Hey, that'll boost traffic...

Documentation of the Ron Paul Effect...

[but is the humiliation worth it?]

[this post & the previous: h/t Andrew Sullivan]

Even a conservative evangelical sees through it

There's an interesting post discussing one's experience on the campaign trail for the Huckabee campaign, and the many interesting things learned....

The Mainstream Media Ain't So Bad -- Many bloggers (including me) have a knee-jerk reaction to the mainstream media. We "just know" they have a liberal bias and that they can't be trusted to report accurately on Republicans and conservatives. If my experience is any indication, then most of what we know is "just wrong."

[...]I expected that I'd have the toughest time with the professional journalists but most of the reporters that I dealt with (especially Michael Luo of the New York Times and Jonathan Martin of Politico) were quite fair and always professional. Even when their coverage was cringe-inducing I rarely could fault them for being inaccurate or putting their own biases ahead of the facts.

Unfortunately, the same can not be said of the conservative media.

[...] Almost always the mainstream media from the "liberal" outlets were more fair and balanced than were the ones from the "conservative" side of the media.

Some conservative outlets, of course, were notably fair and accurate. [...]

But while there were a few other exceptions that I could praise ... far too many of the conservative outlets refused to present any evidence that conflicted with their typical anti-Huckabee narrative.

[...]

As a campaign staffer, I found such behavior frustrating. But as a consumer of conservative media I found it infuriating. There are a number of pundits, bloggers, reporters, and radio hosts that I will never trust again to be "fair and balanced."

Sometimes learning the truth can be painful, can't it? Sadder but wiser now, and all that....

Mitt Romney will never be President -- I won't be surprised if Mitt Romney wins the Iowa Caucus. I will be surprised, however, if he's still in the race when the South Carolina primary comes around. Even if the impending scandal that has been rumored for weeks doesn’t derail his campaign (I can't say what it is but you should hear about it before Jan. 8), his inherent dishonesty will eventually do him in.

It's not just his flip-flops on the issues, though that should be enough....No, what will destroy Romney's chances is that he will lie about an issue, know that he is lying, know that you know he is lying, and say it anyway. It's not just that he's dishonest. It's that he thinks we're stupid.

Now it's true that in the short term, we do tend to be stupid.... [M]ost people have yet to realize--as have the other campaigns and the mainstream media--he is a liar. But eventually the public catches on.

[...] Because most of it is done behind the scenes (i.e., scurrilous emails sent to reporters and influential bloggers) it is difficult to point out the most egregious examples. Don't take my word on it, though. Ask around to the other campaigns and media outlets.

[...] His "lie and buy" strategy may get him a narrow victory in Iowa but he'll flame out soon enough.

Tell it, brother.

There's nothing here that we didn't already know. But it's nice to see it admitted.

The "fair and balanced" thing, I think, goes back to a point Garry Trudeau made (and yikes, I'm actually quoting him, what's wrong with me?) The so-called "liberal" takes it as a given that the other person's viewpoint may be valid, that listening to "the other" is inherently worthwhile. (What's done after that, and how it's often misused, is another story. And I should note that "listen to" and "agree with" are not synonyms.) The conservative, on the other hand, knows he's right... Why should he listen to someone who's wrong? If he knows what the story is, why should he listen to some staffer try to convince him otherwise?

The whole sorry spectacle is, to a degree, the legacy of Karl Rove, the politics of personal destruction writ large.

On the other hand, maybe it's simpler than that. Nobody does a political knife-fight better than Republicans. The money elite of the GOP is terrified of Huckabee, and want him stopped, almost as much as they want Ron Paul to shut up.

Oh well. Nice to see someone start to gather just a bit more awareness than they had before...

No comment necessary

From today's Washington Post homepage.

I suppose there's nothing wrong with relaxing a bit and mugging for the camera, but... is this really the image they want to present? Of course, as things get down to the wire, I'm becoming more and more horrified by what's coming out of this campaign, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised. On the other hand, personally, I've felt the GOP was ready for a good crash/burn for quite a while... This may be the party's Nemesis.

