I have a tendency to retreat into the privacy of my own private den when things are not going perfectly in my life. This is not a good trait. It is not fair to me or my friends. I am sorry, and I am going to work on this trait, so please bear with me. Pun intended. With that said, I am slowly coming out of hibernation, so I will be trying to get back in touch with the rest of society very soon and will be blogging more regularly. As I wake from my hibernation, the bear is apparently pissed.

The fact though is that I have been in hibernation, so I may not have my facts straight. I thought I was waking up in the year 2008, not sometime in the 1940s and 1950s where McCarthy and other fear mongers thought that we can simply dismiss and, in some cases, destroy lives by screaming socialism. I thought that I was taught that a true and strong democracy was based on a battle of ideas. Again, my mind may be a little cloudy due to the hibernation, but surely we have not returned to these tactics of screaming socialism in the year 2008. I almost wish that I was wrong.

The fact is that we are in the year 2008. The fact is that Republicans are now screaming socialism on the campaign trail. This pisses me off. Whatever happened to expecting professionalism and maturity out of adults? I expected professionalism from my secretary, so why can I not expect and demand the same from my politician? Why would the scream of socialism not be professional and not be mature? Simply, it is wrong…the Republicans know that…the Republicans have made the choice to appeal to the worst in humanity by scaring the voting public with emotionally charged words. In full disclosure, I am not voting for Obama…or McCain for that matter, but I do hate it when I am put in a position to completely defend someone attacked unfairly.

This is why it is wrong…

All of this is coming from McCain’s continued use of Joe the Plumber’s question regarding Obama’s tax plan. McCain keeps describing Obama’s tax plan as a redistribution of wealth akin to socialism.

First, read Karl Marx before you call anyone a socialist. Tax plans do not make someone a socialist.

Second, we have a progressive tax system in this country. This is a fact. What does this mean? This means that the more money that you make, the more taxes as a percent of your overall income you will pay. To illustrate this, the tax brackets for a single (unmarried) person in 2008 are the following:

- 10%: from $0 to $8,025
- 15%: from $8,026 to $32,550
- 25%: from $32,551 to $78,850
- 28%: from $78,851 to $164,550
- 33%: from $164,551 to $357,700
- 35%: $357,701 and above

Why do we do this? Because it is fair. Why is it fair? Here is an illustration. Take Person X that is trying to live on $10,000 a year. Person X is poor. Person X is dirt poor. Person X has to worry about basic necessities of food and water, shelter, and clothing at this income level. Person X is in the 15% tax bracket. Now, take Person Y making $200,000 a year. Person Y’s worries are very different. Person Y is not worrying about survival. Person Y has all necessities covered by their large income. Person Y is in the 33% tax bracket. Yes, the percentages of taxes are different, and yes it is fair. But shouldn’t Person X and Person Y pay the same percentage in taxes for it to be fair? Well, we do not have a flat tax in this country. If we were to expect Person X and Person Y to both pay 25%, just to pick a percentage in the middle, more and more people like Person X will not be able to afford the basic necessities of life, eventually becoming dependent on the state for shear survival. In order to avoid this, we ask those of us that can afford to pay more to pay more. The fact is that those of us who have been given an opportunity to make more have the infrastructure, society, and culture that the government helped to create and maintain to thank for it…to some degree.

Obama did not invent the progressive tax system. It is a fact of our society. In the last 100 years, we have never had a flat tax system. The only thing that changes is the steepness of progression. In fact, during WWII, the highest tax bracket was 94%. 94 fucking percent… Surely, this was just because we were in war. Obviously, WWII was the main driving factor to taxes being that high in the highest tax bracket, but the reality is that we have a strong history of high taxation of the rich. To illustrate this, when I was born in 1978, the highest tax rate was 70%.

If McCain is going to complain about a progressive tax plan, you would expect his plan to be a flat tax…right? Nope…Not at all. He is taking his plan completely out of context in order to scare us all. The Tax Policy center compared Obama and McCain’s tax plans. It can be found here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/06/09/ST2008060900950.html

McCain can claim that he will be reducing taxes, but this does not mean that he himself is not guilty of a redistribution of wealth. You see, just because you lower taxes on the wealthy, does not mean that you have created a flat tax where everyone is paying the same percentage of income in taxes. He still is proposing a progressive tax system. He knows this, and he is a hypocrite that is trying to scare voters by screaming socialism.

