In an obvious ploy to appear erudite and well-read, Mitt Romney recently cited Jared Diamond to support his ill-informed opinions on culture. It’s really a bad idea to misrepresent a living scientist, because they tend to come back and expose you as a dishonest fraud.
It is not true that my book “Guns, Germs and Steel,” as Mr. Romney described it in a speech in Jerusalem, “basically says the physical characteristics of the land account for the differences in the success of the people that live there. There is iron ore on the land and so forth.”
That is so different from what my book actually says that I have to doubt whether Mr. Romney read it. My focus was mostly on biological features, like plant and animal species, and among physical characteristics, the ones I mentioned were continents’ sizes and shapes and relative isolation. I said nothing about iron ore, which is so widespread that its distribution has had little effect on the different successes of different peoples. (As I learned this week, Mr. Romney also mischaracterized my book in his memoir, “No Apology: Believe in America.”)
Oops. Didn’t read the book, huh? I’ve had a few student papers like that.
The real stinger is in the conclusion.
Mitt Romney may become our next president. Will he continue to espouse one-factor explanations for multicausal problems, and fail to understand history and the modern world? If so, he will preside over a declining nation squandering its advantages of location and history.
I guess Mitt shouldn’t have gone to Jared’s.
From a man who write a book on the collapse of civilizations, I’d think about taking that warning seriously.
I read Collapse as a child and it was a very good, if terrifying read. And yeah I second Martin; you should take his warning seriously.
_Collapse_ came out in 2005, are you a teenager now?
It’s not Mittbot 2000’s problem that he did read Jared Diamond’s book. If Jared really wanted his book to be read and accurately discussed by Mittbot, he should have written it in binary code on golden plates. Since Mr. Diamond obvious did not, it is obvious that he wanted Mittbot to say whatever the hell came to Mittbot’s random word generator.
“Will he continue to espouse one-factor explanations for multicausal problems, …?”
Like God, perhaps?
What do you expect?
I consider my teenage years to include my childhood.
It seems daring to me for Romney to ascribe America’s success as the result of anything but our inherent exceptionalism. He further exposes himself to right wing criticism by claiming to have read a book written by an intellectual.
Mitt Romney: born with a silver foot in his mouth.
This is a cross post from The Endless Thread — should have posted it here in the first place.
More commentary on Mr. Romney’s reading comprehension problem:
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/02/13087779-reading-comprehension-is-a-virtue?
As Mr. Romney is fond of citing “culture” as an explanation for behavior, I would like to cite mormon culture as the source for Romney’s habit of referencing books he does not understand, or quoting authors in misleading ways. This habit must be taught to mormon babies in the crib. It is certainly used for indoctrinating teenagers in Seminary classes, and it is a staple of General Authority talks.
There seems to be no penalty for being way off base in one’s literary references. Mormons get full points just for making the references — they don’t have to be relevant, nor do they have to make sense.
I’d have to say Diamond is nitpicking a bit, but that’s beside the point. GG&S is about the last book Romney should be citing, because it’s a very strong argument against racism and national exceptionalism.
Mitt Romney failing at reading comprehension back in May.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/05/mitt-romney-very-bad-book-reviewer.html
Mitt Romney misunderstands author David Landes:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/07/romneys-historical-misunderstanding-continued.html
Mitt Romney fails at reading Why Nations Fail:
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-07-31/author-mitt-is-confused-on-palestine-and-culture
Excerpts from responses to Romney from the two authors of Why Nations Fail:
More on Romney’s style of failing and flailing when it comes to reading comprehension:
Yeah, politically idiotic move for a big-business republican to cite Diamond, given Diamond’s thesis in Collapse. Its like playing a Beetles or U2 song as their theme; are they that naive to think the authors aren’t going to say anything?
Romney seems to have decided to make the opposite mistake of Palin. Instead of being embarrassed for reading too little, he’s come up with a reading list so long that it pretty much has to be fake. I’m sure he’s smart enough to read and understand the books he cites. I just call BS on the claim that he’s actually read them. Maybe he read his staff’s self-produced cliffs notes of them. But I don’t think he’s had the free time to actually read all those while being Governor, campaigning for President, etc.
Copper and tin ores, as well as the control of trade routes and exchanges of copper and tin, did matter a good deal in and around the Meditteranean. Iron’s main advantage at first was its availability and its relative cheapness.
I don’t know exactly what Diamond wrote, but if Mitt mixed up bronze and iron, ascribing the distribution and cost issues of the former to the latter, it’s not the worst mistake ever. Not exactly impressive either, of course.
Glen Davidson
A Romney aide later clarified the candidate’s remarks.
Speaking to an NPR reporter, Eric Fehrnstrom explained:
“Shut up.”
Lynna:
Well, yes, of course there’s no penalty. It’s practically a requirement. Mormons and other Christians routinely misinterpret the Bible to fit their preconceived ideas about it and they are incredibly uninformed about it. It’s no surprise they do it with other works.
It’s more like Diamond wrote that certain cultures rose to prominence mainly because of point A, also points B and C, and then also there was a little extra push later on because of point D, and Mitt said it’s all due to point D. Kind of like the kid in the back of the class who sleeps through the lecture and only catches the last 5 minutes.
…and not only that, but Mitt is strongly pushing policies that will actively harm the entities in points A and B, not understanding how important they are, because he’s fixated only on point D.
I’ve read “Guns, Germs and Steel” and “Collapse”, the latter by far the scariest book I’ve ever read. Of the two, I think Collapse should be required reading for any political candidate. How can they lead without a deep understanding of how close to the edge we are as a world?
We really need politicians that can resist “dumbing down” their rhetoric for the masses. Lead, dammit, not toward a 7th grade modern ‘accessible’ target, but toward an Enlightenment one where the reader was expected to rise up to the author’s/speaker’s level.
Of course, having said that, I love it when PZ explains Bio and Evo concepts in terms I can understand. In doing so, however, he tantalizes us with depths of complexity and nuance unseen and undiscovered, not with condescendingly simplified soundbites.
The central thesis of Guns, Germs and Steel is that the fact that Europeans built the big ships and came to the Americas rather than the other way around is an accident of geography. Most of the world’s great cash crops had their wild precursors growing in and around the so-called “fertile crescent” and the large domesticable animals came from not too far away, giving the people in that part of the world a jump-start on agriculture and civilization. Agriculture spread through Europe because its east-west orientation, without significant barriers, means a similar growing season and faster spread of particular crops. And with large animals to do more work, and to provide food, you get larger populations, earlier division of labor, more innovation like metal working, and of course built-up resistance to the diseases that devastated the natives in the Americas.
