Helping “Conservatives” understand Science

Recently in a conversation with a self-proclaimed conservative about global climate change I was told that numbers can say anything, that there is no consensus on global climate change and its connection to man’s activities.  It was explained to me that numbers can be audited to get at the truth of things.  So I asked to be pointed to one audit in a credible scientific journal that proved that global climate change was the hoax he and other conservatives claim it to be.  The reply I got back was the typical whoa, you mean an audit in those liberal environmental whacko sources.

This of course made no sense, there is a well established process by which science works and is published through peer-reviewed journals.  You basically could say science gets “audited” before it is even published.  Of course no audit system is perfect and occasionally we find errors in this process.  The way these errors are caught is that science demands that experimental data be replicable.  An example, if you publish a paper and claim you have a process for producing energy via cold fusion, your data may look good enough to get you published.  However, when no one, following the process you outlined, can replicate your results you quickly get doubted and then discredited in the scientific community.

So why did I get such a disjointed reply?  I was confused for a bit then it dawned on me, conservatives don’t understand science or the scientific method because it is so foreign to the way they have been indoctrinated to think.   So I thought I would take a minute tonight to help them out, you know, the sort of thing I learned we should do under the philosophy of compassionate conservatism espoused by a former conservative president.

Science is a system of inquiry by which people ask questions about the world around them.   You look at some phenomena and you take an educated guess about what’s going on.  Under the scientific method  you then construct an experiment to gather data, and then analyze the data to see what rational conclusions you can draw from that data.  So far I think all of you on the right are with me, but hang on, this is where the right turn comes.   You do all of this without having pre-determined the answer, you actually look at the data objectively as opposed to looking at it to make sure it fits the requirements of a particular, let’s say as an example conservative ideology.

Many times the conclusions we draw from experiments in science provide us results in directions we never even expected in the first place and that’s when science gets exciting for us, because it provides so many more questions.   For this very reason much of science is funded by public institutions and governments.  Why is that?  Well the fact is when private companies do research they have limited acceptable answers.  For example, if you’re a tobacco company and doing experiments to see if smoking causes lung cancer and your results suggest it does, then you can’t use that work because it goes against your dominant paradigm that suggests smoking is not harmful.  This is considered very bad science by cigarette companies, but a good conservative capitalistic process.

Conservatives have been taught to “think” by the leaders of their movement like Limbaugh, Bush, Cheney, Fox News and Rove that answers that don’t fit their dominant paradigm, conservatism, cannot possibly be correct so those conclusions must be based on faulty data or conclusions.  Not surprisingly, if the same process produced answers in support of the dominant paradigm, the data, analysis and conclusions are of course beyond reproach.  It’s a hypocritical position without a logical foundation but that is a fundamental characteristic of all “isms.”

You see conservatism isn’t alone in this flaw; it applies to liberalism, capitalism, socialism, environmentalism, etc…  It also applies to any extreme position in any belief system or religion.  It is this type of thinking that led to decades of denial that smoking was harmful, to wars like Vietnam or the invasion of Iraq.

I’m not advocating that science should be our sole philosophy or that scientists should run the world.  However I believe we’d be in much better shape if our government, the public, our political talking heads and media would take the time to develop a better understanding of the scientific method and critical thinking in general, it’s a dream I have.

Fun Friday: Ice Diving and Kittens

Welcome to Friday a lovely ice diving video from Germany  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF4wkQebatE

Not to let America be outdone in the stupidity category  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEK5rj2WeIw

Even babies have opinions about the coming election

Top ten kitten videos  http://voices.yahoo.com/top-10-best-kitten-videos-youtube-5932938.html

 

Let me save some time: No need to watch the debates

So let me save you some time by telling you in advance exactly what is going to happen and even what most of you will think about it.

Obama vs Romney

If you’re a Republican or Conservative you will be upset that Obama lied so much, you will interpret any statement he makes as evidence of his further plan to socialize America, redesign the flag, take away all of our guns and ruin our economy, regardless of what the facts are.

If you’re a Democrat or Liberal you will be feeling very smug as Romney once again showed himself to be stiff and disconnected from the common man, confused on the facts and generally unpresidential.  You’ll be thrilled at how smooth the president comes off.

