The JREF Million-Dollar Challenge

The James Randi Educational Foundation at this year's The Amazing Meeting (TAM 7) conducted a preliminary test with dowser claimant Connie Sonne. The video of the test has 4 parts and is 40 minutes long altogether. I don't recommend watching the whole thing, it's fairly dull. More interesting is the press conference afterward, which also appears on YouTube. This test had the largest live audience in the long history of the million-dollar challenge so it's unusual mainly in the amount of visibility it has gotten. The other details of the test are fairly typical of Challenges.

• The claimant and the Foundation agreed on the rules in advance.
• The test as conducted was double-blind. Neither the claimant nor the tester knew the location of the card that was being sought.
• The claimant failed to move past the preliminary test.
• Before the test the claimant said the skeptical audience would not affect her powers.
• After the test the claimant said the skeptical audience affected her powers.
• Before the preliminary test the claimant did not subject her own abilities to a similar type of test. She didn't need to, because she knows they work.
• The outcome of this test did not change the claimant's belief in her own powers. There is no test that, if failed, would cause her to change her belief in her own powers.

Why is this important? To the extent that people's individual beliefs remain personal and private experiences, they may comfort people and help them gain insight into their own mind and their own life. It is not the role of skeptics to disabuse people of their own private beliefs, and James Randi does not demand that people give up their beliefs in their own supernatural powers unless they subject them to testing.

On the other hand, supernatural and pseudoscientific claims are often used for more public purposes. When a person asks you for your belief in an unusual claim, you should be skeptical unless there is good reason or evidence in favor of the claim. You should be particularly skeptical if the person is asking for your money through book or ticket sales. You should also be especially skeptical if your own experiences might predispose you to believe the claim. For example, if your son or daughter has died and someone says that they can connect you to the lost person you should be especially careful precisely because you might be particularly emotionally vulnerable.

The Million-Dollar Challenge is a useful tool not because it disproves the claims of honest believers like Connie Sonne. The Challenge is a useful tool because the professional hucksters won't come close to it. The John Edwards, Uri Gellers and Sylvia Brownes of the world know that they are putting on a show and that their supposed powers would fail any sort of controlled test. They often say that it would be wrong to accept a million dollars for demonstrating a power that should be used for the benefit of humanity, but if that were the case why do they accept salaries or royalties for what they do? If their powers were real they should earn a million dollars from an afternoon of work and donate it to a charity that works for the good of mankind.

Oh, and one final thing. If you're a detective and a psychic calls to say they have seen the location of a missing person in a vision, you should just hang up the phone and go back to doing serious detective work.

Beware the Spinal Trap

(Note: this is the infamous article on chiropractic that got Simon Singh sued. It is being reposted all over the web today by multiple blogs and online magazines.)

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results - and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh.

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that "99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae". In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer's first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying - even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world's first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: "Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck."

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

Bill Kristol: Veterans have first-class government run health care; ordinary Americans don't deserve same

On the Daily Show episode from Monday, July 27 Jon Stewart catches Bill Kristol in an accidental admission that our veterans have the best health care system money can buy. Kristol later tries to close the barn door, but I'm pretty sure the cows have already left.

Big Government

One of the ideas that conservatives turn to very consistently when you ask them what they have to offer is the assertion that they are in favor of small government. Of course the reality is more complicated than that. On some issues they are in favor of smaller government, but on many others they are in favor of larger government. Let's take a look at how this tends to break down.

Conservatives want more government:
military spending
lots of military spending (worth mentioning twice)
war
interventionist foreign policy
government secrets/less transparency
domestic wiretapping
prisons
suspension of habeas corpus/indefinite denention
police departments
banning gay marriage
criminalizing abortion
criminalizing homelessness
state executions
immigration enforcement
prescription drug coverage (handouts to pharmaceuticals)

Conservatives want less government:
social security
medicare
health care reform
unemployment insurance
SCHIP
environmental protection
market regulation
consumer protection
science and research investment
international aid (the kind that doesn't go to dictators)
corporate tax exemptions
taxes on wealthiest 1%
rescuing people from hurricanes

The really irritating part is that I hear this meme repeated by even smart moderates and liberals, people who should know better. Conservatism does not represent small government, at least not the thread of conservatism that has come to completely dominate the Republican party. What is the theme of these two lists, the thread that links them all?

Kos points it out for us: it's compassion. The 'compassionate conservatism' line was a political victory for W precisely because it was a giant lie.

Conservatives seem to think that any problem that can't be ignored should be solved by force. And that ordinary people don't deserve the protection of the government, they have to save themselves. While on the other hand, the wealthy and powerful are important and vital to the country and should be promoted and bailed out when they get into trouble.

One more thing: large budget deficits and national debt accumulated during Republican terms in office are not an accident. Long-term government bankruptcy is a GOP strategy intended to generate excuses to do nothing in terms of helping ordinary Americans. If you point out that money could be easily saved from the military budget with no adverse effect on national security then of course you are called all sorts of names.

The Time is Now for Health Care Reform

I've been meaning to do an extensive post on this topic. It's been very much in the news lately with bills appearing before Congress and the Senate and Barack Obama's press conference tonight. However, I don't think I can say it any better than Massimo Pigliucci. Except to add, as Rachel Maddow did, that there is no such thing as moving too fast on an issue that has been in the works for over 60 years. It's also worth noting as Nate Silver did that money from the health insurance industry has a huge effect on the voting patterns of Congressional and Senate Democrats.