Decisions, decisions...

I'm working on the schedule for next semester, and have hit the perennial dilemma. Based on the number of weeks in the course, etc., our second exam should be at about week 12 or so. But there's this little thing called spring break right then. So the question is, do I hit the students with an exam right before break, or right after?

On the one hand, an exam right before break always feels a bit cruel. On the other, given that it takes a few days after break for students to get back into the groove, you can make a case that an exam after break is cruel, that it pushes them to perform right after they've been away from the material for a while.

Last year we had the exam right after break... I think this year we'll try it before, and see if it makes a difference.

Isn't this thrilling?

Sinking into Oligarchy

Glenn Greenwald has a must-read post about what the BushCo criminal enterprise has done to the rule of law and the idea that no one is above it.

Most revealing of all, anyone who insists that this should be different -- anyone who believes that our highest political officials and largest corporations should be held accountable when they break the law -- is a shrill "partisan," bent on vengeance and Guilty of obstructionism: trying to prevent the political establishment from operating in a harmonious, bipartisan manner to do their Important Work. At least under the Bush presidency, investigations into wrongdoing are bad and disruptive and mean-spirited, and calls for consequences for illegal behavior are shrill and nasty.

Count me as a proudly shrill partisan, then. Eight years of BushCo has done fundamental damage to American democracy, far more than Al Qaeda could ever dream of doing.

Also in that article, check out the link to Privacy International's new annual report. Based on their objective criteria, the US is now an "endemic surveillance society," right up there with China, Russia and a few of the military juntas of southeast Asia.

Question for the ages...

What is there about wills, estates, etc., that brings out the worst in family members? The most vicious fights over the most trivial stuff? And it's not stuff that has any sentimental value... we're talking about dilapidated junk. Yet there's a huge amount of "I GOTTA GET MINE!!!" going on.

I know, I'm not the first to ask that question. I'm just seeing it up-close-and-personal for the first time, and it's not pretty.

Helpful Suggestions

I saw a link to this article, revealing that President Doofus is planning on spending time next year traveling the world trying to boost America's image in the world.

With all due respect, it's going to take more than some speechifyin' to do that, mostly because of stuff President Doofus has done.

So, in the helpful spirit of the holidays, here are some suggestions on what he could do to boost America's image and standing in the world, that would definitely have more effect than any number of speeches he could give (because face it, speechifyin' is not his long suit):

1. Announce that effective immediately, waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation" techniques are contrary to the policy of the United States, and will not be applied against any person in U.S. custody anywhere in the world.
   
2. Reaffirm our historic adherence to Article 3 of the Geneva Convention, prohibiting cruel and inhumane treatment of persons in custody. (This would NOT extend POW rights to detainees; but all persons in custody are entitled to minimum decency.)
   
3. Instruct the Justice Dept to appoint a special counsel to investigate the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes as potential obstruction of justice and criminal conspiracy.
   
4. Announce our immediate commitment to the Kyoto Protocols and strengthening the Bali agreement. Additional funding in alternative-fuels research to be funded by a carbon tax. (Drive up the cost of crude, and the market will find an alternative.)
   
5. Announce your plans to reduce troop presence in Iraq by 50% by December 2008, and to have all troops out of Iraq by December 2009. In order to help the Iraqi government transition, non-military foreign aid may have to increase substantially. But if we're no longer spending a billion a week in Iraq, we can afford it.
   
6. Double the funding for the Consumer Product Safety Commission, to stop the disgrace of toxic toys.
   
7. I was going to say "Resign," but then I realized that would lead to President Vader. Stay where you are, the alternative would be worse. So, instead of resigning, announce that your primary focus will be the day-to-day operations of a caretaker administration, pending the next President. In the meantime, you will try to clean up some of your messes and attempt to restore the rule of law.
   

Further evidence religion makes you stupid

Or, "I don't understand it so it must be wrong. The Big Bang is silly, the universe didn't just blow into place, saying God did it is SO much more logical."