Biden vs Ryan

If you’re a Democrat or Liberal DO NOT WATCH THIS DEBATE!  Paul Ryan is going to slaughter Biden, he’ll seem confident, self-assured, he’ll lie and people will clap and Biden, as Biden always does, will demonstrate his extreme flexibility by inserting his foot deeply in his mouth while still standing at the podium and smiling all at the same time.

If you’re a Republican or Conservative, ITS PARTY TIME!!!  Invite your friends over, bring out the Ann Coulter posters, run the split screen Fox News Commentary, play let’s drill in Alaska Boardgames, and thoroughly enjoy yourselves.  If the poll numbers are accurate and the trend continues this may be your last happy night this election season.

Just another public service message in hopes of simplifying your life.  ~ ZD Blue

Why the United States is Doomed

The American experiment has failed, or more precisely is on the precipice of failing.  The sad part of this prognosis is that it’s not the American people who have failed directly, but make no mistake we all share some level of culpability.  We have failed through the poor choices we and our parents have made.  You see we’ve bought into some things and let some things happen that have brought our country to the edge of failure.  We have allowed our government to be about two things, re-electing incumbents and the influence of money.  It has all become solely about power and we have allowed for a system of governance where the determining factor for most elections is how much media can you buy, how many special interests can fund you and through that process how well can you distort reality to make your opponent out to be un-American, a Socialist, out to get senior citizens, planning to ruin our economy, planning to tax the rich, or not planning to tax the rich, not being born in this country, or being of the wrong religion, socio-economic class, or color.

The reason America is doomed is because what we have truly lost in the process of selling out our government is the truth.  You see the truth doesn’t matter any more, science is abhorred, unless of course it is being used to find a new way to get people high, or make your I-phone better, faster, stronger, able to masturbate you while you surf the web with unlimited battery capacity on a 4G network.

How do I know this to be true?  Because routinely when inaccuracies are pointed out by multiple fact checkers the political response is to misdirect or create confusion, to change the focus of the news as soon as possible.  BOTH parties do this, it is the standard operating procedure of today’s politics.  And people on both side of the aisle let pass because the other side does it to.

Also if you notice, both sides are always right, the other side is always wrong.  I would ask you simply, what ideology have you ever encountered that is right 100% of the time.  If that were possible, Fox News and MSNBC are never wrong and their stories, opinions and general bullshit are diametrically opposed, so they can’t both be right.  Poor CNN who actually tries to what FOX News claims to be, fair and balanced, has seen it’s ratings tank in comparison to MSNBC and FOX News, that’s our fault folks, we are the ones who watch the shows, we create the ratings.  We are telling the people who program our news that we are no longer interested in truth, or honest analysis.   We want to watch people argue, make fun of the people of the other view and find out what Marge in Omaha thinks via the anchor’s Twitter feed.

I constantly see television ads that are obvious lies.  If you believe what you see on TV, oil, gas and coal companies care more about local communities, economies and the environment than they do about profits.  Please comment on this piece if you actually believe that to be true, because I have ocean front property for sale in Utah and I want you to have the first crack at it.  This isn’t new folks, for decades people were told to smoke to soothe throat problems and that smoking isn’t bad for you and certainly not addictive.  Tobacco companies, like all big corporations will lie to maximize quarterly profits because they know at the end of the day, the lawsuits mean nothing compared to their profits.  You might think all of those smoking lawsuits destroyed the big tobacco companies, if you believe that, research a company named Altria.  You might know it better by it’s Tobacco company name, Philip Morris.

America may have at one time been truly exceptional, but it wasn’t exceptional by decree of God like most Conservatives seem to believe.  America was exceptional because we solved problems, we compromised when necessary to get things done, we put a priority on educating our children.  That is not a result of a decree from God instead those are the characteristics of a multicultural, evolving and concerned citizenry.   Not the petulant consumer children we have become.

There was a moment, shortly after the tragedy of 9/11 where America seemed like it found itself again.  We put away the partisan bickering, we felt compassion for our fellow Americans.  Except for a few incidents we didn’t go on a nationwide sweep of Muslims and close all of their mosques.  I was proud of America for the first time in my life during that small window of time. 