Another example of him being a hypocrite…McCain voted against Bush’s tax cuts “because of the disproportional amount that went to the wealthiest Americans.” I guess he was in favor redistribution of wealth at that time. Check out the transcript on Meet the Press this past Sunday.

Third, a nuanced fear that McCain is pushing is that Obama’s plan will result in refundable tax credits that would result in the government cutting a check to citizens that actually have no income tax liability resulting in Obama giving welfare to Americans…i.e. – OBAMA IS A BIG SOCIALIST…He is giving money to people that do not pay income taxes…Here is the problem. Our tax system already pays out refundable tax credits to people that have no income tax liability…How can this be? McCain is not pointing out an important factor…People who do not have income tax liability due to low income still pay taxes. How? They still pay payroll taxes…What are payroll taxes? Payroll taxes go to Social Security and Medicare.

McCain’s own tax plan has a refundable tax credit for health care expenses, so he knows that these exist and is even proposing some himself…

More color on this issue can be found at this link:

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/813/

Finally, still on the tax issue, but less on the socialism issue, McCain wants us to worry that Obama’s tax plans will hurt corporations in this country because the statutory tax rate is not the lowest corporate tax rate amongst industrialized nations. Surely McCain cannot be wrong that corporations would be attracted to countries with lower taxes. He is actually quite right. The problem is that McCain is playing the fear card again because he knows that the American public does not understand the nuances of the tax code. Yep, he is purposely misleading the American voter, and scaring them into voting for him…Country First…I think not.

The nuance is in the concept of the effective tax rate. An effective tax rate refers to the actual rate of taxes paid, not the tax rate written in the statutes. Why would a corporation pay a different tax rate than the ones written in the tax codes? First, corporations have tax offsets that lower taxable income. Second, corporations…are you sitting down?…keep two separate tax books…and this is legal. One tax book is kept to report earnings for the stock market…i.e. – higher earning means that the stock will go up. The other tax book is used to determine how much in taxes the corporations have to pay. How are these tax books different? One way is that the two books use different ways of valuing inventory which drives up earnings or liabilities depending on the method you use. What is the end result? The Government Accountability Office found that 2/3 of all corporations did not pay any taxes between 1998 and 2005…Good times…

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/business/13tax.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

So where does this leave us? No candidate is perfect. No platform is perfect. However, there is no room for screaming socialism in the year 2008. A democracy is a battle of ideas, so show up and bring some ideas to the table. We need some fucking ideas. What we do not need is diversions of stating that I am putting the Country First while at the same time purposefully and knowingly appealing to the worst in all of us.

Here is the reality…

- A recession is coming.
- We have 2 fucking wars going on.
- We have a disappearing middle class as more and more middle class jobs leave the country leaving us with working class service jobs.
- 3 weeks ago I had friends wondering if they should pull money out of their checking accounts…Seriously, a potential run on the bank. 3 weeks ago I was reliving “It’s a Wonderful Life.”
- Whether you want to ignore all science and say the global warming may not be caused by humans (this is an issue for another time), the world is changing.
- People are losing their homes.

And you want me to tolerate a Red Scare now?

Both plans are progressive tax plans. The fact is that the rich will still be rich, will still be able to live a rich lifestyle, and just because you may pay more taxes if you get rich this does not in any way destroy the incentive system for people wanting to be rich…

McCain is a liar, and he is putting McCain and McCain alone First.

• A character in the movie “The Holiday” stated that “In the movies, we have leading ladies and the best friend. You’re supposed to be the leading lady of your own life, for God’s sake.” I am not sure what this means, but I am trying to incorporate it into my life. Hello world…I am a leading lady!?!

• Ballerinas cannot punch.

• It is 2008, and I can still dunk. This translates to I am not old…yet.