Agriculture was independently developed in other parts of the world, but in the Americas and Africa, they didn’t have the raw materials to work with, and agriculture was generally unable to compete with hunting & gathering lifestyles.
It’s not about superior culture or intelligence, or iron ore. It’s about building a larger population with a food surplus
It’s more likely that Romney has installed an extra heavy duty mormon filter in his brain. That filter twists all input to correspond with mormon theology and culture
Romney reads the books, but he cannot comprehend what he reads.
Once the mormon filter is installed during childhood and reinforced during the teen years, the adult mormon is programmed to receive all input as confirming the mormon version of manifest destiny. Over-simplification of issues is guaranteed. The adult mormon robot can function, sort of, in the business world, but is incapable of the nuanced understanding required to be successful in fields like diplomacy or being President of the U.S.
Glen — Sure, and the point of GGS is that the success of Western civilization has a lot to do with geography. Diamond focuses primarily on factors that he thinks were unique to Eurasian civilization as opposed to the Americas, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Pacific islands: a wide range of domesticable plants and animals, a geography that supported the spread of those domesticates and later technologies across a wide region (all of Eurasia and North Africa), and the acquired immunity to diseases from domestic animals.
“Guns” and “Steel” are in the title because the geographic and biological advantages of Eurasian civilizations led to the early adoption of writing and the evolution from tribal to state societies which promoted such technologies.
Copper, tin, iron were available to those less successful areas of the world and trade was a part of the economic culture of those regions. But there were limits on the breadth of that commerce. He puts a fair amount of emphasis on the limits of transferring domesticable plants and animals across the North-South oriented geographies of the Americas and Africa.
Of course, Mitt is probably just trying to use GGS to support his White man culture bias which is particularly pathetic since the whole point of GGS (I think) is that the dominance of Western civilization is not the result of racial superiority but the accident of a slightly more fortuitous geographic circumstance.
“..presiding over a declining nation squandering its advantages of location and history…”
Hmmm. Sounds pretty much like the republican game plan to me.
On top of all this, at the scale that Diamond is investigating in GGS, the Palestinians and the Israelis are two communities of the same culture! It compares cultures on the broadest scales (e.g., the West in GGS is western Eurasia, not just western Europe or even all of Europe).
One of the important points of GG&S, for those unfamiliar with it, is that although the geography arguments are important from a cultural standpoint, there are no substantive differences between people. Intellectual capacity is absolutely divorced from race or ethnicity and given the opportunity and support, someone can go from complete isolation (say, the deep Amazon or the Andaman and Sentinel Islands) and become a functioning member of an advanced society with relatively little trouble. Intellectually, it’s the worst nightmare imaginable for the Bell Curve crowd, because it stomps *all* of their justifications for racism, especially the intellectual ones, into the ground and gives a virtually inexhaustible supply of ammo to us mushy bleeding hearts. (Some of the reviews from people like that on Amazon are impressively butthurt.)
Posted on the ex-mormon forum Recovery from Mormonism:
“squandering”???? WTH!!! Squandering????
It’s more like actively destroying our accumulated capital and heritage.
Bush, “Hey, lets cut taxes and increase spending while starting two wars in the middle east.”
I could give Bush the advantage of being well meaning but completely clueless.
Romney: Hey, lets cut taxes some more, increase spending, and start another war in the middle east with Iran.
“You know, you should really look at where Mitt has led his life, and where he’s been financially,” Mrs. Romney said. “He’s a very generous person. We give 10% of our income to our church every year. Do you think that is the kind of person who is trying to hide things, or do things? No. He is so good about it.” — Ann Romney Link.
Um, no Ann. I’m sorry, but Romney has proven himself to be a liar.
Did you get that? While Romney continued to state in public that he had filed all his taxes as a Massachusetts resident, he knew that he had filed in Utah, and he knew that his accountants were working on retroactively filing taxes to change the Utah filings to Massachusetts filing.
So, first he lied and then, while he was working behind the scenes to cover the lie, he lied some more.
And now both Romney and his wife tell us to trust him on his taxes because he is an honest man who has always given 10% of his earnings to the mormon church.
Repeat of link. Scroll down quite a bit to find the section quoted above.
The idea that the character of a land determines the character of its vegetation, mineralogy and autocthonous inhabitants was a commonplace of thirteenth-century geographical treatises. Albertus Magnus’s De natura locorum springs to mind, though he did think a lot of it had to do with the different patterns of refraction of cosmic rays from the planets through the atmosphere.
Clearly Mitch Romford has an incisive and adept mind. I mean, come on, he thinks in terms that were cutting-edge a mere 750 years ago. Compared to most of his Republican brethren, who haven’t got out of the sixth century BC, that makes him so up-to-date he’s virtually a prophet.
More details on mormon culture and the mormon version of Manifest destiny.
Excerpts below:
Link.
Richie Rich for President!
Hey, don’t’ be insultin’ Richie Rich!
He’d NEVER have done that to his dog!
I’ve not read Collapse but GG&S is a very interesting and enjoyable book. I have no idea how Romney could have come to his conclusion from actually reading it…
Thread won.
Wasn’t he talking about the present?
We are all the Tikopia.
=8-)
+ 1
“Romney appears to be saying while Palestinian despair has its roots in their culture, God is also holding them down,” — Jon Stewart.
“Or, if you prefer to look at the converse, Israel’s economic progress is evidence of the hand of providence — going to assume that all the horrible @#$%& that happened to the Jews prior to that was the hand of providence’s middle finger.” — Jon Stewart
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/31/jon-stewart-mocks-romneys-israel-gaffes-jews-are-culturally-money-making-motherfckers/
Someone should do a more thorough job of publicising just how much money Rmoney gives to the Mormoneys. I’m sure the good Christian Republans will appreciate it.
Is it more money than 10 % of his income, or is it less…?
Sounds to me like Mitt didn’t read the book at all, but probably just caught that one scene from the documentary (which was so much awesome!) that mentions the availability of raw materials in the environment and how a population is able or chooses to utilize them.
Lynna (#29)
Is she seriously asking for good person credit for paying their tithe—something Mormons are obligated to do?! How the fuck is that generosity?! My Mormon BFF paid her tithe while working to put herself through college, FFS. She still pays it. She may give less in total than he does but I’m sure she feels it more.
The funny part is that the same people that say that sort of thing will say that taxes to help the less fortunate go against Biblical principles because such charity must be given “cheerfully and without coercion”.