But that ended, we used the tragedy as a political tool to invade Iraq and it all slowly started to unravel again like a burning flag.  Since that time we have seen nothing but increasing divisiveness, fewer civil liberties, new laws against protest, an ever-increasing home security agency that reaches into every facet of our lives, there are even Homeland Security Documents as part of your loan package when you buy a house.

We have polarized our politics to the point where the minority party will cheer for our economy to fail for their political gain.  My God do you realize what that means?  As the economy tumbles more children go into poverty and therefore more children die due to reduced nutrition and medical care.  So in effect our governmental representatives would rather see children die than compromise 1% of their ideological beliefs.  Maybe we should rename those idiotlogical beliefs.  Now did any of them think that position through to that logical end, of course not, it’s just politics, a game that you win if you and your party get re-elected.

We’ve failed America, we’ve sold our truth, our country and our souls to special interests and corporations.  We did it so we wouldn’t have to think and so we can buy more things.  We abrogated our responsibility and in doing so have sold out our children’s future. 

Two men are running for President of the United States of America and both are probably decent individuals.  Both are the pictures of main stream America, family men, by all accounts good fathers and good husbands both are Christians as so many of you are and yet almost all of you hate one or the other and are willing to accuse them of horrible things.   But both have willingly been manipulated by the political process to put their chances of election, or re-election before their actual core values and it’s too bad. 

However neither of these men are worthy of your scorn or the names you choose to call them.  It is the process that we have condoned that created the polarization in this country.  Liberals are not interested in running this country into a Greek style debt crisis, Conservatives are not awful hateful people who don’t care about poor people.  In fact, I doubt there are many true liberals or conservatives out there.  Most of us have views that range across the spectrum, conservative on some things liberal on others.  If you don’t then you probably aren’t thinking, as I said earlier, no one ideology is right 100% of the time.

America is on the precipice of doom but we can prevent it.  The solution is to be compassionate, considerate of others views, the ability to compromise, a desire to operate off of facts, not opinions.  We need to remove the insane money that drives our politics and maybe even go to open elections instead of primaries and elections pitting one party always against the other.  Unfortunately, I’ve lost faith in this country, we are too selfish to do the things I suggest or to come to agreement on ways to improve things.  It makes me sad that both of my grandfathers fought in World War II for an America Dream that no longer exists.

Call me when the revolution starts

I recently spent three weeks in Ireland, one of the things I really didn’t miss about being out of the country was the constant reporting on the upcoming presidential election between Romney and Obama.  More than that it was incredibly nice not to have to listen to all of the hate speech spewed back and forth between US politicians and all of the idiotic talking heads on the cable news channels.  So I’ve made a decision, I’m only going to get my TV news from The Jon Stewart Show, seriously he seems on a nightly basis to be able to summarize all of the idiocy up in about 18 minutes and do it in a way that makes me laugh.  I’m an information junkie so I’ll still troll through the news websites but I’ve given up news coverage on TV.

The bigger issue in all of this is the fact that our politicians don’t give a shit about the people, not Romney, not Obama, not Democrats or the Republicans.  What’s worse is that now everyone seems to have to be labeled and those who label themselves basically filter the world through that lens, if you’re a hammer everything looks like a nail.  So all the conservatives see socialism under every bush and liberals see cruelty and discrimination everywhere, get a grip folks.  If the world was so damn black and white all of the problems would already be solved.

So I wonder is it time to tear it all down and start over?  If the answer to that is yes call me when the revolution starts, it may be televised, but I won’t be watching.

Conservative Hypocrites support Sharia Law

Conservative Hypocrites support Sharia Law

Conservatives in America are always screaming about how they are trying to stop the Obama administration from allowing Muslims to institute Shariah Law in the United States.  They claim it would be wrong to impose Islamic religious laws on the citizens of a secular nation.  However these very same conservatives are willing to support religious law as long as it’s their religion being imposed on everyone else.  They are willing to impose their religious views no matter how bigoted they are in regards to preventing gay marriage or the use of insurance to pay for contraceptives or by finding ways to strong-arm organizations like the Susan G Komen for the cure to hold up breast cancer screenings because they happen at Planned Parenthood.