• The election system needs to be revamped…
- Today, I felt a little disenfranchised. The fact that I essentially had to vote for my third or fourth favorite candidate in the party that I reluctantly vote in shows that there is a problem. After primaries in around 5 states, we have a system where candidates drop out before the vast majority of America has a chance to have a say.
- Let us please have a discussion about voters in Iowa. They are not automatically better voters, more informed voters, better judges of character, etc.
- Let us at least acknowledge that although this year’s election has been noteworthy in the sense that for the first time we have a viable woman candidate and a viable African-American candidate, the next president will be rich. This has not changed. No matter what Obama’s background is or what his name is, he is still a graduate of Harvard Law. This is not your average American. This is not a paradigm shift.
- Let us please have a real discussion about what it means to vote. Should we vote for who we think will win? Should we vote for who is winning in the latest poll? Should we vote for who we would rather have a smoothie with? Should we vote for who is raising the most amount of money? Should we vote for who makes us feel the most inspired but have no idea what the person stands for? Should we vote for who has the same demographics? Should we vote for whom we think will handle issues the way we think they should be handled? This real discussion needs to happen. Without this discussion, we go from election to election without an educated and informed voting public. An election determined by the uninformed results in what? Imagine the changes we could create if we demanded education of issues, public stances of issues by the candidates, and people actually knowing what they are voting for.
- Let us at least acknowledge that election coverage is a joke. Let us take the Democrats for an example. Obama entered the race on February 10, 2007. This is almost a year ago. We have all of the advantages of year long political coverage, many forms of media to get stances out, and most still could not tell me what are the specific differences between Obama and Hillary. Part of this is the voting public’s apathy. Part of this is the election coverage that treats it as a “horse race” not an election. Part of it is that our candidates do not state their platforms. No matter what side you end up on. The reality is that Obama does not speak in specifics…hardly ever. He gives a great speech. He gives an inspiring speech. He creates hope in the public. However, hope does not pay heating bills. Hope does not pay mortgages. I am not picking on Obama. Every candidate is guilty of this, but many Americans, however, will be casting a ballot today for Obama and not be able to tell you what he wants to do. This is the problem…Not necessarily Obama.
- Let us have a real discussion about privatization. Is the free market really better? Is it really always more efficient?
- Let us have a real discussion about Blackwater. Do we want to have private militaries? Do we want to have a private intelligence company that they are in the process of building as we speak? Do we want to have a private army that is fully armed and running around our cities as Blackwater was doing in New Orleans during Katrina? Is this a good idea?
- Let us have a real discussion about economics. We have a voting public that still believes in some form of trickle down economics. What is wrong with the average American when they would support a system that gives more money to the rich in hope that a little bit of the vast benefit that we just gave to the rich will trickle down to the rest of us? I understand how language and framing an issue can determine how we think about the issue, but trickle down economics does not even sound good for us and we support it.
- Let us have a real discussion about Corporations and the stock market. We have a candidate in Romney that made a fortune off buying corporations, laying people off, and reselling the company for a profit. The average American does not think that there is anything wrong with this because he is acting in the best interest of the shareholder. What is wrong with us when the average American lives from pay check to pay check and depends on a job to make this work, but yet we are ok with someone placing the needs of a rich shareholder’s account balance over the job of the worker that actually pays for food?

• Finally, I am apparently in a ranting mood this week…

On August 10, 2005, President George W. Bush signed the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users (SAFETEA-LU). SAFETEA-LU authorizes the Federal surface transportation programs for highways, highway safety, and transit for the 5-year period 2005-2009

Not surprisingly, passenger trains are mentioned nowhere. Fuck US Transportation policy.

For further information, see the Transportation Research, Development and Technology Strategic Plan for 2006 - 2010. I’ll highlight the following from the framework :

To support DOT goals and RD&T strategies, the RD&T Planning Council has also identified six emerging research priority areas to guide the Department ’s RD&T investments. These priorities represent areas where the Department would make greater investments over the next five years and beyond should it have greater flexibility in RD&T program funding. In addition, these six research areas meet the following criteria: (1) they support identified Departmental goals and priorities; (2) they offer the greatest potential return on investment; and (3) they are areas where Federal RD&T is most appropriate and not likely to be duplicated by other efforts. The Department ’s emerging research priorities are:

* Human–Automation Interaction. Conduct and support research leading to an increased understanding of human-machine interactions related to safety performance.
* Application of Enhanced Transportation Safety Data and Knowledge. Conduct and support efforts to convert the large quantities of data produced by applications of digital technology into useful knowledge that can improve transportation safety.
* Congestion Reduction Policy Research and Technologies. Strengthen policy research and analysis on congestion reduction, congestion pricing, and innovative financing, and conduct RD&T to evaluate the effectiveness and market acceptance of traveler and traffic information technologies, products, and services.
* System Resilience and Global Logistics. Conduct and support RD&T to identify freight bottlenecks and changing transportation patterns and to develop and implement technologies to enhance the efficiency of cargo flows.
* Next Generation Air Transportation System. Provide the knowledge base to achieve greater aviation throughput and capacity; reduce user and service costs, including congestion; increase service productivity; and ensure a safe, secure, and environmentally compatible aviation system.
* Energy Efficiency and Alternative Fuels. Conduct and support research to understand the impact of fuel prices and fuel efficiency on mobility, opportunities to improve fuel efficiency, transportation requirements associated with alternative fuel infrastructures, and safety impacts of alternative fuel vehicles.

Still no trains. But they would like to increase Air travel throughput and capacity WHILE reducing costs. Good fucking luck on that one.

Finally, from the DOT’s overall strategic plan thru 2011 :

DOT National Strategy

1. National Strategy to Reduce Congestion (Supports all outcomes)
a. Relieve urban congestion in model cities by implementing a broad congestion pricing or variable toll demonstration; creating or expanding express bus service; securing agreements from major area employers to establish or expand telecommuting and flex scheduling programs; and expediting completion of the most significant highway capacity programs that hold the greatest potential for reducing congestion and bottlenecks.

I’ll paraphrase : “BUILD MORE ROADS! PUT FANCY TECHMOLOGY ON THEM TO TELL YOU WHEN THEY’RE AT CAPACITY! Oh, maybe put some buses on there too, but only buses without any useful intermodal options.”

*Sigh*

originally written for the 9/11 attacks, this short essay sums up a lot of the degenerate pricks on the television you are seeing right now in the wake of the VT shootings.

Many people will use this terrible tragedy as an excuse to put through a political agenda other than my own. This tawdry abuse of human suffering for political gain sickens me to the core of my being. Those people who have different political views from me ought to be ashamed of themselves for thinking of cheap partisan point-scoring at a time like this. In any case, what this tragedy really shows us is that, so far from putting into practice political views other than my own, it is precisely my political agenda which ought to be advanced.

Not only are my political views vindicated by this terrible tragedy, but also the status of my profession. Furthermore, it is only in the context of a national and international tragedy like this that we are reminded of the very special status of my hobby, and its particular claim to legislative protection. My religious and spiritual views also have much to teach us about the appropriate reaction to these truly terrible events.

(via BoingBoing)

1) Mr. Rogers. At a time when public broadcasting was under attack (much like today), Mr. Rogers, then in his thirties, went in front of the applicable appropriation committee and turned its scrooge chairman’s heart from stone. Absolutely stirring in delivery:

2) Marx Brothers. I’m not sure which one of the ‘brothers’ this is, but the artistry and creativity shown here blows my mind:

Today, I learned that I am an orphan. I always knew there was something different about me, but until recently I thought it was just a snippy attitude and an unnatural fondness for poop jokes. But no, there is something else. You see, I’ve never had a family.

I thought I had a family. I could have sworn I had one at one point. I grew up with these two adults who looked like me and took pictures of me on my birthday, but apparently they were just some married couple who made a baby.

We were almost a family; the female component of my married couple stayed at home to raise me. The male went to work. They dragged me to church every Sunday. But according to the Utah city of Kanab, a family must have a “quiver of children.” And here’s the catch: I’m an only child.
 

Sure, I got to keep my My Little Pony palace all to myself. I never had to share my Tinker Toys or wear hand-me-down clothing, but those are small prices to pay for the safety and security of a true, wholesome family. Ordained by God, no less.

I’m not entirely sure what a quiver is. I don’t think Utah has decreed that children should be carried around in a case that holds arrows. Two children probably don’t qualify as a quiver either, but do three count? Four? Five?