I'd think this was a parody, but the fool is apparently serious.

This illustrates the problem with religion. Once you throw out your thinking brain and start accepting absurdity on faith, your ability to understand anything else goes out the window.

[h/t: Ed Brayton, John Wilkins, both of whom deconstruct the fool's rant in more detail.]

Religion vs spirituality

The last couple of posts (heck, a continuing thread of posts throughout) beat up on the Bible-beaters. (But they're such an easy target.)

And yet, "spirituality" is one of the things I've listed as a semi-regular topic for the blog, though I haven't discussed it much. Maybe it's time to address that.

"Spiritual but not religious" is, I suppose, the closest I can come to describing my own outlook. (Some would say that's a null referent, that there is no such thing as spirituality without religion; I'm not so sure. In fact, I am sure; it's not a null.) A higher purpose to life, a long-term trend toward enlightenment and awareness of how we affect each other beyond our own tribe, recognition of our responsibilities toward each other, a commitment to live a little closer to "love thy neighbor as thyself" today than yesterday--those are what I try to aspire to.

Is there Something out there, Something Much Bigger Than Us? Perhaps. It can't be proven; there's no positive proof of anything that's convincing, and a negative can't be proven. (See the Black Swan fallacy.) And of course, "I would like this to be true" is no proof at all. I'd like to own a sports car, but no matter how much I want it, just wanting it isn't going to make a Ferrari appear in the carport.

But there are several things my spirituality is not. I reject dogma. I reject "You must believe this because our great-great-grandfathers believed this." I reject any system that requires me to ignore evidence or abjure reasoning. I do not claim to have all the answers, but I refuse to give up my right to ask any question I please. I reject any system based on blind obedience or accepting the ridiculous "on faith," especially any system that uses my ability to accept the ridiculous as a measure of merit. I reject any system requiring me to pay homage to a tribal sky-god in bad need of a 12-step program, or that takes ancient texts of dubious authorship as unquestionable ultimate authority. I reject any system based on who it excludes or who it hates--if there really is a Big Is out there, then it's out there for everyone, not just those who agree with me or who have names I can pronounce easily.

Thus, I reject organized religion, a man-made institution in which the control freaks have run amok, institutionalizing their privileges and consolidating their control. I particularly reject the toxic combination of religion and politics, which brings out the worst qualities of both. (See the Romney and Huckabee campaigns for easy examples; Pat Robertson's presidential run also comes to mind.)

Some people claim to be able to find spirituality through religion; personally, I've not seen much evidence of it. And for every person who does, there seem to be several more who clearly don't, who find in religion a way to confirm and reinforce their bigotry and let their worst instincts run rampant. I suspect those who found spirituality through their religion, would have found it by some other means if religion hadn't been there. Thus, no net loss if it were gone.

So as long as the Bible-beaters keep acting the fool, I'll keep mocking them.

And so it goes.

That's not what "separation of church & state" means

Sen. Grassley is asking several of the richer megachurches for information about how they're maintaining their tax-exempt status and how they're spending donor's money. Only 2 of the six he's contacted have sent any information back; one said he's welcome to subpoena them (I can see the press conference where they play the martyr card already). The others have said nothing.

The leaders of two ministries contacted by Mr. Grassley’s office who have answered his queries are Kenneth and Gloria Copeland of Kenneth Copeland Ministries of Newark, Tex., and Joyce Meyer, who with her husband, David, runs Joyce Meyer Ministries from Fenton, Mo.

Popular with women for her no-nonsense brand of self-help, Ms. Meyer was asked by Mr. Grassley’s office to explain the “tax-exempt purpose” of purchases including a “commode with marble top” bought for $23,000 for her headquarters.

Hmm. I have a hard time seeing how that level of luxury is needed in a church organization.

Oddly enough, none of these megachurches belong to the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, and of course they're not audited by an outside auditor.

My favorite argument, though, is that because they're churches, the Senator is violating Church-State separation by even asking the question. Amazing how the Bible-beaters talk about how separation is a liberal humanist myth when they're talking about forcing religion into public life, but they scurry and hide behind it when it's convenient. But why shouldn't snake-oil salesmen also be hypocrites?