This has been one of the moral failings of our country for too long. We can definitely do better.

Talking About Compromise

A buddy of mine and I were chatting on IM about the meaning of political compromise the other day. Before posting it here I fixed some but not all punctuation and spelling. In particular over IM I tend not to use capitalization or periods. I also cut bits out to make it more interesting and readable. MONSTRTRKMAN is not his real IM name.

Read more >>

Quick News Stories

Lots of little stories today.

• Reposted from my girlfriend's blog, Radioactive Quill:

So apparently you can be arrested for not appreciating it when a police officer shows up at your house and demands proof that you live there.

Provided you're a Black man, of course. I rather suspect that very few police officers would have the stones to do this to a white man.

Here is the statement by Professor Gates' lawyer. I'm really not sure why he didn't include a threat along the lines of, "I'm going to sue the city for $100 million." I would.

• Reposted from a friend's facebook page, a UF law student:

It's truly amazing that the erosion of racial and sexual bigotry is being accompanied by a revival of religious bigotry. Do people have an innate need to exclude and suppress the "other" that isn't being met now that racism and sexism have become fringe?

If we're discussing founders' intent, why did we include guarantees of religious equality in the First Amendment, while we didn't get around to race until the Fourteenth, or sex until the Nineteenth?

• A congressman from a district not far from where I live is a crazy birther.
• Good news: Obama is turning up the heat on obstructionist Democrats.
• Molecular developmental biology!
  

Jimmy Carter leaves Baptist church, condemns oppression of women

Those of us who grew up in the '80s may not know it, but at the time of his presidency Jimmy Carter was known as a very religious Southern Baptist guy. So it came as somewhat of a surprise to me to learn that he's left the church apparently some time ago. His statement makes it clear why: the church discriminates against women and contributes to a culture that makes oppression and cruelty to women acceptable. He points out that long-held religious tradition has justified discrimination against women and girls as if it were prescribed by a deity.

The truth is that male religious leaders have had - and still have - an option to interpret holy teachings either to exalt or subjugate women. They have, for their own selfish ends, overwhelmingly chosen the latter.

I recommend the same course of action to anyone out there who notices the same thing in their own religion's teachings: stop supporting sexism and simply leave.

Maddow v Buchanan round 2

Last week I posted a link to a conversation between Rachel Maddown and Pat Buchanan on the Rachel Maddow Show. As I had hoped, tonight Rachel took the opportunity to correct the record on some of the racist 'facts' that Buchanan had offered. Go watch the clip! It's excellent.

In other news, some guy named Ralph Peters went out of his way to say that just on the off chance that Pfc. Bowe R. Burgdahl deserted his unit before being captured it would be better for him to be killed by the Taliban then return home safely. All indications at this time are that Burgdahl was captured by the enemy and is being forced to issue propaganda statements against his will. Way to support the troops, asshole.

Bill Moyers interviews Robert Wright

In an earlier post I talked about my visit to an atheist meetup group today. One of the things that was mentioned was this PBS interview with Robert Wright, author of The Evolution of God. Wright is a god-believer with a fairly enlightened point of view overall. The book mainly discusses how god belief and religion have evolved over time from stone age spirits that account for everyday events to bronze age pantheons that require animal sacrifices and on up to the modern day. He says in the interview that God is a 'construct' that has the traits that people have assigned to him.

It's when Wright starts talking about ethics that I have a real problem. He acknowledges that our moral sense and intuitions come from biological as well as cultural evolution. He uses game theory to show how in most situations ethics is not a zero-sum game, and cooperation can help everyone. I agree with these points. Wright goes on to say that our evolved moral senses are not perfect, which I also agree with. Then Wright delivers the surprise: belief in a personal god can help our moral development - we're better off with faith than without.

After all the good sense he was making before, I'm not sure why he chooses this moment to jump off the wagon. All of the great moral advancements of the past two centuries have been made not because of religion but over the loud objections of religion. The end of slavery, the expansions of voting rights, the civil rights movement all had prominent clergy quoting the bible trying to stand in the way of progress. Certainly some of the the people involved in these positive developments happened to be religious, but they often took their inspiration from outside their faith and brought the new understanding inside, reinterpreting the bible or other source of dogma through a new perspective.

ROBERT WRIGHT: One of my own closer contacts with, I would say, a form of consciousness that's closer to the truth than everyday consciousness, came at a Buddhist meditation center. These were essentially secular Buddhists and that was the context of the experience.

But through the meditative practice performed intensively for a week. No contact with the outside world. No speaking. Five and a half hours of sitting meditation a day. Five and a half hours of walking meditation a day. I reached a state of consciousness that I think is closer to the truth about things than the form of consciousness that is kind of natural for human beings.

BILL MOYERS: Was it a consciousness that had an ethical and moral issue in it or was it a state of being? A state of simple acceptance?

ROBERT WRIGHT: Well, it absolutely had ethical implications because it involved much broader acceptance of other beings and it involved being less judgmental of other beings. I mean it reached almost ridiculous extremes. Look looking down at weeds and thinking, "I can't believe I've been killing those things. They're actually as pretty as the grass. Prettier."

But in the realm of humanity, I mean I was just by the end being very much less judgmental about just people I would see on the street.

