What went wrong

I've gently tweaked Andrew Sullivan a few times in this space (and not-so-gently blasted him in emails back & forth w/ a friend of mine). I read his stuff for the same reason I read George Will--he's usually wrong, but often in an interesting or thought-provoking way. And he occasionally goes completely off the rails, as in his latest contest, "Let's protest all the negative campaign ads by making our own negative campaign ads."

But when he's right, he's spot-on:

A critical part of what's gone wrong these past few years has been the tendency of a war president to bully opponents, distort their meaning, use base emotional appeals when we need far more rational discussion about how to counter a very complex, terrifying Islamist threat. The kind of campaigns Rove ran in 2002, 2004 and 2006 made all this far harder. It reduced important debates about priorities in the war, detention and interrogation policies, the wisdom of long-term enmeshment in the Middle East, the difficulties of securing loose nukes, the excruciatingly difficult calls on which allies to trust and how - into dumb-ass contests about who is the biggest bad-ass, who is a treasonous wimp and which opponent most belongs in a French hair salon.

Some Daily Mencken

I may make this a regular feature, I'd forgotten how good some of his stuff is:

The inferior man's reasons for hating knowledge are not hard to discern. He hates it because it is complex - because it puts an unbearable burden upon his meager capacity for taking in ideas. Thus his search is always for short cuts. Their aim is to make the unintelligible simple, and even obvious.

--HL Mencken

Stupidity as policy

Paul Krugman has a spot-on column today on how Know-Nothingism--"the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise"--has become accepted wisdom in the GOP.

Until we get over the poisonous anti-intellectualism rampant in this country, particularly our political discourse--the idea that those who think too much or learn too much are untrustworthy and deserve nothing but contempt, that "common sense" and childlike faith will always carry us through to victory no matter what--we can't hope to clean up the mess we've made over the last 20 years. Our economy is a mess, our standing in the world in tatters, and when a candidate points out a simple low-cost way to save as much gas as offshore drilling would gain for us, he's mocked for it, even though the numbers show he's right.

Given two choices, we keep opting for the stupid one, and then wonder why things don't get better.

Consumer issues

Followup to this post.

I received this email today:

Thank you for writing Crock-Pot ; a division of Jarden Consumer Solutions.

We do apologize that you have experienced trouble with our product. I have sent out a warranty replacement Crock-Pot, to replace the unit that was defective. Also, a pre-paid shipping label will be delivered separate from your new Crock-Pot. Please place the defective unit in the box and ship it back to us, free of charge to you.

Please write back if we can provide further assistance. You may also reach us at (800) 777-5452. We are open from 8:00am to 8:00pm, EST, Monday thru Friday.

Best Regards,

Danielle

Jarden Consumer Solutions

They misspelled my first name in the email, but that's a minor annoyance. But I posted a scathing review, I should also post that they responded by replacing the unit.

Now, if this one fails in the same way, I'm going to be, um, annoyed, to say the least. But they're at least making an effort.

But he's a nice guy!

Today's Post has a nauseating op-ed. The point of it seems to be, Ted Stevens' corruption indictment is a darn shame, and we ought to all just let bygones be bygones, because after all, he's really brought home the bacon and is a nice guy when you talk to him.

Disgusting.

This is the same entitlement mentality that argued that Scooter Libby shouldn't go to jail because, well, he shouldn't, because he's one of us. Baloney.

And the argument being made isn't the (quite legitimate) point that indictment isn't conviction, and we should avoid rushing to judgment. Rather, it seems to be, we shouldn't even ask the question, because he's one of us.

Disgusting, wrong, and a dangerous attitude.

Musical Break

Go watch these. They're worth it.

Quote of the day

The foundation of morality is to ... give up pretending to believe that for which there is no evidence, and repeating unintelligible propositions about things beyond the possibilities of knowledge.

--T. H. Huxley

Definitionses

In my facebook profile, I call myself an agnostic. I recently got a question about it from a friend of mine, who noted that I used to identify with a particular religion. What happened? Here's an excerpt from my reply, with minor edits for clarity.

Well, for a start, I haven't practiced in years. I did for a while after my divorce, and considered myself religious for quite a while after that. As I drifted away from organized religion, my beliefs gradually shifted, becoming less and less denominational, less and less specific...and, as time went on, less and less theistic at all. Today I'm not even sure I'd qualify as a Deist.

