I like right in Tornado Alley, so I live in perpetual fear of losing everything. We had a tornado smash through Central Texas last week and NC has just been flattened.
How long do you think it will be before some green blames the tornados on global warming?
Thinking a bit more about my diatribe on atheistic fundamentalism, the thing that creates bloodshed, horror and oppression in our world is not religion — as ably demonstrated by atheistic mass-murderers like Mao. What creates suffering is dogma, the absolute conviction that one is correct and all others are wrong. Dogma certaintly plays a part in religion, but it is not unique to it. Mao, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot were plenty dogmatic on, respectively, culture, economics, race and all three.
What we are seeing in the vilification of all religion and the pronouncement that the religious are objectively disordered while the areligious are enlightened is something truly frightning — dogmatic atheism. I’m not saying Richard Dawkins will be loading people into boxcars anytime soon (he’d call ’em a taxi). I’m saying the intellectual process is one guaranteed to produce stupidity from otherwise smart people.
On a related note, the dogmatic atheists often use the oft-quoted by usually misquoted and misunderstood Occam’s Razor to “prove” that religion is silly.
Occam’s Razor is a useful tool in the “did terrorists fly planes into buildings or did George Bush [insert insanely complicated conspiracy theory here]” sense. But it is a blunt instrument and not a fantastic one at that. The theory of evolution and our understanding of physical cosmology are insanely complex. To be honest, Occam’s Razor favors the religious.
Twenty years ago, P.J. O’Rourke quipped that he was going to use that title for the next Christopher Hitchens book. I think it’s time. I saw his shambling performance on The Daily Show and Sullivan links to a HuffPo review of his new book.
I haven’t read the book, but the HuffPo comments and Hitch’s rambling assertions have gotten me in the mood to rumble. There is an ongoing backlash against fundamentalism among certain parts of our culture. Not content with simply doing away with the mythological aspects of religion, they now have to denounce religion itself as an evil. The very title of Hitch’s book is that religion poisons everything. And the comments in support this view, the diatribes I’ve been reading lately by people like Douglas Adams and Richard Dawkins and even the little commenters on HuffPo support this view. Religion is bad. It never does anything good. Humanity would be better off without it.
This is utter total ignorant arrogant bullshit.
Read John Stossel’s account of the school choice wars.
There are few political powers more ruthless, more vicious than the teacher’s unions. These are nothing but pure power brokers who hide behind innocent children and hard-working teachers to advance their agenda. In a way, they remind me of Bush’s supporters — his few remaining supporters — who insist that any disagreement with their agenda is not “supporting the troops”. Big Education insists that any attempt to change our broken education system is “anti-education”, “anti-teacher” or “anti-children”.
We are not talking about a bunch of teachers sitting around singing Kumbaya. We are talking about one of the most powerful and ruthless special interests in the nation. They have long had the gloves off when it comes to attacking their political opponents. It’s time we took the gloves off too.
More places are banning plastic bags. Of course, there’s a reason paper bags are more expensive: they consume more resources when produced. And we do not, by the way, have a shortage of landfill space, photogenic garbage barges not withstanding. The next millenium of trash could be stored in an area smaller than Rhode Island.
Penn and Teller have an excellent program on the myths revolving around recycling and trash. Replacing plastic bags with paper ones is bad for the environment, not good for it. But, like all environmental crusades, we have a bunch of scientific and busines ignorami pushing a popular policy because it sounds good.
This is what happens when you empower government. Decisions are made for political reasons, not moral, scientific or economic ones. That’s a bad way of doing things.
Even though I’m a scientist, I’m against this ham-fisted attempt by our Congress to improve science education. It’s yet another attempt to micro-manage our education system. It will almost certaintly have negative unintended consequences and fail to achieve its goals. My guess as to the negative unintended consequence? A deluge of frankly unqualified people in science majors and science education.
And, of course, there’s nothing in there about education freedom. Congress could make improved education a lot simpler, a lot better and a lot cheaper by just encouraging school choice. But we can’t have that. The unions would hate it. The government would lose power. The shithead parents would be in charge.
Plus it might work. And that would obviate the need for more compassionate spending by our Congress.
Sully links to this diatribe about how Haley Barbour’s budget cuts to Medicaid are killing babies. It’s possible they are on to something. But it sounds fishy to me.
All that having been said, I must admit that it is the politics that makes by BS meter twitter. The NYT specifically, and most lefties generally, have been predicting a massive disaster from welfare cuts for years. Of course, I’m not sure how any disaster can be worse than the destruction visited on the African-American family by the Great Society welfare state. But this is the Left’s first chance, after a decade of welfare reform to say, “See! See! We told you welfare cuts would kill babies!”.
As I said, maybe they’re right. Maybe Barbour’s budget cuts are killing babies. But I think we need more than one year of data — and a disastrous year at that — before we start pronouncing someone a black baby killer. No?
No?
Well, he is a Republican I guess.
I’m with the Republicans on this one. Government doesn’t “negotiate” prices. Government sets prices. And when it does, we all suffer. Do we really want the profitability of a drug company to hinge on how well they play the political game in Washington? Do we really want what drugs we get determined by a government hack? The libertarians warned you that when we expanded Medicare, we’d lose our freedom. But no one listened.
Recently, AARP, who support this bill, has had ads with kids castigating our political figures for not planning for the future. This commerical enrages me. There is no organization in America that has done more to fuck the future of everyone under 60 than AARP. They have supported massive expansions in social spending and zero reform. Their entire philosophy is “to hell with the future, I’m getting mine!” A more accurate commercial would cut to an AARP rep smashing open the kids’ piggy banks.
Just in case you ever forget the enemy we face, the Iranian Supreme Court has decreed that it’s OK to murder an engaged couple if they walk together. This isn’t religion. This is barbarism wearing a religious mask.