'Weeds' are what we make of them - they're any plant that the gardener is not interested in growing in a particular spot, a completely constructed idea. It took Wright ten hours of meditation a day to realize that some of them are pretty, and that you might at some point change your definition of what a weed is? It took him ten hours of meditation a day to be less judgmental to strangers?

I hardly see this as a great triumph of religious moral reasoning. If anything the environment Wright describes is the near lack of any culture whatsoever. Simply being absent from his judgmental patriarchial religious context for a short while allowed Wright to decompress a bit and refine his moral understanding. Did the Buddha do this? No, he did it himself. Kudos to Wright for the tentative advancements, but I'm not sure how he credits religion for this.

At the end of the clip I'm scratching my head and wondering why it came so highly recommended.

Today I attended an atheist meetup

My girlfriend and I went to an atheist meetup today. The Orlando Atheists and Freethinkers screened Julia Sweeney's Letting Go of God. Sweeney is a wonderful comedian and terribly fun to watch. She treats the subject of her deconversion with equal parts humor and sincerity. Unfortunately I had a tutoring appointment this afternoon and couldn't stay for the whole thing. It was difficult to walk out of the screening during the break in the middle.

Before the organizer put Sweeney's DVD on there was a bit of discussion. I've never been to a meeting of this group before but my girlfriend has once or twice. Before going there she had shared some of her impressions with me and today I was able to see for myself. My first disappointment was seeing immediately that almost all of the attendees (there were almost 30 people there) were over 40. In this country of course more young people are nonbelievers compared to the older generations. What accounts for this group's lack of youth appeal?

The organizer killed a wasp that landed on the projector screen. Someone said, "make sure to give it a Christian burial." Someone else said, "the trash!" In the context, the potshot against Christianity seemed to come out of nowhere. My girlfriend said, and I agree, that atheism should be bigger than to simply be against Christianity.

There was also a short discussion about spirituality. The organizer opened up by asking for anyone's definition of spirituality. A couple of answers were offered, some that didn't seem to mean anything at all and one which was the positive and connected feelings you get from the beauty in the natural world. Somebody else offered, "we have to acknowledge the slight possibility of something...".

I was confused. If spirituality is the feelings you get in contemplation of beauty, then we can do more than acknowledge a slight possibility. In fact I think that we can all agree that the feelings which are sometimes evoked by the beauty in the natural world can be inspiring, even life-changing. The comment seemed to imply that we should acknowledge the possibility of something more unusual or even supernatural. I don't feel like we need to go out of our way to acknowledge the slight possibility of something which up to this point has not been defined.

In any event, attending the meetup today was interesting and stimulating, particularly getting to see Julia Sweeney's show. It also helped my codify in my mind a little more what the current state of atheism is and what direction I would like to see it go. I don't mean to pick on the Orlando group particularly, especially since I've only seen a small slice of what they have to offer.

On the other hand, I've been thinking quite a bit about how the growing atheist movement needs a bit more development in terms of its identity, direction and goals. Expect more posts about this in the future.

I'm Reading: The Pluto Files by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Following the recent back-and-forth with PZ Myers and Mooney and Kirschenbaum prompted me to go read The Pluto Files by Neil deGrasse Tyson. It's been a couple of years now since Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet, so the controversy has died down a bit, but at the time a good number of people were fairly up in arms over it. This article from the New York Times featured prominently in the book. Looking back at the article from the present time, we can see that the Hayden Planetarium took a bold and prescient step by moving Pluto into the Kuiper Belt. In the book, Tyson recommends that we change the focus of solar system studies: instead of having students memorize the names of planets in order (you may have used mnemonics such as My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas) and then studying the properties of each planet, the solar system is more properly divided up into five families of objects that orbit the sun. The terrestrial planets lie between the sun and the asteroid belt. The jovian planets are large gaseous objects. Beyond them lie the small Kuiper belt objects (including Pluto) and the much more distant Oort cloud. Also not to be forgotten are the many varied and fascinating satellites, objects which orbit other bodies within the solar system.

The five families structure provides for a better and more interesting framework for studying the variety of the solar system. As a teacher, I will use this whenever the topic comes up. What is striking in Tyson's book is the strength of reaction among Pluto defenders. Some people apparently see questions like the number of planets as a stable, comforting foundation for their lives and any questions about Pluto's status as threatening or scary.

Mooney and Kirschenbaum apparently feel this way, with their repeated assertions that the Pluto controversy was handled poorly by scientists and science communicators. As a biologist, I do not understand the point of view that Pluto's change in status is frightening. Taxonomy is in the middle of a huge ongoing revolution as new molecular data enters the picture. A whole level of classifications - the domain level - has been added, and no branch of life has been immune to the shuffling. One of the things I've had to get used to as a biologist is the fact that old ideas in science must constantly make way for new information. Planetary astronomy has not had many upheavals lately, and people has gotten used to things sitting on a stable footing. It's a good thing for us to be flexible and open-minded in light of new information, not just as scientists but as citizens as well.

The Pluto Files (a book about plutophiles) is a fun and engaging read which I highly recommend. A short read, I was able to push through it in an afternoon.

Pat Buchanan in panic mode

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#31952924

Video is 16 minutes long, Buchanan comes in around 4:30.