Mitt doesn’t NEED to read those books — he has people to do that for him. And like all good yes-men, they tell him what they think he wants to hear, which he then has his speechwriters incorporate into his speeches. It’s not a matter of reading comprehension fail, he’s never read them at all.
I must add here that Bill Clinton was a voracious reader. By all insider accounts he actually understood what the books were about and was able to extrapolate plausible potential policies based on those books’ contents.
Israel succeeded because of its huge founding base of human capital. It falters now because that capital has been depleted. It’s been somewhat propped up by the recent influx of Russians, but the Haredi are huge drain.
There was a blistering rant against the Ultra-Orthodox over at Friendly Atheist by an Israeli citizen. He went on and on about how he wanted the Haredis to be forced to paint tanks in the hot sun. I’m pretty sure our ranter was a tank painter.
Re: Romney and tithing to the Mormon Church.
The Mormon church threw lots of money into the California Prop 8 (repeal of gay rights) initiative. Boasting about tithing to that church does not win points with a lot of people.
So, threat of jail = coercion.
Threat of burning forever in hell = not coercion.
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhuh.
But the voters who infest the GOP primaries it . . . hmm. Would a Baptist consider donating to the LSD in order to deny human rights to gays and lesbians to be a good thing (denies human rights to the right people) or a bad thing (gives money to a non-Christian cult)?
I am somewhat surprised that anyone would ignore the enormous amount of money the U.S. government sends to Israel, its “51st State.” I guess Romney is desperate to find some other explanation for Israel’s success.
$115 billion since 1949. I would guess that if someone gave the Palestinians $115 billion over half a century they’d be doing well too.
See p. 30 of the following Congressional Research Service report:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/mideast/RL33222.pdf
Of course, it’s a Republican article of faith that government assistance never obtains anything but dependency and more need. He can’t oppose aid to Israel (no one wants to step on that land mine) but how to explain the success of the state without it? What’s a Republican to do!?
46 Ogvorbis
That would be the LDS (Latter Day Saints) not lysergic acid diethylamide-25 (LSD). That said:
MY FAVORITE TYPO EVER!
(Explains a lot of the prophecies. But, wait, that would explain a lot of everybody’s prophecies).
Which is fascinating considering I just watched a Romney lievertisement in which the slow economic growth in the US was blamed on millions being sent to other countries. Hmm.
Pre- or post-tax income?
Income from all sources?
Shell-corporation income?
etc.
$115 billion since 1949.
Ironic that we have politicians financially supporting universal health care for Israel while doing their very best to kill the President’s plan.
btw, if I may kw*k, I once spent 3 hours as the sole passenger in Jared Diamond’s car. He speaks exactly as he writes and is a maniacal driver imo. We also published as coauthors once (vanity citation).
[/kw*k]
I had to go visit Amazon and read some of the 1-star review comments of GG&S after BrianX (#26) mentioned extreme butthurtedness being exhibited by folks whose pet theories were obliterated by Diamond’s work.
Impressive is right. Is there a fallacy known as Argument by Butthurt?
Here, hang on a minute while I polish up this Internet with my sleeve for you.
I ran across an interesting article which argued that Diamond may not be correct about why nations fail, at least as far as the Americas are concerned:
http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/07/why-nations-fail
What I found so interesting about the article is that it puts America’s decline in a new perspective: We are declining because the elites have decided to change the basis of our society from inclusive to extractive. In the USA’s case the resource that is being strip-mined is the collective contents of the wallets of the middle class.
@ OP
Though it is a little beside the main point (Mitt’s lack of reading comprehension), we may also point out two things:
1. Although iron ore was widespread, the technology to utilise it (though surprisingly widespread) was in short supply and, for many centuries, completely underappreciated in terms of its real value and potential.
2. Distribution of iron ore did, in fact, have some very important consequences. Egypt, for example, did not have enough iron (supplied by the Hittites) to enter the iron age and paid heavily for this lack. (This is even described in Isiah 36.6 (KJV): )
…
@ Lynna
This was also true of the early xtian church.
I was hoping Jared Diamond would bitch-slap that stupid Mormon asswipe.
Well done, Mr. Diamond!
@ plutoanimus
It is the policy on Pharyngula not to use gendered slurs. Please don’t do so here.
Yeah having read GG&S several times for a graduate history class, and knowing it fairly well, I am 99% sure Mitt just skimmed it, if even that.
Which is a pity, it’s a good book. Sacrifices depth for breadth, but Diamond was going after a fundamental question of human history so the answer in a reasonable-length popular history/science book was going to have to be broad.
Shoot, the whole PBS documentary is on YouTube. Mitt could’ve watched it on the campaign trail for free.
Glad to see Diamond clobber Romney’s appalling arrogance and wrongness.
Jared Diamond is the reason I started studying anthropology and archaeology. I’m amused to see him give Romney a verbal spanking.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter if Rmoney is called-out for lying about what’s in someone else’s book. What are the chances that anyone from
MordorTBaggerville are ever going to read an exposé on his rampant bullshitting? They’re certainly not going to see it on Faux News.I’ve read “Guns, Germs and Steel” several times in my life. And I can say without any fear of contradiction that Romney is a fucking germ.
Romney’s “cultural” distinction between the Israelis and Palestinians is an old conservative mantra: The rich owe their success to hard work and moral values, the poor have only themselves to blame for their poverty.
Israel was established primarily by educated Europeans, familiar with the commercial and legal systems needed for capitalism to flourish. The Palestinians are ruled by a kleptocratic dictatorship kept in place by military occupation from an unfriendly power.
Ooh! Open access! And an interesting topic! Immediately downloaded. I just hope it hasn’t been superseded in the last 22 years.
All seconded!
Please explain. That just seems to mean “Pharaoh king of Egypt suffers from Chronic Backstabbing Disorder, so don’t trust him”.
plus, if we’re going to cite the bible for potential importance to cultural-dominance of iron, I figured the “iron chariots” bit would have been more relevant…
…yeah. :-)
…presume your primary voting base is heavily composed of ignorant fucktards who either don’t know about this, or presume we’re sending that much aid to Israel because they’re the only Christian nation in the Middle East.
Well, of course it has. Not ‘superceded’ but tested, expanded and winnowed some.
Diamond himself followed up with this (flawed) review in 1997:
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v386/n6624/abs/386457a0.html
Fuckin A, Chas!
51 chrisv
Even better, TRMS had a segment in which we see Romney during his recent overseas trip expressing amazement that Israel spends 8% GDP on health care vs. the U.S. 18% but has better outcomes. Amazed, he is, over how healthy they are.