I can’t believe the adults who raised me never gave me a proper family. Sure, my “mother” was warned by doctors that a second childbirth might kill her, but what’s a little internal bleeding when something is ordained by God? You can’t blame her, of course. She, too, was an orphan without any brothers or sisters. Just like a crack baby is more likely to grow up and become addicted to drugs, so was she raised to believe that solitary childhood was a valid way of life. Even worse, her mother worked as a nurse. In the 1950s. How did my poor mother survive? Who greeted her when she came home from school? Who made her afternoon snacks? No one.  She was left to make them herself. She could have eaten broken glass for lunch and no one would have been around to stop her. Oh, how far our society has crumbled.  

It will take some time before I will be able to accept my orphan lifestyle. I can’t cry myself to sleep every night, weeping for the family I never had. One day my tears will dry up and I will be ready to move on. I will get married, pop out some kids and sit at home all day in a recliner, eating Doritos and watching Oprah while little Slurpy (Slurpy is a good name for a child, right?) fetches me another beer from the fridge. When my husband comes home from work, I’ll make some Easy Mac for dinner, then he and I will tape 40s to our hands and drink until we pass out in front of the color TV, the way a true couple should. Yes, that’s how it will be. That’s right, Utah. One day, I will have a family. And there’s nothing you disgruntled out-of-town liberals and gay protesters can do about it.

If I appear to be thinking a lot about this topic lately, well, appearances don’t decieve. In truth, I’ve always been interested in the way science and religion interact. As a science minded youth who was brought up Christian, it was natural, and necessary, to try and reconcile the two. It seems many people don’t feel the same way.

At any rate, I’d like to thank the New York Times. It’s really well past time for this article to be published. Too many stories paint Intelligent Design as the latest battle royale, because nothing sells media like a good fight. Here we have some fair analysis at last.

Of course, the entrenched interests don’t sit idly by…

John G. West, a political scientist and senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, the main organization supporting intelligent design, said the skepticism and outright antagonism are evidence that the scientific “fundamentalists” are threatened by its arguments.

“This is natural anytime you have a new controversial idea,” Mr. West said. “The first stage is people ignore you. Then, when they can’t ignore you, comes the hysteria. Then the idea that was so radical becomes accepted. I’d say we’re in the hysteria phase.”

…

“The future of intelligent design, as far as I’m concerned, has very little to do with the outcome of the Dover case,” Mr. West said. “The future of intelligent design is tied up with academic endeavors. It rises or falls on the science.”

This guy’s pretty savvy, because he knows that if you make your opponents look unhinged, you undercut their credibility. It’s good politics. He knows (after all, he’s got the degree for it) that this argument works because there are a view vocal scientists on who *are* just as fundamentalist and antagonistic as he is. But all of this, like so much public discourse lately, ignores the *middle*, which I’ll come back to. Meantime, I’d like to think he’s correct about (and believes) his last statement, because it is actually rational. Of course, it helps him none, since the science just isn’t there. This segment from earlier in the article is very telling :

The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research.

“They never came in,” said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned.

“From the point of view of rigor and intellectual seriousness, the intelligent design people don’t come out very well in our world of scientific review,” he said.

That says an awful lot to me. You keep hearing about the “science” behind ID, but I don’t see it being produced. Here’s an organization who’s dedicated to reconciling science with religion *asking* to spend money on this research. But no, there’s nothing. So the claim that the liberal academic elite have been blocking ID from the journals falls a little flat. If the science was there, someone could have published it by now.

But that’s not the point is it. Mr. West’s claims not withstanding, this issue has almost nothing to do with teaching science or doing science. It’s a front in the war against intellectualism in favor of religious fundamentalism. And I’m certainly not saying every supporter even thinks of it that way, but then, many wars have been fought by people who didn’t know what they were actually fighting for.

Finally, of course, I return to my longstanding belief that there’s nothing about evolution that contradicts christianity (unless you’re one of those “literal reading” folks, in which case, no amount of logic will help you). People on *both* sides of the debate are wrong for propagating an either-or mentality on this issue. I thought briefly about getting one of those “Darwin” fish, but i won’t because it’s an anti-debate symbol. It says “I’m right and you’re wrong.” Hostility and dismissal don’t win intellectual battles. If I wanted to turn my car into a Christian advertising platform, I might go with “darwin fish” + “jesus fish” = “truth fish”. But the symbols are still too blunt an instrument for such a complex issue. Even the most fair minded ID supporters don’t get it…

The slogan, “Teach the controversy,” has simple appeal in a democracy.

