What I’m Reading, April 23, 2014

Posted on April 23, 2014 by wellsdc

David Jackmanson [CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)], via Flickr Apparently, We Need To Remind People That Pro-Choice Women Are Allowed To Have Babies, Samantha Lachman, Huffington Post, April 17, 2014

Chelsea Clinton is pregnant, and some anti-abortion activists responded to the news Thursday by showing they don’t understand what being “pro-choice” means: being able to choose to have a baby, or not.

White Supremacist’s Genocidal Paranoia: Inside the Mind of the White Man March Founder, Toby McCasker, AlterNet, April 19, 2014

Masked ethnic nationalism had been enjoying a nice stay as a dot-point in the “dark enlightenment” of the so-called neo-reactionary movement, but bigotry is never content to be itemized. Say hi to nuwe racism, and the composite ire-ony of using the Afrikaans for “new” here seems so complexly black and white as to transcend meta. Hyper-aware there is less and less room on earth for old hate, nuwe racists dress their prejudice in conspiracy and pseudoscience and call it “pride.” Pride is a much more appealing sin than wrath, and allows them to, heinously, plead victimhood just as they pursue a policy of victimization. It is like punching someone and getting angry at them for hurting your fist.

Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, April 22, 2014

Posted on April 22, 2014 by wellsdc

Is Our Elites Learning, Atrios, Eschaton, April 18, 2014

The problem with the Lifestyles Of The Not Quite Rich Enough genre is there’s never any hint that anyone involved (reporters, subjects) take the next step and think, “oh, gosh, if I can’t live on $300K what must it be like to live on $50K!!!!”

“You’re leaving? Are you effing kidding?” An anti-gay bigot gets humiliated, Kate Geiselman, Salon, April 16, 2014

When Peter LaBarbera saw that close to a hundred people had assembled at my college to hear his warning about “the gay agenda,” I’m sure he was thrilled. He is the president of a group called Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, which describes its mission as being “dedicated to exposing the homosexual-bisexual-transgender activist agendas.”

When, less than 10 minutes later, he was left with an audience of about a dozen, he was angry. Angry enough to say, as the masses marched out, “You’re leaving? Are you effing kidding?” Angry enough to tweet, later that evening, “Two liberal professors lead their students in a walkout of my talk … rather than allow them to hear an opposing viewpoint.”

Except that’s not exactly what happened. What happened was much bigger than that, but I should back up a bit.

Is growth always good? Mano Singham, Freethought Blogs, April 17, 2014

It seems to be almost axiomatic these days to think of economic growth as an unfettered good. But must it always be so? Johann Hari in the April 2010 of The Progressive magazine wrote in a review of a book about John Maynard Keynes, whose influential work has been used to fuel growth, about what that famous economist thought about when we might know that it might be time to call a halt to growth.

***

The key is to try and ensure that everyone has a basic level of comfort and security, and the current rapidly growing inequality works against that.

What I’m Reading, April. 21, 2014

Posted on April 21, 2014 by wellsdc

Торжествуют (They are triumphant) by Vasily Vereshchagin [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons The Lost Empire that Ruled the Silk Road, Annalee Newitz, io9, April 15, 2014

Today, the city of Samarkand in Uzbekistan is relatively remote, known mostly for its magnificent medieval ruins. But over a millennium ago, it was one of the richest cities on the infamous trade route known as the Silk Road. Back in the 600s CE, that route was called simply “the road to Samarkand.”

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The term “Silk Road” was popularized by European explorers in the nineteenth century. German scientist Ferdinand von Richthofen coined the term in 1877, while attempting to follow its eroded pathways centuries after the world economy had come to rely on ocean shipping routes. Also, there is no evidence that anyone traveled along the entire route from Europe to China until Marco Polo wrote about his journey in the thirteenth century. (Polo probably wasn’t the first traveler to do this, but his account popularized the idea and led to many more journeys.)

But for most people the Silk Road was just a local highway system. They used the routes to go from one city to another, and more rarely to cross the borders between empires.

Bill Russell, Boston Celtics Veteran, Sounds Off On Gay Athletes, Jim Vertuno, AP, April 10, 2014

NBA Hall of Famer Bill Russell said Wednesday that gay athletes’ current fight for equality and acceptance reminds him of some of the same struggles black athletes faced in the 1960s. Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, April 18, 2014

Posted on April 18, 2014 by wellsdc

"MEGAMAN X STAGE 1" by fanboy-supermegaman [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)], via deviantART The angry fanboys, Ophelia Benson, Butterflies & Wheels, April 14, 2014

Feminism isn’t going away. Also? The last thing that would make it go away is condescending assholes calling it feminazi bullshit and threatening to rape all the feminists. All that does is show how desperately it’s needed.