It's really quite simple. There are laws that say you don't have to pay taxes on donations, provided you're using them for church purposes. The government is within its rights to verify that you're obeying the law. Otherwise, let the church pay you an outrageous salary, pay income tax on it, and buy your own $23,000 commode.

Poor Huckabee, Victim For Jesus

Once again, Huckabee misses the point:

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee made no apologies Sunday for the religious tone of a recent holiday campaign commercial and said it is important to look for Jesus at this time of year.

"You can find Santa at every mall. You can find discounts in every store," Huckabee said from the pulpit of Cornerstone Church. "But if you mention the name of Jesus, as I found out recently, it upsets the whole world. Forgive me, but I thought that was the point of the whole day."

No, Governor. No one's upset that you said Merry Christmas. Put away your persecuted-Christian complex. It riles up the base, but it makes you look like an idiot to the rest of us.

The problem is that you can't decide whether you're running for President, or Pastor-In-Chief. Different roles. It's fine for a preacher to preach religion. For a President, not so much.

Of course, deep thought isn't his long suit. On the one hand, he says:

Asked whether he was running for president of Christian America, Huckabee said he was campaigning to be the "president of all America, to be the people's president."

However, on the same day, he delivers a sermon at church, where he says

"The great truth of Christmas is that no matter how good we are, we're not good enough to know God without the Christ," said Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister. "And no matter how bad ... we are not so bad that he cannot find us."

"So while some people seem to want us to lose Jesus, I would like for us to do our best to find him," Huckabee said at the megachurch, where televangelist John Hagee is the senior pastor and founder.

And he insists his church appearance isn't political. So when he's president, will he occasionally take time out to make non-political, non-presidential church appearances to promote Christianity?

Seeing no contradiction here, no hypocrisy in his behavior, reveals his lack of consideration, the shallowness of his analysis. Feh. I'm with Hitchens on this one. Though part of me hopes he does well enough to cause serious problems for the GOP establishment. They spent years listening to Rove; let them reap the whirlwind.

Another semester down.

Wow, I hadn't intended to let 3 weeks go by. Long story short: Grading is finished. I had two students plagiarize their final papers for the ethics course (yes, irony is dead). End-of-semester statistics are gathered & turned in, & next semester's Blackboard sites are underway.

We're also in the middle of a blizzard. It must be December.

The more things change...

Checking the headlines real quick....

• Imus is back on the air.
• Larry Craig still isn't gay, despite 5 guys going on record as saying they had sex w/ him.
• Bush & Cheney Inc. lied about Iran's nukes.

In other words, nothing at all has changed. We now return you to your regularly scheduled reality.

Ah, a bit of brain floss....

A perfect antidote to the previous pious ramblings.

Hmmm....the timing was fortuitous. Almost miraculous. Obviously, a magic sky-daddy intended me to find that article at exactly the time I did.

More Unhinged Ramblings

I sincerely hope Time got things wrong in this article on Papa Ratzi's latest encyclical. Because they make him sound like a senile, doddering, deluded fool.

First, of course, he has to attack the wraith of Marxism, much as a GOP campaigner invoking the specter of Hillary, or an 80's evangelist raving about secular humanists. But the real problem you see, is materialism itself. The idea that by focusing on this world, we're providing "false hope of life without suffering":

"We can try to limit suffering, to fight against it, but we cannot eliminate it," Benedict writes. "It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater." In other words, the fall of Communism again proves that human salvation lies in the Gospel alone.

A great deal of ink has been spilled about what an intellectual Ratzinger is, about the quality of his thinking. If this is an example of it, the Church is in serious trouble.

First of all, I don't know of any serious thinker who maintains we can completely eliminate suffering, unhappiness, whatever. A straw man is one of the cheapest rhetorical tricks in the book, but I guess all's fair when the Church is involved. Secondly, isn't the alleviation of suffering held up as a goal by the Church? The problem, apparently, isn't that materialists try to alleviate suffering, it's that they point out ways of doing it (better food production, medicines, education, for a few) that don't involve blind obedience to magic sky-fairies.