Simple is right. It’s a simplistic cop out and a means for promoting religion in the classroom. The fact is that there need not be a controversy. I have no problem believing god created the universe and then man, in His image, and all that, and furthermore believing that He used evolution as His tool for doing so. It’s presumptuous in the extreme to claim that God would not have done such a thing. Simplicity is the enemy of intelligent, rational debate, and the desire for people to have an easy black or white choice is the reason why this issue (and SOOO many others) still has currency. Intellectual laziness.

One of my fellows at Memestreams posted today a link to this New York Times story, which discusses a legal battle currently brewing in California. It’s probably easiest to summarize with the same excerpt that initiated the thread on Memestreams

On Dec. 12, the Federal District Court in Los Angeles will hear a lawsuit filed by a consortium of Christian high schools against the University of California system for refusing to credit some of their courses when their students apply for admission.

I wrote at fair length on the topic, and am at least satisfied enough with it to think it merits reposting here, with a few edits.

As it happens, I feel that this case is far more interesting than the ID movement which, though well supported and high profile, is also, i find, transparent and simpleminded (which is not the same as saying it’s not a threat of course). This, however, raises some fascinating questions.

At the risk of falling into the trap of basing an argument on too little information (as I haven’t read much beyond this NYT article), I’ve some comments.

In one case, an example was given of the UC rejecting a course on the basis of the text being an anthology vs. a full novel. That seems fine to me, but in any case doesn’t bear upon this issue. I say it’s the school’s right to determine that anthologies don’t suffice for literary education, and base acceptance on that determination. Regardless, having nought to do with the deeper issues, I’ll say no more on that.

My good friend Tom, however, located in the complaint itself the following justification given by UC for denying credit

As a result of the orientation/approach of the texts in question, which expressly prioritize religion over science, a course relying on these texts as core instructional materials does not meet the faculty’s criteria for the UC subject “d” laboratory science requirement.

This example is far more engaging because it does potentially insinuate that a book which teaches science from the standpoint of Christian beliefs cannot adequately teach science. That treads dangerously close to saying that Christianity and Science are incompatible (which I consider complete hogwash) though they are not so direct. The resolution to this concern depends a great deal on how the material is presented, in my opinion. If the scientific method is left intact and the physical principles presented fully, including the mathematical proofs behind them, then I have no complaint. If, however, for even one moment, the instruction resorts to a “because God ordained it so” as a *reason* some physical principle exists, without indicating either that there’s higher level math required to understand it or that presently we don’t understand it, then it is doing the students a disservice. To say that Mathematics and Physics are God’s tools bothers me not one bit, unless presented as a means of diminishing the very real and verifiable utility of those tools.

The question comes down to whether it’s the religious *perspective* that UC is rejecting or if, truly, these courses fail to adhere to reasonable educational standards. In fact, it calls into question the entire concept of what standards *are* reasonable, which is the greater prize in this battle, I think. For me, that comes down to two things. The first is whether it is the case that the Christian perspective is the *only* one being taught. It’s perfectly fine to discuss the problems that Twain or Dickinson had with God or with Religion. For that matter it’s good insofar as those issues are much a part of who they were, and such study ought to inform the understanding of either. However, if in so doing, the texts or instructors marginalize or demonize these authors unduly, or fail to analyze the work in historical context, then students will learn only which authors and historical figures didn’t concur with their view of God. This is inadequate and, I proclaim, actually immoral. The second metric is whether the materials or instructors, as described above, rely on Faith as the structure on which to support their history, literature and science educations. Faith is a wonderful thing and is necessary for religion, but has little place in a process which *ought* to be developing the inquisitive side of young minds. Education must of course establish the foundations of knowledge, but must, above all else, emphasize that which *isn’t* known and that which requires additional thought, analysis or study. It should train kids to think freely, encourage them to analyze and then allow them to come to conclusions. If you wish to train them to do all this while first establishing how Christian principles apply, fine, so long as you don’t train them to stop thinking once they have.

