Edward Tufte on the Iraq War

Yesterday afternoon, I’d had to run an errand to our library, and as I was walking out, I saw a real treat on the new arrivals shelf: Tufte’s
Beautiful Evidence(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll). I had to sit down and read through parts of it (short review: thought-provoking ideas, but I don’t think it’s one of his better efforts. It’s still enjoyable to read.) Then what do I learn but that Neddie Jingo got to meet him and showed him a ghastly example of PowerDreck used to sell the Iraq war.

You’ll have to read the whole thing to find out how Tufte responded.

Bad science? It’s OK—just put him in charge of women’s health

Clearly, Bush is not going to drift quietly into oblivion. Majikthise and Feministing report that his administration is appointing a certifiable kook to run the federal program that oversees family planning and reproductive health. His qualifications seem to be that he’s fanatical about abstinence, to the point of making stuff up.

At the Annual Abstinence Leadership Conference in Kansas, Keroack defended abstinence (in an aptly titled talk, “If I Only Had a Brain”) by claiming that sex causes people to go through oxytocin withdrawal which in turn prevents people from bonding in relationships. Seriously.

[Keroack] explained that oxytocin is released during positive social interaction, massage, hugs, “trust” encounters, and sexual intercourse. “It promotes bonding by reducing fear and anxiety in social settings, increasing trust and trustworthiness, reducing stress and pain, and decreasing social aggression,” he said.

But apparently if you’ve had sex with too many people you use up all that oxytocin: “People who have misused their sexual faculty and become bonded to multiple persons will diminish the power of oxytocin to maintain a permanent bond with an individual.” Hear that? Too many sexual partners and you’ll never love again!

I know that oxytocin is thought to have a strong role in bonding, is triggered for secretion in many situations—sex, labor, lactation, etc.—but these claims that you can have permanent depletion of oxytocin levels by too much sex? Never heard of that. I hit the physiology texts in my office; no support. I tried the online databases, and hoo-boy is there a lot of stuff on oxytocin; but nothing I could find to support those claims. Keroack doesn’t seem to have published anything on this subject in the peer-reviewed literature, either—the only source cited for it is something called “A Special Report from the Abstinence Medical Council”. Strangely, the only instances Google turns up of this “Abstinence Medical Council” is as the publisher of this report, and as a part of the Abstinence Clearinghouse, run by Leslee Unruh, unqualified hack (and also organizer of creepy “purity balls”). I think I’m right to suspect the source is ginned-up propaganda for a quack organization.

So there isn’t any evidence for his claims. Is it logical? Oxytocin has complicated and sometimes conflicting effects, so it would be awfully hard to pin down any clear consequences of multiple partners on pair bonding without lots of data, but on the face of it, no, none of what he says makes much sense.

Emotional pain causes our bodies to produce an elevated level of endorphins which in turn lowers the level of oxytocin. Therefore, relationship failure leads to pain which leads to elevated endorphins which leads to lower oxytocin the result of which is a lower ability to bond. Many in this increased state of emotional pain and lower oxytocin seek sex as a substitute for love which inevitably leads to another failed relationship, and so, the cycle continues.

But sex increases oxytocin levels! If he’s postulating that lower oxytocin levels are causal in relationship problems (I’m going with the flow, OK? I don’t buy into the simple chemical explanation of complex relationships myself), then it seems to me that lots of mindless sex would be the corrective prescription.

But then he’s postulating some kind of mysterious depletion or desensitization if you get too much oxytocin. That doesn’t make much sense either, because women are going to get their biggest surges of oxytocin when 1) they go into labor, and 2) they lactate. If ODing on oxytocin diminishes one’s ability to form a permanent bond, then shouldn’t childbirth be a major cause of divorce? There are also oxytocin surges in both men and women during orgasm. Does he also counsel married couples to avoid too much sex? How much is too much? How would he know?

Yeah, he’s waving his hands about interactions between endorphins and oxytocin, but seriously: he’s got no evidence for what he’s claiming, and it doesn’t make sense to claim that brain chemistry on that level senses whether you’ve had sex 10 times with one person or one time each with ten people. He’s making it up as he goes along.

This guy is simply not credible. It looks to me like the Bush administration is trying to throw a sop to the religious right after the defeat of the South Dakota abortion ban by appointing a reliable ideologue with connections to the insane Unruh anti-abortion/abstinence machine to a position where he can interfere with women’s reproductive health. Let’s hope the Democrats will show some spine and squelch this continued nonsense of using fake science to support bad policy.

No way!

Pam Spaulding suggests that this unbelievable speculation is a trial balloon:

Some big name Democrats want to oust DNC Chairman Howard Dean, arguing that his stubborn commitment to the 50-state strategy and his stinginess with funds for House races cost the Democrats several pickup opportunities.

The candidate being floated to replace Dean? Harold Ford.

Says James Carville, one of the anti-Deaniacs, “Suppose Harold Ford became chairman of the DNC? How much more money do you think we could raise? Just think of the difference it could make in one day. Now probably Harold Ford wants to stay in Tennessee. I just appointed myself his campaign manager.”

If that’s a trial balloon, let’s all hop into our Sopwith Camels and shoot it down. The Democrats succeeded beyond expectations last Tuesday; Dean’s strategy is working. Harold Ford is a conservative loser, one of those Republican Lite candidates so beloved of the disastrous old-school beltway management. This unlikely proposal would represent a retreat from a path that is working to the old strategies that were obviously not working. They’d have to be insane to do that.

Also, somebody needs to stage an intervention for Carville.

Godless post-election analysis

I like this summary by Brian Flemming:

The Democrats won a mandate without excessive God-talk and without actually winning over evangelicals in significant numbers. The election results weaken the argument for religious pandering; they don’t strengthen it.

This is not to say that we can tell the religious to just go away, but that what we should do in politics and government is continue to push purely secular values, and trust the sensible evangelicals to find common cause with what is right…just as I will vote for evangelicals who can promote progressive values in spite of their silly supernatural beliefs.

Oh. So we lost after all.

According to the mealy-mouthed Jim Wallis, anyway, the recent election was a defeat for the religious extremists and the secular Left, and a great victory for moderate and conservative Christians. Fortunately, we’ve got Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden to administer a corrective, or I’d have to throw a snit and go start piling faggots for the long-postponed atheist revolution. Since they’ve got it under control, I guess I can let it pass. This time.

But Wallis does join Amy Sullivan on The List.

A surfeit of good news

All right, stop it now. This is getting ridiculous. Tuesday, we watch the Republicans collapse in the elections. Wednesday, Rumsfeld folds up and goes home. Today, Allen concedes, giving Democrats the Senate. What next? Tomorrow, Bush and Cheney are abducted by aliens, who broadcast the anal probing to the whole planet’s television networks? The day after, it rains ponies?*

Am I missing a good bet by not buying any lottery tickets?

*OK, this one might be a little splatty and meaty and not so nice, unless they were magic flying ponies. I’m thinking it could happen right now.