Benedict argues that Marx was flawed, above all, because he misunderstood the human condition. "He forgot that man always remains man. He forgot man and he forgot man's freedom. He forgot that freedom always remains also freedom for evil.

Hm, he's got a point. If people are free, they might do things they shouldn't. That's what "freedom" means. That's why we've seen so many instances in history that when the Church had most of the political power, evil was eliminated, crime was unknown, and no one ever suffered.

He really seems annoyed that people have free will. I'm just saying.

It has become apparent since his election in April 2005 that this Pope, whether or not one agrees with him, stands out for his intellectual honesty and linguistic clarity.

If this is an example of either.... Well, maybe by comparison with his predecessors.

In this latest document, he uses Marxism — though no longer a clear and present danger to Catholic faith — as a warning against the rampant growth of reason, science and freedom without a commensurate growth of faith and morals.

Unfortunately, it's his unspoken, unexplored, and pernicious assumption that faith and morals are near-synonyms that is the root of the problem.

"The ambiguity of progress becomes evident. Without doubt, it offers new possibilities for good, but it also opens up appalling possibilities for evil — possibilities that formerly did not exist," Benedict writes. "We have all witnessed the way in which progress, in the wrong hands, can become and has indeed become a terrifying progress in evil. If technical progress is not matched by corresponding progress in man's ethical formation, in man's inner growth then it is not progress at all, but a threat for man and for the world."

In this much, at least, he seems to be in contact with reality. Unfortunately, he goes off the rails soon enough, and refers us back to tribal sky-gods and self-contradictory texts of dubious authorship as ultimate authorities. Bleh.

However, you have to love the patented Time non-conclusory conclusion:

Benedict's message of old-fashioned faith in the modern world is itself a call to revolution — or counter-revolution. Only time will tell how many respond to the call.

Translation: Maybe it's something. Or maybe its opposite. Or maybe it's nothing at all. We don't know.

Pretty hard to argue with logic like that.

But Logic is Hard!

I expect PZ will have something to say about this. (I hope he does, actually; he usually gets to the core of an issue very well.)

Consider the limitations of science...

All science proceeds on the assumption that nature is ordered in a rational and intelligible way. You couldn’t be a scientist if you thought the universe was a meaningless jumble of odds and ends haphazardly juxtaposed. When physicists probe to a deeper level of subatomic structure, or astronomers extend the reach of their instruments, they expect to encounter additional elegant mathematical order. And so far this faith has been justified.

. . .

Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are. The answers vary from “that’s not a scientific question” to “nobody knows.” The favorite reply is, “There is no reason they are what they are — they just are.” The idea that the laws exist reasonlessly is deeply anti-rational. After all, the very essence of a scientific explanation of some phenomenon is that the world is ordered logically and that there are reasons things are as they are. If one traces these reasons all the way down to the bedrock of reality — the laws of physics — only to find that reason then deserts us, it makes a mockery of science.

You see where this is going, don't you? OH NOES! SCIENCE HAS LIMITS! There are some things we don't know! What's more, some of the questions are so hard, we're not even sure what the right questions are. Therefore, the entire edifice must be a pack of lies.

But wait, it gets better. The anthropic principle gets snuck back in here...

A second reason that the laws of physics have now been brought within the scope of scientific inquiry is the realization that what we long regarded as absolute and universal laws might not be truly fundamental at all, but more like local bylaws. They could vary from place to place on a mega-cosmic scale. A God’s-eye view might reveal a vast patchwork quilt of universes, each with its own distinctive set of bylaws. In this “multiverse,” life will arise only in those patches with bio-friendly bylaws, so it is no surprise that we find ourselves in a Goldilocks universe — one that is just right for life. We have selected it by our very existence.

That's right... The entire universe was made just for us. And science says it may even be possible! If we push and twist and distort it enough.