So you might think this idea of Christian Shariah Law is hyperbole but Rick Santorum, recent winner of three Republican Party primaries for the President of the United States very much supports this idea.  Santorum is also ironically the chosen candidate of the religious right and one of the biggest supporters of this idea.

It never ceases to amaze me how little the conservative and religious right, who spend so much time screaming about American Exceptionalism, freedom and the constitution are the ones most often supporting bigotry, lack of freedom and the loss of civil rights.

 

 

 

My State of the Union Speech

My State of the Union Speech

So tonight the president made his state of the union speech, this morning I had a vision of what I might do in the same situation, it would go a little something like this.  The first thing I would do as I approached the podium would be to turn off the teleprompter, then:

Hell o everyone,

The reason I turned off the teleprompter is because although there was a very nice speech written for me tonight, a speech full of the normal platitudes of office, nice things to say about each party, bold statements about what we’ll do this year, lots of mentions about how amazing our country is, in fact that speech is a bunch of bullshit.  Why?  Well mostly because none of you in our government actually give a shit about the American people.  Let’s face it, you all have one allegiance and that is to the re-election party.  The only Americans that you care about are the ones who can finance your campaigns or get you re-elected.

You have become caricatures of yourselves, pandering puppets to the most extreme wings of your parties because those elements are the ones that can get you past your primary elections.  Of course to do that you have to spout positions that appeal to no one but your base, this is a center-right country on most issues but you pretend that it is alternately a bastion of liberal morals, or a den of conservative closed mindedness.   You, all of you, who so consistently condemn Islamic extremists have become conservative or liberal extremists.

There is a lot of good with our country; in general people are good and kind, even if they don’t always want to think very deeply or very much.  The United States does a lot of good in this world, we support countries that are less fortunate than we are, we try to create peace and support democracy which as self-centered as that is seems to be a good thing.

But we are self-centered and much of what we do, regardless of what we say is in our own self-interest, you see, we are a narcissistic nation.  We believe we are better than everyone else; we have a great term for it, American Exceptionalism.  We believe that our form of government, our religion, our values, the way we see the world is right and unless you believe what we believe you are inherently wrong or evil.

We are not a peaceful nation, but we are not warlike either, not usually.  But recently Islamic extremists violated all that we hold sacred; they had the audacity to kill Americans in America.  We used the deaths of those nearly 3000 people to drive us to war in Afghanistan, we decided to drive out the Taliban, remove them from power and kill them because they gave shelter to our enemy.  Then Saddam Hussein outsmarted our president, no major achievement there, but he also outsmarted all of our so-called intelligence agencies as well.  So we decided to go to war in Iraq as well.  We avenged the deaths of Americans by driving the Taliban out of power, killing a lot of them, and a lot of innocents as well.  We got our former ally Saddam Hussein executed and killed a lot of Iraqis, a lot of terrorists, jihadists and children as well.  In the end we’ve changed nothing permanently in Afghanistan, no invading force ever has.  We’ve changed Iraq, maybe for the better and maybe we’ve unified Iraq and Iran in a way they never could have been before.  We killed Osama Bin Laden and have seriously disrupted Al Qaeda everywhere we could find them, no matter what their nationality including American citizens.  Those we haven’t killed we’ve locked up indefinitely in a foreign country, tortured some, and undoubtedly killed some others.

But what have we really gained from our wars?  As of September 30, 2012 we have spent 1.38 trillion dollars on the wars.  This debt, along with a lack of our government being responsible, or Wall Street remotely caring about anyone but their pocketbooks, has led us into the greatest economic downturn since the great depression.  Over this period of time more than 2.6 million Americans have slipped into poverty and my friends poverty kills.  How many lives have been lost here at home to finance our wars that we are fighting to avenge the deaths of people here in America?  To this point we have lost over 5,000 soldiers in combat in the wars, more disturbingly for the last two years we have lost more soldiers to suicide than combat.  Additionally we have over 47,000 American soldiers who have been wounded, many coming home without limbs, traumatic brain injury and post traumatic stress disorder.  This is the sacrifice we made to avenge 3,000 kills by madmen and to find imaginary weapons of mass destruction.  What we’ve sacrificed in goodwill and how many new terrorists we’ve created due to the massive levels of civilian deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan remains to be seen.  According to Wikipedia there are as many as 150,000 civilian deaths between these two countries in our wars.

