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.