Stephen Dubner reminds us how amazingly safe airline travel is. This will, nevertheless, not be on my mind the next time I board a flight and am convinced I’m going to die. Remind me never to fly in Russia.
Color me unsurprised that the things replacing the evil trans fats may not be any healthier. Remember, we got into the whole trans fat business because the Health Nazis demanded we stop using saturated fats. When are going to start ignoring these twerps?
It may surprise you, since I embraced the IPCC report on Global Warming, but I think the most recent report that our planet faces a catastrophe is garbage. It is irresponsible panic-mongering. It is difficult enough to predict whether the planet is going to warm or not over the next century. But predicting all kinds of ecological disasters — in the same hysterical manner with which Paul Ehrlich did thirty years ago — is dumb as hell.
Apart from the difficulty in predicting the secondary effects when the primary effect is not understood, they ignore that human beings adapt. Global warming is not going to happen so fast that we can’t account for it. What is with the anti-humanist agenda of the greens that they think of human beings as helpless creatures who are incapable of innovation, improvement and adaptation? That we can never meet the challenges we face? We have brought down air pollution, water pollution and acid rain significantly in the past century — problem once thought insoluble. Overpopulation turned out to be a bunch of crap, just as the skeptics said. So now we’re supposed to believe the hype?
I always knew iPods were good for you.
VDH says what I said about Iran, only better. The smart Muslims have figured out how to play the victim. Unforunately, our President is only too happy to oblige them.
Another story on the crackling infrastructure in this country. The biggest unreported story in our nation is the slow decay of our infrastructure. The money is there to fix all this. All we have to do is stop building bridges to nowhere.
We’re not opening a dialogue with Iran. Well, no surprise. We missed our chance. After 9/11, the Iranians had a vigil in Tehran to honor the fallen. If I had been Bush, in addition to going to war with Afghanistan, I would have re-opened diplomatic relations with Iran (I said so at the time; too bad I didn’t have a blog). We are not presently at war with Iran and re-opening relations wit them in the wake of 9/11 would have given a huge signal that we are at war with radicals, not with Islam. It might have averted the situation we are in now. We can’t do it now and “reward” them for the abduction. But we should be looking for a way to re-open our embassy.
Say, for example, if they agree to seal their border and keep insurgents out of Iraq.
That right-wing rag, the Washington Post, gives a broadside to Nancy Pelosi. She’s may be the first woman speaker, but she’s not the first dumbass to wield the gavel. Sadly, she won’t be the last, either.
Yeah, privatizing Social Security would be soooo risky. Always remember the four ways money is spent.
It seems to me that the Supreme Court decision earlier did not so much accept global warming as it kicked the EPA in the head and told them to make a decision about it one way or another.
I’m not even going to quote this story from Cato on welfare for the wealthy. Read it. And remember what Milton Friedman pointed out. Government tends to help the rich a lot more than it helps the poor.
This won’t work. Various school districts are proposing to lengthen the school day in an effort to get higher test scores.
But the problem is fundamental. It’s qualitative not quantitative. Having the kids in the same shitty schools for thirty more minutes or thirty more years is not going to improve things.
It’s getting back to the fundamental problem of government. Since output can’t be measured, input is. And so we assume that if we’re spending lots of money, hiring lots of teachers and forcing the kids – who are already bored, resentful and negative toward education – to spend more time at it, that must be an improvement.
But it’s not – not for everone anyway. And we could be educating these kids effectively with less money, less time and less homework. We know this, because we did it in this country for decades and see it going on all over the world. If we introduce competition between schools, we would see more effective innovation and improvement.
I have a big post on education in the queue. I’ll post it soon.
There is one bright point in the article. And it emphasizes something I’ve said — education is best run at the level closest to the students. This innovation, whether it works or not, is being driven by the states and is tailored to the schools that need the most help. The “one size fits all” model that Big Education (and our President) have been ramming down our throats is breaking down.
If only we could give them a little more freedom.
Chris has been bitching about his new cable carrier. I have read similar complaints on a number of blogs.
The thing is, there is very little choice when it comes to cable. It is not a “free market” in any sense that the followers of Adam Smith would recognize. The nation is divided into fiefdoms that are assigned to various companies. And the cost of cable has risen even as the cost of cell phone, home phones and long distance have plunged.
Why do I bring this up? Because public schools are the same way. Children have no choice, no competition but are assigned to the school they are nearest to. And our schools are spending twice per pupil what private schools are. But many of the people railing against cable company monopolies would lose it over the idea of introducing competition into the public school system.
So every time you turn on your cable and find the signal out, or the picture fuzzy; every time you look at a bill that read $150; think to yourself, “Inner city kids are getting in education what I’m getting in cable service.”
Um, I’m observing. Which means 12-15 hours work days. So my interest in blogging has flagged a bit. I’ll post later this week my review of Neal Boortz’ book. But for now:
Through a study by CNW Marketing called “Dust to Dust,” the total combined energy is taken from all the electrical, fuel, transportation, materials (metal, plastic, etc) and hundreds of other factors over the expected lifetime of a vehicle. The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles – the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.
The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.
So, if you are really an environmentalist – ditch the Prius. Instead, buy one of the most economical cars available – a Toyota Scion xB. The Scion only costs a paltry $0.48 per mile to put on the road. If you are still obsessed over gas mileage – buy a Chevy Aveo and fix that lead foot.
One of the problems with the drive for energy efficiency is that it is being driven by politics not science. And it’s leading to bad ideas like ethanol. I would point out, however, that the Prius is one of the first hybrids. Naturally, future iterations will be cleaner. And that nightmare nickel factory he describes may not be the norm and certaintly makes batteries for a lot more than cars.