If you've ever wondered what it looks like when a racist is afraid that the 200+ year history of white male dominance in this country is over, check this out. In this fascinating interview, Rachel Maddow keeps her cool while Pat Buchanan rants and foams at the mouth.

Buchanan: I don't think Judge Sotomayor is qualified for the United States Supreme Court. She has not shown any great intellect here or any great depth of knowledge of the Constitution. She's never written anything that I've read in terms of a law review article or a major book or something like that on the law. And I do believe that she's an affirmative action appointment by the President.

Apparently the fact that Sotomayor has more experience on the bench than any currently sitting SCOTUS judge had at their confirmation does not count for much, nor does the fact that she was very rarely overturned during her career by higher courts. Buchanan apparently believes the purpose of affirmative action is to discriminate against white males. He feels that the fact that historically 108 of 110 supreme justices are white males simply reflects the inherently superior abilities of white males.

Buchanan: ...white men were 100% of the people who wrote the Constitution, 100% of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close to 100% of the people who died at Normandy.

His racism blinds him to the contributions of other groups. Where I see a history of disenfranchisement and unfairness he sees the natural order of things. Buchanan unfairly dismisses all of Sotomayor's qualifications as the product of affirmative action. Maddow asks if Buchanan sees the nomination of a latina to the SCOTUS as a positive thing for this country and he dodges the question.

Firefighters whine, ask for empathy

I just watched the testimony of two of the firefighters who were plaintiffs in the Ricci case speak their piece at the Sotomayor hearings. When Sotomayor's appeals court summarily dismissed the case, they acted according to existing law which specified that if a policy was discriminatory in practice then it is illegal. The Supreme Court overturned this law as written. What was striking to me while listening to these firefighters was how their arguments centered over two things:

1) We studied really hard for this test.

2) Our feelings were hurt when our case was dismissed.

Here we have, on one hand, a judge dispassionately applying the law as written, and a group of plaintiffs (who have been given a platform to speak by Republican senators) asking for empathy!

Kudos to Hindus!

Recently Pope "Hitler Youth" Benedict blasted atheism and humanism, writing, "...ideological rejection of God and an atheism of indifference, oblivious to the Creator and at risk of becoming equally oblivious to human values, constitute some of the chief obstacles to development today. A humanism which excludes God is an inhuman humanism." As inhuman as the crusades or the inquisition? As inhuman as shielding child molesters from criticism and prosecution? As inhuman as systematically abusing children, not just sexually but physically and emotionally as well?

So thanks and congrats to Rajan Zed for standing up for religious tolerance and inclusion. In recognition of Zed's words, I'd like to say some nice things about Hinduism as well. I admit to some ignorance here; I'll be checking Wikipedia for my facts. Hinduism is the world's oldest and most diverse religion, and the third-largest today. It's staggering diversity makes it somewhat hard to say what it is and is not, but a few recurring themes stand out. Hindus believe in karma, a universal force that rewards goodness and punishes evil. Contrast this with othe well-known religions which reward faith and obedience as opposed to doing the right thing. Hinduism incorporates the concept of creative destruction, where the universe is constantly being destroyed and created, that these processes are two sides of the same coin. This seems neither good nor bad from a moral perspective, but might be seen as a somewhat accurate description of the world as revealed by science: our planet is constructed out of the debris of previous stars that went supernova.

Like all human societies, Indian culture has its injustices. But unlike in the West these injustices rarely happen as a policy of religious dogma. What's more, the polytheistic nature of Hinduism and the diversity it contains tends to create an attitude of openness and inclusion towards other religions. The situ Iation with Pakistan and Kashmir seems to be the glaring exception. I tend to be somewhat more inclined to assign blame to the Muslims in this case, but knowing as little as I do I may be wrong about this. Every Pakistani I have met has been intelligent, open, and engaging. I understand that Pakistan has a strong tradition of positive civil institutions and respect for democracy, despite their recent trouble.

To sum up: Hinduism is a great religion which I have nothing but respect for. Thanks and kudos particularly to Rajan Zed and his like-minded compatriots. Boos and hisses to Pope Benedict and Bill Donohue. Those two should take their heads out of their asses and realize it's not the middle ages any more and people are allowed to follow the religion of their choosing, including none at all.

Senate Republicans attempt to prove racism; succeed

As the Sotomayor senate confirmation hearings continue, we get to witness the continuing implosion of the Republican brand. In this case, we get to see how Republicans are willing to oppose the first Latina nominee to the SCOTUS on primarily racial grounds. They have repeatedly quoted a 2001 speech Sotomayor gave where she offered her hopes that a wise Latina woman might offer better judgments because of the richness of her experience. Sotomayor stands by that speech but has backed off of the specific wording somewhat, saying that it created the wrong impression that a particular ethnic group held an advantage in judging.

I'd like to take a stab at defending the words as she originally said them. Here in the US we have a racist culture, we breathe racist air. Obama's election goes a good way towards erasing the scars of the past, but not everything is behind us. Senators Sessions and Graham, as white male heterosexua christians and recipients of privileges thereof, get to pretend like racism doesn't exist because it never negatively impacts their lives. Of couse someone who is a minority is going to see race relations in a different light.

At the same time, the assertion is made that true objectivity is an attainable objective. Of course judges must work to be as objective as possible, but pure objectivity remains an impossible perfect goal. In a world where everyone is racist simply on the basis of living here, the way to be as objective as possible is to recognize racial biases and confront them head on. Pretending like racism doesn't exist will only distort one's worldview and lead them to make unjust decisions.

