believe that since wartime decisions are fundamentally Executive branch decisions, much deference should be given the the Executive interpretation of the bill. In a time where we're faced with the prospect of an interminable war against a poorly defined enemy, where the president has asked the public to sacrifice nothing except their constituional rights, Alito's views on these matters should be the highest priority for Senate Democrats.

Morality

2005-12-12T22:50:00.000-08:00

In talking about how an atheist chooses a moral system in a comment to one of my previous posts, Argy suggested what I think is an important dichotomy in the sources of morality. Morals arise either from our own innate and instinctual feelings on what is moral or not, or must be based on some principle or rule that allows us to test each individual action to see whether they are moral or not. He called this principled approach arbitrary, but I don’t believe it is. In fact, these two options cover virtually every moral system I can think of. There is no universal, objectively discoverable morality. When we talk about actions being good or evil we are always talking in terms of either a moral system based on principles, or of our own instinctual feelings about an action. Therefore, if we want to talk about an universal morality, independent of societies, time and everything else, we must first create a set of principles on which that morality will be based. That is to say, we must create our rules based on some end the moral system is meant to achieve. A moral system will always be limited in its worth to the value of the principles it achieves.
The most common example of moral systems based on principles are religious moralities. As an example, I’ll focus on the one we are most familiar with in American culture, the Christian Fundamentalist morality. This morality is based on the principle that actions are good based on their accordance with God’s will as laid out in holy scripture. This is clearly an arbitrary morality. It does not claim that good actions will have beneficial consequences, nor does it claim that good action will make the actor happy or fulfilled or anything like that. This brings up a second part of a principled morality system. Each system, in order to provide any impact on the actions of those adopting it, must have some impetus for the actors to act “morally”. This is sometimes included in the founding principles of a morality, e.g. the epicurean moral system is based on the principle that good actions are good for the actor providing a natural motivation. In our Fundamentalist Christian example, a whole mythology of heaven and hell provides impetus to the actors for doing good. This concept of ultimate judgment is required to ensure that Christian believers want to act “morally” even when many “moral” actions have no visible benefit in the lives of the believer or anyone else.
So, how do we compare moral systems to decide which is best? Naturally our moral systems for our personal lives are going to be based in large part on our own religious beliefs. As I wrote in an earlier post, I believe these religious questions are fundamentally personal and as such are hard to argue about too much. However, there is a morality that should be universal, e.g. our criminal system, that need to be based on real, concrete principles. Our evaluation of universal, or at least national, moral systems must come from the principles on which it was based. Discussion of moral systems should arise out of two questions: What end results are our moral rules aimed at? and what moral rules are best suited to meet those ends? Once we ask these definite questions and take the supernatural out of morality, it becomes much easier to have fruitful and productive arguments about morality. Too often our conversations about ethics are colored with the idea that there is some good or evil that is universal and somehow indefinable. By parsing down what we actually mean by morality, however, we can actually analyze the worth of moral systems.

Wackiness in scientific literature

2005-12-05T23:55:00.000-08:00

Over the next week I'll be researching the efficacy of the various components of the ABC (Abstinence, Be faithful, use Condoms) strategy for controlling HIV transmission in Africa. It's a very politically charged issue, but there appears to be a lot of good information available (which is of course cherry-picked by advocates of a given position). However, I just came across an abstract for a what is likely to be among the most ridiculous papers that can be found on Pubmed. It's in the Journal of the Royal Society of Health, some obscure journal which may or may not require peer-review for its submissions, and was published in 2004:

Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioural Neurobiology, University of Tubingen, Germany. stuartbrody@hotmailcom

Public health and political authorities have ascribed the apparent decline in Ugandan HIV or AIDS rates to increased rates of sexual abstinence or condom use. However, what appears to be special about Uganda is that in the middle to late 1980s there was a growing public awareness of health care risks. Given the lack of evidence for transmission of HIV to healthy persons by penile-vaginal intercourse, the improvement in injection safety is the best candidate for declining HIV and AIDS rates. (emphasis mine)

I guess almost all people living with HIV/AIDS are homos and junkies after all. With crap like this out there, it really makes one wonder exactly what is keeping the creationists from publishing their ID "research" in scientific journals. Apparently the standard is pretty damn low.

Interesting Discussion on Roe

2005-12-01T17:31:00.000-08:00

Here's a very interesting debate on whether or not Democrats should stop defending Roe, I encourage you to read it if for no other reason than it shows how real debate should work, rather than the exchange of sound bites that popular public debate has become. I agree more with Balkin on the subject, and will try to comment in more detail later.

One More Reason to Hate Texas

2005-11-21T23:11:00.000-08:00

Are you sure it's not too late to convince the South that they won the Civil War, and are no longer part of our country?