America, tonight, I suggest we make a change, that we try to be more civil, more peaceful, that we do some really radical things.  First, that we try to look at things from other people’s perspectives not just our own, or our own party’s or our political base, that we actually try to govern instead of just trying to get re-elected.  Let’s actually look at America with a long-term perspective, what do we need to do now, that will pay dividends over the next 20 years instead of what dividends we can pay by the next election.  I’m talking about leadership and vision, you know, the things people actually expect from their political leaders and so rarely get.  Maybe if we employ these two characteristics we might just solve some of the problems we have and actually become as great a nation as we claim to be on the radio and on the talk shows.

Occupy Wall Street has a long US tradition

Occupy Wall Street has a long US tradition

There have been worker revolts in the United States pretty much as long as the United States has existed.  However the revolts took on another tenor in the late 60’s.  During the civil rights movement these labor disputes began to be focused racial on blacks.  According to Howard Zinn’s, A People’s History of the United States, in 1966, seventy poor blacks occupied an unused barracks on an air force base.  After this event had been resolved, much in the way many occupy encampments were resolved this year a Mrs. Unita Blackwell said,

“I feel that the federal government have proven that it don’t care about poor people.  Everything that we have asked for through these years had been handed down on paper.  It’s never been a reality.  We the poor people of Mississippi is tired.  We’ve tired of it so we’re going to build for ourselves because we don’t have a government that represents us.” 

It’s amazing how 45 years in this country doesn’t seem to change much, this statement, albeit most likely with a little better grammar, would not seem even remotely out of place today.

Again from Zinn, during this time period A. Phillip Randolph advised the president, “ The Negro’s protest today is but the first rumbling of the ‘under-class.’  As the Negro has taken to the streets, so will the unemployed of all races take to the street.”

This is what the Occupy movement is about, not some socialist ideal but an opportunity for people to be treated fairly and decently in this country.  That of course is based upon the idea that it’s not fair or decent that the 1% of the nation live like gods while there are so many people hurting, that’s why people are in the street.  Now that may be a socialist ideal but basic common decency is a socialist ideal I can get behind.

Christine O’Donnell the epitome of the American Dream

Christine O’Donnell the epitome of the American Dream

In case you don’t remember who Christine O’Donnell is, she’s the political wunderkind, Tea Party poster child who pulled an upset in the 2010 GOP primary to run for senate in Delaware.  Of course she was mercilessly crushed in the general election losing by over 30% in the voting.  Now this was not that shocking, she’d lost a house due to none payment, had been fired from a job then unsuccessfully sued them for $9 million for gender discrimination and emotional distress.  Politically she started out as a pro-choice liberal, had an epiphany at 21 and became and born again, pro-life Republican.

However after all of that she is probably most famous for her commercial where she denied being a witch, check it out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxJyPsmEask

Doesn’t sound so bad, but check out The Young Turks re-edit of the video, much more fun to watch: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Plyyoegpzeg

So after this incredible debacle she was obviously laughed off the political stage and forgotten about right?  Not in America, who do I see on CNN tonight as a political commentator on GOP issues, that’s right, Christine O’Donnell, who says the American Dream is dead!

All hell is about to break loose in Korea

Apparently the despot Kim Jong Il has died, this is huge news.  Given the instability of the North Korean economy and incredible poverty its people subsist under this is really a frightening time.  I highly doubt that the North Korean people will protest or revolt, their media is so tightly controlled that most of them know nothing of the Arab Spring or other movements across the globe.  However, Kim Jong Il’s successor, Kim Jong-un and the military leaders around him will inevitably want to demonstrate to the world the strength of their new leader and his new government.  This will almost certainly mean North Korea ramping up its rhetoric and quite possibly taking some small military actions against South Korea.

Given last summers shelling of Yeonpyeong island the two countries have been tense at best and stupidity by the new North Korean regime could easily start a wider conflict.