Mostly , it was a process of "Do I really believe this? Not 'do the people around me believe it,' not 'do I get patted on the back for saying I believe it'--do I really and truly, deep down, believe this?" And more and more, the answer came back, no, I don't. And while I've never been a literalist (well, not past the age of 10 or so, but that doesn't really count, does it?) the more I thought about it, the more skeptical I got.

Partly, I think, because so many of the arguments in favor of belief are so awful. I'm enough of an intellectual and skeptic (and all-around horse's ass, at times) that anything I claim as a belief is going to have to stand up to some fairly rigorous scrutiny, and most of the arguments for belief don't come close. And heck, even if Jesus Himself Touched My Heart And Gave Me New Eyes To See, all that would prove would be that I'd had some kind of emotional experience. See any number of previous blog posts for deconstructions & fiskings of various stupid arguments for God.

So, I've pretty much given up on any idea of a magic invisible daddy in the sky who loves me as his very own. It would be a comforting belief, but "Believing it makes me feel better, so I believe it" isn't a satisfying argument. (Though if someone else says they believe something because it comforts them, well, I can't very well argue with that, and need only respect their right to be irrational. When they say believing something comforts them, therefore *I* must also believe the same thing and am a rotten commie traitor who hates Baby Jesus if I don't--that's when I part company with them.)

I went with "agnostic" rather than "atheist" because I'm also not convinced of the atheist position. There's a difference between I don't know what's there and I know for sure there's nothing there. There's no conclusive rational proof of God, but disproof is also impossible. The most you can say is there's no evidence for it, therefore we shouldn't assume it's there unless we have some other good reason to. That's my beef with the Intelligent Design nitwits: "God did it" is not the simplest, most parsimonious, least-assumption explanation. I'm willing to be persuaded, but haven't heard a convincing argument yet.

So how do I reconcile that with active participation in a 12-step program that puts emphasis on reliance on a Higher Power? Almost 20 yrs sobriety has taught me, sometimes painfully, that if I do certain things, life tends to go a little smoother; if I do certain other things, I get a little crazy, and if I keep doing those other things, I'll probably get drunk. Whether or not there's a deity behind them, following certain principles keeps me on an even keel. "God" is a useful metaphor for something pulling me toward those principles, and regular prayer and meditation has put me into the habit of taking a few minutes and calmly reviewing my day before setting out in the morning, and again at the end of the day, and promptly trying to clean up any messes or unfinished business before it festers. It's put me into the habit of thinking of other people rather than myself first (at least, not thinking of myself first all the time), and evaluating my actions by whether I'm living up to the values I'm professing--values that don't necessarily need a magic sky-fairy to be legitimate. Am I being honest with others and myself? Can I disagree with someone without being disagreeable? Am I treating others with respect? Am I meeting my responsibilities as an employee, as a family member, as a citizen? If not, what can I do about those things? If I can't change everything at once, what can I change today? At the end of a meeting, I don't need to go off on magic sky-fairies while everyone else says the Lord's Prayer--that would be rude and disrespectful to their beliefs, even if I don't share them, while maintaining silence costs me nothing.

At the convention last weekend, I talked with a woman whose (non-12-step, no need for one) brother works for Anheuser-Busch in St Louis. They just got bought out, and no word yet on who's keeping their job and who isn't. She asked if he was worried about it, and he just shrugged and said, no, nothing he can do about it either way, so he's just doing his job until he hears otherwise. And she (and I) were boggled--how do normal people do that? How do they get it that simply? We have to bang our heads against the wall several times before we remember the serenity prayer about accepting what we can't change and all that.

So, yeah, "agnostic" is about the most accurate description of where I'm at now. Further bulletins as things develop.

Don't buy this product

I don't usually do product reviews, let alone get all suzy-homemaker, but I'm sufficiently annoyed about blatant shoddiness that maybe someone else can be warned off so they don't make the mistake I did.

I recently bought a large Crock-Pot slow cooker, model SCVS600. This model has a glass lid that is attached at one side, with a hinge on one side and a handle on the other. The lid can latch down for transportation, which is the selling point, as it's allegedly "portable."

DO NOT BUY THIS PRODUCT.