Ron Paul Wants Tax-Exempt Status, But Doesn’t Want To Obey The Rules, karoli, Crooks and Liars, April 16, 2014

I just love the way conservatives want to have their cake and eat it too. Ron Paul’s organization, Campaign for Liberty, is being fined by the IRS because they insist on filing incomplete reports, but if you listen to him whine on Fox News, you’d think he was being persecuted, and horribly so. Continue reading →

What I’m Reading, April 17, 2014

Posted on April 17, 2014 by wellsdc

By Stickpen (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Are Medicare Prescriptions Fueling Purple Drank? An Iodine Data Story, Iodine, March 13, 2014

According to our research, there is not only a significant drug diversion problem going on with Medicare prescriptions (a problem that has been well accounted in a recent Pro Publica report published in the Pacific Standard), but it is likely that drugs prescribed to American seniors under Medicare are actually ending up in party cocktails – particularly promethazine, a drug that is prescribed to reduce nausea and motion sickness. Promethazine is often combined with codeine in a prescription cough syrup.

Promethazine with codeine is a key ingredient in the illicit brew known as Lean, Sizzurp, or Purple Drank. Mixed with Sprite soda and Jolly Rancher candies and served in styrofoam cups, the concoction is a popular party drink and a frequent reference in hip hop lyrics. The drink is especially popular in the South, having originated in the Houston area and spread to Atlanta and other southern areas. It often leads to abuse, as in Lil’ Wayne’s case.

(The fact that Justin Bieber has also recently been connected to Purple Drank suggests that the drink’s popularity may indeed have maxed out).

Catholicism, George W. Bush, and the cluelessness of the religious right, Damon Linker, The Week, April 11, 2014

Once upon a time, the religious right’s leading intellectuals told themselves an inspiring story. It went something like this: From the time of the Puritans all the way down to the early 1970s, American public life was decisively shaped by the moral and spiritual witness of the Protestant Mainline’s leading churches: The Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, and Episcopalians.

But then the Great Collapse began, as these venerable churches sold their souls to the counterculture, abandoned the moral and religious tenets of historical Christianity, embraced a series of increasingly left-wing and anti-American causes, and saw their numbers (and then their cultural influence) plummet. Today these churches are an intellectual and demographic shell of their former selves.

This was a potentially disastrous development, depriving America of the theologically grounded public philosophy that it needs in order to thrive. But as luck — or providence — would have it, the decline of the Mainline churches set in at the precise moment when two other monumental cultural and religious developments unfolded: The rise of a politicized form of Protestant evangelicalism and a revival of intellectual and spiritual energy in the Catholic Church under Pope John Paul II. The time was ripe for evangelicals and Catholics to come together to form a successor to the Mainline churches.

Photo credit: By Stickpen (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

What I’m Reading, April 16, 2014

Posted on April 16, 2014 by wellsdc

By Novis-M (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons The irresponsibly stupid and dangerous camouflage patterns of the U.S. military, David W. Brown, The Week, January 22, 2013

When the Marine Corps selected a digital pattern for its combat uniform in 2002, the U.S. military as a whole seemed to fracture, with each branch wandering aimlessly in a bizarre search for sartorial identity. It’s been a long, strange trip since. So let’s take a brief look at the camouflage patterns of the U.S. military, and the sorry stories of their adoptions.

If You Don’t Like “Rape Culture” Then Focus For A Minute On Sex and Status, Soraya Chemaly, Huffington Post, April 7, 2014

The idea that we live with a culture that promotes rape is anathema to people who a) don’t want to believe it because, when you start to really think about it, it’s awful and scary and defies reason; b) live in communities filled with words used to deny, promote or camouflage sexual assault or c) are people who have power and benefit, in multiple, intersecting ways, from the status quo.

“Status” is the operative word. If you don’t like the words “rape culture” or you are uncomfortable with the idea that men rape women (and that is the vast preponderance of cases) in huge numbers, here is a different way to think about this: People with higher status are entitled to rape and abuse people with lower status in society.