And having made the setup, we conclude with the *koff* inevitable:

Clearly, then, both religion and science are founded on faith — namely, on belief in the existence of something outside the universe, like an unexplained God or an unexplained set of physical laws, maybe even a huge ensemble of unseen universes, too. For that reason, both monotheistic religion and orthodox science fail to provide a complete account of physical existence.

That's right. Them pointy-headed scientists is working just as much on faith as the rest of us. Pass the Leviticus.

But wait, there's more!

This shared failing is no surprise, because the very notion of physical law is a theological one in the first place, a fact that makes many scientists squirm. Isaac Newton first got the idea of absolute, universal, perfect, immutable laws from the Christian doctrine that God created the world and ordered it in a rational way. Christians envisage God as upholding the natural order from beyond the universe, while physicists think of their laws as inhabiting an abstract transcendent realm of perfect mathematical relationships.

And just as Christians claim that the world depends utterly on God for its existence, while the converse is not the case, so physicists declare a similar asymmetry: the universe is governed by eternal laws (or meta-laws), but the laws are completely impervious to what happens in the universe.

That's right. In even trying to look for physical law, the scientists were going on faith the whole time. They're religious, they just don't know it! Or won't admit it because they hate baby Jesus!

But until science comes up with a testable theory of the laws of the universe, its claim to be free of faith is manifestly bogus.

Translation: I can think up a hypothetical at the cutting edge that you don't have a soundbite answer for. Therefore God.

But what alternative are you offering?

God.

I see. Then how did the universe come to be?

God.

How can we understand its workings?

God.

What evidence do you have for this position?

God.

What reasons do you have for this position?

God.

What testable hypothesis does this lead to?

None. God doesn't need it and can't be
proven anyway. Therefore God.

Well, thanks for clearing that up.

I find myself actually quoting celebrity loon Scott Adams, who (back when his books were worth reading) had a list called You Are Wrong Because:, listing various logical errors. I believe this one would be "Incompleteness as Proof of Defect." Sample case: Your theory of gravity doesn't explain why there are no unicorns, therefore it must be wrong.

Science can't answer the question I pulled out of my butt, therefore it's obviously bogus.

Feh. And this is what passes for reasoning in some quarters? And religionists wonder why fewer and fewer people take them seriously?

Obviously a between-semester activity

So looking back over the number of posts per week, starting with late August and moving forward to the present:
16, 14, 6, 4, 9, 3, 7, 1, 1, 1, 1, 2.

And the only reason there's 2 posts this week (counting this one) is that with the Thanksgiving break, I've had time to clear some backlog.

Clearly a trend. At least this semester, as real life has intruded, blogging has dropped off. No surprise, really. It's been a busy semester. Accreditation site visit, dealing with the aftermath thereof (no matter how well things go, there's always aftermath), organizing for the programming competition we're hosting next semester, working on a conference presentation and a journal paper... Not to mention various family crises, out-of-the-blue calls from exes, and various other things to fill up my copious free time.

On the bright side, I'm certainly not bored.

Linguistic Hazard

In Croatian, as in other languages, changing a single consonant can completely change the meaning of a word.

Thus, one should be careful when singing in Croatian if one does not actually speak Croatian.

In this case, a line from the Croatian national anthem turned into a brag about one's anatomy.

And so it goes.

I don't get it.

Or rather, get it too well.

The AP reported this morning that Musharraf said he'd step down from the Army this month. The BBC doesn't have anything up about it, though they have other stories on Pakistan. The NYTimes has their interview with him, in which he didn't give a date, but no reference to any statement he was stepping down from the Army, not even to cast doubt on it. From CNN... [sigh] all the latest on OJ, which is of course the most important thing that's happening in the world.

Various updates

Took the team to the regional programming contest this past weekend, did fairly well... Useful learning for the programming contest we're hosting in April (that I somehow got put in charge of).

Meanwhile, got Eclipse installed and running on my office machine for Java and C++, and located a decent downloadable C++ reference we can install on the contest machines.

Now we just need to work out the details, such as where we're going to put the contestants...