When Sessions and Graham focus on this line of questioning, and the Ricci case, and compare Sotomayor's decisions to other latino judges, and when Tom Coburn evokes Ricky Ricardo, it makes it clear who is doing the race-based thinking here. Republican support among Hispanic Americans has been dropping lately, and this sort of behavior will ensure that it stays at rock-bottom levels for a generation.

Bill Clinton v Mark Sanford

This week South Carolina's legislature censured governor Mark Sanford, falling short of calling for his impeachment or resignation. Sanford remains estranged from his wife and family after he went hiking on the Appalachian trail. Let's compare this case to Bill Clinton's affair back in the 1990's. Both men cheated on their wives, and both men committed the lying that seems to be par for the course with these sorts of affairs. As far as government is concerned, Sanford committed the greater sin when he was absent and unaccounted-for for five days as he sparked with his Argentine lover, and he also cost the taxpayers money when he extended a South American trade mission to Argentina, apparently only for the purpose of sparking.

On the sex and emotional side of things, Clinton seems to once again come out ahead (har, har). His escapades with Monica Lewinsky consisted of little more than a BJ and some cigar play, whereas Sanford had a five-day sex vacation and publicly declared his love for this woman. So what accounts for the difference? I doubt that we can credit changing societal views. Americans seem to have little more tolerance for these sorts of things than they did in the '90s. There may be a little bit of scandal fatigue: so many Republicans have imploded so dramatically lately that it's hard to focus the ire on any one thing.

We can speculate that Sanford's Family connections helped by pulling some strings for him in the S. Carolina legislature, which my also partially account for the differences. But I think the problem is more fundamental: conservatives have no innate sense of hypocrisy. Some people have suggested that Republicans get harsher treatment when they cross moral lines because of the apparent hypocrisy, but I think that the opposite is true. Conservatives would rather see someone advocate for 'family values' but fall short than see someone who fails to push their version of morality come to power.

Romans 3:23 says that "all have sinned an fallen short of the glory of God." One of the tenets of Pauline Protestantism is that mankind is inherently sinful and therefore requires divine intervention in order to be saved. Therefore politicians who fall as Mark Sanford has haven't done anything unexpected or even particularly wrong. The blame shifts to Satan and to Eve the original sinner.

In order to break this cycle, it will never work to compare the wrongs of Republicans and Democrats. No matter how many more tallies end up on the Republican side, the Democrats will still be seen by the fundamentalist base as Satan's representatives on earth. I propose we hit back at a more basic level. When a politician starts invoking the name of Jesus, when he says "we are called by God to serve as examples to others" or something along those lines, we should vote him out of office. We don't need to see headlines about his missteps to know right away at that point that he is a hypocritical bastard.

Sex Scandals and Secret Fundamentalism

Today and yesterday Rachel Maddow has been doing some excellent reporting on the Ensign and Sanford sex scandals and how a secretive Washington religious organization is tied into all of this. Two nights in a row she interviewed Jeff Sharlet, author of the book The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power, which I am reading right now. Kudos to Rachel Maddow! Expect a review of the book when I'm done with it.

Maddow showed a clip of John Roston interviewing Doug Hampton, the husband of the woman that John Ensign was having an affair with.

Doug Hampton: It's more about where they live and how these men operate in their life. They're, they're great men, they have a good heart, there's...

John Roston: Why did you contact them?

Hampton: 'Cause they're close friends. They - they're a part of the men that live at C Street.

Roston: What did you want them to do?

Hampton: Confront John.

Doug Hampton is, I think, terribly wrong when he says that these are great men and they have a good heart. His praise of these folks may be understandable considering that he and his family have apparently received a great deal of money from these folks in exchange for their silence (and in exchange for the sex?). But who are these people anyway, and why are they acting as a go-between for John Ensign and his mistress's family? Known alternately as The Fellowship or The Family (Wikipedia, NPR), this shadowy group has been near the center of domestic and international American power for a long time, and now thanks to Jeff Sharlet we're finally getting a peek inside.

The Family has a particular theology that makes them ideally positioned to be in a position of power. They call themselves followers of Christ but avoid the label Christian. Their C Street house is called a church, but their members rarely attend church, or at least what would be recognizable to most people as church. These folks are not mainstream Christians, and they worship a Jesus who bears little resemblance to the 'gentle Jesus, meek and mild' that most Christians would find familiar. These religious ideas are fine for the plebicites, but the Family worships a Jesus who speaks to their specifically. This is the Jesus who came with a sword, who demands that his disciples hate their mother and father, a Jesus for powerful men.

If you think of the mafia when you hear The Family, you're on the right track. In fact the leaders of The Family make reference to the mafia, and sometimes even call themselves the Christian Mafia. The Family also draws inspiration from Hitler, from Lenin, from Mao, and from other dictators and powerful men in history. This doesn't make them neo-Nazis or Communist revolutionaries. To the contrary the movement is quintessentially American. This is the theology of unrestrained capitalism, of trickle-down economics. Power is important: the theology of the Family says that power comes to those who God has chosen, so you can recognize a chosen man because of the power that he has.