I came across this story tonight:

From abc- Cleveland, TX

Two weeks ago, Jacob Schauer was caught getting leaving Cleveland Middle School early. For his punishment, he was sent to the coach's office where he had to endure a series of paddles.
"I can't describe it," said Jacob. "It hurt really bad."
Schauer claims that the paddling was so hard that Jacob still aches with pain. A doctor even prescribed the teen muscle relaxers so that he can sleep.
"It hurt. It stung," said Jacob. "It was like a bunch of bees stinging at once."
What troubles Schauer the most is that she claimed to have signed a form denying teachers the right to paddle her son. When she complained to the principal, she claims her concerns were ignored.
"I said, 'Don't hit and whoop him' and he said 'We don't need your permission. That's just a courtesy,'"

It's really unthinkable that, in this day and age, in this country, this sort of crap is still going on. From what I have read, the school didn't violate any criminal laws (whether the kid has a civil lawsuit for his injuries is another matter). Of course, conservatives are all for parents having more and more control over their children's education, unless it means telling the school officials not to beat up their kids.

To be fair, even among conservatives, there is little support for this sort of behavior, but in the South, where it's perpetually 1950, it's still a-ok.

Religion without Objective Truth

2005-11-21T14:30:00.000-08:00

Well, it’s about time I contributed something up here, this hasn’t been edited or read through or anything, but just a few thoughts on the discussions of the interplay between religion and science that Argy and Hooligan were discussing earlier in the blog. I wholeheartedly agree with Argy that the question of the existence of God is meaningless in terms of scientific proof. That is to say, using experimental evidence to “prove” the existence of God, is a lost cause. Of course, this does not mean God does not exist, but merely puts him outside the realm of evidentiary proof. Argy’s point was that for his personal belief, since there is no evidentiary proof to the existence of God, and since the is a presumption that something does not exist, minus proof that it does exist, there is no reason to believe God exists. I would say that, while there is no evidentiary reason to believe God exists, there are other sources of a reasonable belief in God. Primarily, a pragmatic reason to believe God exists. This is to say, I strongly feel that a belief in the concept of God helps me to be a fundamentally more well adjusted person, that use of the God concept is helpful in my interactions and understandings of the world. As such, I have tailored that belief to provide myself a framework within which I can view the world in a positive light. In this concept of God, I have given God certain attributes, “the ground of all being”, “the universal”, and such. To say that “God is the ground of all being”, “God is Jesus”, etc. is not quite right, as that phrase implies a universal truth, such truths are really part of the scientific world, and are used to represent a verifiable fact. In actuality, even within the strictest of fundamentalist religions, each and every person has their own God concept, made to their own spiritual needs, for some this concept in a non-God, for some, an anthropomorphic “man in the sky”. It is meaningless to say whether each of the concepts is “correct” or “true” or not, as such questions are meaningless.

What are we left with then? If we remove questions of truth or falsehood from religion, we have a religious life entirely devoid of dogma. All dogma is an attempt for religions to tie down certain God concepts and make them universally applicable to the evidentiary world. The problem with dogma is it will inevitably suffer one of two fates. It will either (1) be an assertion that is eventually found to be inaccurate by the scientific method (e.g. that the earth is the center of the world) and will have to be abandoned, or (2) it will remain in the realm of the unverifiable, and thus remain a meaningless statement. Either way, dogma serves little use. Religion without dogma maintains the useful parts of religion, the communal aspects of church, the sacraments, the prayer, the meditation, etc. but gives them a new drive and focus. Instead of performing religious activities out of duty to some dogmatic law, non-dogmatic religion forces the believer to determine which religious activities actually provide spiritual benefit.

Now there are two obvious objections to such religion that spring to mind. First, that there is no way to have the kind of deep faith enjoyed by the more spiritual among us if what we have faith in is a persona concept of God, rather than a universal one. And second, is the belief that such faith is merely self-delusion, a sort of fairy tale made up to provide us with relief from the burdens of life. To the first objection, I would agree that this type of belief takes a kind of faith radically different than the faith in a concrete, dogmatic God. However, it is important to realize that even in the most dogmatic of religions, the believer’s understanding of God has always been deeply personal. It’s easy to sit in a church and look around and realize that every person sitting there, hearing the same words, saying the same prayer, has a unique concept of God. The challenge is holding in your mind the contradictory ideas of faith in your concept of God, and acceptance of another’s concept of God. Or to put it another way, faith in your concept of God, but indifference to the objective truth of your concept of God. As odd as this sounds, if we push the realm of God outside the scientific and evidentiary world, this sort of faith is realizable. Which brings us to the second objection, that faith without scientific ground is merely self-delusion. This objection arises from the same problem of placing scientific, evidentiary concerns on the idea of the existence of God. To say that this belief is self-delusional, is to say that the belief flies in the face of the fact that there is no evidentiary proof of the existence of God. However, as we have said, the question of the existence of God is meaningless, and without answer, positive or negative, however, there is a fundamental desire in many human minds for a kind of spiritual satisfaction, a spiritual fulfillment, and this “self-delusion” satisfies that spiritual need without running aground of verifiable scientific fact.