Back the the CRS report: the breakdown of what the different programs pay for makes my head hurt. There’s an education one that supports schools (all levels) and libraries. Funding for Community Colleges in the U.S. is on the decline and the republicans are pushing for-profit colleges (can you say “Harkin Report?”) as a solution. What do you think would happen if the Republican even suggested dropping that funding for Israel while telling them to go with for-profit solutions instead? And then there’s the up to $60 million a year to help immigrants settle in Israel. Given the “welfare reforms” of the 90s does the U.S. government spend any money to assist immigrants in the U.S. anymore?
The more you scrutinize the U.S. government spending for Israel the more you find at odds with Republican policy for the U.S.
Can we have what we’re paying for them to have?
Everyone is speculating on the reason(s) for Romney’s refusal to release his tax returns. Some ex-mormons have speculated that he won’t release them because they will show that, in some years, he paid less than 10% to the LDS Church. That might doom him in mormondumb and would also indicate that he lied to his Bishop and that is Temple Recommend was obtained under false pretenses.
Personal story that reveals the coercive nature of mormon tithing:
Quote is from this thread: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,578321
The mormon law about tithing seems to vary according to interpretation by Bishops and members. Here’s one ex-mormon’s take on the situation:
Link.
More tithing stories: http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,429371
A more in-depth look at mormon tithing:
http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon136.htm
Salon did a story on Romney’s taxes that includes the mormon tithes (not paid?) theory.
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/03/10_theories_on_romneys_taxes_salpart/
Excerpt:
Nine other theories are presented, including everything from past donations to Planned Parenthood and undervaluing his assets to giving gifts to his sons that exceeded the $1 million limit and that were improperly reported. I like the theory that Romney just thinks that we peons do not deserve to see his tax returns before we are required to vote for him.
Adding to the long, long, lone line of Moments of Mormon Madness when it comes to “same sex attraction.”
http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/lifestyle/54619090-80/women-sex-mormon-gay.html.csp
It’s intriguing to find Diamond suddenly the hero round here, because my up till now, impression was that he was pretty non-grata with the left. But it’s brought some of the most flagrant left-liars out of the woodwork. Here we have :
#26 Brian X
You don’t distinguish between differences between populations and differences within populations: are you a liar or stupid or both?
opus in comment #55, I’m not certain, but it looks like you may have assumed that Jared Diamond wrote Why Nations Fail. He did not. <a href="http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/08/02/jared-diamond-spanks-mitt-romney/comment-page-1/#comment-420039"See comment #12.
Let’s try again on that borked link:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/08/02/jared-diamond-spanks-mitt-romney/comment-page-1/#comment-420039
I was wondering how long it would take for the butthurt (which, as other commenters have mentioned, is so prominent in certain Amazon reviews) to find its way over here.
Well, now I know the answer: 75 comments.
Hi, clastum3. Do let us know if you actually have anything of value to contribute, okay?
@ David Marjanović
The time in question was the spectacular rise of the state of Assyria, which made its fortunes through violently attacking those about it. (RL Klingons?) They preyed, inter alia, on Israel and Egypt (~671BC). The relatively small nation of Assyria could pull this off because Egypt could not keep up with the times. It could not make a go of the iron age *. Observing the state of affairs, it was an Assyrian officer who reminded the Jews of this.
* Technologies like iron. Meaning relatively poor people could be relatively well armed. (Eg: Compare the extravagant expense of bronze technology as mentioned in the Illiad.)
anathema #78
Smarmy comments are the best way out when you can’t deal with the substance.
Oops, that posted itself. Anyhow… Another big technical breakthrough was the warrior on horseback (as opposed to the (again) extravagantly expensive chariots that had been the sole perogative of the very rich.) A modern technological equivalent might be the introduction of SAM (Surface to Air Missiles) by the CIA in the Soviet-Afghanistan War. A total, and sudden, game changer.
(Note to ‘Merkins: Your nation’s neglect of Science, Technology & Engineering will not make itself felt gradually. Societal collapse happens shockingly rapidly.)
@ clastum3 (#80):
Um, what substance?
Was the substance the bit where you whined about how it was funny that Jared Diamond was suddenly a “hero” to liberals now (even though you are the only one who referred to him as a hero), despite having previously been a persona non grata with the left ( . . . since when? I sure didn’t get the memo)?
Or was the substance the bit where you called Brian X a liar for no good reason?
Or maybe the substance was the bit where you complain about how Brian X didn’t “distinguish between differences between populations and differences within populations” when it was perfectly clear that he was talking about supposed differences between racial groups?
Since this “impression” is patently false, the rest of the ludicrous argument that follows it falls like a sand-castle built on quicksand.
@ clastrum3
Er…That was likely the most ridiculous brainfart of the year. What the fuck does it even mean? Diamond’s overarching overview does not particularly discriminate amongst people in such a fashion. The longue durée is incompatible with such narrow mindedness.
And as you said earlier, the ability to arm relatively poor people is a huge advantage. A chariot with one person controlling it and another shooting arrows was an incredible weapon–particularly with the smaller, lighter Egyptian chariots–but it took a lot of resources. It couldn’t compare to greatly increasing that maneuverability and speed (absent the drag of the chariot itself) and the number of people benefiting from those factors.
One archer and the investment of a driver, a chariot and a team of horses or spend the same amount and get six soldiers on horseback? Sure, the chariot was good for smashing through enemy lines, but not nearly so good at its primary use, which was protecting infantry.
anathema #82
Thanks for your prompt reply.
What mainly provoked me was that he dragged the bell curve into it, which surely is applicable within populations. His conflation between intra- and interpopulation must have been deliberate.
It would be a strange world in which bell-curves didn’t describe the distribution of characteristics within a group.
Amphiox –
it seems to have escaped you that my comments were about Brian X’s spoutings.
…er sorry, #87 applies rather to theophontes #84
Mitt Romney makes Obama’s case really well. Of course, the video is from several years ago, from MittBot 2004. Amusing. Excerpt below:
The full effect is not really available without watching the video. Available here http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/03/13104757-what-counts-as-poppycock?
and on YouTube under “Romney in 2004: Blaming President for Economy…”
In the 2:51 minute video, Mitt also makes a strong case for stimulus spending during a recession.
The Bell Curve. Not the bell curve.
clastum3:
I’d ask what the hell you’re talking about but I’m not sure I want to know.