Wealth is also important. Just as with power, you can identify a man who has been chosen by God by the wealth he has, because wealth accrues to those who have been chosen. Family members not only aspire to and achieve vast fortunes, they also maintain connections between members by large secret gifts to each other, called "man-to-man financing". These gifts not only allow members to circumvent campaign finance laws and ethics comittees and taxes, they also allow members to pull the strings of power invisibly.

At the same time that the Family encourages and enables its members to become powerful and weathy individuals, it also attacks individualism and personal identity. A man who is chosen by God becomes weathy and powerful, but at the same time he abdicates his personal will and identity: those belong to Jesus. Yes, this is a paradox, but only as far as the elites are concerned. Those outside the inner circle are expected to give up their personal identity as well as their wealth and power. The Family is uniquely American, as I said, but it is not democratic and it is not egalitarian.

I've been using 'men' and 'he' exclusively in my discussion in spite of my normal caution with gendered pronouns. This is no accident - The Family is an intensely patriarchial organization. The young women who work and serve the Family's Washington operation live in a separate dorm from the young men and more often than not are barred from political meetings.

Before hearing about The Family and starting to read Jeff Sharlett's book, I would have thought that the American fundamentalist movement didn't need a secret conspiracy - everyone already knows they're out to take over the country. The secret wing of the fundamentalist movement operates under the cover of the broader movement; it's secret because it's happening in plain sight. Of course, the activities and membership of the inner circle is not known to outsiders, even outsiders who also happen to be fundamentalists. Indeed, the theology of this elite C Street Gang, the Jesus they worship, would be hardly recognizable to a more typical fundamentalist Christian.

As a final note, it appears that Hillary Clinton is and has been since 1993 a member of Family Bible studies and prayer breakfasts. It puts her quote about the "vast right-wing conspiracy" in a whole new light when you think that she may be a member. I've never been one of those Hillary bashers, but I do think she should answer the questions raised by Sharlet and Ehrenrich and probably at minimum she should publicly denounce Doug Coe.

60 Votes

Keith Olbermann and Howard Dean on Tuesday discussing the addition of Al Franken to the Senate:

Olbermann: With Franken now on the Health committee... are we sure that [Harry Reid] can muster 60 votes to stop Republicans from filibustering health care reform?

Dean: We don't need 60 votes from health care reform, all we need is 51. We have reconciliation.

More on that in a moment, first let me extend my congratulations to Al Franken on finally being sworn in to the Senate. Somehow Norm Coleman and his lawyers managed to drag this process out to nine months, effectively robbing Franken of six months of the six-year term he was elected to. For a while I was a frequent listener to Al Franken's show on Air America Radio, and I enjoyed listening to him quite a bit. By every account Franken is a serious political figure and a truly smart man, don't expect to see any SNL-style clowning around while he is in office.

Howard Dean points out that, in this case, the Senate can use a rule known as reconciliation to bar the posibillity of a filibuster. For some reason he seems to be the only person appearing on the news shows that knows this. In any event, aside from reconciliation, Harry Reid and the Democrats in the Senate should not allow the filibuster to be as powerful as it is. If the Republicans want to stop an issue from going to the floor for a vote, they should have to actually stand up and give marathon readings from a cookbook. Lately, Republicans have only had to threaten a filibuster and the Democrats bring a motion for cloture.

Look at this graph. since the Democrats took control of the congress in 2007, cloture motions have skyrocketed!



Apparently Harry Reid needs 60 votes before he's allowed to brush his teeth in the morning. If Republicans were actually filibustering half as often as we've had cloture votes, the Senate would be shut down entirely. What this graph shows is just how badly things have gotten out of Reid's control. An effective leader would figure out a way to rein all of this in. Aside from the cloture situation, there was the Blagojevich/Burris debacle where Reid showed that he's a weak leader. Before Blago named a senator, Reid declared that he would not seat anyone that Blago appointed because of the indictment. Then when Blagojevich named Roland Burris, Reid caved within two days. Somehow it took Al Franken six months to get seated, but we had Burris in within a weekend?

Unsurprisingly, Roland Burris is now under investigation for allegedly promising to hold a fundraiser for Blagojevich in exchange for the Senate seat. If Reid had managed to stick to his guns for a couple of months, we would have had a chance to find this out as well as get Blagojevich out of office before seating a Senator from Illinois.

Exhibit three is Reid's apparent inability to exert any sort of control over the so-called Blue Dogs or conservative Democrats. This really gets to the heart of the matter. Given the current makeup of the Senate and Congress, there are really only two groups that matter right now: progressives and obstructionist Democrats. Some of these obstructionists are motivated by their strong ties to corporate lobbyists, but some of them also seem to be living in a state of fear, thinking that it's 1994 and Newt Gengrich is about to sweep in and take over. If Harry Reid was an effective leader he would be able to get a handle on this fear.

I'm a big fan of Cesar Milan, the Dog Whisperer. Watching his show and reading his books, you realize that what he's really talking about is leadership. Dogs naturally have a pack mentality: there is a pack leader, and everyone else is a follower. A good leader shows the pack what the best way forward is, and the pack follows him because following the leader serves the interests of the whole pack. Somebody should send Harry Reid the complete Dog Whisperer series on DVD. In this case, passing important reforms of the type that the people voted for in 2008 ensures that the people continue to support our representatives. 72% of Americans support a public option in the health care reform package, and if we can't get help from Reid and his Democrats, eventually we'll start to look elsewhere.