It seems that if we can foster a more deeply personal understanding of religion and spirituality we can attain something much closer to what the founders of the great religions had in mind, a kind of spiritual life without judgment on our fellow man, without constant proselytizing, without the inevitable hypocrisies of evangelism. Indeed, much of the violence and persecution resulting from religious belief comes as a result of religions attempting to push dogma over spiritual substance, the attempt to fulfill arbitrary spiritual rules that fly in the face of reasonableness and any pragmatic understanding of good. Grounding religion outside of objective fact, and in personal pragmatism, seems the only way of religion being a reasonable positive unifying force in our world.

Reversing extinction?

2005-11-17T21:43:00.000-08:00

The Thylacine (aka Tazmanian Tiger) was one of the very publisized human-induced extinctions in the early 20th century. This remarkable marsupial has since turned into a bit of a bigfoot scenario: though there is no real documentation of any individual existing beyond the 1936 death of the last captive, there have been sightings galore of wild Thylacines. Because of this popularity and some people's views that we are morally responsible for doing all that we can to reverse the extinctions that we have caused, there is now an ongoing attempt to clone living examples of this (most-likely) extinct species. {all I have to say here is: can I have one for a pet?}.

So, scientists are attempting to extract viable DNA from specimens that are over 100 years old, and have been preserved in alcohol. If they are able to accomplish this (which thay have been failing at- the DNA is much too degraded to be useful), they would like to insert the DNA into the oocytes of one of the Thylacine's closest living relatives, the Tasmanian devil. Unfortunately, they have to consider that the lineages of the two species are thought to have diverged about 25 million years ago. Considering that scientists havent been able to stick viable pig DNA into sheep oocytes (species much more closely related), the prognosis is not too good. In other news however, Chinese scientists are much closer to being able to create a hybrid wooly mammoth/asian elephant. It helps to have an ice-age quick-frozen sperm donor, and a much more closely related surrogate.

But really, the point here is that there are people out there trying to use genetics to recreate/reanimate extinct species. Though I agree that it sucks that humans played such a crucial role in wiping out these guys, I can't see how bringing them back would do anything but screw the environment over even more. In some cases, such as the main example above, I'll admit that it would be really freaking cool to have the species back, and that I can't see any great harm in working on it (aside from the obvious waste of millions of dollars that could go to say, supporting the dwindling populations of soon-to-be-extinct creatures). In other cases though, is there really a place left in this world for wooly mammoths? Or short-faced bears?

Other kinds of evidence

2005-11-17T19:57:00.000-08:00

The LFP asked me what constitutes teological evidence, as opposed to scientific evidence; in particular, I think, in terms of evidence for God. I think I was too specific in my last post by refering to teleology. What I really meant was any kind of non-scientific, or non-naturalistic evidence.

The LFP asked, "Are you suggesting there are kinds of evidence separate from scientific evidence?"

There might be, and I'm open to it, but I haven't been convinced that there is. The best I can say is that I'll know it when I see it. The evidence would have to be unfalsifiable by science, to be sure. So come, LFP and Mad Charity, come Punchy, bring your evidences, and I will decide!

The Argy stamp of approval?

2005-11-16T19:59:00.000-08:00

I've been discussing what makes humans special with a Hooligan, in relation to his Baha'i faith and my atheism. A couple of his comments of interest:

Modern secular science is no less circular, in any case. It sets up the rules by which its adherents (and I admit to being one, too) play the game, which is fundamentally circular.

Hooligan seems to be confusing methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism. The scientific method does preclude supernatural explanations, because they are not testable. Science cannot, however, make claims negating the existence of the supernatural, as such claims would be equally untestable. If The Truth of a given matter were in fact unobtainable through scientific means, scientists would either have to say "I don't know" or continue to search in vain for a naturalistic explanation. Which brings me to Hooligan's question:

But what aspects of your analyses preclude the existence of God? Or of a soul, or spirit?

The answer, of course, is none of them. I don't believe in God because I have never been given any convincing evidence (which would necessarily have to be teleological, rather than scientific).

He then mentioned the strong parallels between my philosophy (that is, it is our capacity to reject the selfishness of nature that makes us special) and Baha'i writings, though I think my definition of "separation from nature" is rather more specific than his. I tend to agree with the man, which is rather good news. I've recently come to the decision that religion may be a necessary aspect of a successful civilization. Of course, it's my cynicism that leads me down this path. It took me quite a bit of thought to come up with my ethical system, and I don't think most people are inclined to search for personal decisions. It is much more effective to hand them a set of morals to live by, and to put the rules into simpler contexts than are often found in reality. I'll give Baha'i a pass for now as a candidate religion, until I find out its nefarious secrets.