This is a problem for religions across time and space, of course. How do you tell someone that they may (must, even) use their minds to search out Truth for themselves, but simultaneously tell them that certain things are simply Fact, taken from the hand of God? It’s a delicate task and one that’s often bungled I think. The minute a teacher must say “That’s simply the WAY THINGS ARE,” they’ve stopped teaching and begun indoctrinating. If any topic is off limits for analysis, then the fundamental purpose of education has been subverted. Samuel Johnson offers a quote which speaks to that very issue; to wit

Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.

Thus, I indicate, examination of all things can only be good. If your philosophy is too weak and tenuous to endure questioning, then perhaps it ought not to survive.

One last thought and then I must get back to work. From a purely pragmatic standpoint, what sense is there in denying an education to those students who, if you are confident in the value of your curricula, *most* need it? I’m not saying the universities should begin accepting students who truly can’t do the work, or are wholly unprepared. Nonetheless, it seems to me like a wonderful opportunity to expose these young people to another paradigm. To an educational system in which God is not placed at the center. If their minds are strong and flexible, they will succeed and, I think, grow as people. Isn’t that the point? I do not say this because I believe (or wish) that the UC system (or university in general) will subvert and eliminate a religious upbringing, but because I believe intellectual challenges are necessary to cement that upbringing in a foundation of Reason. If some, instead, find other paths, then that too is their God given right.

Included in a nearly incoherent rant worthy of the supernicety, John Cusack presented the following prescient (though retrospective at the time) quote from Churchill in a post over at the huffington post:

“The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.”

Sen. Lindsay Graham, I submit that your attempts should haunt you for the rest of your public life. Habeas corpus is one of the few things which is core to the United States soul.

some outstanding reading i have found on the internet recently….

this article over at rolling stone is an unbelievably interesting and sickening look into our current political system. even without all of the corruption in the administration and republican leadership in congress, the gaming of the system in which the republicans currently partake is enough to turn even my absurdly cynical stomach. good to know, yet unsettling. why can’t the public realize that these people are working “day and night to burgle the national treasure and burn the Constitution”?

on a similar theme, check out this post at the opinion mill that draws the analog of George W. Soprano. this administration is currently performing a “bust-out” of the United States government, taking it for everything its worth while they still have the reigns of power. and, as Thomas Frank can tell you, what’s the matter with kansas appears to be the matter with everyone (the media included). they’ve bought a bill of goods.

if you’re looking for something a little lighter, check out these two posts (one, two) over at blogmaverick, Mark Cuban’s blog. i have recently added his blog to the blogroll, despite it might seem that he’s a little full of it. i personally like to see people using their money to harass the status quo. anyway, the posts are Mark calling out Donald Trump for being a pompous ass and giving his (much more coherent) side of the competition between their reality shows (and yes, I know that this happened last year). for total surreality, take a look over at trumps new blog. i particularly like the donald’s argument that corporate corruption can really just be reduced to tackiness.

This is not a paid endorsement…but it should be.

Just finished a great book. Collapse, Jared Diamond. It’s study of why complicated societies completely disappeared from Earth–Easter Island, Incas, Greenland Norse. It’s a realistic discussion of enviornmental management, decision making, political economy.

Green diatribes often skid down the slippery slope towards a Walden-esque utopia. Whereas consumers and business interests often deny that the daily decisions that they make have some type of lasting effect on the existence of the life on the earth.

Diamond cuts through all of that crap. He is an enviornmentalist/bird-watcher/UCLA Prof. who knows that we will destroy our ability to exist on this planet if we continue to manage our environment like a cheap $3 whore. He also knows that people are consumers and that the market economy is going to exist and that the market economy requires resources at the lowest possible cost. So he meticulously goes through the good and bad decision-making processes of ancient and present civilizations (e.g. Easter Island was totally deforrested to put up those statues; Dominican Republic forrest management is a model of renewable resource utilization) to see what choices previous market-economies have made that lead them down the path to disaster or allowed them to continue to exist. More importantly, he recommends realistic alternatives– honest-to-goodness policy paradigm shifts that would reduce environmental effects that are not only harmful but counter-profitable.

It’s worth the read or the audio-book.