The Republican War on Science

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Chris Mooney is trying to kill me.

It’s true. He sent me this book, The Republican War on Science(amzn/b&n/abe/pwll) (now available in a new paperback edition!), that he knew would send my blood pressure skyrocketing, give me apoplexy, and cause me to stroke out and die, gasping, clawing in futile spasms at the floor. Fortunately, I’ve been inoculating myself for the past few years by reading his weblog (now also in a new edition!), so I managed to survive, although there were a few chest-clutching moments and one or two life-flashing-past-my-eyes experiences, which will be handy if I ever write a memoir.

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Billionaires for stem cell research

Forbes has an article on billionaires who oppose the stem cell ban (free reg required): the subtitle is “Billionaire cash has kept embryonic stem-cell research alive—just barely,” which really says it all. It discusses the extremely generous gifts private donors (and also some state funding by referendum) that have kept stem cell research afloat in the world of GW Bush and the religious right. There’s quite a bit of money flying around out there.

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PowerPointing our way to disaster

Neddie Jingo has an appalling example of the kind of presentation used to promote our strategic plan in Iraq. Go take a look and weep—it’s one of those meaningless godawful PowerPoint-style assemblages of boxes and arrows. You know what I mean: a nightmare of chartjunk that distracts everyone into contemplating the relationships of graphical abstractions on a screen rather than actually dealing with the substance behind them.

I’m actually very impressed that he managed to also put together a paragraph actually explaining what the graphic is supposed to mean, and that the paragraph makes sense…and exposes the deficiencies in the plan.

Once upon a time, it took a fair amount of effort to put together a slide for a presentation. It involved photography—that stuff with film—and you had to plan well ahead and put it together with some care. You had to think about what you were going to include. And when you put all that work and planning into each slide, once it was projected on the wall, you spent a good bit of time carefully explaining it to your audience. The slide was an illustration of some data, and the interpretation and explanation was done with the words you used to accompany it.

Now what I see with PowerPoint is a proliferation of graphical noise and short bullet points, accompanying by a steady bloating of the number of slides shown. An image is no longer a piece of real-world data, but something the speaker flashes up as a substitute for saying anything. As the Neddie Jingo example shows, it can be a flying piece of fantasy with no substance behind it at all…but string enough of those together and you can zip through a pretense of a talk without actually having to say anything.

One measure of a good talk to my mind is being able to imagine the video projector failing, and the speaker still being able to communicate a sensible idea to the audience. PowerPoint isn’t the point of your talk, it’s a convenience, a crutch, a tool for making some data visible. Nothing more.

Although it does look like it can also be a weapon of mass distraction when misused by the military.

So Long Mom, I’m off to Drop the Bomb

Some people seem to be outraged at the idea of people stopping the killing in the Middle East. Those people are, curiously enough, some very prominent Christians.

A small minority of evangelical Christians have entered the Middle
East political arena with some of the most un-Christian statements I
have ever heard. The latest gems come from people like Pat
Robertson, the founder and chairman of the Christian Broadcasting
Network, and Rev. John Hagee of Christians United for Israel. Hagee,
a popular televangelist who leads the 18,000-member Cornerstone
Church in San Antonio, ratcheted up his rhetoric this year with the
publication of his book, “Jerusalem Countdown,” in which he argues
that a confrontation with Iran is a necessary precondition for
Armageddon (which will mean the death of most Jews, in his eyes) and
the Second Coming of Christ.

In the best-selling book, Hagee insists that the United States must
join Israel in a preemptive military strike against Iran to fulfill
God’s plan for both Israel and the West. Shortly after the book’s
publication, he launched Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which,
as the Christian version of the powerful American Israel Public
Affairs Committee, he said would cause “a political earthquake.”
With the outbreak of the war on Lebanon, he and others have called
to their followers to pray for Israel, and for the continuation of
the war on Lebanon. They have demanded that Israel not relent in
what they call the need to destroy Hezbollah and Hamas. They seem to
have completely forgotten the very core of the Christian faith.

Forgotten the core? What’s that—proselytize, evangelize, convert the heathen, or kill them all and let God sort ’em out? I think Rev. Hagee is perfectly representative of the historical mainstream of the Abrahamic religions.

To our current infestation of cheerleaders for Jesus: if you want to comment on this thread, please make it clear whether you a) believe in the Rapture, Armageddon, etc., b) believe that a war in the Middle East is a necessary precondition for biblical prophecy to be fulfilled, and c) think this is a good thing.

(via Liz Ditz and Boing Boing)

Why does Teresa Nielsen Hayden hate America?

She’s full of advice for terrrarists on state of matter. Now in addition to confiscating our toothpaste, the security people at the airport are going to make us pee into a chromatograph before they let us on the plane.

Let’s just end the slow, lingering buildup and cut straight to the final requirement. Before we can fly, make us all strip naked, take a diuretic and laxative and purge ourselves, and then shackle us to our seats before takeoff.

Turning gold into straw

Hold it. In the recent terrorist arrests, the British were able to do their job while supporting the rule of law, and the US pressured them to rush the arrests for political gain?

It’s amazing how this administration is so good at turning even great successes into spotlights into their own incompetence and corruption. David Neiwert’s new substitute teacher does a fine job of exploring the psyche of the Republican clown show—coasting by on dogma, authority, and a black & white view of the world seems to work well for getting elected, but man, it sucks as a way to run a country.