@ clastum3
Woah Safari! I cannot really see any fault with what Brian X said. What exactly do you disagree with? (Other than “butthurt”…)
You come across as truly confused on this issue. (No, really. I cannot even imagine what your point is.)
fuck sakes
It’s The Bell Curve, not the ‘bell curve’ (i.e. normal frequency distribution).
ueah, like the maroon said, w/ link (but no italics)
@ The Mellow Monkey: Caerie
What we haven’t mentioned yet: Once people commit to a certain way of doing (here, say, chariot warfare… but also bronze armour … or conventional weaponry in the age of IED’s) they have an incredible resistance to changing their ways. This has too often cost them dearly. (I shout at my books: “No,no! Don’t you see it is going wrong?“)
I skimmed some of the ex-Mormon site’s justification to avoid paying 10% of gross income to their church, to “only” pay 10% of net income. Holy faux-antique word salad written on gold-plated tablets, Ratman! That gibberish is even worse than the tax code. Meleuch told Jedzebed that he’d have to pay 10% of his surplus and or interest on everything he owned or maybe not. A True Believer(tm) has to convince Bishop Armtwister that he does or doesn’t owe money, and does or does not get a chance to go to Heaven(tm), based on interpreting that mess. Congresscritters are experts on screwing up the tax code, but they’re amateurs compared to religious tax code writers. Then again, L. Ron Hubbard of $cientology and Joe Smith of Mormoneyism of recent history were both documented liars and fraudsters. The other religions just had more time to *ahem* lose the court records.
My second point (inspiration? revelation?) is that I had no idea Mormon victims were being asked to pay 10% of _gross_ income. After deducting federal and state income taxes, Medicare and Social Security taxes, and health insurance (if you can get it), middle class people keep anywhere from 80-70% of their gross pay. Housing is often 20-30%, then not so optional stuff like food, clothing, and utilities take a bite. Now they have to convince Reverend Clubs Kneebreaker their mandatory voluntary contribution comes from net instead of gross income? It’s relevant to people on a salary, but if you’re self-employed, that change in interpretation could break your business. There are stories on that ex-Mormon site about people going bankrupt because of that expense, and still being coerced into paying their tithe. Bishop Romney (R-Money) and his family are proud of paying into that scam… but won’t release their records. How convenient. I’ll bet the holy ordained accountant is paying Bishop R’s tithe based on his net U.S. declared non-trust non-corporate surplus income, all $15 of it. He’s got the culturally superior right to do so, naturally.
This really is breathtaking: my use of caps gets corrected, and the usual abuse and attrition, but not a word on my arguments, which must be self-evident anyway.
Do I have to spell it out in words of one syllable? For any characteristic, in a population there will be a distribution, which, if not a perfect poisson, will have a similar shape.
Brian X was trying to use Diamond to deny this and the cohorts are weaseling along with him.
Is there no-one here with an ounce of intellectual integrity?
Some moremoney inspirational posters: Live the Fantasy!
(I shall usurp an image of Ro-money when the time comes.)
No, clastum3. That is not what is happening. Diamond’s book attacks the central thesis of a book called The Bell Curve, which is a pile of racist bullshit.
That traits manifest in bell curves is not disputed. The content of The Bell Curve is.
I just checked Guns, Germs, and Steel and Collapse out from the library.
At the same time, I got Delusions of Gender and Bring Up the Bodies. The librarian gave me a funny look.
I should have grabbed Bonk as well.
Clastrum3, Brian X was talking about Charles Murray’s book The Bell Curve. No one here is denying that bell curves exist.
@ clastum3
To yourself obviously.
The fatuous bullshit you have presented too date?
Relevance much?
Oooh… O_0
Esteleth:
They’re both good reading, I have them both. It’s a pity Romney doesn’t have the wherewithal to actually read and understand them.
*looks at the current argument*
oh wow. that can’t even aspire to being trolling. Tragic.
I’ve seen the documentary of G, G & S, but have not read the book. Time to change that.
Esteleth,
it’s a couple of years since I read GG&S, but it made quite an impression on me and my recollection is that it was in no way an explicit attack on any ideology, but simply offered an explanation of the way things turned out the way they have.
It was that objectivity that made it so influential.
Maroon. Not maroon.
@claustum3,
If someone talks to you about The Grapes of Wrath, do you get a mental picture of angry berries?
@theophontes
Oh, absolutely. Particularly when that commitment has been made by wealthy people and the alternative would be empowering to the less wealthy, who will then gain wealth through utilizing the new technology. It takes away some of the control and power of those who have invested in the current technology, so of course they resist. But as they do that, they leave themselves open for losing ground to their more adaptive neighbors.
An endlessly fascinating subject!
You’re an idiot or a troll.
Poisson ≠ normal.
That word does not mean what you apparently think it means.
Maybe you should slow down a little, bro, and compose your “arguments” so they actually say what you thought they were saying when you heard them in your head.
Jesus. You’re not even a third rate pedant. The poisson is only bell-like under certain values of lambda, and is certainly not useful in describing any random* variable in a population, but is specific to events or occurences occuring at a set probability in space or time.
I’m ignoring the point made to you previously, that The Bell Curve is not an overly capitalized and italicized version of the normal distribution, but rather a somewhat dicier thesis. Feel free to continue ignoring that, I guess.
*I’m being charitable and assuming you meant this.
Esteleth –
I was being too kind to you: at my last post I hadn’t imagined you’d never read it.
But then on pharyngula that’s no bar to pontificating about it.
clastum3, do you have any idea what the book The Bell Curve is about? It is about how there is a correlation between race/nationality and intelligence, and that this correlation is the cause of differing economic outputs of societies.
Diamond’s thesis that a lot of these things are accidents of geography attacks this racist thesis.
Apologies for misspelling your ‘nym, clastum3.
hotshoe :
I understand attrition as in “WWI was a war of attrition”. In other words you trying to wear me down, in typical pharyngulite manner when they’re trying to distract from the fact that they’ve got it all wrong by picking on the interpretation of words that are not central to the thesis.
Just how do you understand attrition then?
As contrasted with, say, Bell Curve, which was not an example of objectivity (but was still influential for right-wingers and bigots).
It’s nice to think that the Bell Curve controversy has died down enough that a commenter like clastum3 has never even heard of it, or heard of it but so remotely that – even when capitalized – the name “Bell Curve” don’t remind them of anything about a history of racism.
clastum3:
You presume to discuss societies and don’t know the difference between a statistical construct and a book with the same name? Back to the minors with you.
Esteleth
me in arch-pedant mode: It doesn’t attack that thesis – it undermines it.
But this is more than pedantry – if you want to be taken seriously you must express yourself objectively, and the cant language used pharyngula is a poor guide along that path.
Your whole criticism of BrianX in 75 and 86 was based on confusing the book The Bell Curve with the concept of the bell curve. Your mistake has been pointed out several times by several posters; some of us have even provided links. Yet you refuse to even acknowledge your mistake.