Fear of becoming a racial minority makes white Americans more conservative: study, Scott Kaufman, The Raw Story, April 10, 2014 (h/t LGM)

Two researchers from the Department of Psychology and Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University demonstrated that the more white Americans know about the changing demographics of the United States, the more likely they are to endorse conservative policy positions.

***

Maureen Craig and Jennifer Richeson conducted three studies in which white Americans were presented with information about the racial demographic shifts that have led the U.S. Census Bureau to project that “racial minority groups will make up a majority of the U.S. national population in 2042, effectively creating a so-called ‘majority-minority’ nation.”

The result was that, “[d]espite being self-identified political independents, respondents who were asked about the [majority-minority] racial shift reported being somewhat more conservative than did respondents” who were asked the less salient question about Hispanics being roughly equally to African-Americans.

AA and Rehab Culture Have Shockingly Low Success Rates, Dr. Lance Dodes, Zachary Dodes, AlterNet, April 2, 2014

Twelve-step programs hold a privileged place in our culture as well. The legions of “anonymous” members who comprise these groups are helped in their proselytizing mission by hit TV shows such as “Intervention,” which preaches the gospel of recovery. “Going to rehab” is likewise a common refrain in music and fi lm, where it is almost always uncritically presented as the one true hope for beating addiction. AA and rehab have even been codified into our legal system: court-mandated attendance, which began in the late 1980s, is today a staple of drug-crime policy. Every year, our state and federal governments spend over $15 billion on substance-abuse treatment for addicts, the vast majority of which are based on 12-step programs. There is only one problem: these programs almost always fail.

Peer-reviewed studies peg the success rate of AA somewhere between 5 and 10 percent. That is, about one of every fifteen people who enter these programs is able to become and stay sober. In 2006, one of the most prestigious scientific research organizations in the world, the Cochrane Collaboration, conducted a review of the many studies conducted between 1966 and 2005 and reached a stunning conclusion: “No experimental studies unequivocally demonstrated the effectiveness of AA” in treating alcoholism. This group reached the same conclusion about professional AA-oriented treatment (12-step facilitation therapy, or TSF), which is the core of virtually every alcoholism-rehabilitation program in the country.

Photo credit: By Novis-M (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

What I’m Reading, April 15, 2014

Posted on April 15, 2014 by wellsdc

"Dragons famili" by mapazhe [CC BY 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)], via deviantART How We Won the War on Dungeons & Dragons, Annalee Newitz, io9, March 26, 2014

[U]nlike my fantasy of being a hot half-elf, the Christians actually had some control over our lives. My best friend got kicked out of Catholic school for playing D&D, which we counted as a win because it meant she could come to our shitty public school and play D&D with us. Outside our southern California town, however, D&D players weren’t getting off so easily. They were ostracized by their peers, kicked out of public schools, and sent to glorified reeducation camps by parents who feared their children were about to start sacrificing babies to Lolth the spider demon.

It sounds crazy in our world today, where there are Dungeons & Dragons movies and a rich game industry full of titles inspired by those old paper-and-dice games we played back in the twentieth century. One of the most popular shows on television, Game of Thrones, features plots that my friends and I might have cooked up back on that playground at lunch. Somehow, the popularity of epic fantasy and role playing overcame America’s fear of young people making up stories about monsters and gods.

The Cost Of Permission Culture: Or Why Netflix Streaming Library Sucks Compared To Its DVD Library, Parker Higgins, TechDirt, April 9, 2014

The problem is that, unlike earlier movie-rental options, streaming rights fall fundamentally within a permission culture. Netflix is a great illustration of what’s gone wrong here. It’s gone from having a nearly unrivaled catalog of films available to rent to being the butt of Onion jokes. What happened: It shifted from a system where nobody had a veto power over its operations, to one where it had to get permission and make deals with Hollywood. Sometimes it’s difficult to find the concrete costs of living in a permission culture, but the decline of Netflix’s selection is an important cautionary tale.

Physicist surprised to see himself in ‘documentary’ claiming the sun revolves around the earth, Robyn Pennacchia, Death and Taxes, April 8, 2014

Like any other Christian pseudoscience theory, geocentrism is built upon the premise that humans are special and earth is special and God made them special, so any science conflicting with that must be wrong. Like, probably Satan somehow made it look like the earth is really old and revolves around the sun just to destroy our self-esteem. The film makes this premise clear, with its suggested hashtag, #areyousignificant.

How Hatred of Islam Creates Strange Bedfellows of Christians and Atheists, CJ Werleman, AlterNet, April 11, 2014

Despite claims by David Silverman, president of the 501(c4) political lobby group American Atheists, atheism does not earn an atheist the title of freethinker. With very few exceptions, movement atheists are not. They’re parrots. Don’t believe me? Ask an atheist to opine on the Israeli-Palestinian crisis, and he or she will invariably wax lyrical about religious motivated violence, Islamic extremism and suicide bombers. In other words, expect a recital from atheist luminaries Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens.

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Atheists, myself included, enjoy mocking religious fundamentalists for their inability to question authority or dogma. But very few atheists sound dissimilar to the aforementioned atheist heavyweights when it comes to assessing the roots of Islamic terrorism. In the aftermath of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, American Atheists president Silverman tweeted, “Dear Peaceful Muslims: Sorry, but yet, that IS your Islam and your Prophet’s followers.” Silverman included the hashtag #IslamIsBarbaric. If you were told neo-con firebrand Ann Coulter had posted this careless tweet, you would have believed it.

No doubt, Harris (neuroscience) and Dawkins (evolutionary biology) are leaders in their respective fields. What they’re not is experts on terrorism and the Middle East. So movement atheism needs to stop pretending like they are, because the words of Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens serve only to make movement atheists sound like neo-conservatives, Zionists and the Christian Right, which ultimately makes seeking peace even harder to attain.

[Ed. note: The URL slug for the above article is “how-atheists-are-complicit-atrocities-and-oppression-palestinian-people.” Just thought that was worth noting.]

Photo credit: “Dragons famili” by mapazhe [CC BY 3.0], via deviantART.

What I’m Reading, April 14, 2014

Posted on April 14, 2014 by wellsdc

Not credited. May be work of U.S. Public Health Service (1918 ad) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons Dear Parents, You are Being Lied to By Living Whole, Avicenna, A Million Gods, April 11, 2014

Those who do not learn from history are doomed to make the same mistakes. I predicted that an anti-vax backlash would occur when the anti-vax got so successful that they destroyed the herd immunity of a western nation to the point that common diseases could return. If you won’t learn by the carrot then unfortunately it is the stick. The price of Andrew Wakefield and the likes of Sherri Tenpenny, Mercola, Adams was increased disease. We are seeing record increases in common diseases that we were on the verge of eliminating.

How to Talk to Vaccine-Hesitant Parents, Keith Kloor, Discover, April 8, 2014

The smart folks at ThinkProgress seem to have missed all the media coverage of this recent study, which found that, for those already suspicious or concerned about vaccines, images of sick children and dramatic, cautionary narratives “actually increased beliefs in serious vaccine side effects.” This is a known as the “backfire effect,” a phenomena defined concisely here:

When your deepest convictions are challenged by contradictory evidence, your beliefs get stronger.

Jenny McCarthy, Who Still Promotes Misinformation About Vaccines, Now Says “I Am Not ‘Anti-Vaccine,'” Hemant Mehta, Friendly Atheist, April 13, 2014

McCarthy rejects the science — and thinks she deserves credit for just asking questions. Even though those questions were answered a long time ago and she just wasn’t happy with the responses. If Jenny McCarthy is not “anti-vaccine,” then Ken Ham must be the greatest advocate of evolution we’ve ever seen. In the meantime, the Jenny McCarthy Body Count will continue to rise until she comes to her senses and rejects the harmful beliefs that she still holds.

GOP Lawmaker Compares Abortion To Buying A Car, Laura Bassett, Huffington Post, April 9, 2014

A Republican state lawmaker in Missouri defended his controversial bill forcing women to have ultrasounds before abortions by comparing abortion to purchasing a new vehicle. “In making a decision to buy a car, I put research in there to find out what to do,” state Rep. Chuck Gatschenberger (R) told colleagues at a hearing on the bill Tuesday. *** The major problem with Gatschenberger’s analogy, of course, is that people are not required by state law to do research before buying a car. State Rep. Stacey Newman (D) told Gatschenberger that his car analogy was “extremely offensive to every single woman sitting in here.”

Photo credit: Not credited. May be work of U.S. Public Health Service (1918 ad via [1]) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

What I’m Reading, April 11, 2014

Posted on April 11, 2014 by wellsdc

If Jesus Never Called Himself God, How Did He Become One? NPR’s Fresh Air, April 7, 2014

You do find Jesus calling himself God in the Gospel of John, or the last Gospel. Jesus says things like, “Before Abraham was, I am.” And, “I and the Father are one,” and, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” These are all statements you find only in the Gospel of John, and that’s striking because we have earlier gospels and we have the writings of Paul, and in none of them is there any indication that Jesus said such things. …

I think it’s completely implausible that Matthew, Mark and Luke would not mention that Jesus called himself God if that’s what he was declaring about himself. That would be a rather important point to make. This is not an unusual view amongst scholars; it’s simply the view that the Gospel of John is providing a theological understanding of Jesus that is not what was historically accurate.

Good riddance, Barbara Walters, Alex Pareene, Salon, May 13, 2013

Barbara Walters has announced her retirement from journalism, a profession she claims to have been practicing for more than 50 years. Walters, the former co-host of the “Today” show, ABC World News, “20/20,” and current co-host of “The View,” is a national icon and a pioneer, and probably as responsible as any other living person for the ridiculous and sorry state of American television journalism. She has announced her retirement a year in advance, so that a series of aggrandizing specials can be produced celebrating her long and storied career. So let’s get things started off right, by reminding everyone how her entire public life has been an extended exercise in sycophancy and unalloyed power worship.

What I’m Reading, April 10, 2014

Posted on April 10, 2014 by wellsdc

Photo credit: Nemo [CC0 1.0], via Pixabay On Ignoring Sound Methodologies: Empiricism, Scientism, And Other Ways Of Knowing, Academic Atheism, April 5, 2014

Lately, there’s been a move away from either taking empirical methodology at face value, so to speak, or attempts to demonstrate its weaknesses. Instead, there’s been a move toward avoiding it and/or claiming that some other methodology is better. People who did this, however, haven’t offered any good justification for claiming their methodology is better. The issue is that such thinking is beginning to become more widespread.

That leads to any even greater problem. Effectively, what ends up happening is that such people forgo their respect for truth. They’re basically stating that their prized opinion matters more than the truth—that they want to believe despite the evidence at hand. Prior to showing why empirical methodology can’t be avoided, it is useful to deal with some accusations—accusations that have become quite persistent and that rest in a misunderstanding.

The Sham of Conservative Originalism, Ed Brayton, Dispatches from the Culture Wars, April 7, 2014

Conservative originalism has always been a sham, a pretense of objectivity where there is none. Justice Scalia, in particular, loves to lecture everyone on how his textualism and originalism are objective, as opposed to all those liberal justices who only care about the outcome of the case. That’s simply a lie. Scalia himself is absolutely an outcome-based judge; compare his opinion on the scope of the Interstate Commerce Clause in Raich to his opinion in the health care reform case from two years ago, that is all the proof you will need. There are lots and lots of ways to manipulate originalism to get the result you want, including picking and choosing which views of the founding fathers are the ones that matter.

Republican SBOE Member Asks if Non-Mexican Americans Will Be Included in Mexican-American Studies, Katherine Haenschen, Burnt Orange Report, April 9, 2014

Republican SBOE Member Ken Mercer asked during a hearing on Mexican-American Studies if Cuban-Americans Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz would be included in the curriculum.

The debate centered on the potential creation of a Mexican American studies course that could be offered as an elective to the entire state. The SBOE would need to develop and approve the new course’s curriculum.

Hispanic students are the largest ethnic group in Texas public school systems. The overwhelming majority are of Mexican descent. It should be common sense that Texas public school students should be able to learn about leaders who share their heritage. After all, it seems to be working out just fine for the white kids.

The fact that Ken Mercer cannot distinguish between Cuban Americans and Mexican Americans suggests that this coursework is sorely needed.

8 Things America Gets Wrong About Sex, Amanda Duberman, Huffington Post, April 7, 2014

It’s difficult to distill America’s sexphobia into a few list-friendly factors. Rather, a puritanical seed planted around the 1700s, nourished by national identity, has grown into a sinister vine tightly wound around many of our public institutions. While antiquated laws about women and sex are lampooned for comedy and shows like “Masters Of Sex” and “Girls” are all over premium cable, the stigma around sex and sexuality persists where it hurts the most: in the classroom, doctor’s office, at political conventions and sometimes, in the voting booth.

Photo credit: Nemo [CC0 1.0], via Pixabay.

Cryptic Philosopher

:p~~~~~~

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