The handle on the lid, and the hinge mechanism, are made of a plastic that gets soft when heated. (Oddly enough, the lid of a slow cooker can get a little warm, and stay a little warm for quite a while, particularly if you're using it for, oh, say, cooking slowly.)

Thus, when you lift the lid, the handle can snap off in your hand, sending the lid crashing back down, and dropping a few small shards of soft plastic into your food.

Or, if you decide it's still usable and use it again a few weeks later, and leave it on high for 2 hours (not a particularly long time as slow-cooker standards go), the plastic around the hinge itself can give way, thus spilling more plastic bits into your food and in this case, the bonus effect of sending a hot glass lid down onto your countertop, good luck stopping it without grabbing onto anything hot.

DO NOT BUY THE CROCK-POT MODEL SCVS600,
THE ONE WITH THE HINGED LID.

I have no idea how their other models are, but THIS one is definitely NOT recommended, because of the poor quality of the plastic used in making the hinged lid. It falls apart--literally--within a few uses.

Yes, I've complained to the company. No response as of yet. Further updates (if any) as events develop.

Addendum: Looks like I'm not the only one.

Update: The company has responded. Text of their email here.

"Well, duh!" Headline Of The Day

From CNN:


I suppose there's a market for unattractive sex... but I don't think I care to know the details.

[Yes, yes, different people have different ideas about what "attractive" or "unattractive" may be, in this context, I know.]

Incidentally, here's the full story, if you want the details.

Reality Explained

[h/t: PZ Myers]

Mars Pulls Ad

It looks as if M&M/Mars has pulled the obnoxiously homophobic ad they were running.

How many times will they make the same mistake, I wonder?

Memo to David Brooks

Re: this morning's hit piece

David: Yes, JFK & Reagan made much more hard-headed speeches in Germany. They were specific. They talked about what America could and should do.

But: they were already President at the time.

If Obama had loaded up his speech with policy prescriptions, with specifics about what should be done and how, you would undoubtedly excoriate him--and rightfully so--for making a campaign speech on foreign soil.

Is it the speech President Obama should have given? Absolutely not. However, for Presumptive Nominee Obama, it was about as specific as it could have been. He's one Senator out of a hundred, and does not set U.S. foreign policy.

Yet.

Really, is the idea of context all that hard?

Quote of the day

I think if I were truly evil, I would have to demand that all of my acolytes be celibate, but would turn a blind eye to any sexual depravities they might commit. If I wanted to be an evil hypocrite, I'd drape myself in expensive jeweled robes and live in an ornate palace while telling all my followers that poverty is a virtue. If I wanted to commit world-class evil, I'd undermine efforts at family planning by the poor, especially if I could simultaneously enable the spread of deadly diseases. And if I wanted to be so evil that I would commit a devastating crime against the whole of the human race, twisting the minds of children into ignorance and hatred, I would be promoting the indoctrination of religion in children's upbringing, and fomenting hatred against anyone who dared speak out in defiance.

--PZ Myers

300th post!

Well. What a landmark. Of sorts. Not sure what it means.

Rather like many of my posts, no doubt...

Not-feeling-the-love dept.

A London Times columnist on the Obama phenomenon:

In the great Battles of Caucus and Primary he smote the conniving Hillary, wife of the deposed King Bill the Priapic and their barbarian hordes of Working Class Whites.

And so it was, in the fullness of time, before the harvest month of the appointed year, the Child ventured forth - for the first time - to bring the light unto all the world.

Not-McCain's-Week Dept.

The political gods are not smiling on the McCain campaign, which had to cancel a campaign event including an oil-rig photo op... because of a nearby oil spill.

Savor the delicious taste of irony.

Give them enough rope...

Elaine Donnelly finally gets her big chance and testifies to Congress about how teh gayz will destroy the military. With no qualifications as a military expert or an expert on human sexuality, she still had plenty to tell the Congresscritters. And she did. And thus helped set back her own cause.

A double standard? Say it ain't so!

Some speculation on why the media isn't all over the Edwards-has-a-love-child-maybe-kinda-sorta story. Double standard? Duh. Of course.

Quote of the day

Maybe [Rick Warren] is representative of the country, though…superficially earnest and well meaning, with a seething core of stupid that means we'll do horrible things in spite of good intentions.

--PZ Myers