Your initial confusion can be attributed to ignorance, which is fine, but now your just being obtuse.
Um. Gibberish much?
Also, what What a Maroon said.
um, you’re….
For an update on Mitt Romney’s latest lies (or shall we be charitable and say “latest comprehension failures), see Steve Benen’s 28th edition of Mitt’s Mendacity.
Benen provides links that back up his claims that Romney is lying.
Romney may not know that Obama’s American Jobs Act exists, so he claims it does not exist. I don’t know which is worse, to be that ignorant, or to know about the Jobs Act and then lie about it’s existence.
That’s just one example out of 28 examples presented by Benen.
Brian X and others
this is going round in circles, you picking me up on editing slips: I’ve tried not to distract by mentioning e.g Maroon’s.
Post 26 you said “there are no substantive differences between people” , and mentioned “The Bell Curve”. I haven’t read The Bell Curve, but from Wikipedia it seems that the racial part of it was very small and it was largely about differences within groups. It was fair and correct to take you at your word.
Is the difference between poisson and normal distribution really so relevant:? what is the distribution of height of a group of the same sex? I admit I don’t know exactly, but if it doesn’t look more-or-less like a bell I’d be very surprised.
Is my inexactitude so relevant, or is there some attrition, dissembling or even worse going on on your side?
Wikipedia is incorrect. While the section that overtly deals with race is small, the overarching theme of the book is that certain races/nationalities are less intelligent than others, as are women compared to men.
To construct the book, Murray outright ignores data that contradicts his thesis, and massages the data he includes.
Clastrum3, Brian X’s point was that Guns, Germs, and Steel has undermined the arguments of people who use the book The Bell Curve to claim that some races are inherently more intelligent than others.
If you simply didn’t know about the book and simply misunderstood what Brian X was saying, fine. Just say that you didn’t know about the book and that led you to misinterpret what Brian X wrote and we can all move on.
As it stands now, I have no idea why you are arguing with us. I don’t even know what you are trying to argue for.
Jesus fuck, are you determined to remain an idiot as well as an ass ?
Let’s look again. Here’s what BrianX wrote (#26)
{Do note the capital “B” capital “C” Bell Curve – the name of a specific book, not the generalized concept of a bell curve …}
Here’s you losing you shit on your very first reply in this thread:
[italics/emphasis mine]
Not one of us is “trying to distract from the fact that [we’ve]
you’vegot it all wrong” – because in fact we do have it all right. We do understand that BrianX was referring to the book Bell Curve, which was motivated by racism and which is contradicted by Diamond’s central thesis in GGS (a book which you supposedly admire for its objectivity. The irony.) We al are competent to distinguish between populations, but that’s irrelevant. Your whole screed is moot because it’s based on your misunderstanding of the topic of discussion – even though you quoted it yourself!And yet, now you want to whine about “abuse” against you ? Must be nice to be you, such a special little snowflake, entitled to freedom from any blowback from coming here nastily blazing away – without even thinking at all – or at least without paying attention to the “Bell Curve” book reference, which was obvious to everyone else.
+++++
As for “attrition” – yes, you’re ignorant – or one of the sloppiest writers – or a liar – or all three. Here’s your fucking crappy sentence again, in full:
See, you left out at all the verbs necessary to make sense of your sentence. But a charitable reading, attempting to make honest sense, looks something like this:
But the problem is, you can’t use “attrition” that way, in a direct conjunction with “abuse”, as you wrote it. “Attrition” isn’t a countable noun the same way that “abuse” is.
So now, in order to charitably assume that you understand what attrition is, we have to rewrite your sentence yet again.
If you fucking meant to say we’re “conducting a war of attrition against” you, then fucking say that! Don’t say something else entirely different, and then try to pretend you understand how to say things right.
Goddamn, if I have to do all that much work to understand one self-pitying (and objectively false) sentence from you, I expect a big paycheck.
You’re not worth it. I won’t reply to you again on this subject, and I won’t give you even a fragment of the benefit of the doubt if I see you on another thread.
Toodles, cupcake. Have fun hating on Pharyngula for “abuse and attrition”. Tee hee.
Shorter clastum3:
“Since you only watched the documentary but didn’t read the book, you obviously don’t know what you’re talking about. If only you’d read the Wikipedia article on it….”
Hey, folks, take a look at the troll outing itself.
First it says:
Only minutes later, it says:
Riiight, no bar, no bar at all to trolls like clastum3 pontificating about things they haven’t read and don’t understand.
Not worth your time, folks.
clastum3: Your original point was that your intelligence is something that commands awe. I’ll concede that, in a sense, you are correct.
I’m gobsmacked, anyway.
Romney gets the wrong stuff stuck in his head, and he sticks with it. No fact-checking can dissuade him. He has been abusing Jared Diamond’s work since 2007. This makes me think it is even more likely that he did read Guns, Germs and Steel but is just incapable of understanding it.
Garance Franke-Ruta writes in the Atlantic:
Link.
Hey, hotshoe…
Jinx!
congratulations hotshoe, you’ve proven you can parse and understand a sentence expressed a little conversationally and elliptically, and you’ve shown your working. Just need to improve your speed a little so you can keep up with the others. Might pass the elementary English exam next time.
Time to go to bed, but couldn’t resist this:
Maroon #107 @Clausius,
Never read it, but think to understand its cultural significance in the States. In England, for my generation probably George Orwell was the equivalent, and I read virtually everything he wrote (Burmese Days is the only gap, I think). It was years later that it emerged that there were serious questions about the factual basis for his supposed “reportage”. He was a journalist who needed to make his stories piquant, he needed a line, and was politically motivated. Grapes of Wrath was written to sell as a novel: tear-jerking was essential.
Both authors were writing about people, who, compared with most of the world’s population at the time were extremely well-off.
If someone talks to me about The Grapes of Wrath, I get a mental picture of political manipulation.
…and still no recognition that he (yeah, I’m going out on a limb here, but the language and attitude just scream “he”) was totally wrong about BrianX’s argument, that the people pointing out the The Bell Curve referred to a book rather than a statistical artifact weren’t just correcting his “use of caps,” and that his hypocrisy is screamingly obvious to all.
Boring troll is really, really, really boring.
Wikipedia should be sufficient to give you a very thorough understanding of everything.
You must be a hoot at parties.
Hey, Gaebolga,
I owe you a soda!
Blockquote failure in #136. I’ll try again:
Actually The Grapes of Wrath is about people in Oklahoma who had been financially just making it but, due to circumstances beyond their control, become poverty stricken. They move to California which turns out not to be the land of milk and honey.
