Two households, both alike in dignity,
On fair Earth, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
(From that great classic play, Romeo and Juliet and an Unnamed Egg Donor)
Let’s compare the scientific relevance of the British House of Lords and the Republican party of the United States.
There are currently concerns about nuclear transfer procedures in human fertility treatments — you may have heard some of the noise in the news about babies with three parents. Cases of mitochondrial disease are passed on from mothers to all of their children, but one way around it is to use donor mitochondria, so woman #1 provides the cytoplasm for a healthy egg, woman #2 provides the nuclear DNA, and a man provides the sperm that fertilizes the genetic material provided by woman #2. That’s three parents, one child.
Two techniques can be used, maternal spindle transfer and pronuclear transfer. Both have been tested in monkeys and mice, and they work. Both have risks; these are single-cell surgical procedures, basically, and there will be failures — there have been failures. There is the danger of damaging the nuclear DNA, and also, of accidentally transferring the genetically broken mitochondria to the new cell, propagating the problem you were trying to overcome.
Both procedures involve removing the unfertilized nucleus of a donated egg cell, with healthy mitochondria. In maternal spindle transfer, the unfertilized nucleus is then sucked out of the mother-to-be’s egg, and inserted into the healthy cell. This hybrid cell is then fertilized by the father’s sperm using standard in vitro fertilization techniques.
Pronuclear transfer differs in that the mother-to-be’s egg is fertilized first, and then the diploid nucleus is transferred to the donated cell. The only difference between the two is whether the nucleus is fertilized first, in pronuclear transfer, or after the transplant, in maternal spindle transfer.
This is a fine distinction. Pronuclear transfer has been used for decades in animals; maternal spindle transfer is a newer technique. Both ought to be explored, and it’s really up to the parents, the doctors, and scientists involved to decide what is best on a case by case basis. In that sense, this discussion in the UK House of Lords is rather pointless. They aren’t the ones who will have to deal with the consequences.
But I was amazed: they were actually fairly well informed about the issues! There was a lot of pompous puffery between the “noble lords and ladies” (they actually call each other that!), but it looks like they did their homework. Even the ones I disagree with.
Lord Patel explains why these operations are necessary.
It is important that I put down some ground work. What are we talking about? We are talking about a mitochondrial DNA disease that commonly affects multiple different organs. Symptoms include severe muscle weakness, diabetes, heart problems, cardiac failure and sudden cardiac death, as well as central nervous system problems, which include dementia, epilepsy, stroke and such other horrible conditions. It results in death, which can occur early in childhood or after a prolonged period of incapacity and pain that can last for years.
It is important to have some facts about mitochondrial DNA genetics and inheritance. Mitochondrial DNA is strictly inherited maternally, via the egg. The mitochondrial DNA copy number and the number of mitochondria vary between cell types, with more than 200,000 in the egg and early embryo down to perhaps as few as 10 to 20 in many cells of the two to three-week old embryo, and hundreds to thousands in most cell types in adults, where the number tends to correlate with energy demand. Cells can have a mixture of two or more types of mitochondrial DNA sequence, a condition referred to as heteroplasmy, in contrast to homoplasmy, where each copy has the same sequence. More than 300 distinct mutations of mitochondrial DNA have been found in patients with mitochondrial disease. Although some mutations are far more common than others, if an individual is heteroplasmic, with a mixture of mutant and normal mitochondrial DNA, the proportion of the former determines whether they show symptoms of mitochondrial disease. Some women at risk of transmitting mitochondrial disease to their children are heteroplasmic and may have levels considerably below the disease threshold, but their eggs can have very high levels of mutant mitochondrial DNA or even be homoplasmic. This can be explained by the so-called bottleneck, which I will not go into in detail, but, during the development of the egg, only a certain number of mitochondria go into fertilisation, and that causes a bottleneck that sometimes results in only the mutant mitochondria getting through.
It is estimated that at least one in 200 children in the UK is born with some faulty mitochondrial DNA—so quite a lot of them may well have some faulty mitochondrial DNA. It is estimated that one in 6,500 babies goes on to develop serious mitochondrial disorders. The severity varies from mild to extremely debilitating and may result in early childhood death. Almost 2,500 women of child-bearing age in the UK are at risk of transmitting mitochondrial disease to their children. Estimates based on this figure suggest that between 100 and 150 births a year in the UK risk passing on mitochondrial disease to the child. If today we were discussing cancer or dementia, and how we could modify those diseases with some form of genetic or mitochondrial manipulation so that people would not get it, everybody would be in favour of it; but as mitochondrial disease affects 100 to 150 people a year, we do not take it so seriously—or so it seems.
I’m actually quite impressed. And then I read a few accounts of American legislators, and despaired.
You recall Idaho representative Vito Barbieri, who wondered if women could swallow itty-bitty cameras to inspect their vaginas. He’s only one. There are more idiots.
In Georgia, Republican representative Tom Kirby wants to make a law against human-animal hybrids. He’s very concerned about those scientists meddling where only God should tread, but he wants to be very careful to leave a loophole protecting natural chimeras. Like mermaids, centaurs, bird-men, or werewolves.
Y’know the mermaids in the ocean, that’s been around for a long time,Kirby explained.I don’t think we should create them. But if they exist, that’s fine.
Y’know I really don’t like centaurs,he went on.They really have bad attitudes most of the time and we’ve got enough people with bad attitudes as it is.Bird-men, he said, are understandable enough.
I think man has been trying to fly forever,and it would be fineif it’s a natural genetic mutation,but to create flying humans in a lab, well, that’s a step too far.Similarly,
(w)e don’t want to laboratorily [sic] create the werewolf,the lawmaker said, but if they arenaturally occurring in the environment,then they should be left alone.
I’m going to have to use the word “laboratorily” more often. But this man must be stopped, lest he interfere with my top secret project to create flying were-mermaids and cephalo-centaurs.
Or perhaps you’d rather hear from Nevada Republican Michele Fiore, who thinks cancer is a fungal infection.
If you have cancer, which I believe is a fungus, and we can put a pic line into your body and we’re flushing with, say, salt water, sodium cardonate through that line and flushing out the fungus,Fiore said on her radio show over the weekend.These are some procedures that are not FDA-approved in America that are very inexpensive, cost-effective.
Oh, dog. How can it be that a legislative body whose members are selected by the luck of inheritance can be so much better educated than one whose members are supposedly elected by merit?
Good stuff, except seats in the House of Lords haven’t been inherited since 1999.
How bad of me is it to wish Michele Fiore self-diagnoses cancer and self-treats it?
And also… wasn’t that an awesome documentary series with Kevin Sorbo in it?
I think the answer is obvious. If we consider the House of Lords to be a good estimate of the neutral prevalence of stupidity, the U.S. Congress must clearly result from strong positive selection favoring stupidity, the selective agent being the electorate.
Though no longer inherited, the Lords are unelected, which is their saving grace. The (by and large) absence of electoral politics from the upper house of Parliament makes it possible to have a reasonable discussion of issues, which is their function. By contrast, the US Senate is a worthless, steaming pile of bloviation, corruption, and chicanery.
Every time anyone suggests ‘reforming’ the Lords by introducing elections, I want to strangle them.
None of which, by the way, is meant to suggest that any individual Lord is not a complete twat or shouldn’t be bunged up for kiddy-diddling or whatever; it’s just that the institution itself works.
Yeah, pretty much. Insulation from democracy has merits as well as flaws. We’ve actually reached a stage where the checks and balances are better in the UK system than the US :)
The House of Lords has 92 hereditary peers, but most of the other 790 or so are life peers. Oh – and 26 bishops and archbishops. But they’re CoE bishops, so probably some of them are atheists. :)
Oddly enough, the hereditary peers are now elected to the House of Lords – by the other hereditary peers.
Because they don’t need to stand for election (& so aren’t beholden to constituents, contributors, or partes), and given their wide range of experience (some life peers were politicians, but most of them weren’t), the House of Lords is a remarkably good revising chamber.
I’ve often wondered (objected) to the reform of the Senate to popular elections. When originally; Senators were Chosen by the State Legislators to provide a Stable-LongTerm Representation of the entire State (not just of ‘the people’ in the State). Essentially an imitation of the House of Lords. But everyone raised such an outcry that an amendment was passed to make Senators popularly elected, instead of appointed.
It seems that this discussion affirms my initial naivete about that amendment, but…I can say no more, either way… But it does appear the Senators we have now, affirm my objections, but appointment wouldn’t have made much difference. ohhhhh myyyyyy {Takei voice}
Centaurs have bad attitudes?
Don’t yoou say so…
mikeconley #5:
Please do not use gendered slurs.
[Commenting rules.]
Are you sure – I mean really sure – that you would want to be part of some kind of revived British Empire? I remind you that our current leader is David bloody Cameron (just let that sink in for a moment), and before him we had Tony lie-about-the-WMDs Blair in charge,and a few years earlier we had the… err… ‘glory’ of the Thatcher administration. Does this really sound like a system you would want to voluntarily associate with?
Still, if you are set on this course, then we Brits would certainly consider taking most of you colonials back under our wing if you are of such a mind, PZ. But those Republican chappies – they would be something of a sticking point. We already have the likes of Nigel Farage over here, we really don’t need any more like him to deal with.
Oh, and you would also need to get used to British terminology. Cars have bonnets and boots, not hoods and trunks, for example. And then there are the spelling conventions – learn what ‘u’s are for, for a start. The weather over here is also probably a little different to what you are used to. I hope you like rain, and like hearing people complain about rain. A lot. And the second a wet leaf falls on a line be prepared for train services to stop entirely. Likewise, roads will grind to a halt when more than two snowflakes fall within five minutes of one another; these are important UK traditions, and so would have to be rolled out in the former US as well. In the absence of such weather in the renamed New Albion, we will complain about its absence instead. For example ‘what a horrid, dry dustbowl. Why would anyone want to live here enduring such bright sunshine and a complete absence of damp, cloying fog?’ What else… oh yes, the cuisine – we don’t really have any as such, but you will definitely need to develop a taste for fish and chips.
If that lot doesn’t scare you off, nothing will.
Actually the House of Lords has three categories. At one time a fairly large chunk were hereditary peers where the sole requirement was being born into the position. That portion is now replaced by a subgroup that is elected by their peers for life (new election only held when someone dies); this may be reformed further. A second chunk would be bishops in the Church of England (not all bishops but those holding certain bishoprics and a certain number of the most senior of the rest). A third chunk would be life peers who may be senior retired politicians or eminent figures in British life. It is not unknown for senior university figures to be made life peers. So the speakers include Lord Winston who was a professor at Imperial College who specialized in human reproduction and Lord Patel who is Narendra Patel a research obstetrician (former president of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists). The House of Lords includes respected scientists.
BTW a fair number of peers are also humanists/atheists. In 2013 the House of Lords had a discussion on “Atheists and Humanists: Contribution to Society”.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201314/ldhansrd/text/130725-0002.htm#13072524000334
and
(From http://www.legis.ga.gov/Legislation/en-US/display/20152016/HB/287 )
make me suspect that outlawing centaurs may not be the primary target of this bill.
It sounds as if they try harder to work for the good of the state instead of pandering to their constituency. Also, anti-intellectalism is currently rampant in the U.S., with the Republicans standing in for the Know-Nothing party.
That the welfare of the people, especially women & children, depends on the good sense of U.S. legislators is a disaster.
To add to Gregory Greenwood’s little list @11: Here’s David Mitchel.
I was going to burst into laughter…then i realised that those are actual politicians…with influence over people’s lives…and now i might burst into tears….
Fuck me…..
But I was amazed: they were actually fairly well informed about the issues! There was a lot of pompous puffery between the “noble lords and ladies” (they actually call each other that!)
Well most lords these days are either retired politicians or citizens of note (Lord Robert Winston being a good example) I interviewed a couple of ‘Barons’ for my Master’s degree, Larry Whitty, the former general secretary of the Labour Party, and Bill Rodgers’ one of the SDP’s old ‘Gang of Four’
“
Though no longer inherited, the Lords are unelected, which is their saving grace. The (by and large) absence of electoral politics from the upper house of Parliament makes it possible to have a reasonable discussion of issues, which is their function. By contrast, the US Senate is a worthless, steaming pile of bloviation, corruption, and chicanery.
Every time anyone suggests ‘reforming’ the Lords by introducing elections, I want to strangle them.
What about the cash for peerages scandal? I’d agree that the lack of electoralism is a good thing, but the whole selection process is pretty damn corrupt. A good compromise would be to have the Lords elected by the same principle as John Stewart Mills proposed, with votes weighted acording to a person’s education, and, here’s the crucial thing only permitting them to sit a single, fixed term then there’d be no need to strike an populist poses, but at the same time they wouldn’t become an entrenched elite body.
Please do not use gendered slurs.
twas brillig (stevem) — Unfortunately, the Senators we had then weren’t particularly better than the the ones we have now. Then as now, the Senate was full of rich white men with their hands in the pockets of other rich white men. It’s main function was to assure “state’s rights” which was originally so the South could prevent the abolishment of slavery, and after slavery wasn’t much better. And it was very difficult to get some old fart out as long as the old farts running a state wanted him there. So, I can’t say I long for the halcyon days of the past.
A blatant case of open discrimination. What about equivilant portection for vampires? Vampire hunting is clearly a hate crime, and in a just world Abraham van Helsing would be the most wanted Dutchman on Earth. Damn you Tom Kirby and your bigoted Team Jacob ways!
Seriously, when is someone going to break the news to Tom? Twilight, Buffy, Dracula, An American Werewolf in London, The Little Mermaid – none of these things are actually documentaries. No, not even the X-Files…
I also find it amusing that he chooses this particular array of mythical creatures for such protection. The folkloric Mermaids used to lure sailors to their deaths with their siren songs, and in the original mythology, and through out the vast bulk of the history of the meme until the recent rash of awful teen romance dreck, Werewolves (and similar critters like the Wendigo of Native American folklore) were numbered amongs the most vicious and brutal of fictional creatures, and
had an uncontrollable bloodlust expressed in many myths as a penchant for ripping pretty much anyone they encountered to bloody shreds. And even those who somehow survived the attack would then be infected in turn, unable to control their transformation and liable to bucther their own families and loved ones. These are hardly the poster children for peaceable coexistence.
And after all that, I borked the italics in my last post. Darn.
newenlightenment #17:
On the first part of that, please accept a hearty ‘fuck you’ from a member of your proposed Morlock-class.
The second part, the single term, I don’t see as particularly useful. You’d end up with a house stuffed with people voted in on the basis of their stances on ‘this term’s popular agenda.’
Daz @10
Just to stand up for my friends across the pond twat does not mean the same thing in the UK as in the US. If the reference had instead been to fanny then rules about gendered insults would be in play. Isn’t language fun?
re robro@19:
Thanks for the history refresher. I knew my objection was pure naivete, and did not expect things to be better if that amendment was voided. I guess we’re screwed in either situation. me has a sad.
kantalope @23
I’m pretty sure it does – we’re talking about it referring to a woman’s genitalia – yes? As far as I know that’s the case here and in the US.
newenlightenment @ 17;
Like Daz: Keeper of the Hairy-Eared Dwarf Lemur of Atheism @ 22, I have very serious concerns about any form of multiple vote system, especially one linked to educational oportunities that are themsleves linked to the prosperity and class status of a given person’s parents. If formal education is used as a benchmark of how many votes one gets, the outcome is inevitable – higher education becomes ever more the cripplingly expensive preserve of the elite in society as an ideal means of keeping the ‘plebs’ in their place. A relative handful of people with the money to afford armfuls of degrees (quite possibly from obliging old school tie diploma mills) could easily maintain a level of political influence utterly disporportionate to their actual numbers; to an even greater degree than the current system, it would facilitate minority rule by allowing the 1% (along with a few obliging stooges who know how their bread is buttered) to completely offset and override the political will of everyone else.
Social mobility would go out of the window entirely, and any attempt to implement meaningful political and social reforms that would threaten a status quo comfortable to the privileged and powerful could easily be stymied. The status and reach of one’s parents would become the limit of one’s own. Birth would likely become social destiny in most if not all cases. It is a formula for an oppressive, classist dystopia.
And as for allowing hypothetical elected peers to only sit a single, fixed term, I once again agree with Daz – the peerage candidates would simply follow whatever topic was politically trendy at that particular moment in time. ‘Red button’ issues that guarentee votes from the reactionary right, like immigrant-baiting, would dominate even more then they currently do. It would concentrate and magnify the problematic aspects of our already chronically and acutely short sighted political culture, not alleviate them.
nelliebly @25
And I was told twat was more like the American twit. While the american fanny which would be someone’s butt; is in UKish female genitalia. See language is fun. And just for info an OED subscription in $295 a year – does that seem high to anyone?
@kantalope
Yeaaaah….my advice would be don’t come to the UK and call someone that when you actually mean they’re a twit. That would be a bad plan. Unpleasantness would result.
Twat? When I was a school in the UK, it meant “pregnant goldfish”. Perhaps a senator might like to comment?
#17, newenlightenment
Exactly what do you suppose this weighting would show you? There are plenty of deeply unpleasant and self-deluding people who are quite highly educated. See also, threads passim listing creationists and alt-med fans (is there a more demeaning term to refer to these people?) holding PhDs and suchlike.
#18, leerudolph
Not sure if serious.
#23, kantalope
It doesn’t necessarily refer to female genitalia in common usage (I’d probably characterise it as referring to someone particularly stupid, or otherwise unpleasant and ignorant), but that’s certainly where the term originated. The same holds true for “cunt”. Ignorance of other important meanings of words is not an excuse to continue using them, I’d say.
For what it’s worth, as a Brit, I used the term in question for years, thinking it was a variation on ‘twit’, before the true meaning was revealed to me, and this was the situation for others I’ve discussed it with. I think it was well on the way to becoming de-gendered in the UK; like ‘berk’ before it became divorced from its original meaning, becoming just a general word for a silly and vexatious person, rather than anything to do with sodomy (IIRC).
Saying all that, I’m not pleading for its continued use; if anyone is offended by the word in question, then it is offensive, and I for one have dropped it from my internet vocabulary, even if I can’t shake it from my everyday verbal cuss-words.
Damn, what a berk: I dropped the closing italic tag after ‘is’. Sorry about that.
That’s what I get for posting without my reading glasses or previewing.
kantalope @ 27;
Even if you are right, it doesn’t really help. In the same way as it didn’t make any difference when some of my fellow Brits tried to argue that ‘c*nt’ didn’t refer to female genitalia in the UK (a claim I dispute in any case – I am a Brit, and that is the meaning I have always associated with the phrase), so similarly whatever the term under discussion here might mean in the US, even if it is a varient on the relatively innocuous twit in that culture, that doesn’t mean that its use in a mixed forum that includes people from all over the world in acceptable. In the UK it is a gendered slur, and since quite a few people from the UK frequent Pharyngula, that is reason enough to avoid its use.
NelC @30.
Close, but think in terms of rhyming slang for ‘Berkshire hunt’.
I have a dictionary of slang I inherited from my grandfather – in most cases if you aren’t sure about the origin of a piece of slang it’s safe to assume that it originates with female genitals. Which gives it a pleasing symmetry with life as a whole.
NelC @ 30:
When I was growing up in the UK, I understood ‘berk’ to be rhyming slang, with the entire phrase being ‘Berkshire hunt’.
kantalope #23:
I’d like to point out that I’m British. And yeah, ‘twat’ is a synonym for ‘vulva’ here.
Not really a fan of IVF and the like. Seems a waste of resources to make even *more* people. ‘s why I’m annoyed the IVF got a Nobel, but the Pill never did.
Also, need it be pointed out, here of all places, that a goldfish cannot be pregnant?
AFAICT, the Lords are better at considering issues because they don’t have much power to affect them. If they actually had political power, they’d quickly become as corrupted by money as possible.
Here in the U.S., we have a multiplicity of problems with democracy, of which I’ll highlight two:
1. The system anachronistically divides power in a bewildering set of layers. Just within the Federal government, you have House, Senate, Executive, SCOTUS and the Fed (not to mention the growing unofficial and unchecked security apparat). The average voter has no clue as to how all these interact, so we get stupid shenanigans with shutdowns, filibusters, and the like, with fingerpointing and stasis in the face of crying need.
None of the bad actors in these phenomena pay a price for their knavery, because the electorate can’t figure out who’s doing what. On top of this, there are two other layers of complexity with state and local government, each with its own byzantine structure and modes of backbiting.
Then on top of that, we add another layer of complication with local initiative issues, many of which are intentionally deceptive in their structure and purpose.
2. Massive income inequality (growing especially since the 80’s) has created unimaginably wealthy individuals, who feel no sense of social responsibility, and who take advantage of all the complexity in 1. to both use their money to create influence (which is then used for self-dealing), and to hide the way they are doing it. Like a collection of black holes, the massive concentrations of money exert an irresistible gravitational pull, driving ever more money and power into themselves.
The things PZ is noting are symptoms of these more fundamental problems. Political discourse in the U.S. is as degraded as it is because governing is both too complex for voters to deal with, and too corrupted by money for government to function well for the non-rich. Adding a detached set of gasbags to discuss things intelligently (rather than leaving it to the ignorant denizens of state legislatures) wouldn’t really accomplish much without more fundamental change.
The question of Senate elections is one where Canadian and some American right wingers diverge. I suppose there might be some on the fringes that disagree, but it’s long been a goal of the mainstream Canadian right to have an elected Senate. (Ours currently has its members selected by the Prime Minister from suggestions provided by the provinces. They can serve until age 75.) On the other hand I see some American right wingers who want the old system of Senate election brought back in, which would make it a lot closer to the current Canadian system.
twas brillig… @ # 8: … everyone raised such an outcry that an amendment was passed to make Senators popularly elected…
That outcry came from a series of blatant bribery scandals – and, viewing our current crop of state legislators, you should have no doubt at all that implementing the teabagger goal of repealing the 17th Amendment would produce even more sordid scenarios.
‘We get the legislators we deserve’-Mencken
“Twat” is very definitely a gendered slur in the UK.
However – Kantelope is not the first to err in this regard: Robert Browning trod that path ahead of them: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pippa_Passes#.22A_distressing_blunder.22
@timgueguen #40
The Republicans want that here because they do much better in very low turn out off year state elections than they do in national elections* with much better turn out. This has allowed them to do some extreme gerrymandering in conservative states like Texas that has quite an impact on their national representation in the House.
* By popular vote, rather than representatives allocated
Membership of the House of Lords is now a matter of patronage and how much you donate to the political parties, plus some seats are reserved for bishops (Church of England only).
When it was still inherited, one member was the 5th Baron Haden Guest, better known as Spinal Tap’s Nigel (this goes up to 11) Tufnel.
What do people here think of sortition as a way of selecting a revising chamber?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
Gregory Greenwood@11
The weather in the UK doesn’t turn me off at all! We lived on the central coast of California for a while, and one of my greatest pleasures was to sit and watch the fog roll in off the ocean. Fog is very common in that area, and many of the other military spouses complained bitterly about the fog and the chilly year-round temperatures, but I loved it.
Now I’m stuck in miserable hot dry Texas and I often think about that lovely fog.
When we bought our first Prius, we were trying to think of a good name for the storage area under the floor of the back of the car. I had heard someone calling their trunk a boot and mentioned that to hubby. We decided that it was the perfect term for it. Now we have two Priuses (Prii?) and always refer to those storage areas as the boots.
Does this qualify us as honourary Brits? If a Repub is elected as the next president over here, will you adopt us?
twas brillig 8
We’d be better off abolishing the Senate entirely. The purpose of it, as robro notes. is to ensure ‘states rights’, and at present it serves to give states like Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana vastly disproportionate influence on national politics.
kantalope: 23
Yes it bloody does.
NelC
Nope, never had anything to do with that, but it’s funny you should bring up that term; ‘berk’ is a contraction of ‘berkshire hunt’, which in turn is Cockney rhyming slang indicating a particular part of anatomy which has been mentioned in this discussion already. I leave it as an exercise to the reader to guess what word and what body part it is.
with all the Brit v America etymological discussion, I just want to add that when watching Rush, I was continually baffled by their casual use of calling Hunt a c*nt. He even said so himself, “That’s my name, rhymes with c*nt.” I think there was another discussion (around the time the movie was showing) that the word means something totally different in Britain (Europe, in general) than how Americans think it means. Sorry, refresher please?
About the issue of democracy’s failings, does that mean we’re advocating Plato’s solution: Benevolent Dictatorship? Infeasible, yes, but “hypothetically”? Or are we just reiterating Churchill, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other kinds.”
Fellow users of proper automative terminology who prefer fog to sunshine? I am pretty sure you are already Brits in all but geographical location. By all means flee the nightmare scenario of a delusional Repub Presidency and come and live in jolly old Blighty, but just be prepared for our own politicians (better than Tea Partiers admitedly, but that is most assuredly the lowest of low bars), and a political discourse that is at times less than enlightened, with nary a day (still less and edition fo any of the tabloid newspapers) going by without lashings of testerical islamophobia and extra helpings of nauseatingly racist anti-immigration bigotry.
You might also want to familiarise yourself with the traditional British greeting for our cousins from across the pond, usually expressed as some varient on hostile mutterings of ‘bloody yanks’. Still, your reception could be worse. You could be French…
twas brillig (stevem) @ 49;
While I don’t share the unthinking reverence for Churchill found in many parts of the UK, that particular quote is probably the best thing he ever said. For all democracy’s many, many failings, all the other political systems humanity has tried either have all those failings and a few more for good measure, or have even worse problems, often involving genocide.
So it does look like we are stuck with our creaky, often corrupt, and very, very far from perfect democracies, at least for now. Or at least until the great and benevolent Cephalopod-ocracy rises.
I for one welcome our new be-tentacled overlords…
twas brillig
There’s lots of ways of implementing democratic governance. The one the U.S. uses is pretty crap.
I just wanted to say that I appreciated the layman’s explanation of the procedure. It was simple enough that even a dummy like me (thank you, English degree!) could understand it. While I love your blog, PZ, I pretty much have to skip over any entry you’ve written involving zebra fish.
@Dalillama #48
On the other side there are Vermont, New Hampshire, and Hawaii. The analyses I have seen (but can’t put fingers on atm) point to the current red/blue over/underrepresentation in the Senate pretty near to break even.
Currently minority party protections in the Senate (filibuster etc) are acting as a break on Republican excess in the House. I’m all for legislative reform, but abolishing the Senate wouldn’t make my list.
An off the top of my head list of better ways to start would include:
1) All congressional districts being drawn up either by bipartisan commissions (ala CA) or by algorithm that holds them to simple shapes and/or clear geographic boundaries
2) Wherever possible multi-seat House districts to allow for minority party representation and allow minority party representation in closely divided districts
3) Instant Runoff Voting to empower “third parties”
Just those three would bring us a long way towards making the House more representative of the people they supposedly represent. As it stands with very low turn out primaries, block voting, and the power of incumbency, the system is screwed.
Optimal Cynic@46,
That’s my preference: selection by lot from the entire adult population, serving a single ten-year term, and a good but not excessive rate of pay – but you’d be allowed to opt out. The Lords sometimes do well, sometimes badly – they blocked the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia, for example. But basically, they will alwys be on the side of the elite to which they belong.
TBH I’m not sure tat the UK in general is doing much better than the US: whether the House of Lords is good or bad doesn’t seem to be making much of a difference: the government largely does NOT represent the interests of the citizens, the country is becoming more and more of a police state, education is becoming less and less affordable for the masses…
I don’t live in the UK so I might be wrong, but I think it’s doing worse than other Western countries.
@46: I think sortition would be brilliant. It would be *more representative* than an elected house, even a house elected by perfect proportional representation. There would be no party politics shaping the voting patterns, so the debates would be genuine attempts at getting the legislators to vote for your perspective, rather than the usual posturing. It would avoid the populism of Swiss-style direct democracy, because the legislative votes would be informed by close investigation of the issues.
I would assume that the sortioned upper house would take on a lot of expert advice, so it would still have this same advantage that the House of Lords has, even though the experts would no longer be actual members.
F.O. #56:
I pretty much agree with this, but we do seem immune to the more, erm, bizarre excesses of the US system. Mostly not because of the House of Lords as such, I think, but more for the reasons jamesheartney talks of in #38. It’s not that the UK system is that great, but more that the US system is worse.
And then we have David Tredinnick . A Tory MP who believes aortic aneurysm are cause by Saturn.
It’s worth asking how many of the Lords were actually present. I’m not certain, but I don’t believe there’s any requirement for them to be present on any given day so mostly they turn up to things they care about, which naturally leads to a more informed discussion.
Perhaps that’s just part of the lack of concern regarding election, they can say what they actually think, rather than what they believe people want to hear.
The provincial government in Ontario (Canada, that is), is attempting to bring in a new sex education curriculum in schools. In yesterday’s debate on the subject in the Legislature in Toronto, a Progressive Conservative (PC) member, Rick Nicholls, demanded that parents be allowed to opt their children out of sex-ed. The Liberal Education Minister, Liz Sandals, made fun of Nicholls by, get this, saying, “You could vote to opt out of teaching about evolution, too.”
Nichols replied, “That’s not a bad idea.” Which, it turns out, embarrassed the rest of the PC caucus. According to the Toronto Star, “Privately, PC MPPs were furious with Nicholls, who, … skipped their weekly caucus meeting.”
Although the PCs are our right-wing party, even they – with one or two exceptions – back the teaching of evolution in schools. Which is a good thing because in the course of time they will form the government.
For the rest of the story (homophobia warning – our provincial Premier is a lesbian), see:
Sex education debate at Queen’s Park gets nasty
@twas brillig
As I’ve read it in history books, the problem was with the particular method of choosing US senators. When they were directly elected by state legislatures, many US senator elections were bought. It’s much easier to buy the votes of a few dozen people than the votes of a few million people.
The method for choosing UK lords seems different, and thus the same problem doesn’t seem to apply. I really know much less than what I should.
PS: Based on things said elsethread, perhaps the UK lords selection process has had and/or continues to have similar problems.
@jamesheartney
I completely and wholeheartedly agree with #2. If we’re serious about fixing the problems, a good first step would be massive wealth redistribution, and a change to the culture that a certain degree of wealth redistribution is a good thing. For starters, massive – and I mean massive, like 90% or higher – death taxes for the rich, and very large progressive income taxes for the rich.
Some degree of inequality is required for capitalism which is required for the specialization of labor which is required for the massive increase in material wealth that we all enjoy. However, “some degree of inequality” != “the massive inequalities present in current US society”.
I agree electoral reform is just trying to bandaid the underlying cultural problem, and it is a cultural problem. The fundamental problem is that people are ok and accepting of the filthy rich. That is a cultural problem. Still, our fiat power is limited, and thus it is useful to discuss electoral reform because it’s probably politically easier to get implemented.
@Grewgills
I’m also also a huge fan of instant runoff.
I don’t know what other systems do it, but I am currently infatuated with the method of election of the Israeli Knesset, and I might love the idea of changing the US house to use it. According to my understanding: In short: it’s free to register a political party (maybe requires X number of petition signatures). When you register a political party, you also register a list of electors. In an election for the US house, everyone votes in a single nation-wide pool of votes. You vote for a party. The party gets a number of electors into the house according to their percentage of the votes. The electors are chosen from the registered list, starting from the top.
@OptimalCynic
It’s a fascinating idea. I like to ponder the idea of 1 legislative body elected by the Israeli Knesset method, and another legislative body chosen by random lots e.g. sortition.
@49 twas brillig
I’m an American, but my impression is we use “cunt” more often to insult women, whereas I think in Britain it’s used more often to insult men. It’s used similarly to “asshole”, except I think it also implies effeminacy. So still sexist, just in a different way.
chirez @ 60,
The vote was 280 Content and 48 Not Content plus Lords Speaker (does not vote) = 329, so pretty busy.
However undemocratic it may be in principle there are benefits from people only speaking or voting on subjects they know something about.
@EnlightenmentLiberal 62
Proportional representation is a massively important concept, and something that isn’t even on most American’s radars because the single-member district system is so ingrained. In New Zealand we switched from the traditional plurality system to an almost fully proportional system in 1996, which massively upended the old two party order. Aside from a few poorly thought out technicalities of our system, all our votes matter equally, whether you’re in a safe seat or not.
If you’re American, check out FairVote.org. They promote a system of proportional representation called Single Transferable Vote (they just call it fair voting) which is based on voting for individuals, not parties, which would be far more consistent with the American political culture which is quite individualistic (party whips are very weak, there is a lot of internal competition in the parties). This is the voting system we use for local council elections in my city in New Zealand, and it works very well.
Nelliebly @32 et al, thanks for the correction. Interesting parallel with ‘tw*t’ and ‘c*nt’, in that I think most people don’t have the original meaning in mind when they use the words, they just become generic terms for ‘right bastard’ or ‘silly twit’ or whatever.
As with ‘f*cking’, ‘bloody’ and ‘damned’, or ‘idiot’ and ‘imbecile’ and even ‘crazy’, when they’re first adopted for swearing purposes words can carry a great sting associated with their proper meanings, but after extensive usage — including a period when they’re considered so bad that they’re never explained properly to the next generation, perhaps — they lose the charge carried by meaning in exchange for the charge carried by tone of voice, and then even that gets worn away to the point where the word can be uttered in front of one’s servants or children. ;)
Just to reiterate, this is not to say that use of certain words shouldn’t be deprecated if the group is offended by them; what offends one is offensive, and others should take note of that unless they wish to offend.
twas brillig:
My observation is that it does mean the same thing in the US and UK, but many people in America see it as the absolute, number one worst insult imaginable, whereas, in the UK, yes, it’s a swear and/or insult, but not a particularly egregious one, and not really any worse than calling someone a ‘dick’ or ‘shithead’, or similar such sweary insults.
Why must we depend on our legislators for major scientific breakthroughs and ethics decisions? What has become of our research institutions that they no longer care about human well-being? I’ve heard that there are even some researchers who work with zebra fish instead of humans. Why has Congress let things get so out of control. At least Scott Walker is doing something about it. By clearing higher educational institutions of deadwood like researchers so important contributors can take over and sacred rites like football can continue, he has declared his support of practical results.
I used to think about political reform like those reforms that would change the way representatives were elected and the time they are allowed to serve would / might get a more responsive and efficient government.
The I watched the BBC sit com “Yes Minister”. That started me thinking. What with the complexities of the issues that are generally dealt with any changes we could make would only increase the influence of the bureaucracies and the vast army of lobbyists all of which just gives more opportunity for “undo-influence” since that is the only place that will have the experience dealing with the hard issues.
uncle frogy
Simply not true. For example, “cunt” is very rarely heard in TV dramas, unlike most swear words and insults.
I’ll reiterate:
and
(From http://www.legis.ga.gov/Legislation/en-US/display/20152016/HB/287 )
This means that while we’re all laughing at someone who thinks Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them is a university grade text book, if this gets passed, you can say goodbye to stemcell research.
This also means, if taken literally (which I think it will be), that embryo selection is illegal and that embryo donation is enforced by law. Once fertilised, that egg needs a uterus, stat!
I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that that is the main goal of this proposal and that someone else within the GOP thought this up, then tacked on the hybrid bit and gave it to “that silly Kirby” to propose, to try and slip it by while everyone was laughing too hard to notice.
“Like Daz: Keeper of the Hairy-Eared Dwarf Lemur of Atheism @ 22, I have very serious concerns about any form of multiple vote system, especially one linked to educational oportunities that are themsleves linked to the prosperity and class status of a given person’s parents. If formal education is used as a benchmark of how many votes one gets, the outcome is inevitable – higher education becomes ever more the cripplingly expensive preserve of the elite in society as an ideal means of keeping the ‘plebs’ in their place. A relative handful of people with the money to afford armfuls of degrees (quite possibly from obliging old school tie diploma mills) could easily maintain a level of political influence utterly disporportionate to their actual numbers; to an even greater degree than the current system, it would facilitate minority rule by allowing the 1% (along with a few obliging stooges who know how their bread is buttered) to completely offset and override the political will of everyone else.
Social mobility would go out of the window entirely, and any attempt to implement meaningful political and social reforms that would threaten a status quo comfortable to the privileged and powerful could easily be stymied. The status and reach of one’s parents would become the limit of one’s own. Birth would likely become social destiny in most if not all cases. It is a formula for an oppressive, classist dystopia.
And as for allowing hypothetical elected peers to only sit a single, fixed term, I once again agree with Daz – the peerage candidates would simply follow whatever topic was politically trendy at that particular moment in time. ‘Red button’ issues that guarentee votes from the reactionary right, like immigrant-baiting, would dominate even more then they currently do. It would concentrate and magnify the problematic aspects of our already chronically and acutely short sighted political culture, not alleviate them.”
Well bear in mind I was suggesting this for a second chamber, so representation in the much more powerful commons would be unaffected. Currently no-one gets to vote for the lords, who are nearly all drawn from the 1 percent, so I don’t see how my suggestion would increase the power of the elite. I’d want my proposed reform to take place in tandem with a greater equalizing of educational opportunities in any case (e.g the abolition of private schools, the awarding of university places based upon performance relative to one’s peers rather than grades etc) The single term idea is because if a representative knows they are never going to be reelected they don’t need to worry about the opinions of their voters and can get on with making informed decisions. Most people oppose GM crops, but all the evidence suggests that they’re safe? Without the need to worry about a drubbing at the polls, and no means of extending their term in power a representative could vote with their conscience.
zmidponk@66,
I think that’s crap, frankly. The offending word (my first response to you was blocked because the filter can’t distinguish between use and mention) is indeed considered extremely offensive in the UK, and in my experience any Brit saying otherwise has an ulterior motive. For example, it very rarely occurs in TV dramas, unlike just about any other common swear word or insult.
MAN , I didn’t know ANY of this! I though salt was sodium chloride, but it’s evidently sodium cardonate. I want to sue the University that gave me a PhD in — science.
.
It just shows how abysmal our education system is, and how it needs to be defunded, so rich guys can save on their taxes.
Daz: Keeper of the Hairy-Eared Dwarf Lemur of Atheism
25 February 2015 at 10:44 am
Also, need it be pointed out, here of all places, that a goldfish cannot be pregnant?
…. I won’t believe that until you have checked with a senator
newenlightenment #74:
Which is more equal, no members of the general public getting to vote on a topic (such as ‘Who get’s into the upper house?’) or some members of the general public having more say on the matter than others?
Also, your education-based weighting, how’s about someone who has an MLitt and an MBA, who attended Eton College, then St John’s College, Oxford, then the Graduate School of Business at the University of Cape Town? Oh, and they said this.
I have thought it might be better to abandon this whole “Independence” experiment and go back to being colonies.
The House of Lords used to be more like this : http://youtu.be/1Xz88K9YJOE
Now, it’s less filled with corpses.
Nick Gotts #75:
…depending on use, yes. In exactly the same way that, depending on use, ‘shithead’, ‘dick’, ‘prick’, ‘motherfucker’, etc, etc, etc, can be considered extremely offensive, a casual swear, or even a term of endearment.
My experience as a Brit is that you’re the one talking crap here.
Well, I’m talking about real life, not what will or will not be censored for film or TV purposes, but even in that, it’s still seen as acceptable in certain circumstances. For example, see this email exchange between Edgar Wright and the BBFC about using the word in question:
http://www.edgarwrighthere.com/2013/07/31/the-worlds-end-letters-to-the-censor/
New Enlightenment @ 74;
I think you are conflating my general criticism of multiple vote systems within democracies with a specific criticism of multiple vote within the context of the Lords (I apologise for my unclear wording). My point is that any multiple vote system, by its nature, is corrosive to functional democracy since it is tailor made to benefit the elite at the cost of everyone else. Once you make it easy for certain groups to get more votes than everyone else based upon a metric already linked to prosperity, like educational acheivement, it is only a matter of time before society’s power brokers work out how to game the system. And once you have an ‘in’ for multiple votes in any part of a democracy, there is always the risk that its expediency for the elite would see its use extended to all arms of the legislature.
Once again Daz (this time @ 78) covers what I want to say about the problematic aspects of multiple vote systems with regard to the currently unelected Lords;
Effectively placing one entire House of government entirely in the hands of the elite would serve only to entrench their power even further. You wouldn’t even get the odd outlier who would act against the interests of the 1% out of principle, since the elite would use their disproprtionate voting share to make damn sure that whoever became a peer was their person, through and through.
Daz also makes the good point that extensive educational acheivement is still no guarantee of good decision making, with David Tredinnick being one excellent example, and Richard Dawkins, and his huge blindspot when it comes to treating women as, you know, actual human beings, being another. Technocracy would be one of those systems of government that has comprehensively proven itself inferior to democracy, and working an aspect of it into the voting system is unlikely to end very well either.
Advanced education simply doesn’t necessarily guarantee empathy or ethical behaviour.