Will having a 60th vote in the Senate change the game for the Democrats? Not if they don't learn to grow a spine and fight for the reforms we want.

Sperm Cells from Stem Cells

Scientists in Newcastle, England say they've managed to make human sperm cells out of human stem cells. This is an extension of earlier research done on mice, and it looks like it may still be five years before the technique is perfected. The research promises to eventually cure infertility. If this technique works as advertised, and if viable stem cells can be produced from adult stem cells, then you can make sperm even if the normal process is not working. Good news for infertile men, but there are a lot of other implications here too, which I'll get to in a moment. First, a quote from Josephine Quintavalle from Comment on Reproductive Ethics:

"This is an example of immoral madness. Perfectly viable human embryos have been destroyed in order to create sperm over which there will be huge questions of their healthiness and viability.

"It's taking one life in order to perhaps create another. I'm very much in favour of curing infertility but I don't think you can do whatever you like."

Who is Josephine Quintavalle and why does she get a quote in this BBC article? Scanning the website of CORE, they appear to be little more than a tiny group that believes that embryos should be considered people. I'm not sure what she is talking about when she says that this is 'immoral madness'. So far we are only talking about single cells, grown in culture, and the possibility of restoring lost fertility to men. I highly object to the statement that this constitues taking a life. I also don't think you can do whatever you like, but what does that have to do with the topic at hand? Why did this squeamish prude get the only word on the ethics of this?

If she's going to be so outraged, let's at least give her something to really be outraged about. If stem cells can be harvested from adult humans, and if sperm cells can be thusly created, then women will soon be able to produce sperm! How long will it be before the first lesbian couple has their own child, fully biologically their own? How long will it be before we have the first parthenogenic human? Pretty soon the virgin Mary will seem more like a trailblazer and less like a divine miracle.

Expect a lot of outraged whining from other men who feel like their existence has to be justified by their capacity to reproduce.

I'm Reading: Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman

Just yesterday I finished up reading Misquoting Jesus by Bart Erhman. Biblical scholar Bart Ehrman chronicles his journey of discovering the bible and how that shaped his personal spiritual journey. Raised in a mainstream Episcopal church, Ehrman had a born again experience in high school. Unlike his family, his born again friends and later his professors and fellow students at Moody Bible College saw the Bible as the literal words of god. At Moody he dug deeper into the Bible, learning the basics of textual criticism. Later he attended Wheaton College and Princeton Theological Seminary in pursuit of the origins of the bible, and each move was a step down from the rarefied fundamentalism of Moody.

After the short background, Bart Ehrman fills us in on what he's learned: saying that the Bible is the inspired word of God doesn't help because we don't have those original words. For most of the bible's history up until the invention of movable type the Bible had to be painstakingly copied out letter by letter by scribes. In addition to simple mistakes, scribes would often purposefully change the text as they copied it, for various reasons. Texts were changed for clarification, or to unify one manuscript with others that existed, or to attack one or another of the 'heresies' that existed at the time, or to defend the faith against the Romans, or the Jews. Some stories were part of oral tradition before they were added to existing texts. The story of the Jesus' forgiveness of the woman who was caught at adultery was certainly one of these, since it can be found inserted in various spots in the gospels.

The upshot of all these errors and changes is that there are a lot of different variations present in the manuscripts that we have today. Ehrman indicates that the number of variations we have among the various texts is greater than the number of words in the Bible! Textual analysis can reconstruct a fairly accurate picture of what the Bible looked like in the third or fourth century, but eventually going back far enough the supporting evidence gets more and more sparse.

Important articles of modern faith, or controversies within the modern church, may in some cases trace their origin to scribes who thought they knew best. For example, Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 14:33-34

As in all the churches of the saints, let the women keep silent. For it is not permitted for them to speak, but to be in subjection, just as the law says.

But elsewhere in the same book, 1 Corinthians 11 makes it clear that women could speak in the early church (as long as their heads were covered). How do we resolve this conflict? Ehrman concludes that the passage from chapter 14 was a later addition, that Paul did not intend to say that women could not speak in the church.

In other places the Bible was altered from its original because of controversies involving the divinity of Jesus, the nature of the trinity, the relationship of Christianity to the Jews and Gentiles, Jesus' anger, the cruficixion, and many more.

Why is this important?

Non-Christians and Christians who do not take the Bible as the literal word of God may feel that there is no new news here, or that the authenticity of the Bible never had much impact on their faith or lack thereof to begin with. On the other hand, this book may come as a bit of a shock to those of you who take the Bible as the literal word of God. The gripping hand is, the Bible is often used here in the U.S. in defense of all sorts of absurd positions. It can be nice to be able to respond to biblical literalists secure in the knowledge that they are completely full of crap.

I am sorry, biblical literalists. You will have to make your arguments on some grounds other than "God said so" from now on. Even if it were true that the authors of the bible were not humans with their own human motivations, passions, prejudices, and foibles, that they were able to convey God's divine words directly and uninhibited to the page.... we don't have those words any more.

Update to Teabaggers boo Cornyn, Perry

Did I say that racism might be a motivating factor for these folks? Nah, that couldn't be it...

Teabaggers boo Cornyn, Perry

It's tea party time again, so we get another opportunity to hear what the crazies have to say. I just saw Richard Wolfe and Keith Olbermann talking about this on Countdown, and the AP also picked it up (via Houston Chronicle).

Videos of this event are interesting to watch, too, if you can find them on YouTube. It's fun to watch the Republican party continue to implode in on itself. I do get the sense that they're not really booing Cornyn and Perry, but rather the failure of their leaders to lead effectively and keep their party in power. At this point we can speculate on whether GOP leaders can lead the teabaggers back into the party, or if some outsider will be able to pick up their support, given their current mood.

What particularly struck me, though, is this: attendees booed Rick Perry over his support of toll roads. I would have thought that Perry had given these folks enough to like him with his anti-Washington and secessionist rhetoric lately. And also, are these folks opposed to toll roads? You have got to be frakking stupid to show up to an anti-tax rally and oppose toll roads. Listen people: if the government lowers taxes, then the services that it provides now will have to be paid for by fees or eliminated. Do Texas teabaggers oppose road construction and maintenence?

I have another question for tea party attendees, also. It's been barely six months since Obama took office, and while some big changes are being debated right now, there aren't yet many points where the government is very much different then it was under Bush. This was particularly true during the first round of tea party protests back in April. Despite the fact that not very much has changed in Washington, we are hearing a lot of talk about 'tyrrany' and an abandonment of the Constitution.

Where is this coming from? I've been hearing this tyrrany talk a lot, but it never comes along with any specific complaints. It's always just given as a bald assertion: the Obama administration is tyrannical, or the Obama administration is fascist. No details are offered in support of the claim. When we were out of power we sometimes threw strong language around, but it was always to make a specific point. We complained when Bush declared preemptive war, or suspended habeas corpus, or tortured people. When stuff like this happens, it justifies strong language. But as far as I can tell, Obama hasn't done anything yet, or at least nothing that the teabaggers are willing to point out as the source of their angst.

So if there's anyone out there who's been to a tea party protest and can offer and explanation, I'd like to hear it in the comments. As it stands right now, I'm forced to make uncharitable assumptions about the motivations of these complaints: the protestors are whiny babies who can't take the fact that their party is out of power, or they're all just racist and don't want to own up to the fact that they fervently wished there would never be a black president.

Generation gap and poor reporting

I followed this link hoping to gain a little insight on how my generation's views and values differ from older Americans. What I found was a very disappointing article that sent me searching for the original poll. Maybe I've become too accustomed to Nate Silver's statistical analysis and reporting, but this AP article (via MSNBC) seemed almost entirely useless.

In order to support the argument that there is a generation gap, the first number from the poll that the article mentions is, "Almost eight in 10 people believe there is a major difference in the point of view of younger people and older people today." I hate to have to make such an obvious point, but people saying that there is a generation gap is not the same thing as showing that there is a generation gap. Moving along, the article next mentions which factors account for the perceived gap, instead of reporting what people actually said about their values.

Finally the fifth paragraph mentions a difference in values that the poll actually measured, on the importance of religion in people's lives.

The rest of the article continues to be a muddle, with very few actual numbers from the poll, and a lot of discussion about aging, quality of life, leisure time, and use of technology. Overall the article fails to deliver on explaining how "Older, younger people differ most on social values, morality," which was why I started reading it to begin with.

Also, last night while I was reading this I remember two sentences that were particularly poorly constructed, one about the '60s counterculture and one about older people's complaints about younger people's work ethic. Someone must have agreed with me because while I'm looking at it today, those sentences have been trimmed down considerably and now make a lot more sense.

On the topic of older people complaining about the younger generation's work ethic and sense of entitlement: it simply isn't true that young people are lazier or have a weaker work ethic than older people did. What has happened is that over the years, the nature of work has changed, and the difficulties and challenges involved in surviving and being successful have changed. Don't assume that, just because things are different and we don't face the same challenges that you did, that we don't have the same work ethic. That's lazy thinking.

Anyway, having failed to gain any understanding from this article, I moved on to the poll itself. You can find it here (PDF) if you like. The 91-page report centers almost exclusively on the topics of marriage and parenthood, which you wouldn't have known from the AP article. Before I dip into the topics here, I'd like to point out that 'values' spans many issues aside from marriage, sex, and parenthood. Why didn't this poll cover values like social justice, education or the environment?

Aside from covering only a narrow range of values, the Pew Report was an interesting, if fairly dry, read at 91 pages. I highlighted the most interesting graph above, showing how single parenthood and approval of unmarried childbearing drops off considerably as people get older. Out of all the data that purported to show a generational gap in values, these were the clearest, the biggest difference. Other charts didn't have as much resolution because they only divided respondents into only four age categories, or even two.

One Hand, Other Hand, Gripping Hand

The title of this blog is a tribute to Larry Niven's and Jerry Pournelle's excellent duo of books, The Mote in God's Eye and The Gripping Hand. The stars of the book are a charismatic but dangerous race of aliens. When the Moties hear the human expression "on the one hand, on the other hand.." they add, "on the gripping hand", since they have three unequal arms. The gripping hand, then, refers to a third point that supersedes the others. So on the one hand, I'll use this blog to talk about interesting issues in science, and on the other hand, I'll add in my own political commentary, but the gripping hand is, my interests tend to wander around a bit so I may be way out in left field from time to time.

Wikipedia has an article on this idiom.