Perhaps if you read the book your mental picture would change.
Addendum:
Steinbeck is a quite readable author. I’m particularly fond of Cannery Row
I love Tortilla Flat, but Travels with Charley can go screw.
Clastrum3,
We would welcome your comments if you talk about something you actually know something about.
Having to read Travels with Charley for high school English nearly ruined Steinbeck for me. Fortunately, I spent a lot of time in Monterey and got to hear the history, so I eventually took a fancy to Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, and Tortilla Flat.
There are three or four recent murals behind the buildings which make up the tourist part of the street named Cannery Row (used to be Ocean View Ave, officially renamed in 1958 to honor Steinbeck). The murals depict the background characters of Cannery Row world. I love the interaction between the artwork and my mental picture of Steinbeck’s vividly described world.
music mural
“The nature of parties has been imperfectly studied. It is, however, generally understood that a party has a pathology, that it is a kind of an individual and that it is likely to be a very perverse individual. And it is also generally understood that a party hardly ever goes the way it is planned or intended.”
— John Steinbeck Cannery Row
clastum3:
You don’t by any chance live in the Metro Orlando area? Because one of the dumbest people I know lives there. (Admittedly, so does one of the smartest people I know, but he’s likely to have heard of the book before.)
Clastrum3:
Maybe I could engage your discussion if I knew what the hell your point was.
Why am I thinking of Emily Litella?
What’s all this I hear about presidential erections?
Too many fuckwits think “freethinkers” = believe any bullshit I put out there, including islamophobia….But we are true freethinkers, free of their prejudices.
“Hey, guys, even though I was wrong, I was actually right. Because – let’s face it – I’m way too smart to be wrong. I get so tired of having to explain that to every single person I meet!”
Salon posted an article that digs a little deeper into the source of Mitt Romney’s delusions when it comes to Israel. Mitt Romney: Son of Abraham?”
Excerpts below:
Wonder how Romney feels about porn star Jenna Jameson endorsing him.
Mormons fear porn almost as much as they fear the Outer Darkness. Must be hard to have your supporters being rich folk from that industry.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/election-2012/porn-legend-jenna-jameson-romney-unhelpful-endorsement-article-1.1128334?localLinksEnabled=false
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/03/quote_of_the_day_9/
I remember enjoying that one too. ‘Course I was like 14.
Really serious Steinbeck is East of Eden and Log of the Sea of Cortez.
Romney has a talent for aligning himself with political operatives who have proven themselves to be complete dolts in the past. Take for instance, the guy he hired to push the fantastic, plastic, magical mystery economic plan that is supposed to produce the Romney Economic Boom.
Kevin Hassett co-authored Dow 36,000: The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market. That book was not just wrong, it was spectacularly wrong. So, is it a good idea to have Kevin Hassett making predictions about economic outcomes, and providing input for Romney’s pie-in-the-sky plans? Well, I guess if you’re going to be a wingnut, you might as well go all the way.
Link.
self-policing:
East of Eden and The Log from the Sea of Cortez.
Lynna, OM #150
Hasset was an economic adviser to McCain four years ago.
I’ve met Hasset. He’s a very charming man, which isn’t surprising for someone who, when he isn’t advising politicians, is a salesman. Romney, like many CEOs, likes to have yes-men around. Hasset fills that niche quite well. Plus Hasset knows the same jargon as a financier like Romney.
I see all through my post #152 I misspelled Hassett’s name. Oh well.
*Sniff* Do I detect damning with faint praise? ;)
Nerd
cryptic
Free Dictionary
damn with faint praise
Try again (hitting moderation filter)
Faint praise
Nerd
yabut
who?
Lynna:
Considering she couldn’t have been more explicit about it being solely about the money, I think being endorsed by a porn star is the least of his worries about that particular statement.
‘Tis, talking about Hassett as Mitten’s economic advisor.
I’m currently running on the theory that Jenna Jameson is actually a stealth democrat who is deliberately trying to sabotage Romney’s campaign.
There’s really no other rational way to parse the comments she made accompanying her “endorsement” (or the fact that she made the endorsement public at all).
‘Tis Himself:
So, Hasset can be charmingly wrong, like he was in Dow 36,000. See http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/09/dow-36000-2/
It continues to amaze me that Republicans can be proven wrong, or even shown to be criminals (Ralph Reed types), and suffer very little for it. They’ll certainly still get a job stumping for Mitt Romney. Is this the triumph of style over substance? (Well, Romney has no style, or an anti-style, but some of his advisors and surrogates are charming.)
All of us are still trying to understand Mitt Romney’s strange combination of cluelessness and ruthlessness.
An article in today’s Salon looks at Romney’s odd culture war.
http://www.salon.com/2012/08/05/mitt_romneys_culture_war/
Sounds religious to me, with mormon icing.
Ayn Randians find the poor responsible for their poverty, and Romney loves that take on poverty. So does his religion. If you are righteous and obedient, you will prosper in the land.
Mike Lofgren, a guy who worked for 28 years as a professional staff member in Congress, has written a sort of tell-all for Salon, GOP insider: Religion destroyed my party . Excerpts below.
In his fairly long article, Lofgren provides specific examples of Republicans bowing before infusions of cash, family values be damned. Christian Dominionism, selective Libertarianism, the tax-exempt status of religious organizations and more are discussed.
I disagree with Lofgren in his plea to leave Mitt Romney’s religion alone, but the rest of the essay is informative. Here’s Lofgren on Michelle Bachmann and the takeover of education by the religious right:
Romney is all for private enterprise taking over schools, and with fewer restrictions on curricula. Romney may be a mormon, but he is a tool of the broader religious right.
@ Lynna,OM
In South Africa it gets even more creepy. Poverty is “infectious”. People actually murder the poor in order to prevent the “infection of poverty” from spreading. (This is actually a common trope with primitive forms of superstition. And primitive superstition is very much the driving force behind all religiousity.)
Well, that’s one way to make Mitt Romney look moderate. Sheesh. I think you may have ruined my morning. Again, sheesh.
Romney is doubling down on his Jerusalem-is-the-capital-of-Israel statement. He has a new ad out that repeats this incendiary pronouncement
http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entries/romney-reaches-out-to-jewish-voters-plays-up
New York Times cartoon on the subject of Mitt Romney’s finances:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2012/07/08/opinion/sunday/the-strip.html#3
Well I believe in America, and see no reason to apologise for that: I’ve been there several times, and it seemed real enough, although I suppose it could have been an ultra-sophisticated simulation; or maybe aliens have been fiddling with my memory.
All of Romney’s lies in one place. Link.
The list includes Romney lying about his own first name.
“I’ll take books I haven’t read for $500, Alex” – clastrum3
Anyone notice a similarity to another idiot who frequented Scienceblogs Pharyngula for a while – nym of clausentum, IIRC?
Surely you have noticed Romney’s robot-like walk and demeanor. Under the Romney skin there is an alien who forced the illusion of the existence of the U.S.A. on your poor brain. And for that, he does not apologize.
You should be wary, though. The Romney/alien’s believe-in-America campaign is not finished with you. You have been reading Pharyngula again. That’s all the evidence needed to send a major fiddling expert your way. You must BELIEVE in Romney’s USA, and nothing else will do.
Here’s Romney’s latest lie, President Obama is trying to restrict voting rights for those serving in the military. Link. Faux News is all over this, eating it like candy. Apparently, there is no lie so blatant that Romney can not get away with it.
I know others have already commented on this piece of nonsense, but seriously, WTF? While Diamond is not overtly of the left, the major theme of GG&S is that the 19th and 20th century predominance of European and European-derived societies is not the result of either biological or cultural superiority, but of geographical and most notably biogeographic factors; while that of Collapse is that we face an immensely serious environmental crisis, including but not limited to the effects of anthropogenic climate change. Thus he directly contradicts central dogmas of much of the right.
Chris Hayes discusses Mitt Romney and federal money for the Olympics.
Video interview with former Salt Lake City Mayor, Rocky Anderson.
http://UpwithChrisHayes.msnbc.com/_news/2012/07/21/12877714-mitt-romney-and-federal-money-for-the-olympics?lite
$1.3 billion in federal dollars.
Romney claims credit for creating a $100 million surplus at the Salt Lake Olympics, and says he donated that surplus to an endowment for Olympic sport.
Dear Mitt Romney, $100 million is more than twice the amount that was actually received by the endowment fund. $40 million is not $100 million. And credit for the surplus goes to we the taxpaying people, not to you.
Link, with facts about endowment, etc., plus documentation of Romney saying, “Balderdash!”
Turd, that’s the funniest Goddamn thing I have ever seen you write.
KG # 170,172 yes, I was earlier clausentum and changed my nym (and posted the fact here) because I was having trouble logging in when blog moved to freethought.
One of the points on which Diamond doesn’t fit into the left mould is on population: he sees it as the major part of the problem. In fact he ascribes the Rwandan massacres largely to population pressure. On the left the preference seems to be to snipe at anyone who mentions it as a “culler” (copyright Pharyngula), or misanthrope.
In fact we caught you out here dissembling on this once, KG!
clastrum3,
You’re a barefaced liar as well as a bigot and a fool. I have never once dissembled with regard to population, and you will be unable to show any instance where I have done so – I notice you have not attempted to do so in making your false accusation. What I have done is object to people who do not know the actual facts about population growth – that the proportional rate of growth peaked in the early 1960s, has halved since, and is still falling in most countries – pontificating about it, and claiming that there is a “taboo” against discussing it, generally in the middle of a discussion of it. Nor is the importance of population growth in general dismissed on the left, although there are exceptions; what the left in general objects to is its use by right-wing and racist scumbags using the issue of population growth to cast the blame for environmental crisis on the poor and on non-whites, when most of it belongs to the rich.
I’m sorry, but since when is the left the folks who are having a hard time facing the realities of overpopulation? Last I checked, “demographic winter”, “be fruitful and multiply”, and a general hatred for family planning are right-wing obsessions.
Ah, but you didn’t refute it, so you tacitly agree with it…Prejudices are for RWA’s liberturds, and other scum of the Earth.
KG #176 : are you denying that you once posted this on pharyngula?:
I despair of ever being able to do a decent web search: if anyone could find the thread where it was posted, and tell me how they did it, I’d be eternally grateful. That’s before I get to conspiracy theories about posts from the wrong sort of people (bigots aka non-left wingers) being suppressed from the archives.
clastrum, are you stupid or something? stopping population growth won’t solve the problem of AGW or resource depletion. That’s not the same as it not being a major contributing factor to current problems.
So that quote you produced, if real, cannot possibly be called “dissembling”.
Turd, you refut that statement every time you make a post.
Anytime,anyone states they are without prejudices or bias, they are FUCKING LIARS!
Like Turd.
Personally, I think Turd learned his “bull baiting” skills down in Clearwater, Florida.
clastrum3,
No, I don’t deny that I said that, because it is, of course, true. As jadehawk says, population growth contributes to increasing resource use and pollution, but since resource use and pollution per capita is also increasing, halting or even reversing population growth would not solve those problems.
How the fuck do you remember to open your mouth when you want to eat, you cack-brained lackwit?
Mitt Romney, a cipher in many ways, may be known by the company he keeps. And the company for which he pimps. Tea Party whack jobs being one.
I think it’s pretty clear we can rule out “or something.”
More coverage on Mitt Romney blatantly lying when he claims that President Obama is trying to “undermine” the ability of American troops to vote: Link.
Joseph Jesus fucking Smith Christ, Mr. Romney.
To clarify, I wouldn’t have automatically denied it if it were not true; but since I have no specific memory of saying it, if it had been something I consider false, I’d have demanded a link showing that I did say it, and the context in which I said it.
The excerpt above is from an article written by Adam Gopnik for The New Yorker.
Mormonism’s History and Meanings is available in full online.
The problem with Diamond, as numerous actual anthropologists have pointed out, is that his books aren’t terribly good with the basic facts (see, for example, Questioning Collapse). His books are not scholarly books and, to be honest, Rommey comes pretty close to actually getting the essential argument undergirding Diamond’s work. Others have blogged about this elsewhere (see, for example, Living Anthropologically). But Diamond is a bit more complicated a read then many seem to be arguing here.
Anyway, if I am going to use a big non-scholarly book in one of my classes, it’ll be Charles Mann’s 1491 or his 1493. For a scholarly book, Eric Wolf’s Europe and the People Without History is still essential reading. And here I absolutely agree with Jason Antrosio at Living Anthropologically.
But I put Diamond’s book in the same rubbish heap that I’ve tossed Dawkins (God Delusion) and Pinker (The Better Angels, The Language Instinct, The Stuff of Thought, and The Blank Slate). Lousy books the lot and they make serious scholarship look bad by implication (people assume these are serious scholars, they are as serious as David Brooks or Thomas Friedman).
On the other hand, and to end on a positive, I very much enjoyed Terrence Deacon’s Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter.